Richard Stern was, as he had told Dr. Robbins, feeling just fine. For the first time in over a month, he was totally free of the nagging headaches that came and went, and had been growing more frequent and intense. He lay back on the bed with his hands behind his head on the pillow. That Laura chick was not in the chat room and he did not feel like wandering around the web. He had been given a few books to read, but none seemed interesting. What he actually wanted was to get out and run his car with the top down and the blinding sun and desert heat on his face. That would feel good.

Where was Karen? Over the last few days he had been seeing a lot of her, but she was all business and scientific and like that. Not as much fun as when he managed to get her back to his apartment for a little horizontal dancing between the sheets. With the pleasant image of a naked Karen in his mind, he reached for his cell phone on the table to call her. It was, however, just out of his reach, about six inches beyond his fingertips. He sighed, and was about to shift over to extend his reach when something funny happened. The phone rotated one hundred and eighty degrees and the slid across the table and into his hand.

For a while he just lay here, looking at the black cell phone now cuddled under his fingers. He remembered the time he had reached for a falling pencil and it had jumped away from his hand.

"This is interesting," he said aloud. "Very interesting."

Swinging up to a sitting position on the bed, he placed the cell phone flat on the table and withdrew his hand. For almost a minute he did nothing but stare at the phone, trying to make it move with just the power of his mind. It just lay there, inert and showing no signs of wanting to obey his wishes.

Frustrated with that effort, he reached for the phone, intending to pick it up. Before his fingers could touch it, again it rotated a little and slid over to meet his hand.

Leaving the phone lying on the table, he pointed at it with his index finger. Making a circle motion with his finger, he watched in amazement as the phone began to slowly rotate. In obedience to his finger, it spun faster and faster. Richard laughed delightedly.

"Oh, my, this is interesting!"

Pointing his finger to the edge of the table, he told the phone to go there. Obediently it slid across the table. He pointed to the opposite edge and it scooted over.

"Let's see what else I can do," he said.

In the next twenty minutes, he found that he could make most small objects move where he wanted them to, could levitate a pencil to the height of a couple inches off the table, and that this influence over inanimate objects could extend about three feet. However, with practice, he began to increase that range.

It was only after half an hour of playing with his newfound power that he began to wonder about it. Was this something he had always had but only now discovering? Probably not. Then it had to be somehow related to the drugs they were giving him. What was that they had told him? That they did not really know what the new DNA would do? If anything. Well, it certainly did something. He was grinning from ear to ear.

Richard Stern was an intelligent young man, but also a crafty and devious one. He decided to keep this little power a secret - at least until he could figure out a way to use it to his advantage. There had to be some way that he could put this ability to use.

Of course, he began to think of ways he could make money from it.