A heavy peach mist lies over the rice paddies as the black shapes of farmers in straw hats make their way through the glistening mud. Behind them, a wobbly yellow orb boils up slowly out of the eastern horizon. An idling water buffalo makes a surprise close-up as it flashes by in the window of the train car.
The sleeping berths have just been folded up and the three of them are now seated on the plastic benches underneath, The Handler and Medic facing Elvis. Humid heat pushes in on them from all sides.
“You know what this reminds me of?” says Elvis, pointing through the window.
Medic waits for an answer. None comes. “Oh, I thought that was rhetorical. No, I don’t,” he answers haltingly.
“Balinese shadow puppets,” concludes Elvis with a smile.
Medic waits for a while to see if Elvis wants to elaborate in any way. The young, fresh-faced Asian continues to smile silently but eagerly, as if waiting to be asked to do so.
“How do you mean?” asks Medic, testing the theory.
“Like the light, for example” bursts forth Elvis, confirming Medic’s suspicion. “Like a lamp in the sky, and everything’s a shadow. And the train adds the soundtrack. So cool.”
Elvis alternates his wide-eyed gaze between Medic and the scenery, inviting Medic to look again. Medic does and nods in agreement.
In truth, the nod is more of a courtesy. Elvis seems to be a nice guy but there’s also something a little off about him. Medic noticed this almost right away as they got acquainted on the dark Thai beach. The young man demonstrated good self-reliance, having just completed a small trek through the night jungle using only GPS. And he implicitly seemed to understand their need to sink the dinghy, offering a helping hand before they asked. In short, he seemed capable, even experienced.
So this coy thing gives Medic pause. He’s not sure he’s got the patience for the withdrawn eagerness with which Elvis waits to be questioned, only to produce simple-minded answers at the end of it.
In fact, Medic is a little unsure of what to make of Elvis in general. He feels like he could easily be ten years Elvis’ senior, a feeling heightened by the young man’s deferential demeanour. But the spiky hair, the compact and powerful physique poured into a t-shirt bearing a pithy message, even the large brass Texas belt buckle and complementary gilded sneakers, they all suggest a youthful confidence that seems to be either absent or suppressed.
“So … when did Dmitri recruit you?” asks Medic, eager to get onto a new topic.
“Well, you know,” begins Elvis, flopping his head around to avoid a direct confrontation with the question, “it’s technically the agency that recruited me. Dmitri was my connection, so I guess in a way you could say he recruited me but that’s not quite right.
“But, yeah, I guess about a year ago,” continues Elvis. “I was on some subreddit and we got into a conversation. We ended up having a lot in common, decided to meet up one day, and you probably already know the rest.”
“Sort of,” replies Medic softly, uncomfortably aware of how little he knows.
“How about you?” asks Elvis with a thrusting enthusiasm.
“A few weeks, give or take,” replies Medic as he pulls back into his seat in feigned relaxation. “She got me involved.”
He swings his hand left and points at The Handler. She appears to be immersed in something on the screen of her mobile phone but the sunglasses make it difficult to tell. After a few moments she perks up, lowers the phone, and remarks, “Huh?”
“Just saying you pulled me into Section B,” repeats Medic.
“Oh, yeah,” she acknowledges with an empty smile.
She sits like that for a few moments before returning to her phone with a flat, “Okay, great.”
An extended and awkward silence follows.
“PK?” asks Elvis at long last, breaking through the omnipresent din of the train with an upraised eyebrow.
“Excuse me?” responds Medic, head cocked to one side.
“PK. Psychokinesis. Telekinesis. You know … moving stuff with your mind,” explains Elvis as he lifts his fingers to his temple and squints in faux concentration. “That your thing?”
“Sorry … what?” asks Medic again, shaking his head.
“Oh shit,” responds Elvis with a look of concern. “You guys haven’t–“
“No we haven’t,” cuts in The Handler as she lowers her phone. “Medic and me have barely covered the basics.”
Taking off her sunglasses, she turns to Medic. “This is some of that more underground stuff I was telling you about,” she says with nonchalant reassurance.
Suddenly aware of his own slackened disbelief, Medic quickly switches to his best poker face.
“Okay, hang on,” he says, raising both hands in objection. “You’re telling me that you guys are … what … psychic? Telepathic? You have, whatever you wanna call it … weird powers?”
He can feel his blood pressure rising. For the first time since the start of this voyage he’s feeling shredding pangs of doubt and uncertainty, questioning what the hell he’s doing here. Mostly, he realizes, he doubts her.
“See?” responds The Handler with mild exasperation. “This is what I was talking about. All of it comes with so much baggage. That shit needs to be unpacked before you even walk through the door. We didn’t get to do that yet.”
“You’re serious? Like, about the whole thing?” asks Medic, folding his arms defiantly. He can now feel his heart pounding in his chest as the floor drops out from under his perception. A lot of nasty scenarios and implications are running around in his head.
The Handler assumes a docile tone, looking up at him from a slightly bowed head. “Look, I’m sorry that this is getting dropped on you so fast but I promise you we’re not crazy or some new age hippie assholes. None of us would be working together if this stuff wasn’t real or effective. It just works in a way that maybe you don’t expect.”
Medic relaxes his posture but maintains a defensive stare. “Can see into the future too? Can you guess what I’m going to say next?”
“Like I said,” replies The Handler, “it doesn’t work the way you might expect. No, I can’t guess what you’re going to say next and yes, sometimes with the help of the agency we can see into the future.”
“So why aren’t you all rich by now?” shoots back Medic.
“Well,” shrugs The Handler, “proper secret agents shouldn’t be flashy. Gives us away. Creates situations like the one we’re in. Besides, how do you know that some of us aren’t rolling in dough? Then again, do we need to be? Think about our trip so far; we haven’t needed money for anything. Well, our own money, anyway,” she concludes with a smirk.
Medic nods in silent agreement.
“Dude, come on,” she says as she assumes a tall, motivational posture. “We’re on a train bound for Bangkok to meet up with our secret agent buddies for a really critical mission. That view out there” — she points toward the window– “is spectacular and I don’t know about you but that banana rice thing we had for breakfast was outstanding. And this after traveling over oceans for weeks, which turned out to be memorable sometimes. You were there. And you’re here. Even if you don’t believe what we’re telling you, and believe me you will, isn’t that already pretty impressive? Doesn’t that count toward my credentials?”
A noticeably more receptive Medic nods once again.
“Thank you,” she says courteously. “And since there’s no point beating around the bush now, those tests you did on the way to Cape Verde were supposed to find if you excelled at anything.”
“Any psychic abilities you mean?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“You’re pretty average. Some abilities that you can probably improve with training but there’s nothing that stands out, nothing specific to focus on.”
“So you’re saying that I have some psychic abilities?”
“As much as anyone else, yeah.”
“As much as any agent?”
“As much as the general population, agents included.”
“So you’re saying that most people are psychic?”
“More or less, yeah.”
“And I’m just supposed to accept a claim like that at face value?”
“Well of course not. We just haven’t had a chance to cover the research yet.”
“Isn’t that just a bunch of junk science? If psychic abilities were real–“
The Handler cuts him off with an upraised hand. “You’re projecting your expectations about how they should work instead of focusing on how they do work. Keep the skepticism but like I said, leave the rest of the baggage at the door. Study the data. Try it out for yourself. Then judge.”
“Okay,” accepts Medic with a reluctant sideways nod.
“Okay, great,” confirms The Handler. “Well, I have to use the loo so please excuse me. Elvis, which way?”
“Oh, just down that way,” responds Elvis snappily as he points down the narrow corridor of the train car.
The Handler gets up unsteadily and wobbles in the direction of Elvis’ finger.
“It’s just a hole in the floor,” says Elvis as Medic turns toward him.
“What is?” asks Medic.
“The toilet,” responds Elvis with a mischievous smile. “It’s just a hole. Opens up right onto the tracks. You need some nerve just to take a piss.”
“Yeah, some nerve,” follows up Medic absentmindedly. Then, as suddenly as if concluding a thought he asks, “So do you have an ability? What’s your thing?”
“PK,” responds Elvis perkily. “Psychokinesis. Telekinesis. Whatever you wanna call it. Mind over matter.”
“And how’s that working out?”
“Great. Making great progress.”
“So you can move stuff with your mind?”
“Yup.”
“And how do you get started in something like that?”
“Psi wheel, probably.”
“What’s a psi wheel?”
“It’s a sort of pinwheel. You cup your hands around it and focus on it to move. Once you can spin the wheel you start learning to change directions. Some people say this is just because of the heat from your hands or maybe your breath but good luck explaining it when it’s under glass. And after that you spin it without any hands at all.”
“And you can do that?”
“Yup,” responds Elvis instantly. “I can do it even when I’m not in the same room.”
“Okay, well, I’ll believe it when I see it,” finishes Medic in a flat tone.
“Seeing might not be enough, though, right?” asks Elvis. “You know, because of people like your Handler and her hypnosis thing.”
“I thought we were immune to that,” points out Medic.
“That’s what I’ve heard too,” agrees Elvis with a weak shrug.
Another awkward silence passes with only the clacking of the train car filling up the void between them.
“You know what?” offers Elvis with a sudden assertiveness. “I think I saw a guy selling Singhas down that way somewhere. You want me to pick you up some?”
“Yeah, that might be a good idea,” responds Medic stonily, eyes fixated on distant thoughts and recollections.