Psychic Warrior by Bob Mayer Page B

they couldn't talk verbally-they had no language-so the telepathic communication was emotional. If someone saw a large tiger approaching the group, that person could use their mind to warn the others by sending their fear into the others' minds. There are even some examples of this 'pack mentality' in the animal world today."
    "What happened to this ability?" Captain Anderson asked.
    "It's still there in some people but regressed," Hammond said. "Once we developed a verbal language, it wasn't as important. The person who saw the tiger could yell ‘Tiger!' which was just as quick and more effective in that it specifically identified the threat. Since this was a better mode of communication, evolution took over and the verbal mode of communication became dominant.
    "So as humans used the verbal language more and more, the telepathic capability waned and became residual. It's not entirely gone. All of you have had moments when you sensed things despite the fact that there were no specific normal sensory inputs that gave you that information. A sixth sense."
    Hammond stood up. "Especially you men. Each of you has an even stronger residual mental capability than the norm. Significantly stronger. That's why you were chosen for Trojan Warrior three years ago.
    "First, each of you is left-handed or ambidextrous. The brain consists of two hemispheres." Hammond pointed at her neck "At the base of our brain, our nervous system does a switch. So the right side of your brain is responsible for the left side of your body and vice versa. Thus a left-handed person is right hemisphere dominant.
    "Both sides of your brain are pretty much the same. That makes for redundancy. There have been clinical examples of people who have suffered tremendous damage to one hemisphere, or had extensive surgery, who were still able to rehabilitate to almost a normal level of functioning."
    Dalton thought about Marie, lying in her hospital bed. Whatever damage the aneurysm had done, perhaps there was hope that she would recover. Hope. Dalton knew what a two-edged sword that was from bitter personal experience. He forced himself to accept reality: Even if by some miracle she did regain consciousness, the ALS would be that much worse, the disease still progressing even as she lay in the coma. And he knew Dr. Kairns had leveled with him: Marie was never going to wake up.
    Hammond walked to the front of the room and pulled a chart down. It was a top view of a brain. She pointed to the right side. "But there’s something very interesting that doctors have always wondered about here. The speech center on the right side appears to not work. All our speech comes from the left side. But the same parts are present on the right. Why?" She didn't wait for an answer and tapped the chart. "This is where the residual telepathic ability resides. This is where we focus our efforts to get you into the virtual plane."
    Hammond went back to the desk and picked up the TACPAD. "This machine amplifies the parts of your brain that can allow you to get to and operate on the virtual plane. We've used the TACPAD successfully for two years.
    "What the TACPAD does in conjunction with the isolation chamber is the following-" She grabbed a marker and began writing on the board.
    1 — Isolation Chamber
    Emphasize Parasympathetic
    Hammond pointed with the marker. "When the parasympathetic nervous system is operating, your body relaxes. Your pupils constrict, your heart rate slows, your digestive system practically shuts down, your muscles relax. You did some of this consciously in Trojan Warrior. The isolation chamber does this by lowering your body temperature to the point where your body is almost totally inactive."
    She pointed at the wall plug. "Your brain operates on such a low voltage that its power is almost negligible. We can't exactly increase the voltage into your brain, as that would fry the cells, so we focus the power that is already there by reducing the need for it to be