From the bar, Evan’s attention was caught up by a male voice chattering loudly behind him.

“I understand what you’re saying Hannah, but seriously. You cannot expect the average person to grasp the depth of what you are intending to offer them.”

“How would we know if we don’t offer them at least the chance?” A young woman’s voice drew Evan further into the conversation.

He turned to see a young woman scowling defiantly at the man seated across from her. An array of necklaces and charms covered what the woman’s low cut blouse failed to. The man’s cascade of heavy dreadlocks blocked Evan’s view of his face.

“We are so connected today. Everyone has a cellular mobile device. We no longer call locations hoping to connect with the person we seek, we call people knowing they are within reach via a small device constantly on their person. How far of a stretch is it to do away with the device and contact the person over these same invisible waves?” Hannah continued her speech, her flowing sleeves punctuating her movements.

“We do it all the time and don’t even realize it. Everyone, even normal people, as you call them. I have seen so many people do it. They look at their devices a moment before an alert signals an incoming communication. They know. Their minds are connected to the waves and the messages. We are amplifying our psychic levels and we don’t even know it.”

Hannah smiled, her serene expression surprised Evan. The woman appeared to be delighted though her stubborn tone displayed otherwise.

“Some even have expressed knowing who is going to call, or they at least have some emotional idea. I have seen it in their faces. They experience an emotional shift before they even look at the screen to confirm who the message is from.”

Hannah paused, eyes intent on her partner. Eyes Evan wished would flit his way, if only for a moment.

“Yes, but Hannah, my dear, it is exactly as you say. These people have no idea what they are dabbling in. They are monkeys with a rock. It happens to spark fire against another stone. There is no real understanding of the connection they are making. Why give them more? They are happy as they are. And probably so much safer.” Evan stifled a snicker as he considered how right the dreadlock man was in referring to himself.

“But they are ready,” Hannah pressed. “And you know as well as I do people today are not truly happy. And what about us, those who do understand? We could be accepted for what we do. We could be the generation that heralds a new era of communication.”

Evan watched as the woman leaned forward in her seat and the tangle of crystals and charms shifted.

The mention of communication advances could draw his attention no matter the situation or the speaker. In this case the view was as alluring as the commentary.

“Imagine it all the more─we may not be the first civilization to have even gotten this far.” Hannah drew her mobile device from her pocket and shook it in the space between herself and her counterpart. “This, this brick of silicon. What is it without the connection to the cloud? Nothing. Why do we deny more ancient civilizations the power of electricity, mass communication, technology? We have so little understanding of the languages they made use of. We have even fewer clues to the meaning behind such works as the great pyramids of Giza. Or what about Stonehenge? Have you thought about the stones at Carnac?”

“What on earth do all of those have to do with cellular communication? They were holy sites. They were places for the soul to connect to some God, for goodness sake, my dear woman, they were not a place to plug in your wi-fi.” The man sitting across from Hannah shook his head and waved at the mobile device in the dejected woman’s hand.

Evan rolled his eyes. He had heard more than enough of the nonsense in this overheard conversation. He returned his focus to the bartender and requested a drink to take back to his seat.

As Evan worked his way down the length of the train car, his focus suddenly shifted to a buzz of activity surrounding where he and his uncle had been seated.

A throng of passengers had cleared the way to allow medical personnel to kneel over a fallen passenger. The glass slipped from Evan’s grasp to shatter against the floor of the train car. Glass and ice mingled in the spreading pool of liquid as a wave of some unknown feeling wafted over Evan.

He strode through the doorway into the travel car. Time and space slowed around him, allowing him to experience a teleportation through to the scene of the activity.

Evan spotted the man he had seen chatting with his uncle Fred. Time slowed all the more as Evan’s focus tuned into the man. He was a little older than Evan, though not quite the same age as Fred. He was uninteresting in all senses of the word, yet he arrested Evan’s attention.

The man’s close-cropped hair and clean-shaven face in partnership with military uniform left Evan to believe this strange man a fellow soldier. The insignias bothered Evan more than they should. From afar, the panels had looked obscured, but in the closing distance Evan could see that the panels themselves were completely blank. Black and scarred with some sort of etched symbol, the military rank and branch missing as if eradicated with more than violent intent.

“What happened? Where’s my Uncle?” Evan fired the question at the man, but only maintained eye contact a moment more.

"Connecting." Linus offered.

The spell shattered as Evan scanned the floor where the emergency medical technicians huddled.

Dark brown and grey striped tennis shoes stole all of Evan’s thoughts. Sticking out from the cluster of medical workers and their equipment, the shoes remained on equally familiar mismatched socks.

The man in the deformed military uniform put a hand on Evan's shoulder.

Evan spun. He glared into the strange man’s pale eyes. The man was so cold and matter-of-fact it froze Evan to his soul. Military training could make a man colder in emergency situations, yet this seemed inhumane, dark, almost smug. 

“What happened to my uncle? What did you do to him?” Some part of Evan feared to raise his tone. The uncertainty of his military rank, the bizarre sensation of connection, the ice in the man’s eyes. Evan grappled with a pained cocktail of respect for a brother in arms, a desire to act against an enemy soldier, and fear. This man weighed Evan’s nerves. Beneath it all, an energy about the man made Evan feel more than a little nauseated.

“What happened?” Evan ripped his attention from the strange man to drop to the level of the EMTs.

The curse cast upon him by the man broken, Evan’s mind absorbed the full scene sprawled out on the train floor.

Fred’s eyelids lay closed, as if the walkway of a train would be as good a place as any to take a quick snooze, but the steady rise and fall of breath was absent.

Medical workers tore open Fred’s cardigan. The drab, olive sweater lay splayed, buttons peppered the floor, stripped free from their place along his grey and green plaid shirt. The sight of the scattered buttons shook Evan once again.

“What is going on?” He shouted over the volley of commands conveyed between the pair of medical technicians.

“Sir, please step back!” The young man’s firm tone preceded his taking up a pair of paddles, each attached by a thick wire to a box set at Fred’s side.

“Step back!” The other technician barked in echo, his voice carrying to the crowd of anxious spectators, including the man in the military uniform.

Evan turned his attention once more on the man in the uniform. “What the hell did you do to my uncle!”

The cynical, curt response fired back, “Maybe he choked on his hamburger… maybe he got milkshake brain-freeze.”

Evan’s hand moved as if on its own volition, powered by a force seemingly beyond his own, curling into a tight cannonball of anger driven by fear and concern. His arm swung out arching his fist into the face of the strange man in the military uniform.

The man’s body flung into the seat. The force of impact rattled Evan’s tablet on the table. Evan took in the crowd surrounding him. None seemed to have noticed the violent outburst, so entranced were they by the distress of his uncle.

Evan dropped to his knees beside the emergency worker. The man glared at Evan again for overstepping the boundary of his work space.

“Please.” Evan pleaded with the young man. “He’s my uncle.”

The emergency worker glanced at his partner. With a nod, the pair argued no further with Evan and returned to the business of saving a man’s life.

***

One car away, Hannah's conversation held in the abrupt halt. The young woman’s eyes sparked with an inner light. Her face held rigid as she stared vacantly at the man across from her in the small booth.

Within the dining car Hannah jolted from her seat startling her companions. "Access the code."

“Hannah?” The ire brought by the heated conversation instantly melted to the warmth of sincere concern. “Hannah are you there? Are you having a vision?”

Eyes from the bar and surrounding booths shifted to the woman. Hannah’s expression remained stoic, her breathing slowed. Physically, Hannah sat motionless in her seat, yet deep in her spirit, images scanned through her mind, stealing her into another level of reality.