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The One Power spread itself as an invisible wave around the world, moving faster and fast. No one could see it coming, few could feel it, but there were machines. A new kind of meter read the wave as something. What the wave was it could not say, but it read, processed and registered.
A teleprompter in a small facility in central Russia started to print out the readings. No one heard it tick of course, because the moment the wave hit the meter, one of the scientists had destroyed a computer with the one power. It had just crashed, deleting four hours of work for a scientist named Vladimir Glenko, and he had been quite mad at it. When he started throwing disks and other stuff around the room, some of the people in it had withdrawn to the next room, and as the computer blew up, everyone else ran away.
One of his friends, a scientist named Ivan Romanov said out "Vladi, what did you just do. You , you blew up that computer, didn't you. But how?" the man said with a voice of terror and intrigue in his voice.
Vladimir was wondering the same thing. For a moment it had felt as if he was more alive then he had ever been before. Twice alive, twenty fold even. It was like he was fighting to keep that power, but it was a magnificent fight. He was in euphoria. He had seen every little pixel on the static screen of the computer, and with his rage, he had somehow made it explode. But it was not an explosion as such, there had been no fire, the computer had just broken apart with pieces of it flying all around the room. He had felt air blowing up inside it, and them blow up more and more and more, all in the blink of an eye. Then the computer had exploded. Finally after looking around in the room for several minutes, at the disbelieving faces of his comrades, at the computer, he said simply "I don't know, but it was something that I did. I am sure of it."
At this time almost everyone had fled to the other side of the compound, some had even hidden themselves under beds and tables. Few of Vladimir's friends had stayed behind however, trying to find out what had happened. They asked him questions, but he could not tell them anything else than what he had felt, and by the looks on their faces, Vladimir supposed they were afraid the he might do the same to him. He was afraid of that himself too.
"Hey Vladimir, check this out" a voice called out from the other side of the room. It was another of his friends, Nikolai, who was holding a piece of paper in his hands. As Vladimir started walking towards him, the man continued talking. "You know that new, expensive meter that we got a few years ago, the one that isn't of any use because it's only supposed to register brain-waves or something as stupid as that. Never bothered to find out myself. Anyways, it shows some activity that would be right at the time as your… accident. It might give us a clue to what has happened."
Vladimir replied with a some irritation in his voice "First of all, it doesn't register brain waves. Those waves move at best twenty centimetres outside your skull, or so I have heard. That thing registers something even more stupid. Five years ago some idiot in the politburo was convinced that there were ghosts or something equally stupid, and had it made to register them. It's not like we have ever gotten any reading from it. And even if it could get information about ghosts, we are twenty kilometres from the next city." after looking at the surprised faces of his friends, they didn't know this, and neither would he unless he had met with an older scientist in this place who told him that over some vodka. "Until now that is.", Vladimir ended his words with.
After a quick glance at the paper, only to make his friends think he cared anything about it, he was a computer specialist after all, not an American ghost-searcher. Then he said to his friend. "Find out if there is any other base in Russia that holds an meter like ours. If they do, tell them to send the info to us, that way we might be able to determine the origin, speed and time of the original outburst. And make sure you get past the damn bureaucracy this time".
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