Martin Williams’ father was a career soldier, like his grand­father and his great grandfather, and the men in his family they talked about from long before his time. So, it was natural for him to assume that he too was going to be a soldier. But something about it bothered him from his earliest memories. As he grew older, he’d go back and ponder the source of these doubts—doubts he never expressed openly. Eventually he con­cluded that some very deep part of him, intrinsic to his being, felt that the job he had to do was even larger than fighting to protect free people. But that deep part of him never revealed what that big job was. He waited and hoped that someday he would understand himself at least that much, meanwhile set­ting about on a military career.

His parents once took him to a museum when he was very young. It was one of his earliest memories. The museum was hosting an exhibition on Venus Aphrodite, replete with stat­ues and paintings of her throughout the ages. He imagined he knew Venus long ago, though he had no idea what that meant. When he reached puberty, he began to dream of making love with Venus. When he began dating, he picked the girls who looked like the Venus of his dreams, blonde, colorfully made up, a graceful neck, inviting, mischievously yet innocently flaunting her lush body.

Growing up, Martin noticed how often he made mistakes of one kind or another, which led him to become introspective and very observant of his own behavior, internally as well as externally. He told himself that mistakes could turn his whole life into a waste. He saw that before he acted, a flurry of con­flicting impulses in his mind would present a range of possible actions, then he would apparently choose one path and take it. The word ”apparently” appeared in his mind often, because he was well aware that reality could differ from appearances. He had become an avid reader of books on science, and science fiction novels from the age of five. He became an agnostic the more he felt drawn to science. (Nevertheless, one Christmas he was touched by the meaning of the holiday and sang baby Jesus to sleep in his mind.) To him, science meant certainty, and the avoidance of surety until the evidence was inescapable. So, he regarded whatever he thought in his mind with a grain of salt.

He noticed that right before he took any particular action, the voices or thoughts in his head intimating which action he should take could be identified as the internalized voices of his father and mother. He formed an impression of the advice each one would give him, and became given to predicting how they would advise him in whatever the current situation hap­pened to be. He kept track of the outcomes and could tell that sometimes the advice of either parent could lead him to take an action that was regrettable. One time in self-defense he really hurt a boy more than necessary, which had been sanc­tioned by his mind’s predicted father’s advice. Another time he was so civilized with his young friends that they embarrassed him about it, his behavior having been advocated by his mind’s predicted mother’s advice. By the time he was ten years old, he realized he had an advisor in his mind whose track record was flawless in giving action recommendations that satisfied him in retrospect. Often that “voice” didn’t even use words—it was more like a hunch he understood without having used words to explain it to himself. By age twelve, he had figured out some­thing strange was going on. He had many, many hunches each day, and they always turned out to be right. He also noticed that his mind made up things like hunches, which almost always gave bad advice. He very gradually learned to tell the difference between his real intuitions and the mock intuitions that apparently some part of his mind made up to make itself feel smart.

Once, at around age twelve, the point of view in his mind that gave him the real hunches used words for a change—words accompanied by a strong feeling of realizing a deep truth. The words were, “I am God… and so is everybody else.” That felt truly weird because he was agnostic, and totally committed to science. He tried to figure out what those words meant, and why it felt so true—like it had to be true for some scientific rea­son that his mind could not yet explain to him. For the rest of his life, he would work to unravel this mystery.

Ω

Captain Martin Williams, rangy and sandy-haired, was being briefed by his superior officer in a dark cave in Afghanistan. Both men used small flashlights to illuminate the map. The Major pointed to a rocky pass. “Intel says take your men through here.”

Martin had a hunch. He pointed at the next pass to the west. “What about this one?” he asked.

“Why that one?”

“Just a hunch.”

The Major looked exasperated. “Marty, don’t start that crap.”

Martin shrugged.

He gathered and moved his men relatively soundlessly through the moonless night. As they approached the pass they had been ordered to take, Martin, leading the way, held up his hand and the company halted. He picked a fireteam and pointed up to the ridge on the left. “Make a deep recon just the other side of the ridge line. If you meet resistance, dig in and protect our flank, then scramble down and rejoin us,” he ordered. “No radios unless there’s a firefight.” All their helmets had radios. The enemy had learned how to listen in, however. The enemy was a branch of ISIL that had recently taken over the country by crushing the Taliban.

The rest of the company was surprised to be waiting in place as the four soldiers disappeared into the night. Martin kept them waiting five minutes. They heard and saw a firefight erupt just over the ridge to the west. Martin motioned his men forward at a fast trot. The 140 men ran through the pass. Not­ing craters in the ground, Martin figured out that the unit his fireteam had engaged had been working on zeroing in mortars on the pass they were running through, and he sprinted for­ward at the fastest speed he could manage. His men took the hint.

Ω

His superior apologized. “Good work, Marty. You’d have lost fewer men if I’d listened to your hunch.”

“Sir, I have a hunch you should check the source of the intel,” Martin said, and his boss nodded sensibly.

Ω

“Sir, you want to give me my own command because of my hunches?” Martin laughed out loud. Was he dreaming? This was ridiculous. Wearing dress uniform as ordered, he was meeting with a bunch of Generals in the Pentagon.

“This comes straight from the top. The president has given top secret orders. Intel confirms the existence of a psychic unit within the Russian army. We’ve got to have our own, and we’ve got a lot of catching up to do. We’ve got to assign it to somebody who we can trust, one of our own, not some civilian, although you are free to recruit civilians to work under your command. This is a mental arms race. The president feels that it could be the most important arms race we’re in,” a five-star said. “He wants this Theta Force to report to him personally.”

Martin checked in with himself, and found that this made him very excited and happy. But he had a hunch.

“Sir, may I speak plainly?” Martin asked, looking around although addressing the five-star, who was senior in the room. The general grunted and others nodded. “Sir, I could cock this up. I can train people to use their minds the way I do, I’ll need help finding people who have the raw talents both within and beyond the Army, and I can use my hunches to help protect Theta. What I can’t do while doing all that is to handle the poli­tics of running a command that reports so high.”

“What are you asking for?” the five-star queried.

“I would like to be the executive officer of Theta, in charge of training and security. I don’t want to be the commanding officer. I’m not ready.”

The group looked at each other. They had all, including Williams, graduated from West Point, where they had been trained to want to move up the ladder as fast as possible. This guy is weird, maybe he’s right to say he isn’t ready for com­mand of what is probably going to be a battalion-size unit.

“Anyone in mind?” the five-star asked.

Williams nodded. He had done his homework. “Colonel Tim Shannon,” he said. He had observed Shannon, who com­manded the brigade of elite troops from all branches of service in which Williams had been just a cog. Shannon always got nearly all of his people out. Williams had a hunch that Shan­non could also be trained to have hunches, and he was glad nobody asked him to explain this particular hunch, which had come to him in a dream. In the dream—set in a brightly lit place, almost too bright to see, with beautiful white ornate temples everywhere—Martin was a teacher, and Shannon was his star pupil, wearing the same bushy mustache that Shannon now sported.

The five-star looked around. Shannon’s current boss looked irritated, but in the spirit of cooperation, allowed reluctantly, “We can make do without him in Afghanistan.”

“One more request, please, sir?” Martin boldly surprised them all. He could hear the common thought in the room: cheeky. The senior officer nodded cautiously.

“Please don’t ever tell Colonel Shannon that you offered me his command,” Martin enjoined, and they all signaled agree­ment.

Ω

Seana Moon’s earliest memory was of being in a baby seat in the back of a car. Her parents, whom she loved above all else, were in the front, laughing and talking to each other. Her heart was full of happiness and everything was perfect in her life, being off on some adventure with her parents. She suddenly sensed something bad and began shrieking a wordless warn­ing a moment before a bullet came through the driver’s side windshield.

As she grew older, she always sought out more informa­tion about the tragedy in which her parents both perished, her father killed by the bullet and her mother killed in the crash. The authorities could only surmise that it was the kind of test gangs used to decide whether to take in a newcomer.

Seana’s perfect life disappeared in an instant. First there was the horrible sound of things smashing and the unforget­tably awful sounds her parents made as they died. Then the smell and smoke that made her cough and unable to breathe, none of which mattered because she only wanted to go wher­ever they were going. She was surrounded by frantic strangers, who manhandled her in their panic to free her from the car, and then the memories blurred as she was taken from place to place, examined, talked about as if she wasn’t there. Then some nice person would try to comfort her but she was incon­solable, crying all the time, crying herself to sleep, crying her­self awake, realizing that she would never see her Mummy and Daddy again—though some part of her somehow doubted that.

When the tears finally subsided and she was able to think about what had happened, though still just a toddler, Seana had the strange idea that she herself had been the target. Where did that terrible idea come from? Wherever it came from, it made her hate herself. She forced herself to give up that idea and convinced herself it had not been her fault. She took this precocious act of will before she learned to talk, never realizing how unusual that was.

Seana was taken in and brought up by her Aunt Anna and Uncle Jim. Anna made her living as a professional psychic. Jim was a car salesman and though not psychic he had seen enough to convince him that Anna’s talents were real. Anna worked for wealthy people, reading tarot cards for them, and advising them accordingly. On occasion the police also called her in for help on an unsolved case.

Seana thought she saw lights in the air around Anna some­times, and when she took a picture of Anna with her first cell phone, the photo picked up the lights around Anna’s head.

Anna explained that the lights were her protectors. She pointed to one of the lights. “This is Jocko,” she said. “Jocko is very big and carries a long, pointed weapon.”

“A spear?” Seana asked.

“No, a directed-energy weapon,” Anna disclosed.

All her young life, Seana was open to the existence of “magic”—as she thought of it—in all its forms. Nothing was impossible if you didn’t rule it out in your mind, Anna had taught her. Anna taught in many ways, often dressing up the three of them (with Jim) in costumes and carrying out strange rituals. She demonstrated the use of the I Ching, Ouija board and the pendulum. She guided Seana through concentration, contemplation, and meditation exercises. She taught her how to read tarot cards, and Seana started to give readings for money so she could go to college without saddling herself with debt.

In college Seana studied philosophy and psychology. Her friends at school partied with psychedelics, from mescaline, psilocybin, and Molly, to LSD, 25i-NBOMe, and ayahuasca. Seana tried them all but always left the party early and went off alone when tripping, to do serious self-investigation and to pray for contact with God. She had no set religion but had always sensed the presence of an intelligence far greater than human.

Ω

When Tim Shannon was given command of Theta and intro­duced to Martin Williams as his second-in-command, the two hit it off from the start. Tim knew of Martin as one of his Com­pany commanders, and when being briefed about plans for Theta, he was told that Williams was the only blooded combat officer in the U.S. Army who had shown any promise of having psychic abilities. Martin had learned to have great respect for Shannon, having observed him make the right strategic deci­sions in tough combat situations, and having seen how frater­nally and protectively he treated all the men and women under his command.

Martin felt that if reincarnation happened to be true, Shan­non might have long ago been his star pupil, just like in the dream.

In the early days of Theta, the two spent their time train­ing Tim to not block his innate psychic powers, which Martin now claimed that everyone has, causing Tim to regard some of Martin’s ideas with a modicum of skepticism. But there was no denying the effects: Tim soon found that he could tell his own real hunches from wishful thinking, and was amazed at the accuracy of true hunches. He also started to be able to read thoughts that Martin communicated to him.

Shannon started to recruit people and bring them into Theta, some from the U.S. armed services and some who were civilians, all now given officer status in the U.S. Army. Ameri­can intelligence agencies and law enforcement agencies, whose top officials had received secret orders from the president to aid in the hunt for America’s psychics, tested thousands of claimed or suspected psychics, finding only a small percentage able to pass the usual tests such as the Rhine cards. Those who made the cut were presented to Tim, who then made his own assessment and decided which people to take, largely based on his own hunches.

Theta had offices in the Pentagon but its main base hid in plain view in a suburban neighborhood in Virginia. It had been a Howard Johnson motel a long time ago. Now it masquer­aded as a no-name motel that was mysteriously always sold out. Within a few months the base housed more than a hun­dred recruits along with Tim and Martin.

Seana was one of the first recruits. More than one intel­ligence agency knew that she made her living as a psychic and her clients included some of the wealthiest people in New York City. Tim was surprised by her beauty, intelligence, and upbeat nature. This is the one woman in the world made just for me, he thought at first blush. He didn’t take the thought seriously at the time; their professional relationship strongly discour­aged his paying any attention to that line of thought—besides which she was just barely an adult at twenty-one, and he was thirty-seven. Still, he found it extremely easy to talk to her and when he asked her to read his mind she did so with amazing accuracy.

“You are attracted to me, but that line of thinking is forbid­den to you,” she said without embarrassment.

Now getting used to being an Army officer, she addressed him with decorum. “Sir, I can attest that I’m not the one woman in the world that was made just for you. You’re a gallant hero to millions of women who watched you winning a war on televi­sion. I’m sure more than one of them would like to meet you.”

They shared an easy laugh. It might always have to be pla­tonic, he thought, but he loved her already. He gave himself permission to love her as long as he didn’t express his feelings in any way. He hoped she was not reading his mind right now.

“Incidentally,” he shared, “Martin and I agreed at the start of Theta that among ourselves, we would not read each other’s minds except by invitation and in any emergencies.”

Seana concurred, adding, “That’s what all true psychics believe too.” She had met quite a few.

Tim drove them from the Pentagon to Theta’s base outside Arlington to meet Martin. When they arrived at the base, Tim inquired and was told that Martin could be found in the hot tub by the pool. The sun was just going down. Tim and Seana dropped off their things in their respective rooms, put on their bathing suits and joined him.

Minutes later, watching from the hot tub and sipping vodka tonic from a plastic cup, Martin was galvanized seeing the two of them approach. He got it that Tim was bringing in a recruit to meet him. His mind immediately compared Seana to Venus and decided that this was not the real Venus coming back to him from his dreams or his imagination. Seana was petite whereas Venus was Junoesque. They both had wonder­ful curves and playful expressions, but Venus in his dreams was flirtatious while Seana projected a demure vulnerability. As she came closer, he could see that Seana had larger eyes and higher cheekbones. They were different women, though he quite appreciated Seana’s appearance.

Ω

Templegard’s body was sleeping in a cave in Afghanistan with his finger on a trigger. His consciousness was off in an enjoyable dream. In the dream he was on a cleaner mission in a spaceship with his comrades in arms. He recognized two of them easily, one being his former boss, Colonel Shannon, who had left the theater recently on a classified mission. Temple­gard was happy to see them back together.

The second one, a woman with black hair and pillowy lips, he recognized as the woman in half his dreams, so no surprise there. As always, she was alluring to him. Now she was dressed in some kind of tight-fitting black coverall. He liked the way it fit her. She smiled impishly at him.

Another woman he didn’t recognize reminded him of somebody he must have once known. She was a curvy blonde with high cheekbones. He liked her right away.

And there was a man who seemed to be the leader. Temple­gard had never seen him before but he looked familiar some­how. Sandy hair, tall and muscular, eyes that took in every­thing.

They were all looking out through the huge transparent nose of the spaceship. From above the plane of the ecliptic near Saturn, Templegard saw the ringed planet below form­ing a sort of line with Jupiter and Earth. He had a clear sense this was as prophesied: his partners down on Earth, who had forgotten their identities, were about to be jarred by a miracle. Templegard sent them a prayer. Then he wondered who and what he had been thinking about. After all, his partners were right here on the ship.

Ω

Just east of New York City in a brick professional building, most of his partners—who other than Shannon did not know he existed, and didn’t know who they really were themselves either—were additionally unaware of the major events, man­dated high in the multiverse governance, which were about to befall them.

As if all that ignorance were not enough, they had plenty of trouble already.

In the conference room with the large mirror on one wall, Lieutenant Colonel Martin Williams held up Rhine cards only he could see, and Major Jason Page tried to psychically detect the symbol on each card held up.

Behind the one-way mirror in the next room, their boss, Brigadier General Tim Shannon, sat with Congressman War­ren Baynes, hearing the piped-in voices of Williams and Page, and able to see the cards over Williams’ shoulder. Page was getting almost nothing right. Baynes’ bejowled face radiated disgust as he mumbled to himself. Shannon maintained an impassive exterior while noting his political stock value drop­ping by the second.

Williams said sympathetically to Jason, “Something dis­tracted you during meditation.”

“What was that?” Jason asked.

“Probably worrying about your score,” Williams said and smiled. Neither of them looked at the one-way mirror but they knew they were both thinking of the source of pressure.

Shannon tapped the Bluetooth in his ear and said, “Try the other one.” Williams flinched at the word “try”, looking let down. Sorry… I mean run the other one, Shannon said tele­pathically to Williams, hoping the other would get his mes­sage. Williams is better than the rest of them at ESP, so maybe he will, Shannon thought.

Williams’ smile returned.

Shannon signaled Baynes to turn his chair to face another one-way mirror in the room. As they rolled their swivel chairs in that direction, the lights came on in the exercise room. Jason had shed his outer clothes as he entered the room and flipped on the lights. Behind him came Lieutenant Colonel Ahmed Khan, wearing judo gi, followed by Williams and a pretty young woman, Seana Moon. Williams and Seana tied blindfolds over the eyes of Jason and Khan, adding high-tech “earmuffs” to block out all sound. Baynes peered hopefully at the proceedings through the one-way glass while Shannon maintained his poker face.

Stripped to the waist and barefoot, wearing only his U.S. Army fatigue pants, Jason looked like a young Black Adonis, exuding confidence. Khan looked much older and compara­tively out of shape, although he obviously worked out daily.

“This fight seems kind of unequal,” Baynes commented to Shannon in their dark observation room.

“Khan has been practicing blindfold fighting since he was four,” Shannon disclosed. Khan and Page began to circle. Page attacked Khan with a surprisingly well-aimed flying kick, Khan deflected it, Page rolled to his feet and continued circling.

“Wow!” Baynes said. Shannon looked grimly satisfied.

Baynes watched more attentively now. Page attacked Khan with a flying leg trip and they both went down, scuffled briefly, and came up circling.

“Why didn’t you show me this first?” Baynes asked.

“That’s the problem,” Shannon replied. “You never know what’s going to work, when.”

“Sounds like all our other advanced weapons systems,” Baynes muttered.

“Yeah. But we’re finding out the things that block psychic power. We’re going to discover all the blocks and learn how to keep them out of the way, someday—“

“Maybe someday—if you can show some results soon, so we can get this program put back in the budget—“ Baynes dropped the other shoe.

“Put back?” Shannon felt the bottom fall out as Baynes nodded somberly. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why do you think I came to see you here in New York?”

Shannon turned from him and stared through the one-way mirror, bringing his sudden anger and angst under control. Page and Khan were exchanging a volley of Kung Fu attacks and parries.

“Williams sensed this coming…” Shannon mused. “You don’t know how complicated… Seana is going to turn her head and look at me.”

Baynes turned to watch Seana, thinking to himself how pretty he found her. She turned to look at the one-way mirror to where she knew Shannon was sitting, then turned back to her tablet, which showed the brainwaves of Jason and Khan.

“I knew I could make her do it just then,” Shannon said. “If I’d waited a second, the confidence would have gone, and I couldn’t have done it.”

Baynes looked interested.

“Page is looking pretty good, huh?” Shannon went on, and Baynes nodded. “He’s still embarrassed from the card test, trying to redeem himself,” Shannon continued. “Think I can make him fail in there?”

Baynes shrugged.

“We’ve got to know how to make enemy psychics fail, you know, Mr. Baynes. You don’t put our budget back in, this coun­try is wide open to enemy psychics.”

“It’s not just up to me,” Baynes objected.

“Watch this,” Shannon said, reaching for the stars as he flicked his Bluetooth. “Seana, don’t turn your head. Encourage Page—don’t turn your head!”

Seana looked confused. Page at that moment body-blocked Khan, knocking the wind out of him. Khan recovered and they began to circle again.

“Hey, not bad, Jase!” Seana said. Page stopped, grinned, and started circling again.

“Can the side comments,” Williams admonished her.

“Williams heard you order her to do it—“ Baynes started questioningly.

“He doesn’t want Page to guess that,” Shannon explained.

Page made a series of attacks on Khan, who fell back fend­ing them all off, until one of his defenses unintentionally hit Page on the chin. Jason went down clutching his jaw in pain. Khan ripped off his blindfold and he, Williams and Seana reflexively went to Page’s side. Page got up, took off his blind­fold, and rubbed his jaw, looking suspiciously at Seana and sheepish at the same time.

Baynes eyed his watch. “You have someone to take me to LaGuardia, Colonel?” he asked, hoping it would be Seana.

“I’ll take you,” Shannon said, sensing Baynes’ interest in Seana and sparing her Baynes’ lechery.

In the car, Shannon asked, “How much time do I have to come up with results I can show you?”

“I don’t know,” Baynes admitted. “What I also don’t know is why the hell you’re in New York. I’d think you’d be able to demonstrate results faster by keeping all Theta personnel together in your very expensively equipped main base in Vir­ginia—“

“That was our recommendation too,” Shannon surprised him by saying.

“So why are you in New York?”

“Orders.”

“I know,” Baynes said caustically. “Orders from the presi­dent. Secret orders.” He suddenly turned to Shannon. “Did you vote for him?”

Shannon flicked a glance at him, answering, “No.”

Baynes slapped his thigh. “I haven’t found anybody that will admit having voted for him.”

“We’ve had a lot of presidents like that,” Shannon said calmly.

“We used to have great men—historic giants,” Baynes said reprovingly and passionately. Shannon glanced at him again and decided the man was deeper than he had realized.

Baynes muttered as if to himself, “The prerogative of the Executive Branch. For all I know he could be using you to spy on his political enemies and covering it with a blanket of ‘national security’.” He looked at Shannon. “You know you wouldn’t have gotten your original funding if it wasn’t for me. Now I don’t even know what you’re working on.”

This was a bluff on Baynes’ part. The president wanted Theta, and it was the president’s influence that made Theta happen, not Baynes’, but almost no one knew that. Williams had been sworn to secrecy on that very point.

“I said we couldn’t do fieldwork and demonstrate results at the same time—”

“Why New York,” Baynes pressed. “You want me to roll pork barrels with you, son, you roll pork barrels with me. Why New York?”

Shannon owed this guy. Theta couldn’t afford to lose him as their champion in Congress. He’d have to break a rule, which meant Baynes would have something on him. He had to trust Baynes. What a dumb thing to do. He did it anyway.

“That’s where… the subject is.”

“What subject?”

“The subject of surveillance.”

“Who is he?”

“Can’t… I’ve told you too much already.”

“What’s his importance?”

“He’s demonstrated… some unusual effects… he could be a very powerful psychic.“

“What are you going to do, recruit him?”

“Maybe… we don’t know where his loyalties lie… he’s a citi­zen now but wasn’t born here…”

“All of the top Theta people had to be sent to New York to observe one guy you might recruit? What does he do, part the Red Sea?”

“Mr. Congressman, you’re a pretty good agent yourself. I’ll get you your results.”