Ability (Omnibus) Read Online Free PDF Page B

so hard to convince the learning mind to imprint and retain the information? He’d messed with the cycle speed of the data, the frequency of repetition, even the brightness levels of the information being displayed on the holo.
    He was missing something. It had taken him four months to get from nowhere to almost thirty seconds of retention. It had taken him another six months to get from thirty seconds of retention to…thirty to forty seconds of retention. Garret knew from his success at getting to thirty seconds that he was on the right path. He knew from his failure to move but a tiny step forward from there that he was either over-thinking the problem, or more likely, not thinking around the problem correctly. He steepled his fingers along his unshaven jaw while pondering what to try next.
     
    *****
     
    September, 2043
     
    Derry’s fingers wandered across the fretboard of Garret’s beautiful Martin acoustic guitar, each press with her fingertips producing another brilliant, clean note. The steel strings resonated in loud bursts and soft salvos of melody, matching her voice as she sang about long lost loves, kissing girls, and being alone in the dark. She’d become adept at playing the instrument after so much practice. At first, when the module’s effect had begun to wear off, Derry became depressed, as if she were losing a natural ability such as sight or smell. Unlike the boys, she looped the guitar lesson module exclusively, each time picking up the barely-played Martin and working to get her fingers strong enough to press the steel strings down properly. After a couple of weeks, she no longer needed the flash inductions to sound like she’d been playing for most of her life.
    She’d barely passed her semester finals. Spending weeks eating pills and burning her eyes out with looping Holo-D meant that she hadn’t studied nearly enough to maintain her Dean’s List status. No doubt when her mother saw Derry’s grades, she would be frantic with concern at first, fading quickly into criticism that would start as friendly advice, eventually becoming cutting, cruel insults. Dezaree Clarkson was never good enough at anything to please her mother. The only thing that pleased her mother was her mother’s new boyfriend, who was barely two years older than Derry. The kid, she’d never lower herself to think of the boyfriend as anything other than the kid , no matter how rich and successful he was, had his own software research company, his own Mercedes, and his own McMansion in Plano. A McMansion that was worth at least three million dollars, her mother liked to remind Derry as often as possible.
    She put the acoustic on its stand and picked up her tablet. She sighed as she called up Malory’s “Morte d’Arthur” and worked her way through another tale. Derry only had to kill another four hours before Brian would show up and whisk her away to another crazy experimental session. Her mind wandered as she tried to guess what tonight’s dope would do to her mind, her body, and maybe her ability to successfully retain flash induction permanently. That was the goal she was after. Brian seemed to want to create the perfect drug, but he’d also become caught up in Garret’s obsession with the learning modules. Garret only seemed to care about being able to freeze or burn things with his mind. Derry had noticed over the last few weeks that the relationship Brian and Garret had as friends and roommates had cooled considerably. The problem, in her opinion, stemmed solely from the fact that Brian had used his mind to freeze a bunch of stuff, and Garret had, so far, been unable to duplicate it himself.
    The fact that Brian was the producer and supplier of the Receiver drug burned Garret up, causing him to become whiny, almost childish at times. She’d avoided bedding Garret for the last two months after spending a few nights with him while he bitched about how Brian was intentionally going too slow, intentionally messing