Chapter 23: Family Dinner at the Williams'

Wednesday, April 6, 2005

I was outside my sisters' bedroom door at 6am, when a bleary-eyed Donna came out. She'd be firing on all cylinders in a few more seconds. We headed outside.

Once we were on the sidewalk, I said, "First point of business. No pretty girls have hugged me today, and I need one to before I can run properly." And I gave her a quick hug. I could see she really wasn't in the mood, but that was okay, they're there for when she is.

She said, "You're just trying to make me go easy on you."

"Not true, I just wanted a hug, but let's stretch while we talk." We started stretching while I asked, "Where do you want to run?"

Donna said, "I don't mind, go wherever you want. I'll just run with you."

"But what if I run faster?"

"Ha! Like that's gonna happen."

#1: <Well, if that's her attitude!>

#3: <No. I don't want to run her into the ground, upset her, or anything else bad. Let's just take it easy?>

"The main reason I'm running today is to spend time with you. Let's not go so fast that we can't talk. I haven't had much chance to talk with you recently, and would like to catch up with what you're doing."

I set off at a slow pace and Donna fell in beside me. We chatted away about such things as:

• She was looking forward to her first karate lesson on Thursday, the same day as my first Aikido class. Not quite the same time, and not quite at the same place, so Mom's taxi service was going to be busy. Which reminded me to thank Donna for bringing Aikido to my attention.

• Considering myself an expert on cross-gender relationships now (sure!), I asked her if her concern about being pretty was because there was a boy she was interested in. Not really, it seemed. She'd just seen Carol and me get lovey-dovey and she'd felt left out. After a little more questioning, I thought she might have a little bit of prettiness concern, but it wasn't a big deal as she was into sports rather than boys, and enjoying her life as it was.

There was quite a lot of chatting for the first several minutes. None of it was important in content, Donna being only twelve, but it was reasonably important to be a good Big Brother. After a while we tended to run mostly in silence, just enjoying each other's company. The pace I had picked was easily comfortable for both of us - of course it was for me! - and we could easily speak whenever stray thoughts occurred to either of us.

When we got toward the end of our time Donna said, "You've run better than I thought you would."

"Listen to me talking. I have no shortage of breath. I could run faster than this but I'm happy as it is. I've enjoyed this morning with you. We should do this more often. Are you tired?"

"Not really, I could go faster."

I offered, "Okay, maybe the next morning we could go a little faster. But I enjoy running WITH you, so I don't want to run AHEAD of you."

Donna couldn't resist, "You just don't want to run BEHIND me."

"That's true. I enjoy running WITH you."

Donna suggested, "Shall we have a race to see who is faster?"

Donna is very competitive, but I was feeling very mellow. "I know you enjoy races, but I like being nice with my sisters. I used to be mean to you by arguing and fighting a lot, but this is much nicer. I'll tell you what, I'll go faster, and you try to stay up, okay? As soon as you slow down, I'll slow down to your speed."

I steadily increased my pace, with Donna matching me all the way up to my optimal speed.

Poor Donna; she did her best to hang on, but we'd run a fair distance already and I was going way too fast for her. It didn't take long for her to start struggling, so I immediately slowed down.

She protested, "No! {Pant}. Keep going! {Pant}."

I ignored her request, stopping as she did, saying, "I'm not going to run off into the distance. The idea is we stay together."

It took her a few seconds to catch her breath, and then Donna used it to rave about how good I was at running, marvel at my not being tired, wanting to know how I got so good, wanting to know how my times for various distances, etc. It was good to see her so happy. One of the most exciting aspects for Donna was, "You could win LOTS of races!"

"I'm studying two grades, I've got a wonderful girlfriend, two wonderful sisters, one of whom told me last night that I was neglecting her. I play soccer - or will when my cast comes off - and I'm hoping that I'll like Aikido. I don't have the time for another organized sport. Especially because I've got TWO sisters! You've only got one so it's not so bad for you, but I've got two! Believe me, they're a LOT of work. I've got to keep chasing them so I can get hugs."

"Haha. You're funny. But you could WIN! You're REALLY good! You've got to come to the club and be timed running properly over..."

"I'm glad you're happy, but running competitively doesn't appeal to me. Remember Dad had to give up on the idea of me being a pro basketball player? Same thing for running. I like using my mind, not my body.

^-- "I tell you what though; I'm thinking about entering ONE real race, just to see how good I am. I'll make sure you can come watch me win, okay?"

I'd had the thought while running with Donna, that if I entered a race I could pace myself ahead of the second best runner (i.e., the guy who would've won, if not for me being so freaky). That'd let me finish in first place, but not in some trouble-making, world-record time. It might be a bit complex if the other runners varied their pace much, as I'd prefer to hold mine constant, but I thought that in a long race there shouldn't be too much variation. If there was a sprint at the end, I could sprint too. Maybe not as fast as them, but I'd make sure I had a reasonable lead going into the finish. It seemed fairly straightforward and doable. How I performed in a real race, and my knowing roughly how much slower than optimal I'd run it, would be a pretty good test of my running ability. I didn't HAVE to run a world record; that was mostly ego. I just wanted to confirm that I could, which was still ego, but a less extreme version.

"That'd be GREAT! What distance?"

"A long way, preferably a marathon."

"You can't run a marathon without months of training, but there's an Open Men's 10k coming soon. How about that?"

Without sprinting at the end, my extrapolated time for that distance was one minute under the world record, so it'd do. I let Donna's comment about my training requirements for a marathon go past unchallenged, instead just saying, "That'd be fine."

"I'll check at the club if registrations are still open."

"Thanks. Are you rested enough to jog home?"

^

I let Donna have the first shower as my cast slows me down. After I washed, I headed to the breakfast table.

Walking down the hallway toward the kitchen, I heard Donna say, " ... in a 10k Men's race we're hosting. Seeing as how I'm training him, I should have a bet on him to place. How about ten dollars?"

I arrived in time to see Donna's poor attempt to keep her anticipation off her face. Her expression wasn't her real problem; Mom's expression was. Mom doesn't allow gambling, not even allowing Dad to have bets on the Superbowl. Occasionally there'll be a silly little fun bet in the family, but "fun" is the key word, and Mom draws the line at about a dime's worth of real money. Donna's greed taking her over Mom's line by a factor of hundred wasn't the smartest thing she's ever done.

Dad said, "Just a fun, family bet you mean? Not really caring who wins or loses, right?"

Donna agreed hopefully, "That's right."

"Okay. I bet you ten dollars Mark will come third or better," Dad agreed evilly.

"Umm. That's what I wanted to bet on. You..."

"It doesn't matter; it's just a family bet."

Dad had given me a wink as he said the last, so I said, "I'll bet you another ten dollars that I win, Donna."

Poor Donna - and she was currently worrying about that becoming literally true - said in panic, "But I wanted to bet ON Mark! I'm training him, so I should be ON him."

I said, "I don't need any training, so it doesn't matter which way you bet."

Donna was frantically trying to think of a comeback, when Mom declared, "Shame on you for trying to trick money out of your own family, Donna! You know I don't allow bets."

While Mom was telling her off, Donna hung her head. She spent a couple of seconds being sorry for herself: that it hadn't worked. In mid-rebuke, Donna suddenly lifted up her head and announced, "Okay, all bets are off. Sorry Mom." Then she got busy with her breakfast to make it harder for Dad or me to insist the bets were still alive.

I copied her, also getting busy with my breakfast. I'm very hungry in the mornings.

When Mom finished telling Donna off for gambling, Dad asked me, "Are you really so good at running that Donna thinks you'd place in an organized race?" Dad was surprised because I have zero history of running.

I explained, "I think I'm even better than Donna thinks I am; I think I'll win rather than just place. My wanting to enter a race is just a one-time thing; just to check I'm as good as I think I am. I don't have the time or interest to take running seriously."

"How'd you get good enough to impress Donna so quickly?"

I shrugged, "It's a mystery to me too. Part of the reason I'm entering the race is to help me believe that I really am as good as I think I am."

Donna didn't mind participating in this conversation, so she stopped eating to say, "He's AMAZINGLY good. He ran the last two or three miles at a 10k winning pace, without running out of wind or getting tired, and that was after nearly an hour of jogging! I can't extrapolate his 10k time from that, but it's gotta be something that puts him into the first three places..." She started talking about my running style, dropped in technical terms like VO2, made anatomical comments, and mentioned other things I had no idea about. I was surprised at how knowledgeable Donna was, but I guess she'd picked up quite a fair amount from her several years of club running.

Dad asked her, "Do you really think he could place?"

You can tell that Donna is NOT the smart one of our family, by her immediately hopeful answer, "Do you wanna bet?"

She got rebuked by Mom again, much more sternly than last time. Donna would NOT be using that immoral three-lettered word for a while.

Dad asked me, "How much training are you going to do?"

"I'm not really that interested. I'd like to go out with Donna in the mornings whenever she wants. Otherwise just as the mood strikes me. Nothing planned."

Dad obviously thought this was a bit casual, but he didn't make an issue out of it. He asked Donna, "Do you want to go running with Mark again?"

"Yes, he was fun to run with. And kind: I kept wanting to race because I thought I'd win, but he just made sure we had fun. He could've beaten me easily."

Mom couldn't resist. "You mean, if at the start of the run he'd asked you to bet ten dollars on who won, you would've bet on yourself?"

"Um, yes."

"You would've lost your ten dollars then, wouldn't you?"

"No. If he'd offered ten, I'd have tried to talk him into twenty."

After we laughed, and Mom had added the obligatory "Let that be a lesson to you"-type of comment to Donna, Dad continued his original theme with me, "So how often are you going to run in the mornings?"

My answer was easy, "I'll run whenever Donna wants. She's the serious runner of the family and knows much more about it than I do."

Donna was pleased that I deferred to her for the decision. "Do you want me to plan some training runs for you?"

"Nope. I want to have more fun runs like this morning. I couldn't care less about training."

[I have a bit of a thing about logic, so I don't say, "I could care less" like most people do. It's illogical, so I stick to the 'correct' version of "I COULDN'T care less," even if most people use the fractionally shorter version. I'll retain their wording when I'm quoting their speech, in the interests of making this document as accurate as possible. It's weird how expressions change like that. "Head over heels" is another example. It used to be "Heels over head", which makes perfect sense rather than the current version which means nothing. I'll stick to the current phrase for that expression herein, as it's so well established. That illogical versions of expressions can become the preferred form has me scratching my heels in puzzlement.]

Donna clearly thought I was silly not to train properly, but she said, "How about Monday and Wednesday mornings for about an hour?"

"Sounds perfect to me, sweetie. We'll do that." I'd recently started calling my sisters "Sweetie" sometimes. I'd never done it before, but it seems appropriate these days and I enjoy it.

I finished my meal, paying even more attention to it than normal. One little thing that had been puzzling me was that after a run I was not as hungry as I expected. I normally eat a lot, as I believe I've mentioned, but the long run hadn't increased my appetite. It didn't make sense, scientifically speaking, as the energy stored in my body presumably had to be replaced. I couldn't argue with the fact that I wasn't hungrier than normal, but maybe it took a while to show up and I'd be hungrier by lunchtime. [As it turned out, no. Over the next day or two, my hunger was no more than it normally would have been.]

When I was carrying my dish to the sink, I passed Carol's chair, so I transferred my dish into my right hand so I could give her shoulder a little squeeze on the way past. She sat up straighter, and even from the back I could tell she smiled.

We were ready before the car, for a change. While we were waiting, I remembered to ask Mom whether I could get the driver to take me on to Julia's house after dropping Donna and Carol off here. She said she'd talk with the Principal about it. [The answer came back "Yes," Mom adding, "The Principal didn't have much choice, but you shouldn't abuse it and should be considerate toward the driver as none of this was his fault."]

Mom reminded us, "We're going to the Williams' for dinner tonight, so make sure you're home in plenty of time."

Mom also asked me to phone Julia to see whether she was going to be home shortly. I did, and Julia was. I relayed that answer to Mom, who immediately left to deliver Julia's notes to her, that not being the real reason for the visit.

I kept chatting to Julia, and an important topic came up during our conversation, but I'd barely started talking about how Julia would be helping her mother with the dinner preparations in the afternoon when the school's car arrived. I quickly said to Julia, "I've got to go, the car's here. I always open the door for Carol. Bye."

I raced to get ahead of Carol to open the door for her. She helped by walking very slowly. Carol clearly liked my attentions, which was very fine with me. In the car we held hands, as we do these days.

[Later that evening, before dinner, Julia asked me to explain my "open the door for Carol" comment, which I did. Julia thought I was very nice. I got a hug for it.]

I was walking down a corridor, slightly late for my next class after delivering a note-taking request to one of Julia's, when I had another déjà vu. Déjà vu is weird anyway, but you should try it with four minds on either side of the link. [[Actually, you can't, as I've made that impossible now.]]

I/we stopped walking, and just stood in the corridor(s). It was sort of chaotic, sort of not. With eight minds involved, and our knowing that time would run out very soon, there were thoughts firing back and forth as fast as we could. In one respect it was similar to how we normally talk internally, although there was more of it, but the most noticeable aspect of the process is how goddamn disjointed and difficult talking across the link is. Fortunately, this time the distortion was far less than it'd been in the movie theater and just before we'd suicided in the menswear store.

[[I previously put some numbers on it. A "refreshing copy" (copying the minds from one w-dimension to the other) takes 0.1 seconds with one mind on each end, but the mental reaction time to exchange a thought is 0.15 seconds, making deliberate cross-dimensional communication impossible. With two minds on each end the refreshing interval is 0.19 seconds, giving intervals of 0.04 seconds to communicate within. With four minds on each end, copying time is about 0.35 seconds, giving 0.20 seconds to exchange thoughts. That's five times longer than with two minds, making it much easier to work with.]]

Time was something we all knew was important, as the phenomenon only lasts what feels like twenty seconds. So we very quickly compared notes, and both groups had had very similar experiences: bathtub and poison suicides, both had wonderful families now, both had Julias, both were apparently geniuses, both good runners. The other Mark hadn't had a morning run with his Donna, so differences existed. We told him that a non-competitive run was fun.

The previous paragraph makes it seem as if the topics were quickly raised and agreed on, but the disjointed communication made the actual process awkward. We could talk internally normally, as could the other Mark, but exchanging messages across the déjà vu link was often difficult. It wasn't like talking on a radio or telephone with a time delay, echo or static. None of those effects were occurring, as we always had crystal clear, immediate responses; it's more that communications across the w-dimension seemed to lose many of the messages, so a great deal of stop-start repetition was required.

We knew it wasn't as simple as messages getting lost. Had that been the case we would NOT have risked our second suicide, in case our minds had become lost! We knew it was something else because sometimes the sender of the message would forget not just the last message he sent but the one before that too, or we'd receive a message that had little to do with the current topic. There was something else causing the communication problems other than simple dropped messages. It seemed to be with us, the Marks, rather than the transmission process itself. Making it harder for us to understand the problem was that when we'd déjà vu'd with two minds, the proportion of mix-up types had been very different from now. Back then there'd been almost no cases of a mind forgetting an earlier message, but that was the most common problem now. Despite these clues, we couldn't guess at an explanation. [We discussed it several times over the next days, and after later déjà vu's too, but failed to think of a plausible reason.]

[[We failed because we had the wrong mental model for the process. We weren't communicating "across the w-dimension" at all, but with the copies of the other Mark's minds that 'were in our head' (that's inaccurate, as neither the local minds nor the copies were in our heads, minds being information rather than a lump of biology. Minds interact with, but are not inside, brains). The communication difficulties were caused by the arrival of the regular refreshes from the original minds. Because our minds and the copies of our minds were so similar, there were effectively two almost identical conversations going on in each w-dimension. Had they been totally identical, the refreshes would've just caused the apparent loss of some messages (those made during the copying time), but there were random variations between the dimensions. For example, if #1A and #2B 'spoke' at once, in one dimension #1A could give way to #2B, and in the other dimension, #2B might give way. Then a refresh could arrive, confusing us. It was very annoying.]]

Both Marks had noticed increased control of subconscious functions. He'd discovered go-softs too, so I guess teenage boys are troubled by their erections throughout the Universe. Neither of us had a clue about why we could run so well. We both ate like pigs, but not much more after a big run. He'd discovered that he was reasonably good at weightlifting, by getting all his muscles to act in concert. Not a big improvement over normal, but noticeable. It didn't seem useful though, especially as weightlifting wasn't something we wanted to do.

Someone suggested holding our breath underwater. Neither of us had tried that, but we agreed it sounded interesting and worth trying.

We 'talked' as quickly as we could, expecting to lose the connection in about twenty seconds or so. But when that time was up the connection persisted. We weren't sure what to talk about. We strongly suspected that we'd never encounter these particular minds again, so surely this was a valuable opportunity not to be wasted.

We agreed our life was great, and we had ABSOLUTELY no intention of committing suicide again, either out of depression - having a lover is making a HUGE difference to our happiness! - or to double the number of minds we had already.

My side of the link said, <Rather than increasing the number of minds we have, we'd sometimes like to send you our #4.>

#4: <Hey, Guys!>

The other side of the link didn't get the joke, confirming that they had the sanest #4.

We thought the Williams family were great, Julia was a beautiful girlfriend and worryingly intense and devoted to us, we loved Carol and Donna, we were great at soccer, and ... We were still trying to find a useful topic when the phenomenon cut out.

#1: <Well, what'd you think of that?>

#3: <Whatever is happening to us, it's big, but I love our life now. I don't want to suicide again, not even with a 50% chance of surviving. I'd hate to hurt everyone by doing that.>

#4: <Yeah, I'd rather kill myself than hurt them like that.>

#2, #3: <{Groan}.>

#1: <That's EXACTLY why we wanted to give you away!>

[That's exactly one of the sorts of comments that we'd trained ourselves never to say to anyone else, as we saw that jokes like that often hurt the recipient. We could say it internally because we knew each other VERY well. #4 KNEW we were joking, and that he was a valued member of our head. He was 99% the same as the rest of us, and even his variation wasn't in conflict with our majority's personality.]

#4: <I get the feeling there are a lot of minds out there. A lot of us, and copies of our dimension.>

#1: <Yeah, seems that way. Amazing isn't it? But each time we suicide we halve the number of us there are. The number of our bodies I mean; not minds, obviously.>

#3: <Are we sure our bodies really die? Maybe when we suicide both sides survive, but believe the other side died?>

#2: <No, I think we really do die. In my first merge I'm sure my body died first. I remember that #1's body - that we're in now - was stronger, there was less blood in the bath and that sort of thing.>

#4: <Same with #3 and me I thought. His body was better off.>

[[There's enough randomness involved in the slit wrists suicide method to result in quite a variation in the times of death. You try giving yourself two identical bloodletting slices with a razor blade, and I think you'll find they're not identical. Plus there are variations in the dying speed caused by the temperature of the water, how the Mark was sitting, how excited he was, and several other factors. In some dimensions their Marks simply died because they didn't have a déjà vu, or their and their partner's times of death were after their déjà vu's narrow window closed. In other dimensions, the just-merged surviving Mark died because his blood loss was too advanced. For this conversation to have occurred - more relevantly, for this autobiography to have been written - somewhere across the entire W-Dimension there had to be a pairing of Marks such that one Mark died from blood loss during the déjà vu period, and his déjà vu partner had enough blood left to abort his suicide. Given the randomness inherent in the suicide method, it's not surprising that at least four such pairings happened: two each in me and the Mark I just finished déjà vu'ing with.]]

#2: <And when we merged to four, it felt like #3's body died from the poison, so I think the number of bodies does halve.>

#4: <But there doesn't seem to be any shortage of us.>

#1: <No. What about the timings? I just realized that the déjà vu's are getting more frequent. Originally, back when we had a single mind per body, we used to déjà vu about every two years or so. You agree?

#2: <Yeah, something like that. I never kept a track, but that feels about right.>

#1: <Okay. Let's call it two years. We committed suicide and had two minds per body, then had déjà vu in the movie theater. That was our first déjà vu after our first merge, about seven months after the merge, right?>

#2: <Seven or eight. About that.>

#1: <Then the second merge was eight months later, giving us 4 minds. So 7 and 8 months for 2 minds. And this déjà vu was only 6 weeks after we got to 4 minds. #3 and #4 had the same experiences, right?>

#3: <Yep.>

#1: <To summarize: 24 months for 1 mind, 7 and 8 months for 2 minds, 1.5 months for 4 minds. Or to put it another way, base time for 1 mind, 1/3 or less for 2 minds, and 1/16 for 4 minds. I think it's roughly an inverse square relationship.>

#3: <It looks that way. So we can expect déjà vu's to continue to come about every six weeks, give or take. If we merge again... >

#4: <Over my dead body!>

#1: <If we ignore him, he might go away.>

#3: < ... If we merge again, that'd be 8 minds, 2 years over 64 is 1/32nd of a year. A bit more than 1.5 weeks between déjà vu's.>

#1: <It'll be four times faster after every merge because the number of minds doubles and it's a square law.>

#4: <I think the most useful thing to know, is that we're going to get déjà vu's roughly every six weeks. That's quick. Fast enough to wait and see if it comes on schedule to confirm our hypothesis. We could even make a list of questions to ask next time, knowing that it'll probably be happening soon. At six weeks apart, on average, they're almost convenient.>

#1: <Yeah. The last one was much easier to communicate in and it seemed to last longer too, which is convenient of it. I thought the last one was the clearest and longest lasting déjà vu I've ever had. Everyone agree?>

#2, #3, #4: <Yes.>

#1: <Let's see if the next déjà vu's are consistent with that then.>

#4: <I just thought of something. We can't afford to merge again. We'd need to get a job first.>

#1: <That's absurd! I know I'm going to regret this, but why?>

#4: <I'm not making one of my usually brilliant jokes; I'm being serious. We figured we eat about 8% more food per additional mind. If we merge again we'd gain 4 minds, so our body would need 32% more food than we needed with one mind. We'd almost be eating as much as two people by then. Mom would not be pleased! I guess that it'd cost an extra $50 per week, or something like that. We'd need a job to start paying for our food.>

#2: <You're right.>

The rest of the school day was just the usual. I collected all the notes for Julia, and we took the car home.

^

I called Julia when we got home from school, to make sure all was well with her. She was happy.

At one point she laughingly said, "I know the real reason you're calling, and let me assure you that it will be very good."

That confused me. I didn't have a "real reason" for calling her, other than just checking up on her and letting her know I cared. So I asked, "Real reason?"

With a humorous tone, she said, "You're just calling to make sure dinner is going to be good. I know how important food is to you. It must be really scary to be relying on someone else to cook for you, haha."

"Ah. You know me well. So now that we have uncovered the main reason for my call, tell me all about it. What are we having for dinner? What's the main course, what about dessert, I hope you've got a big enough plate for me... ?"

"I'm telling you nothing. You'll just have to wait and see."

Damn! I started worrying, but then realized that I could rely on Vanessa to look after me. I felt much better after that.

Julia passed on a suggestion from her mom that we bring swimsuits with us so we could soak in the hot tub after dinner. I've never seen Julia in a swimsuit but I could imagine she'd look sexy, so I confirmed that it was an excellent idea. [[You can tell I'm getting more emotional about Julia. She's a very small, slim girl, with an even smaller figure. What she has is very nice, but my thinking she'd look sexy in a swimsuit was objectively an overstatement. It was great that I subjectively thought so though.]]

I told her I had her notes from today, and that I'd bring them tonight. Which reminded me to ask how she got on with my mom this morning.

Julia laughed, "It was quite funny. Your poor mom is quite confused. Remember I said I'd call her to fix her thinking you were treating me as a sex object?"