Given the recent changes I find myself dwelling again on whether previously I was psychic or psychotic? It lends itself to whether I should consider any resurgence as a warning or blessing. I wish I had a way of reaching Deborah Ford from my Nasson days, or to a lesser degree Natalie Ritchie. Debby was in the middle of the maelstrom of much that occurred psychically at Nasson and Natalie was there when it all went away (although I doubt she had much of an ides what was going on.)

I'm not sure where to begin this story, Liar and Thief should probably be read first. Psychic or Psychotic? I'm going to write this from the point of view of the former. While I suspect the latter, I lived it from the former viewpoint.

College was a vastly different experience for me than high school had been. Understand that my "power" lay in feeling what others were feeling. On rare occasional - usually involving physical connect - I would get a word, phrase or complete thought. But mostly it was empathic not telepathic.  There was also a sense of the "power" of an individual. I met very few persons of power on the Island, but there were a few. One was an old man (probably younger than I am now) who played chess at the Black Dog when he wasn't being a fisherman. Some people had so much power that it hurt to be near them. He wasn't one of those, but he had enough that I could get no read off him at all. BTW - he destroyed me in chess, making me realize that a large part of my skill in the game was reading the emotions of my opponents.

Anyway my point is that there wasn't a lot of that on the Island or anywhere I visited. Until I arrived at Nasson. I don't know the population of Nasson at that time but I'm pretty sure it was less than six hundred. There were over 40 people of power. Most were people that were just hard to read, and impossible to push. Several, like Deborah were impossible to read, and three were so blindingly powerful I had to avoid them.

I used to wonder if some force was drawing these people together (I explored that idea to some degree in Ascendancy, but that is mostly fiction.)

Now you'd think that not being able to get a feeling for someone would be a bad thing, but for me it was like a blank slate; I could imagine anything in that void. What you have to understand is that from the age of six on I had been overweight, and at puberty had expanded to dramatically overweight. There is an instinctive revulsion in the mind of most people toward the grossly overweight. I don't blame them, I have the same reaction when I see some of our fine Floridian folks. It varies in degree from person to person, but it is almost always there. And I had been battered by it as far back as I can remember.

It is hard to attempt the establishing of a relationship when you are feeling their initial impressions of yourself. There were a few exceptions: Liz McHutchin, bless her heart, springs to mind. I made her nervous a few times, but she never had a negative feeling toward me that I picked up. Clearly though, she thought of me only as a friend, but not as non-sexual as some women did. I spent a lot of time around Liz and we even went on a couple of dates - although it is unclear now whether they were only dates in my mind. Still she was good for me, and I was able to help her out when she would fall into the occasional mindtrap.

So unlike high school, I slowly and carefully tested the waters and let some friends in on my secret. Some, of course told others. There was a lot of skepticism but I made a point of showing off when I got the occasional word or phrase or thought (a great way to be feared, not the smartest move.) and Push was a great group pleaser even though it had a low success rate.

Anyway, I couldn't read Debbie, and Debbie was cute but approachable. And most importantly Debbie tolerated me hanging around. We talked a lot. I tried teaching her to do what I did, but I had no idea how I did what I did. She had no interest in dating me, but was very upfront about it, which I have always respected and an uneasy alliance grew. I wanted more, but she knew that, and except for a couple of occasions when I was much too drunk we understood each other. I was at ease around her.

But I'm stalling. Almost 30 years later and I'm still scared of Bear.

I met Bear through Debbie. As she was kind of dating him, it is reasonable I would cast him as the bad guy. This is all fairly circumstantial and won't read as freaky as it ws to me, but this is how it unfolded in my mind. First, I couldn't read him, not like he was a power color, or blindingly white. His energy was black, and it wasn't like a normal aura, like he existed in the black rather than it emanated from him. And unlike other unreadable people he was not vibeless, he gave off a very creepy vibe, like some houses did.

In the months that followed I had some strange dreams about Bear. Digression: It seems strange to me now that suspicious as I was of him I never learned if he had a last name, if Bear was his real first name, which dorm and room did he live in. That is a very strange way for me to act - I'm about amassing information. Anyway. I usually don't remember my dreams, this one I remember clearly to this day. In the dream Bear was in the campus cafeteria. Attached to him was an umbilical code, thick and throbbing of black dark energy. It flowed from the middle of his back, pulsating like something alive, and passed through the wall, across the quad and out in the direction of upper campus - his dorm room or the woods - I'm not sure.

He was standing in the middle of the room draining energy from several students who seemed completely unaware of what was going on. After a brief confrontation in which I got my ass handed to me, I grappled the umbilical cord which through mental effort became corporeal in my hands, and severed it. With a flash of power like nothing ever felt in life or dream again, he flung me across the room. Without replenishment this act drained him and he aged before my eyes and collapsed - a fact that did not go unnoticed by the students and chaos ensued. Bear appeared around a hundred years old before dying.

After the dream, with no more clue of what I was doing than when trying to train Deb, I tried to see that frequency - find some reality of this power conduit. The dream seemed so real. I, of course warned Deb, and she, of course, told Bear.

Skip forward and Bear and I am walking alone down by the old mill stream. He is asking me about my powers. I do not feel like tipping what little hand I am not sure what else I said, but I remember saying "When someone lies, I know, always."

This was not actually true, I could tell from most people, but not those I couldn't read. With hardly a pause he says, "Try this then: I am 86 years old." I flash back to my dream and him turning really old in it. He could have looked 86. I suddenly feel how alone we are, were we have walked. Still I persist. "Tell me you are 87," I say. He refuses to do so. I bug him on this point and he never gives in. We walk back toward campus mostly in silence.

I rarely see Bear after this. This story has no resolution, and it has haunted me for years. Beyond my own possible insanity I have no explanations for these events. Of I had some religious or superstitious leanings I would have some ideas, but I don't and so I don't - even within the realm of my experiences - have any idea what he was or what was going on.