This Just Isn’t Possible

By Tom Norton

The subject of this novel is a 45-year-old introvert named Allen Meyers. For reasons unknown to him, he was separated from his parents as an infant and the subsequent years of his childhood were turbulent. Running away from a foster home at the age of ten, he found himself on a beach near Los Angeles. This remembered beach scene plagues him through adulthood and he believes that he is losing his mind. Allen never likes where he is at any time and always would rather be somewhere else; possibly the beach.

Seeking medical help for his condition, he is diagnosed as a Significant Telepath, resulting in him working for a secret agency within the U.S. government. His condition and his new occupation put Allen in dangerous situations concerning a nuclear device acquired by Al-Qaida. It seems things go from bad to worse for Allen Meyers, as one dangerous adventure leads to another.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jul 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9781035818143

Tom Norton

Tom Norton authored his first book at the age of 67, in the year 2008. Since that time, he has authored over 50 books. He draws on his knowledge of American and world history, as well as his experience in matters involving nature, the sciences, gold mining, the nuclear industry and the petroleum industry. From this knowledge, his books are primarily fiction based on factual history and are historic fiction, science fiction, autobiographical, national and international historic fiction, military orientated and fantasy.

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About the Author

Tom Norton authored his first book at the age of 67, in the year 2008. Since that time, he has authored over 50 books. He draws on his knowledge of American and world history, as well as his experience in matters involving nature, the sciences, gold mining, the nuclear industry and the petroleum industry. From this knowledge, his books are primarily fiction based on factual history and are historic fiction, science fiction, autobiographical, national and international historic fiction, military orientated and fantasy.

Dedication

To those who would rather write a book than read one.

Copyright Information ©

Tom Norton 2023

The right of Tom Norton to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781035818136 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781035818143 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

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Prologue

The story line of this novel is based on a little recognised phenomenon known as telepathy. A dictionary definition of telepathy describes it as: The supposed communication of thoughts or ideas by means other than the known senses.

In the past, we have all encountered or read about telepathy but it was always referred to as something else. We have experienced or read about mind readers, witches, fortune tellers, séances, Ouija boards and a multitude of other mysterious subjects. Most, if not all of these, (if in fact they work with any success) are the result of mental telepathy.

Rarely will you hear the term telepathy and when you have, it was probably some obscure story about a Russian, Korean or Chinese study being performed. For the most part, the general public gives the phenomenon little attention and just writes it off as not being credible.

But what if there are telepaths actually walking around out there? There is obviously an advantage to having telepathic powers when one is involved in politics, business, relationships, gambling and a multitude of other endeavours.

If there truly are telepaths, why don’t we hear about them? The answer to that is that they or the people who are employing them don’t want us to know they are telepaths. Would they not make the very best of spies for any government? Wouldn’t the government downplay the fact that there are telepaths, let alone telepaths working for the government, nationally and internationally? Exactly.

Chapter One

VISIONS

Above the door of the small room in the clinic, a second hand moved across the face of the clock at a snail’s pace and only increased in speed as it fell from 12 o’clock down to 6 o’clock. It then started its slow climb back uphill again to the 12 o’clock position. The minute hand undetectably advanced slowly for several minutes and during the blink of an eye seemed to occasionally fall back a minute. The slow advance of the minute hand and the seemingly stationary position of the hour hand were creating an anxiety in Allen Meyers to the point that he felt a scream was inevitable.

Allen was waiting for the results of his recent brain scan that would hopefully explain the cause of the progressive problem he has had for several years. He was certain that the brain scan results would show that whatever the problem was, it was a terminal condition.

Sitting on the end of the examination table in a white smock, he was cold but yet his skin felt clammy. Noises from outside the door in the hallway frequently distracted Allen from the clock in anticipation of the door handle turning but it never seemed to turn.

After what felt like an eternity, the thought ran through his head, "It’s a brain tumour, I know it is. What else could it be unless I am going completely crazy?" An image began to slowly appear to Allen of a sandy beach in front of an expanse of ocean in the distance. He had been here hundreds of times before; once in 1980, when he was actually at the beach as a runaway child and many times after that in what he called visions or scenes.

This image slowly faded as the image of the opening door to the clinic room combined with it and slowly replaced it.

Hello Mr Meyers, said the smiling doctor with a thick file in his hands, Sorry you had to wait so long but I met with a few other physicians concerning your case.

Pulling a chair from across the room, Dr Martin sat and opened a thick file and looked at Allen.

I know you have been concerned about a brain tumour but I can assure you that you definitely do not have a tumour or for that matter, any cancer of the brain.

With this said, Allen felt his body instantly relax and he felt a sensation of weakness and the need to scream dissipated.

Looking at the MRI data of your brain, there is nothing there that should not be there but there are some slight anomalies that may be no more than just normal differences in everyone’s brain. It was these that I was discussing with my colleagues.

As Dr Martin addressed these anomalies and explained the brains various functions, the faint image of the sand beach and ocean faintly blended with the image of the doctor and the clinic room. Allen shook his head slightly and the beach scene faded away. Allen thought to himself.

"It’s not a brain tumour, I am just going crazy. Suggesting this or admitting it to the doctor could only result in a bad situation. Anyone thinking they are crazy must be and this was a situation he did not want to confront at that time, maybe later. Allen’s thoughts were of psychiatrists, him being labelled as mentally ill and all of the headaches and heartaches associated with the problem. I am not up to this, I can’t handle this," as the beach scene tried to intrude on his thoughts.

Dr Martin now had the MRI images of Allen’s brain hanging in front of the two and was pointing out the anomalies to Allen.

"It is my colleague’s opinion that at some point during your young childhood, you had a minor brain concussion with some swelling that may explain these anomalies but not entirely. Because you are 45 years of age, there is no reason to believe these anomalies, which are merely a matter of the size of components of the brain, will change or have changed in the last 30 years.

This being the case, any functions of your brain that are not normal are psychological in nature and that is not my expertise. If you feel you are having mental issues, there are several medical experts I can recommend. Your concern was that you may have a brain tumour and your reason for thinking so was that you have a problem with daydreaming and wanting to be somewhere else.

This is not normally indicative of a tumour and not to make light of the situation, I often have the same thoughts. It may be nothing but I would highly recommend that you at least check this out with someone in the psychiatric field. That is about it for me. What are your thoughts, Allen?"

Allen’s mind was racing as he said:

"Well doctor, as we discussed earlier, I had the notion that I might have a brain tumour and I think that has been my problem all along. I thought I had a brain tumour and I’ve been completely stressed out about it. I think I have been suffering from stress and maybe having stress attacks like I have read about.

Because of this, I have trouble sleeping at night and when I do, I have very vivid dreams about all sorts of things. My dozing off during the day may be just that I don’t get enough sleep. I’m very relieved about what you’ve found or I should say not found, in the MRI and I think now I’ll be just fine. In fact, I feel much better already."

At Allen’s pause, the doctor said:

Well great but remember what I said. If you feel you need professional help in the future, contact me and I’ll give you a referral to someone who can help you.

I don’t think that’ll be necessary doctor but if I have a problem, I’ll certainly call you.

Fine then, I’ll keep your medical records on file here at the clinic and it has been nice meeting you Mr Meyers. With this said, the doctor turned and opened the clinic door and walked out into the ocean.

Allen quickly dressed while all the time he was repeating to himself, "I am going crazy, I’m going crazy." Down the stairs and out the clinic entrance, Allen made his way to his car and drove to his apartment in the Los Angeles suburbs. Arriving at the apartment, he made his way to his well-worn recliner and collapsed into it.

In seconds, he was in that twilight zone somewhere between consciousness and sleep where strange thoughts prevail. Lately, Allen seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time in this zone as he tried to rationalise his apparent mental problem. Eventually, sleep overtook him and he spent several hours sleeping in the recliner.

A passing ambulance woke him but he didn’t open his eyes and just laid there contemplating his problem with the new additional information, not having a brain tumour. If it was not a physical problem, then he certainly was going crazy and it was getting worse as the weeks pass. Did he go to a psychiatrist and open up that can of worms?

He would probably continue going crazy anyway and who knows they might even lock him up in an institution or something. It had been his opinion that psychiatrists don’t cure the mental problem, they just tell you what it is and maybe what caused it. Hell, the psychiatrist was just going to find out from him what he told the psychiatrist, so the psychiatrist wouldn’t know any more than he did.

Allen considered the possibility that if his mental condition could be helped or at least prevented from getting worse, maybe he could self-diagnose the problem. No one knew more about Allen Meyers than he did. Maybe if he thought about and wrote down everything in his past that may have bearing on his problem, he may be able to correlate his symptoms to events in his past that may have created these symptoms. Worst case situation, he would go babbling crazy and a psychiatrist somewhere may use this information to determine why he went crazy.

That is what he would do. He would take his two-week vacation from the car dealership’s parts department and try to get himself together. Things hadn’t been going too well there anyway with his increased daydreaming and falling asleep at his desk.

Now with a bottle of beer, a note pad and pencil, Allen was back in the recliner and started the arduous task of writing of any relevant events in his life that could have had an influence on his mental state.

His birth certificate said that he was born in Bakersfield, Ca in 1970 and his father and mother were Sydney and Josephine Meyers. That is all he knew of these two people, having never seen them. His first recollection of anything was of what must have been doctors and nurses wearing white clothing.

Sometime after this recollection and only for a short time, there was a man and a woman he vaguely remembered and they must have been the first of many foster homes he was in as a youth. Nothing of interest there; he hardly remembered the two or the home. Then there was who he had called Milly and a husband and two boys about Allen’s age that he hated.

He could remember the yelling, crying and fighting going on in the house as well as the spankings the man dished out to him and the other two boys. He must have been about six or seven at the time because he had been in the first or second grade. He remembered spending as much time as possible in his bedroom with the blanket over his head and would lie in bed thinking about the stories his teacher had read about pyramids, lions and tigers and things like that.

At the age of ten and after a severe spanking with a belt, he ran away from the foster home and after catching several rides hitchhiking, he found himself on a California beach in Pacific Palisades; a suburb city of Los Angeles. The same beach he has been revisiting in his head for years.

The golden-brown sand with the surf rolling up on the beach, the cool breeze in his face and that prominent smell of salt water and wet sand. It was reasonable that a person could visualise this pleasant image but should they be able to smell it and feel it? No, it is not reasonable.

He must be crazy and it was getting worse and the images were more frequent and more vivid. Of course, there were other images that Allen visualised but these were less frequent and easy for him to shake off.

What happened after the trip to the beach at 10 years of age? He was picked up by the Pacific Palisades police and questioned and he shared with the police the conditions at the foster home that he had run away from. This created quite a stir and he was made a ward of the court who arranged for him to go to a facility for troubled youth.

He hated it there every bit as much as where he had lived previously. He was bullied by the other kids as well as being reprimanded by the teachers for having what they told him was introvert behaviour. It was sheer misery for him there except when he could be alone with his thoughts. He had been instructed in math and book keeping, which he hated and at the age of 18, he joined the Army that he immediately did not like because he was always in a crowd of people and rarely was left alone; which is where he wanted to be.

His daydreaming had always been a problem for other people and in the Army, it was definitely more of a problem for him. There he was considered inattentive and by no means a team player. He was sent into combat for months at a time and the only way he could handle it was to think how good it was going to be when he got out of the Army and somewhere else other than lying in a hole with bullets whizzing over his head.

Back in the States, he hired on in the parts department of a large auto dealership in Los Angeles where he sat at a desk every day for the next 20 years or so until today’s doctor appointment. These 20 years were all like one big long blur; sitting at that desk day after day, talking on the telephone or acting like he was on the phone and daydreaming about being somewhere else.

What he had never given any thought to before was now becoming a problem. His persistent daydreaming was becoming what seemed to be more than the daydreaming he assumed everyone does. He was slowly becoming able to actually see and feel his daydreams superimposed on his surroundings.

That damned beach and ocean was the prevailing scene but there were also less frequent visions of other places he had been to in the past. All pleasant places but now were not so pleasant for him this time around. This situation is what caused his fixation with having a brain tumour. The more he thought about the brain tumour, the more frequent and realistic the visualisations.

Relaxing as best as Allen Meyers can after mentally revisiting his life and making notes pertaining to his life, he thought:

"I have always been a little crazy and didn’t know it. I thought everyone was like me but now I’m going really crazy, simple as that. The way things are going, it won’t be long until I am standing on that damned beach and everything else will fade away instead of the beach. I don’t know if my life up until now has caused me to be going crazy but I have to make a decision on what I’m going to do about it.

It appears that I can’t help myself, so I am going to have to get some medical help on the chance that I can be helped; possibly some kind of medication or something. Maybe I can go to a doctor out of town and have a confidential discussion with him and no one at the dealership will ever know about it."

Allen’s thoughts were interrupted by the oncoming beach visualisation and as always he fought it off, which had progressively been harder to do the last few weeks. The breeze had been warmer than usual this time and with the obvious high humidity of the sea air, he had begun to sweat profusely. Wiping the sweat from his forehead, he said to himself:

"That’s it, I have had enough. I wish it had been a brain tumour, at least this would all make sense."

Allen parked his car in the parking lot of a clinic on the outskirts of Los Angeles and nervously made his way into the clinic. One floor up and he was at the office of Dr Richards and entered and checked in at the reception desk for his 1 o’clock appointment. He told the receptionist he had no insurance and would pay cash for the appointment. He definitely did not want his insurance company involved in this.

When called, he followed a young lady to a room where he was told to make himself comfortable and the doctor would see him in a few minutes. As she was leaving the room, that damned beach was beginning to appear and Allen shook his head vigorously and it slowly dissipated.

No clock. Well that was a blessing and within minutes, a doctor entered the room and introduced himself as Dr Richards. After shaking hands, the doctor took a seat across from Allen and asked.

Mr Meyers, what can I do for you?

Uncomfortably, Allen said, I am seeing things.

What kind of things?

Well, not creatures or scary things. Places I have been before.

Really? That’s interesting. What kind of medications are you taking?

I don’t take any medication.

It says here that you do not drink alcohol. Is that true?

Not since I was in the service years ago and not much then.

I see that you had a recent MRI that showed you have no brain abnormalities. It says that the concern was a brain tumour. The doctor looked straight into the eyes of Allen and asked, Can I assume that you are in my office because you believe you have a problem that you would not like others to be aware of?

Allen was taken back by this as the doctor was being faded out by the sand and the ocean. He shook his head noticeably and replied.

Yes. This is confidential, isn’t it?

The doctor, still looking at Allen said, To a point, yes, this is confidential. Is there an insurance company or government benefits involved in your visit?

No, I am paying cash.

Well, unless you are an imminent danger to others, the only records or files of this visit will be kept here at this office. With that out of the way, tell me about yourself and your problem.

Digging into his back-pocket Allen retrieved several folded pages of typing paper and handed it to the doctor and said:

This is not everything about me and my problem but it will give you a good idea of what I am contending with.

Hesitantly, the doctor took the pages and with pen in hand started reading and jotting down notes on the pages. The doctor’s only reaction to the pages while reading them was that occasionally he made a slight nodding motion with his head. When finished, he slouched down in his chair a little and said to Allen.

Well, this is very interesting Mr Meyers. Just how concerned are you about your condition and what do you believe is going to be the end result of it?

Allen was expecting a diagnosis and not a question and becoming very uncomfortable, he blurted out.

I think I’m going crazy and I’m going to end up in a nut house. With this, he again shrugged off the upwelling beach scene and slumped in his chair.

After a considerable period of time, Dr Richards said.

Then you are expecting the worst?

Allen nodded without speaking.

"Well Allen, the reason I am asking is that with what little information I have here, I cannot make a complete diagnosis but there is enough here to indicate some of your problems or potential problems. If you were not expecting the worst for yourself, I would feel uncomfortable discussing these problems with you because it might enhance your problem further.

That being said, yes, you have a mental disorder or more than one. But crazy is not the terminology to use. What I do understand of the content of your pages here is something I am quite familiar with. For the most part, it is called suppression and with only this information and in layman’s terms, it is caused by your mind avoiding the reality of your situation at the moment.

You say that these images of other places randomly appear to you. If you have not considered this, is it safe for me to say that they always and only appear at a time when you wish that you were somewhere else instead of the place or situation you find yourself in?"

Allen’s eyes fixed on the wall above the doctor for several minutes as he thought about what the doctor had suggested to him. He then looked at the doctor and said:

I think so, except when I am dreaming or falling asleep.

I thought so, except for the dreaming part, replied the doctor. "My internship was spent in a large mental institution and this was a quite common symptom among the patients. The brain or you can say people, attempt to avoid unpleasant situations or surroundings by any means possible. One of these means was to think about something else. It has been my experience that some brains are more efficient than others in doing this.

The best example of this is people who have the ability to eliminate the sensation of pain utilising this method. At this point, it appears to me that this is exactly what you are doing with the beach thing. In respect to this problem, the difference between what we consider normal human behaviour and abnormal human behaviour is when the condition interferes with a person to the point that they cannot function satisfactorily in society.

The fact that you are here implies that this problem is interfering with your life. Is there a cure for the problem? In some cases, it can be cured with psychotherapy and in others with medication. In other cases, symptoms can be inhibited so that they do not get worse or at least the progression is slowed. In your case, I can see no other way than for you to pursue treatment for your problem with myself or some other medical professional."

The doctor looked at his wristwatch and continued.

"I have other patients to attend to now but if you would like to see me again, make an appointment with the receptionist. And if so, please rewrite your pages here in much greater detail. There are a few items here that interest me and we do not have time to discuss them right now. I am sure you have many questions about what I have told you and as I said, I really see no other option for you than to see me again or some other professional.

You might do some research on suppression. If there is an emergency, by all means call the office. I really hate to leave you in a lurch Mr Meyers but this is just a preliminary appointment." The doctor stood and shook Allen’s hand and left the office.

Sitting in his car in the parking lot and staring out the front windshield, Allen was thinking that he had a much better understanding of his problem and the good news was that there was a chance that the doctor could help him. The bad news was that it looked like he was going to have to commit to doctor appointments and medication.

This could be a problem at work if they find out about this and God knows what other problems might come up. He started the car and drove down the parking lot in front of him which was a mixture of blacktop, cars, sand and foam washing up on the beach.

Allen had made a decision. He was going to make another appointment with Dr Richards and he was going to enhance the documentation of his problem in greater detail and mail it to the doctor