"How can he be her husband, but Sam is not your brother? How can one be true but not the other?"

Mara turned red. "Carol Sandoval had a husband before this other guy showed up. She didn't have to wrap her mind around the concept of having a husband in order to accept him. I do not have a brother. I can't just create that sort of relationship out of nothing. It may not be logical to you, but it is to me."

"I did not mean to upset you. I just want you to embrace the experiences you are having, not avoid them."

"What am I avoiding?"

"You haven't talked about what happened the other day with the radio."

"I'm still mulling that one over, trying to figure out how you did it."

"Explain to me how it is possible for you to send a man to an alternate reality using the Chronicle, but it is not possible for you to make a radio work using your abilities?" Ping raised his eyebrows.

"I don't know."

"You're just a bundle of contradictions, aren't you? Perhaps you need more time to sort it out. Maybe we should talk less and do more."

"Do what?"

Ping pointed to a wall a hundred feet away under a row of windows barely discernible because they were beyond the periphery of the light. "There is a small table over there. Would you bring it over here?" He pointed to the opposite edge of the light off to the side of the whiteboard.

While Mara moved the table into place, Ping retrieved a tripod projection screen from behind the metal cabinet and set it up thirty feet beyond the light toward the center of the warehouse. Once Mara had the table in place, he walked behind the cabinet once more and emerged with an old 35mm projector, which he placed on the table and pointed at the screen.

"You said you taught metaphysics before, right?" Mara asked, watching him fiddle with the projector.

"Yes, that's correct." He went to the cabinet, opened it and removed a large film canister. He returned to the projector, opened the canister, removed a reel and mounted it onto the old projector's arm.

"So you have worked with people who have metaphysical abilities before, right?"

"Not actual people with real abilities like you or Sam."

"You've never worked with a prompter or a pretender or a progenitor before?"

"No. They are rare. I've never even met one before."

"So this is all theoretical to you. It's not like there are metaphysical abilities all over the place where you come from."

"That's correct."

He threaded the film through several slots and wrapped it around two spools.

"How can you be so sure I'm a progenitor? Maybe you are wrong."

"You've demonstrated your abilities several times."

"No, I mean, maybe I'm something other than a progenitor. Maybe I'm a psychic or a soothsayer or something."

"Call it what you will, you are a progenitor. Okay, I think we are ready. Have a seat."

"You know that film looked like it had been overexposed. It looked blank to me, like it had been left out in the sun or something." Mara took a lotus position on her mat.

"It's just the lead on the film strip." Ping connected the projector into an extension cord.

"Is that cord actually plugged into something?" Mara asked.

Walking to his mat, Ping pointed to a long orange cord snaking on the floor into the dark toward the wall with the windows.

"Since you have an affinity for technology, I thought we would use this device as your talisman today," Ping said, pointing over his shoulder to the projector.

"You know, I do work with some gadgets from this century occasionally," she said. "Although, I remember having a teacher who would bring in old reels of nature doc.u.mentaries and show them to us using a projector like that. We were as fascinated by the projector as the movie."

"We'll try something a little more modern next time. Now, I want you to close your eyes and go through the same process you did with the radio. Think through each step, visualize each in your mind as you a.s.sess how the mechanism works. Verbalize it or just think through it, whatever you are most comfortable with."

Mara closed her eyes, imagined going over all the moving parts of the projector, checking the belts, the lenses, the light and the power supply. Satisfied everything appeared mechanically sound, she confirmed the film was threaded correctly. In her mind, she flipped on the power switch at the back of the projector and heard the rapid clicking of frames feeding through the machine.

"Excellent," Ping said. "Now I want you to think about a movie you would like to see. What do you want the projector to show you? Think about that movie. We want the projector to show us those images. Keep your eyes closed until I tell you to open them. Concentrate."

Mara could only think of the nature film her teacher used to show. She focused on that, a film featuring a mother tiger and her two cubs. Mara loved the film so much that, for most of the third grade, virtually every stuffed animal, toy, lunch box or linen had a tiger motif. She loved how the mother tiger lifted her cubs by the scruff of the neck to move them to safety and how she would warn away predators with- A growl.

Mara's eyes sprang open. "Did you hear that?"

Ping's bugging eyes answered her question.

Another growl, this one downshifting to a hiss, came from the cone of flickering light shining from the projector's lens. It echoed in the darkness that surrounded them. Ping stood up, turning, straining to see beyond the fluorescent light. He spun back toward the projector.

Mara got up and whispered, "Maybe it was just a sound, a sound track, from the projector." She nodded toward it.

"I didn't think that film had any-" He stared at the screen. A hazy purple blotch appeared at its center as if something were smeared on the projector's lens, but whatever it was writhed like an amoeba, something shapeless.

"Ping?" She was holding her hands up to her nose. "Do you smell that?"

"What?"

"I think it's duplicator fluid."

"Dittos? What are you talking about?"

"It's not coming from me." She held out her hands. The aroma filled the room. "Where's it coming from?"

Ping turned back to the screen. The amoeba had grown denser, darkened to violet, undulated more urgently. The ditto smell was overpowering. "Mara, look at the screen."

She lowered her hands. The blob on the screen bulged outward into the cone of purple light coming from the projector and then retracted. It bulged again, growing, reaching out more than two feet, extending itself with two appendages groping for the ground. Below the ambient light of the projector, a large purple paw print appeared. Then another. The purple bulge snapped back into the screen.

A roar echoed throughout the darkened warehouse. A large blur sprang from the screen, took form as it arched toward Ping. Crouching, throwing his hands up, he dispersed. The large purple tiger flew into a cloud of dust, landing on Ping's mat, sliding out of the light into the dark warehouse beyond.

"Ping, what's happening?" Mara yelled into the billowing particles. She swung to where the tiger had disappeared into the shadows.

A growling hiss came from her right. She turned to face it, saw only darkness. She could hear it breathing, panting. A snuffle sound came from the left. She jerked back that way. Two green eyes glowed, blinked. She could see the outline of the tiger's head, tilted downward, staring at her feet. Something rumbled in its throat.

Mara eased away, not taking her eyes off the tiger. She used the sound of film clicking through the projector as a point of reference and stepped backward. She felt heat on her ankle and glanced downward. The s.p.a.ce heater, knocked aside during the attack, stood behind her. She stepped over it and kept backing away.

The tiger sauntered forward, now into the edge of the light. Pulling back its lips and whiskers in a hiss, the purple tiger bore its fangs and hunched onto its back legs, preparing to leap.

Mara froze. She heard a mewing sound. Something rubbed against her ankle and the back of her leg. She risked looking down. Two purple cubs frolicked between her feet. Slowly shifting her gaze upward, she saw the tiger's ears rotate backward as she eyed her cubs and raised her own gaze to Mara's face.

With a low growl, the tiger lunged, claws first.

Mara crouched then dived across the floor. The feline flew over her and landed near the projector. After rolling for several feet, Mara slammed into the heater. The tiger cubs gamboled after her as if playing tag. Their mother snarled, then lowered her head and stalked back toward Mara. She scrambled on the floor putting the heater between her and the mother tiger. Four feet away, the tiger reared up on her hind legs, letting loose a roar which Mara felt reverberate in her skull. As the tiger's front quarters and claws dropped, Mara grabbed the little s.p.a.ce heater and held it up.

A torrent of flame poured out of it, enveloping the tiger, consuming her in a quickened pyre that licked up to the ceiling in a single flash of fire. For a second, it lit up the entire warehouse and threw off a thermal blast that knocked Mara to the ground. In that moment, she could have sworn she saw her arm flicker. Then darkness surrounded her again, except for the sparks that sprinkled down from the rafters.

Ping's dust mote swirled in the flickering light of the projector. After a few seconds, he coalesced and took his familiar form.

Mara tried to stand up, staggered a step and changed her mind. She sat back down on the cement floor, not even trying to locate her mat.

"Are you okay?" Ping asked. "You look pale."

"No, I am not okay. I feel like something just sucked the life out of me. What the h.e.l.l just happened?"

"I'm not sure. That did not work out the way I thought it would," he said.

CHAPTER 45.

"YA THINK? WHAT exactly did you expect?"

"I a.s.sumed you would imprint your thoughts on the film or project them in some way from the projector. I did not expect you to conjure live tigers from nothing. Especially purple ones that smelled like dittos. How amazing is that?" His eyes widened, and his cheeks flushed.

"First off, if you think magic is so lowbrow, you should come up with a word other than conjure. Second, I'm failing to see the upside to almost being eaten alive."

Ping walked over to the projector and turned it off. He located their mats, rearranged their cla.s.sroom, walked over to Mara and offered her a hand. She took it and stood up. "I think the wooziness is pa.s.sing," she said.

Ping walked her over to the mat, and she sat down. He took his place across from her. "I think we've had enough practicing for the moment. Are you up to continuing with some discussion, or do you want to call it a night?"

Mara took a deep breath and tried to get her pulse to slow. She lifted her arm, the one she thought flickered. It trembled. "I'm not sure I'm up to this," she said.

"You mean continuing with our session tonight?"

"No, I mean this metaphysics stuff. I have no idea what happened here tonight. If I am responsible for this, I clearly have no control over it."

"There's no doubt you are responsible for it. Where else would a purple tiger reeking of duplicator fluid come from? It's certainly not something I thought up."

"I just cannot fathom this. How can this be happening?" She ran her hands through her hair and stared back at Ping.

"Give it some time. With practice and experience, I believe you'll learn to control these abilities. The reality is, you don't have a choice. These abilities will manifest themselves whether you want them to or not."

"My abilities, as you call them, didn't affect my life before we started all this."

"That's not true, Mara. It was your abilities, or rather your lack of knowledge about your abilities, that allowed all those pa.s.sengers to cross over from other realms."

"How can you say that? They crossed over because of the Chronicle."

"The Chronicle doesn't work without a progenitor. Remember, the power comes from you, not the Chronicle. It is simply a tool."

"It was the other Mara that did it, not me."

"There is only one Mara. Your counterpart on the flight was just another facet of you, playing out a different scenario in a different realm. Well, she cheated and messed around in this realm, too, but, metaphysically speaking, this is your doing, your responsibility to fix. This is your realm."

"Well, now you tell me. That is completely unfair, and, metaphysically speaking, it sucks."

"However unfair it may be, there's still a pretender and a hundred other creatures from alternate realms out there. Sooner or later some of them will come knocking at your door. What do you want to do?"

"I don't really have a choice do I?" After a few minutes of silence, she sighed and said, "I suppose we should keep going."

"Do you have anything in particular you want to discuss?"

"Well, since you mentioned the pretender, I've got some questions about that. You said pretenders have the ability to manipulate the four elements-Earth, Wind, Fire and Water-correct?"

"Yes, they are the elements of perception, the elements that make up the world as we perceive it."

"Does a pretender use all elements, just one of them or what? For example, we think a pretender created the electricity guy that showed up at my shop. What elements did he manipulate to do that?"

"Legends from my realm say each pretender has an affinity or talent for manipulating specific elements. Some may only be able to manipulate Fire or Water. Others may be able to work with a combination of elements. Each expresses the abilities differently. In the case of the creature that showed up at your shop, I suspect his creator is adept at using Earth and Fire, maybe more. The creature was somewhat solid, so my guess is that involves Earth, and electricity could be interpreted as a form of Fire."

"Sounds a little ill defined, if you ask me."

"Pretenders don't conduct chemistry experiments by mixing elements and getting a consistent reaction. Think of them more like artists. Each artist repaints perception based on the talent and palette available. Different pretenders use different media. Some use Water. Another might use Wind and Fire." Ping tried to catch Mara's eye while he spoke to see if she followed his train of thought. "This is one of the reasons I resist the notion of magic and witchcraft. There are not any spells here, no recipes for magic potions. Pretenders' abilities are metaphysical. There is nothing supernatural about it."

"So pretenders can manipulate those elements, but a progenitor cannot. Correct?"

"From a practical perspective, that is not actually true. Remember, pretenders only manipulate the elements of perception. Progenitors can alter the elements of reality. Any perception can be undone or trumped by what is real, using the elements of reality."

"What were those again?"

"Consciousness, Time, s.p.a.ce and Consequence."

"If I am a progenitor, how would I trump a pretender?"

"I'm not sure, but it seems you have the ability to bring things into existence, like conjuring the tiger. You also seem to be able to alter reality. For example, you caused the radio to act like a cell phone. I imagine once you gain some experience, you could easily best a pretender," he said, pausing. His eyes rolled upward as if he were trying to capture a thought. "Your abilities appear to manifest themselves as an extension of your affinity for gadgets, technology. You even defended yourself using a s.p.a.ce heater. Eventually I believe you will be able to do this without these talismans. It is likely you will demonstrate other abilities as well, based on each element of reality."

"Other abilities?"