Chapter 11

In Zurich, I lay in bed awake, the girls cuddled around me. Nora permanently on my right so she could get to the bathroom easier, Em on my left cuddled into my shoulder, Val spooned behind her.

Night time was the easiest time to review the memories and thoughts of my girls. It had taken several blink kidnapping and copying memories of noted clinical psychologists to finally get a handle on the divergence of their personalities.

Em had grown with the stress of being the copy, not the original. Her time as Boris, something she had thoroughly disliked, to put it mildly, had also changed her. She fought harder for what she wanted, and she was more open to giving affection as a female. She still startled sometimes when she looked in the mirror, forgetting that she had a new face and body.

The original Nora had not experienced more than the addition of what she simply thought of as new sisters. She had gotten her dream of being pregnant, and her focus was increasingly on her pregnancy, as she relied on the others to keep her original promise. There was a tinge of guilt, but it was overlaid by the sheer relief she wasn’t Em or Val.

Val had experienced none of Em’s trauma, being a copy of Nora, not Mora. Despite her assurances to me, and her own beliefs, she had experienced the loss and betrayal of Rebecca personally. The fear of the sudden explosion of the front door to the SWAT team, followed by reappearing in a strange new place. The twinning after she decided that two of her at home was enough, and she couldn’t compete with them, so if she wanted a life with me, it needed to be as a travel companion.

Her increasing physical powers had thrilled her, and the knowledge that she got to experience practically everything I did satisfied her in a way that bordered on smug superiority over the other girls. She took her duty seriously though, the constant martial arts training, the enhanced body, she was prepared to give her life, of which she had hundreds, for everyone I loved.

My mind and powers flicked for a moment to the increasingly insane Rebecca. She was tied to her bed almost 24/7 now as her brain chemistry continued to make her a danger to herself and others. I conjured a large roach into her closed mouth, waking her to violent struggles and screaming into her mouth. I held it closed until she swallowed the bug. It was petty, but I only woke her like this once a month or so.

My hot anger, had mellowed, just as any accusations about me from her were mellowed by her increased insanity. Her death would have only increased suspicion on myself. Her mother, Margaret, had suicided in jail, instead of facing the financial loss of everything. Her father, Michael, was happy in Barbados, working a small tourist fishing boat he captained with a local crew. His old secretary was his new wife, and thanks to my meddling, she would soon discover she was pregnant, with a son.

Paul had been a much harder choice. He was quietly serving his prison time, a careful selection of a lawyer for his wife protected a small portion of his assets by legal separation, enough to keep his wife Linda in a nice assisted living home for the remainder of her life. He was only serving eight years, and likely to be released early for good behavior, but his business, reputation, and personal wealth was gone.

It hurt, the betrayal of trusted friends. I could almost understand it from Paul, the desire, the opportunity, the life as caregiver at home for a disabled wife, the excitement of the affair with Margaret. His joy at having a child, I now understood better. I forgave him, but I wasn’t going to change his legal punishment, adding to it or subtracting from it.

I set the memories aside. I had long learned that the past was only a memory that affected the present. No matter how large it felt, it didn’t require that you carry it around with you constantly. Nora stirred, and started to climb from the bed. I assisted, lifting her up with my power, and opening the door I had installed on her side of the bed so she could reach the bathroom easier.

She returned a few minutes later and snuggled her back into me, as my power eased and massaged her body. She was soon back to sleep. Tomorrow was going to be a big day. Thanks to the extensive use of my powers the penthouse was completed seven weeks early. This would be our last night in the rented apartment. The rest of the building would finish on schedule

The furniture was in place, clothing, dishes, everything we needed. I planned to surprise the girls in the morning, they just had to move a few personal items to be completely moved in. Of course they could even skip that, and I’d conjure all new items for them.

I just couldn’t seem to sleep, I was feeling a foreboding feeling, as if something bad was about to happen. All my selves reached out with their full extent and searched for problems. I’d had trouble staying aware of my surroundings from the beginning. There was just too much detail. I tended to keep my power unfocused, so that I wasn’t deluged with information.

It had cost me that day in New York when the SWAT team had caught me by surprise, but there was little I could do about it. I was in too many places, and had too great of a reach, it would take all my awareness to be aware of everything all the time, even in a limited area of just a single kilometer around each of my selves. I considered my options, and could think of nothing better than doing a full scan out 500 meters, every few minutes, but even that would soon grow tedious.

I checked my power levels, I had enough stored energy to conjure a couple big stars, even if it would have to be done in pieces. As I focused on the problem, I realized I could conjure a pearl, and pour my power thru it to conjure a single compressed ball of hydrogen. I wondered if I could blink store the sun. I already had created a backup of the entire Earth in July, it had been so fast that no one had noticed, at least yet.

I had plenty of free slots, it had only been 20 days between having the room to store Earth and the room to store the sun. I began to consider what this power might mean. The idea that I could remove an entire star excited me. I could turn Alpha Centauri into a single star system. Proxima would either fly off on its own, or move to a more distant orbit around the single remaining star. Would I remove Rigel or Toliman?