Traveler

By David Yates

It has been theorized that humans use only about ten percent of the power of their minds. Meet Braden, an incredibly gifted young man who has learned to tap into the other ninety percent. Pursued by a powerful group of men, Braden finds that he must rely on his amazing skills in order to stay alive.

978-1-59431-762-0

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Paranormal/science fiction

Chapter 1

"Your son's IQ is…well, it's immeasurable by any standards with which I am familiar. He's off the charts all across the board. Simply put, he's the most brilliant child I've ever seen, or even heard of. Tyler's really going to go places in his life."

Truer words were never spoken.

***

Tim and Mary Atcherson were pleasantly stunned as they drove home from the doctor's office. Dr. Fox was a well-known and much-respected child psychologist, so they trusted his testing procedures and results. According to Dr. Fox, their son was the brightest child he or any of his colleagues had ever seen, and was he possibly the smartest kid in the world, ever? Dr. Fox seemed to think it was possible.

"Well, what do you think?" Mary asked her husband as they rode along in their pleasant fog.

"I'm not sure what to think," Tim replied. "I'm pretty sure our job as parents just got a lot more…interesting."

"What do you mean?"

"Well," Tim said, "we are now responsible for raising a genius. He already has the necessary tools and is learning rapidly. We need to instill in him the more intangible qualities, like responsibility, integrity, honor, morals, ethics…and I think we'd better get started quickly, because he's learning things at a scary rate."

The subject of their conversation sat behind them in his safety seat, bright blue eyes moving from father to mother and back to father as if watching a particularly good tennis match. Although Tyler Atcherson was only two, he was bright enough to know that…well, that he was bright. Not only could he do things his peers wouldn't be able to do for several years, but his memory was like a well-honed razor. At six months of age he had been walking unaided and talking, although it was just individual words. But those words were sentences by age 1, and he was also solving simple addition and subtraction problems by then. His development continued at an amazing speed, and by the time he was blowing out the two candles on his next birthday cake, he was writing sentences, reading books and articles from the newspaper and from magazines. In fact, he knew how to operate his father's computer and how to access the Internet. He was reading articles and other Internet content, which greatly broadened the scope of his learning base. Oh, he was a regular kid in the sense that he liked playing and watching TV, but unlike other kids (even kids much older than him), he thirsted for knowledge as a vampire thirsts for blood. If given the choice between watching cartoons or reading an Internet article on the hunting instincts of the puma, he might choose TV, but it would be a close race.

And his retention capability was as good as his incredible talents. He remembered every tidbit of information that he read or heard. He was very good with numbers, and already had memorized the multiplication tables. He was particularly good with dates; he knew what was so important about 1492 and 1776 and 1861; he understood the significance of 1919 and 1947 (he liked baseball). He knew important dates in history, like October 29, 1929; December 7, 1941; November 22, 1963; and September 11, 2001.

Unlike most other kids on the planet, Tyler liked every subject he studied. Also unlike most other kids, he had no "weak" areas that gave him trouble. He was able to learn and retain things pertaining to virtually any subject. He had favorites, such as mathematics, sciences, the arts, and history, but his mind was like a sponge, soaking up all the water possible from any source. He was eager and able to learn; under ordinary circumstances this would be a very good thing. And, considering everything that happened later, maybe it still was a good thing. Or, at least, maybe there was still a silver lining around the dark cloud that followed.

After the Atchersons left his office with their little genius in tow, Dr. Fox again went through the young boy's test results, as if he couldn't believe what he had just seen. As a matter of fact, he still couldn't believe it. He was as excited as the boy's parents were, but for very different reasons. Where the Atchersons saw unlimited potential and opportunity for their son, Dr. Fox saw potential fame and wealth for himself. Tyler Atcherson was still his patient, and Dr. Fox had told Tyler's parents that he was going to schedule more comprehensive testing at the state university (supervised by him, of course). The Atchersons had given their consent to further testing, since they were just as interested as Dr. Fox in finding out exactly how intelligent their son was. Already, Dr. Fox could see himself being interviewed by David Letterman or Regis Philbin or even Howard Stern.

"Maybe I can even get a TV show of my own, like Dr. Phil," Fox mused under his breath. "Yeah, a show like Dr. Phil, but catering exclusively to children with problems." His eyes gleamed at the prospect, and his excitement began to grow. No other show like it on TV yet, he thought. There would have to be a network interested in it, right?

"Right!" he agreed, and spun around in his swivel office chair to his computer. He brought up his email program and clicked "Compose Mail". When the screen came up, he wrote an email to Mike Reynolds, his colleague, college roommate, and longtime friend. In his excited state, Fox's ethics went right out the window. Although Fox was a college graduate and a psychologist, he wasn't exactly the brightest bulb in the chandelier; as he composed the email, he was blissfully unaware that he was about to be in direct violation of the doctor-patient privilege by sending the email. He told Reynolds in the email everything that had just occurred in his office with young Tyler, including testing procedures and the content of conversations he had had with Tyler. He also mentioned his excitement about what would surely be his upcoming wealth and fame. He even included the boy's full name in the email.

To his credit, Reynolds (whose bulb shone brighter than Fox's ever would) sent a reply email saying that he was happy for Fox, but that he shouldn't have revealed so much information. Unfortunately, Fox never saw Reynolds' reply; in fact, after 11:07 p.m. that very night, Fox never saw anything again. And, by sending the email (although neither of them knew it), Fox signed the death warrant of his friend Mike Reynolds as well.