Here's a little bit more of the third installment in the Petri Dish Chronicles! As always, the disclaimer is that this is a draft and, as such, it's unedited and likely full of errors and is subject to revision, revamping, and being completely scrapped and rewritten. But, with that in mind, I'm reasonably satisfied with the basics of it, at least at the moment, or I wouldn't have bothered posting it. Enjoy! :-)
Excerpt from Shifting Paradigms:
Sputtering, Petri gave up trying to convince them she wasn’t doing what Vlad was insisting she was doing. If she was honest, she couldn’t even be certain herself that he wasn’t correct. She couldn’t feel any connection with the rainbow the way she would with another mind but, since she had no idea what a connection to a digital network would feel like, she couldn’t swear she hadn’t made one.
Petri closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened her eyes again, she looked at Vlad and said, “Fine. How?”
“From what the Arcanum have told me regarding your time with them, the last time you had difficulty making progress in controlling your psychic abilities, the only way they found to induce you to abandon the artificial limits you subconsciously placed on yourself was to threaten the life of one of your friends.”
Feeling all the blood drain from her face, Petri reached out and clutched Chessie’s hand. The older woman gave her a reassuring squeeze in return. “No!”
The enigmatic entity stared at her for several heartbeats before shifting his gaze to her friends. Looking back at Petri, he shrugged. “They also mentioned that the result was rather less controlled than they would have preferred.”
Taking a shaky breath, Petri swallowed against the sudden lump in her throat. “I’m trying."
“I believe you are, Per Dish; however, there is a time limit. At some point, if you fail to make progress, we will need to explore the possibility of more extreme options.”
Petri closed her eyes and shook her head. “If you hurt them, I will never do what you want me to do. I'll make you kill me first.”
Vlad gave her one of his cold smiles. “If I kill them, I have no doubt of that. But if I hurt them? No. I believe in that eventuality you will do everything in your power to save them.” Petri returned the hard look to the strange being who was threatening the people she loved. And in a tone cold enough to rival the vacuum of space, she said, “The last people who tried something like that almost ended up dead themselves.”
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