The Push Chronicles (Book 1): Indomitable Read Free Page A

happened many times in human history, I believe.  What this meant is that, no matter what I discovered, I couldn’t harness it without one of two things.”
    “A sizable cult or some way to feedback your own brainwaves, in essence your beliefs, a million fold.  That's exactly what my biofeedback device is doing right now, isn't it?”
    “I would give you a gold star if I had one, my dear.”  Eric suddenly spasmed, his muscles violently contracting.  He coughed up a wad of blood and what had to be some internal tissue.  The looped thought patterns were not just conscious thought, but also the signals for his autonomic functions.  His body was literally burning itself out as his organs tried to keep up with a hundred thousand commands at once.
    “Almost done.  It is literally do or die time.  When this is over, I’ll either be dead or the world will never have to fear for tragedy or pain or evil ever again.”
    “You can’t do this.  Even if you aren’t blind crazy, what gives you the right to determine everyone else’s reality?”  Some kind of unnatural vibration was in the air, forcing me to yell to be heard.
    “Why don’t I have the right?  Isn’t science supposed to make the world a better place?”  He too was shouting above the din.  His thousand-toned voice only made it more confusing.  “It is going to.  Now!”
    The last thing I saw before the tremendous flash of pure white light, echoing like the shockwave from a massive detonation from him, was part of Eric’s comic book collection fluttering in the unnatural winds.

Chapter 3 Whiteout
    I had always hoped there was an afterlife but, as a physiologist, it was often hard to have a real belief in it.  The curse of too much knowledge, I suppose.  It was with that thought that I was happy to open up my eyes.  After all, I had to be dead and this had to be the afterlife.  What I had just seen should have vaporized everything nearby, at least according to my basic understanding of physics.
    My next thought was that the afterlife looked scarily similar to the dingy apartment in the aging apartment building that I had been in before I died.  My last thought as my mind came to full consciousness was that, for a vaporized person, I felt amazingly intact.  White phantom lights still blinked in my eyes and my entire body felt aching and tingly, as if I were recovering from a full body muscle spasm, but otherwise, I felt shockingly good.  I willed the pain into a side corner of my mind and sat up slowly, just in case I was more injured than I thought.
    I had fallen unconscious a few feet away from where Eric had been sitting and the scene that remained there was confounding.  The wooden chair was still there, mostly intact, but with a very exacting indentation that matched Eric’s form burnt into it.  Electrode wires dangled lifelessly from the equipment on the table, melted off on one end.  It was then that my nose decided it was a good time to come back online and assault me with the smells of charred wood and the heavy ozone of burned out electronics.
    As for Eric, there was no evidence he had ever existed outside of the burnt outline of his body.  I gingerly got to my feet and reached out for the chair, almost afraid to touch it.  I ran my fingers over the burnt impression, amazed at how precise the contouring was.  There was no ash, bits of cloth, or specks of human remains.  It was a moment before the emotions hit me.
    I screwed my eyes shut as the tears came without warning.  No matter what had just happened ... I wasn’t even sure how much time had passed now ... I still held feelings in my heart for Eric.  For that moment, Eric's growing lists of transgressions against me were forgotten to make way for the wash of grief.  His enigmatic smile, his soft-spoken way of turning a phrase, and the little ways he showed affection, I was remembering them all and was hit with the near-certainty that I would never see or feel those