Each of the other girls had exact instructions on what to do. No disturbing her. It was hard enough as it was; if she lost focus, everything would unravel.
She was 99% certain she could do it, the 1% was why she shouldn't be able to do it, but as her mother used to say, there’s more things you can do with your mind than there’s fleas on a dog.
Thirty three years ago when she was seven, scientists came to Fernanda's school and tested some of the students in the hall, away from the teachers and the other children; testing for especially gifted children they'd told her sceptical mother. This worried her because there's gifted and 'gifted'. To her, 'gifted' meant someone like herself and her own mother who could see things and Fernanda was the same. Were they looking for children with abilities like this for some reason?
A few phone calls around people she knew revealed it had happened in other places too; again to children with the 'gift' Some weeks later, a letter arrived inviting Fernanda to a two week residential school in the North Island so 'they could help her attain her full potential'. Her mother said no and nothing more was heard.
Twenty three years ago when she was seventeen at high school, they got in contact again and asked her to go along to a meeting at the university so their data could be updated. Despite her mother being set against it, she went along out of curiosity, especially after having no memory of the previous tests.
It was a bizarre experience, the testers, whoever they were, looked liked central casting's idea of nurses and doctors, but obviously they weren't, as they had no ide how to interact with the participants. As another girl Fernanda spoke to said, it was like they'd been taught the right words to say but didn't understand what they meant.
None of the tests were like IQ tests or straightforward school exams but rather, as she found out later, the type of exercise used in testing paranormal abilities. The man in charge was a tall, bearded Australian who carried a clipboard in which he kept writing. By the time, it finished, all the participants including Fernanda felt quite uneasy and stressed; a feeling increased by the security guard who asked them all to sign a form before they left, saying they wouldn't reveal the day's activities.
Over time, as she began to understand more about the hidden world, she heard of numerous similar events that betrayed the secret state's interest in the paranormal and this only helped increase her curiosity. By the time Fernanda moved back to New Zealand in 2010, she had come to understood the possibilities of human consciousness and had spent twenty years developing her own ability to alter herself and the world around her.
This led to grandiose plans to mix magic and politics, most of which dashed on the rocks of life leaving just a couple of ideas in the life raft. These were worked on for the next couple of years as she plotted, researched, planned, recruited and drank lots of beer, all in a good cause; in the process of which, she began to acquire a number of useful, alternative identities that allowed access to previously forbidden social circles. Most importantly, she met two like minded girls whose ideas were on the same wavelength as hers; things, she thought, were going to get interesting.
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And they did.
Two years later, Fernanda was playing around on Google maps, looking for things that shouldn't be there; following a hunch, she was looking for a secret bunker, not the well known one, but another which didn't officially exist. Rumours pointed to a small area a few K away from the Beehive, underground. Bizarrely, as she slowly examined the map, she saw an arrow pointing downward, with 'restricted, don't include'-whilst laughing, she saved it immediately, copied it and emailed it to the other two. Within 24 hours, arrow and text disappeared.
A few weeks later, they made a weekend trip to Wellington; from the outside, standard non-descript office building, nothing unusual apart from huge numbers of CCTV cameras and an impressive array of antennas on the roof. From this visit, sprang a series of plans that would culminate in a physical visit to the bunker to deliver a declaration of war.
So there was Jackie 1, in an empty room in Dunedin, seated in the lotus position on a pile of cushions, to the side of the room were the newly arrived Jackies 2, 3, 4 and 7; the first three would go into the bunker and 7 would keep an eye on them and 1.
Jackie 1 had spent years perfecting her remote viewing but this was a step beyond, using mental energy to break down space and time so they could just step from a room in Dunedin to a room in Wellington. She first picked up on the possibility of this in Romania when she was twenty, from a very odd man whom she met on a railway platform; he still sent her cryptic letters every 2 weeks containing 5 or 6 lines of text with pages of commentary and notes on what he wrote. From this, she put together a 6 month training program and bit by bit, she got more ambitious and here they were, at the moment of truth.
Sometimes, she thought some of the girls were more useless than deathless which is why Jackie 1 and 7 determined to set out exactly the rules:
no identification, no mobiles, no jewellery, faces, hands and feet covered. If anyone is in there, come straight back and don't engage with them; 30 seconds, 3 photos with the manifesto and leave it behind.
Jackie 7 started counting down from 30, as Jackie 1 began to open the door; the wall began to glow and look fuzzy and slowly it began to get fainter until there was an open space. Jackie 7 started counting down from 30 and the three girls stepped through into the bunker.
Hardly into the room, a woman appeared, shouting at them; they turned and headed back but Jackie 4 was rugby tackled by the woman...20 19 18. She crawled on to the hole, with the woman attached to her legs, still shouting as the other girls pulled her...17 16 15 14. As she got to the gap, 2 and 3 were trying to prise her hands off Jackie 4...13 12 11 10 9. 4 was now in the room but with the woman still holding on with one hand; Jackie 7, as she counted down, stamped and stamped on her hand, making her let go and tried to push her back with her foot...8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1.
The wall reappeared instantly as Jackie 1 lost her lost control of it, separating the woman's body from her head which plopped onto the floor, rolled slightly and stopped with an expression of sheer terror on its face. And that was the end of Margaret Rae Gunnarson.
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