Sometimes, it is what you do that matters. Sometimes, it is who you are. Usually it is just being in the proper place at the proper moment in time with the will to act.

I woke up after the lights came back on, and there was a book in the receptacle. It had Journal printed on the cover. There was no way I was going to put anything that these crazy people running the asylum could use against me, so I wrote about nothing in particular. I wrote about sunshine and daisies.

It is something that my writing teacher used to talk about. She said that if we had nothing else to write about, spend some time writing about something familiar to us. Just spend time writing. She set us an assignment to write as much as we could that night about sunshine and daisies. I started by writing about how stupid it was to write about sunshine and daisies, by the time I had finished with twenty pages I no longer thought the assignment was stupid.

Try it yourself sometime. Start by writing about the way that sunlight lightly touches the yellow color of the flower, adding a translucence to the petal, and giving a sense of depth. . .

Yeah, I don't want to give all of my secrets away.

So I spent the time before out next meal writing about sunshine and daisies.

I wondered what they would take away from the experience. I know I felt more relaxed than I had in days. We went to lunch. When we got back, it was lights out again. I slept again. The lights came on again and we were told to write. I spent some more time free writing, but since I had done enough daisies, I decided to start writing about vacuum. You know, like in space? I wanted to see how many words it would take me to completely describe a perfect vacuum. I was still writing when they let us go to dinner.

'You will be allowed into the common area after dinner."

That was at least something different. After a morning spent writing and sitting around, everyone in their own silent world, I wondered what the common area would be like.

Something occurred to me. The children hadn't been noisy all morning. I looked at them and they seemed a bit lethargic. I walked over to one of the little telepaths.

"What's your name, sweetie?"

"I'm Lucy."

"Are you feeling ok, Lucy?"

"The light is funny in here. It makes my eyes hurt, and my head feel soft."

I was starting to feel worried. "Can you read my thoughts, Lucy?"

"I'm sorry, the light hurts too much."
I had spent the energy to get rid of the pills for nothing. I think that was just a test of our obedience. What was this place? Why were they doing this? I tried something I had never done before. I thought about something I wanted to connect with. I focused on the texture and shape and color. I thought of reaching out and plucking it from the tree, and matched my movements to my thoughts.

Next thing I knew, there was a fresh granny smith apple in my hand. Lucy clapped at that, and for a moment her pain was gone. I gave her the apple, and she ate it quickly and messily. I'm not sure if anyone else noticed.

Dinner was the same as breakfast and lunch. A protein bar washed down with water. I almost wished in that moment that I had eaten the apple instead of Lucy. Seeing how the pain in her eyes had returned, however, I couldn't begrudge her that little joy.

We ate it silence, and then moved into the common area. There were some ping pong tables, and a piano. Off to one side there was a TV and a couch. On the other side of the room was a chess table with three chess sets on it. I wanted to sit down and see what passed as TV in this world.

"Jamie, come play chess with me." Tory grabbed my arm and practically dragged me to the chess table. He had been a little strange today, smirking at everyone and giggling to himself as he wrote. I didn't really want to play chess with him.

"I want to just relax for a bit, Tory. Maybe watch some TV."

"Anyone can watch TV, Jamie. Chess takes some real skill."

"Come on, Tory. I'm a bit tired after all this writing."

He smirked at that. "Afraid to lose to little ole me?"

This really seemed to mean a lot to him, so I decided to play his game with him at least this once. I always felt sorry for the little pawns.

I read Through the Looking Glass one summer, and it really made me feel for the pawns on the board after that. I saw all of them as Alice, and wanted them all to be queen. So I did my best to use all of my other pieces to clear the way for them. I know, it's not really a winning strategy, but I was happy every time that I got a pawn to the eighth row.

My playing method really seemed to bother Tory. He couldn't decide if he was mad or not. I think the time I took his queen with one of my pawns, because his king got into revealed check from my queen really bothered him. I got three pawns to the eighth row that game.

Over all, I got twelve pawns home out of six games. I made a lot of little Alices happy.

We still had some time to watch TV after he got bored. I sat with the other children on the couch and we watched a strange mix of shows from my world. I can't really describe it, and I'm sure the point was lost on me, but everyone else seemed to enjoy it. I stopped really paying attention when the main character started saying, "Kawa, kawa, Hey KAWA!!" and everyone laughed. I was completely lost.

About an hour later we went back to our room.

A lot of the others immediately began writing in the books, even without the command to do so. Everyone else seemed to already be conditioned to follow their orders. I wondered what was going on here. It didn't make any sense to me. They were all getting the same glassy eyed looks that the other inmates had when we walked down the corridor this morning. The children were further along than the teenagers, but they were all getting there.

What made me different. What was protecting me.

'Jams, do you have any idea what's going on here? Why aren't we affected?'

'Huh? Affected by what? I think you should be writing.'

I suddenly knew what made me different, and I panicked a little. What happened when Jams was fully overcome?

I had to think positively. She seemed to be taking the bullet for me on this one, so I needed to make the most of the time I had left. I looked around, and noticed that most of them were silently writing in their journals. Tory, still had the same smirk on his face. I really had to watch that one. Something just wasn't right about him.

"Place your journals in the receptacles."

Well, I did as I was instructed, trying to match the dead actions of the others. I was going to need to find a healer after I got everyone out of here. That shouldn't be too much of a problem, but it would need to be somewhere other than this world.

"Prepare for sleep."

We all lay down and the lights turned off. I tossed and turned for a while, and then finally fell asleep. I had some really strange dreams. Jams was always there, and never really reacted. I'm not sure if it was really her, as it could have been my own fears about her.

I didn't know what to do for her. She was so dead. I thought about when she lost her life. I felt her die.

I haven't written about it truly before, because I always felt it was private to her. However I felt her dying again.

She had grown colder and colder, and lost her focus.

Now, she was losing focus, but there was no physiological reason.

It killed me a little inside.

I really have no words to explain how I felt right now. It was as if the very will to write had seeped from my soul. It was. . .

It was a field of daisies, brown in winter and waiting for the first snow. There is no grass. There are no leaves. There is no more sunlight, and it will never rise again. The moon glows red, and blood drips from the very atmosphere.

I got a little smile thinking about that. It actually helped me to organize my thoughts.

Loosing Jamie is not losing a friend, or a sibling, or lover. Loosing Jamie is losing myself. It would be like waking one morning and realizing you had only one leg, and one arm.

I had to figure a way out of here, or I would live my life without an arm and a leg.

I couldn't leave any of these children here.

I suddenly had a thought.

I might not personally be able to return to my Mary, but she and Frank would be able to take all of these children and give them a life.

They had the contacts to place them. I was sure that this would be a great way to resolve this little issue. No, to figure out how to get all of them out of her with me, and then get them healed and off to Mary.

I awoke with a smile.

We went and showered like we had the previous morning. I was still bothered by all the communal showers they had here.

We went to breakfast, and this time we weren't alone in the dining hall. It seems that all of the people in the sanitarium were in the room with us. The room was packed and it was silent. They all ate mechanically, and I looked at all of them to see if anyone else was like me. Even Tory had lost his animation of yesterday. I began to notice that most people were in synch with their motions. There were a few in the room that were moving at their own pace. I looked directly at one, and he saluted me with his meal brick. About one in ten were like me, at their own pace, but pretending to be mechanical in their actions.

I went along with them, trying my best to blend in. I knew if someone was really paying attention that we would be noticed. What they did about it would really depend on whether or not anyone who was watching cared.

We finished the brick and went back to our room for the morning sleep.

I wasn't tired, so I sat there looking at the darkness. I can thankfully say that while looking into the darkness, the darkness never looked into me.

I shook myself at the thought. If I continued thinking these thoughts, I would drive myself insane.

I had to plan what I would do. How was I going to connect to all of the others, when none of them could help me.

It would have to be related to how I connected to Jams. This worlds detectors had discovered me doing it, so I must be broadcasting beyond myself. I tried to touch anyone at all in the room with me. I reached out, and felt, and stretched.

It was as if I was running into a brick wall. I tried to push against the wall. I failed. I mentally took a run at the wall and crashed into it. I passed out. I didn't wake up until everyone returned from the next meal. That scared me a little. It had been fairly early in the sleep period when I had tried to attack the wall, and here it was about four hours later I'm only just waking up.

I needed to be a lot more careful about what I did. I could wake up dead next time. There was only a finite amount of energy I could use.

I sat there and thought about it for a while. I reached out my hand to the wall and felt along it. It felt pebbled. It wasn't a solid after all. I pushed my hand slowly into the surface and it passed into it. The less pressure I used the easier it was to permeate the wall. I slipped into the wall. A great vista opened up before me.

I had no idea what it was that I was seeing. I looked around me, and saw a faint yellow ribbon flowing from me. I could see my energy level here, and saw with a bit of fear that I only had about a hundred or so feet of ribbon left in me. There was room in me for a lot more than that, so I had to assume that I started short when I came in here.

I was losing ribbon at about a foot a minute. Not too fast, but I only had about a hundred feet left.

I lost a couple of feet while I sat there trying to decide what to do: Stay and explore, or run home. I grabbed onto the ribbon to see if I could stop it, and felt myself pulled through the wall. I saw myself lying in bed and the lights come on. I slipped back into myself.

We went to dinner.

I was getting tired of meal bricks.

We went to the common room after dinner. Most of the inmates went and sat in front of the TV. A few went and played ping pong. A couple went over and pretended to play chess.

They were pretending, because none of the moves were correct. What were they doing?

I sat and watched them move the pieces. There was an art to it. There was a. . .language to it. I really didn't want to be here long enough to learn that language, but I walked closer and watched anyway.

One of the young men there gestured me toward the remaining open seat.

I had a thought and pointed toward my eyes, then toward my ears, and then shook my head.

The one who had pointed toward the seat walked over to me, and tapped my head. He then gestured to the seat again.

I shrugged and sat down at the table.
The person who had invited me to the table moved a couple of pieces: 'Would someone like to recap for our new member?'

My eyes widened in surprise. 'I can understand!'

One of the other girls at the table smiled, and then laughed her pieces. The other girl moved them: 'Pedant here has that talent. I can teach anyone anything he knows. I have no idea how he learned this language.'

Pedant looked grim: 'The person who taught them to me was taken for final rendering.'

I saw the smiles fade.

'What. . .' I began with a small pawn shuffle, but Pedant raised his hand.

'That is too much of a topic for our first meeting. The common talents, they keep as many as appear. The rare talents, they only allow one of at a time. The fact that you're awake tells us that you must be a rare.

I wondered about that. But I wouldn't tell them my worries.

'What's your power?'

I couldn't think what to tell them.

'Don't you know your power?' This was said by a rat faced boy between the girls on the other side of the table. He laughed his pieces. It was the same movement that the girl had mad, but there was something of a smirk in it. Don't ask me to explain it. It would be lime explaining a chuckle versus a giggle, by sound alone, to a deaf person. I could just tell

'Hush, Walker, give her a chance to organize her thoughts.'

'I will have to describe what I have discovered so far. . .'

Jaws dropped. 'So far. . .'

'Discovered. . .'

Pedant raised a hand: 'Silence, let her speak.'

I took a deep breath, and then let it go because I wasn't speaking: 'I can move between worlds. I can host dead people in my head. I can travel outside of my body. I can take things from other worlds, and push them there. I can find specific people in other worlds, and travel to them. I can talk telepathically, but currently only to people who are in my head with me. . .

I trailed off as I looked at the faces around me. Their mouths were open in shock. Walker began, 'Jamie. . .' but Pedant stopped him.

'No real names here.'

'And you should be able to see that he's male.' Said the other boy at the table. Both the girls giggled their pieces.

Walker looked at me in appraising manner: 'I don't care what her genetics say. She's female.'

I blushed and smiled and looked down at the table.

'See!' The girls laughed, and the silent boy looked embarrassed.

Pedant came to his rescue: 'No need to be put out, Underseer. You look at the core of things, and see them as they are on a basic level. She is physically male. We see her as she appears. She appears female.'

Underseer broke out in a huge grin: 'They! There are two of them in there.'

Walker looked at me with a question in his eye.

'I saved one of my alternates when she died. I am keeping her alive until we find a better home for her.' Something suddenly dawned on me: 'Wait, Jamie in this world is physically female.'

'You didn't know?' asked one of the girls.

'Well, I did try to find the perfect, unoccupied body for my alternate. We were looking for a mind destroyed by the Beast' I then explained who the Beast was.

"Inmates return to your rooms."

We said our goodbyes, and I went to my room. Our journals were back. I opened mine to see what was written or changed there. There had been no changes I could see.

We went to bed and the lights were shut off.

I decided that I needed to refresh my energy before trying the plane again. So I went to sleep. I awoke before anyone else, and noticed that one of the children was missing. I noticed the door open, so I went out into the hall. I called for her, but there was no reply. I went into the bathroom. I smelled something. It stank horribly in the shower area. The walls were wet and red, and I wondered what it could be in here. Then I saw the small broken body. I began to scream. I couldn't stop it. I screamed and screamed until I simply couldn't scream any more.

I turned to run, and there was Pedant. He looked at me with a question in his eye. It was at that moment that I realized he was mute. Not showing him up I simply pointed. He looked at her poor little body and held me as I cried silently into his shoulder.

I began to shake uncontrollably. He held me until that stopped too. I would find out who had hurt this innocent one.