Ambrosia actually paused to think about the answer. To think about it for a long, long while...
"Oh, c’mon. I *know* you are just messing with me!" I said, putting my hands over my chest. "It’s literally all in your head."
In response, Ambrosia giggled in her fist.
"And you know that I’m teasing you, but still act this way. This only becomes more amusing each time it happens," she said, without a gram of conscience in sight.
"After you discovered humor, you became a monster, Amby. A destroyer of my self-esteem," I said, grinning broadly. Then I went serious again. "But jokes aside, I want to test my new power now. I’m awake enough for this!"
Amby frowned, clearly not pleased to hear this, but nodded.
"Then I will watch over you. And a Physician. Just in case."
In the end, Amby called not only a Physician, but also Attendant Helping-Hands and a local Oracle who was hurriedly trying to remember if there were any prophecies about me suffering a stroke or another sudden ailment today.
This small crowd was waiting for orders outside my guest bedroom. I was lying on the bed with my head on Amby’s knees.
"After I start this, I feel like I won’t be *here* for some time. My body will become asleep, but it should be alright. There’s no need to keep me close all this time. I don’t know how long this test will take!" I repeated for the third time now.
Ambrosia only stroked my forehead, looking down upon me with endless patience and a bit of ruefulness.
I let out a sigh and relaxed, knowing that she wouldn’t go away even if her legs would fall asleep. I didn’t want any discomfort for my wife, but this care was making me feel warm and fuzzy inside as I closed my eyes.
It would be easy to just fall asleep in an ordinary way right now. But instead, I focused on my telepathic might.
Endless stream of people’s thoughts was at the edge of my perception, but I blocked it out. Instead, I followed my intuition and imagined myself leaving my body and seeing things from outside.
Immediately after, my thoughts followed my imagination, and with them, my conscience itself.
Suddenly, my thoughts were coming not from behind my own eyes, but from somewhere under the room’s ceiling. And I was looking around and hearing things from the same point!
It was a very strange sensation. Everything looked flat, as if I closed an eye and also lost a tiny bit of my color perception. It sounded and smelled flat in a similar way, too.
I became a thought and looking in a direction became a matter of thinking about it. When I thought about looking at my own body, I saw it and Amby from above.
It was the first time I saw myself without visual aberrations of primitive metal mirrors. My face, I couldn’t help but note, looked much more punchable than I remembered. And Amby looked entirely oblivious to my presence.
But what shocked me the most wasn’t that.
’Who the fuck is that?! How did she get here?!’
There was a murder hornet hovering right next to my bed! An actual murder hornet with massive claws, tough chitin and teeth so large that she couldn’t fully close her mouth.
However, I also immediately noticed three strange things about this hornet. First, she was the size of a bee—several times smaller than an actual murder hornet. Second, although she was hovering in the air, her wings weren’t beating or even open at all.
And third, she was looking at me and scowling.
Not at my body, at *me*.
I reflexively reached out, trying to read her thoughts. Although I was an astral projection, I felt that my telepathy was still working perfectly.
However, when I tried to get into this creature’s thoughts, all I heard was absolutely nothing. An empty space, as if I was trying to read the mind of a rock.
Even the stupidest of insects had more thoughts. Perhaps even plants.
And—another strange thing—nobody paid this being any mind. Amby was entirely oblivious to her presence, and so was I—until I became an astral projection.
In this moment, as if my telepathic attention was the last straw, the hornet-creature sneered at me and vanished.
I looked around, but there was no trace of her in sight. Who was that? I wasn’t hallucinating, surely?
I suspected who that might be, but honestly, I would prefer this hornet-creature to be just my hallucination than for this suggestion to be true!
For a minute after this, I just tried to calm down while I got used to my current state. There was no sight of the hornet-creature again, and she didn’t do me or anyone any harm (yet), so I gradually relaxed again.
All this astral projection stuff was too exciting, even for ominous visions to put my mood down fully.
I found I could travel to other places with the speed of thought! As soon as I thought about being somewhere, I appeared there.
It actually was so easy that after I thought about the possibilities of this, I accidentally teleported myself over half a dozen sub-hives before returning to my body. The limit of my range was 100 thousand kilometers, just like the gene description said.
I also found that I could freely use my telepathy in this state. I appeared in Hive Supremo and said "Hi!" to Worriesgone.
She became so confused over getting this message and not a word from me for a couple minutes afterward that she decided she was imagining things. Which made her sad, because Worriesgone was really missing me even though I wasn’t apart for long...
’This was really me saying hi, Worriesgone. Your Father. I just got a new amazing telepathy upgrade—when Amby and I will return home, we will tell everybody about it!’ I promised my girl to calm her down and returned to my body with yet another thought.
This upgrade was awesome, and it needed to be shared.
But first, I hoped to get an answer to one question...