Chapter 4: Moving Forward

27 April 2017 [Thur]

I was playing computer games when the alarms went off. I heard my sisters jockeying for the first turns in the showers. I was prepared for Rachel to ask me to make her a private shower, but I heard her in the fray. I guess, she either forgot I could, didn’t want to impose, or enjoyed the contest too much.

Usually, I would have headed downstairs for breakfast, but with my 2AM calzones, I wasn’t hungry. Instead, I saved my game and got to work on my finances. I moved $1.25 million from savings to my checking account, opened and funded an E*TRADE account with $1 million.

With my accounts funded, I looked into what stocks to purchase. I chose, what I believed were, the five best options, but then decided to leave it to my good luck. I made a spreadsheet to list a random number of three letter NYSE codes; each with a random percentage of my funds to invest in that stock, and a random date and time to sell the stock. I was about to place the purchase and sale orders according to the spreadsheet, when Sally knocked on my door.

“Come in.”

“You asked me to bring your homework assignments back.” She was still looking at her feet; I had hoped we were past this.

“Yes, they’re right here. I hope I’m not overstepping, asking you to do this.”

“No. I want to do it.”

“Alright. I really want to do something for you in return. You don’t work for me and I’d like to think we’re friends, but you’ll barely even look at me. You seemed to get pass that on my birthday, but it doesn’t seem to have stuck. Why is that?”

“When you invited me into your room, I thought you liked me, but yesterday I found out that you had screwed that girl, Free-be.”

“Its complicated but I can assure you that I do like you. However, you deserve a better answer and that will take time. Time that you don’t have right now. But we can talk when you get home from school, and I would like to have something put in your room, a gift of sorts, while you’re gone. Are you okay with both of those?”

“Yeah, okay. See you later.”

She left, and I finished my business on E*TRADE. Then, I looked for a fast but skilled electrician to bulk up the circuit for my room so it could handle the power draw from multiple copies of my room. I ended up with a 9AM appoint the next day, to get an estimate.

My next order of business was meeting the housing requirement of the new trust. The ‘Castle Grounds’ is the three square miles that remains from the ten square mile property acquired as part of Angus’ 1867 investment in the Denver Pacific Railway. He oversaw a replica of the family’s Irish castle being built at the center of his newly acquired land and had almost all of the relics shipped over. Most of the land was first used as farm land, and over the next 150 years it was split into separate plots. The outer plots were sold and the inner ones were developed and leased as homes, apartments, and business units. At the center is a park with a small wooded area around the castle, which is an attraction for tourists and local school trips.

I found a one-bedroom, third-floor apartment for Allison, a penthouse apartment for Great-Aunt Elizabeth and her daughter’s family, three or four-bedroom houses for my three aunts and their families, and a two-bedroom apartment for Heather and James, her husband. I also put a hold on the next available four-bedroom house for her. I would consult with Rachel before assigning her a unit and I was considering moving to the new high-rise apartments after graduation.

The new distributions would start in four days, but with May’s distribution only based on the last four days of April it would be tiny, if there is one. So, I had decided to make an extra payment from the trust to make up for that. Rachel, Heather, Allison, and Aunt Abigail’s account info in the trust history was still current, but I had to call my great-aunt and two of my aunts to get their info. I transferred what would be an average month’s distribution to each of their accounts, $80 thousand.

Once the transfers were confirmed, I called to let each of them know about their new housing assignments, their option to sublet, the distribution schedule of the new trust, and their newly available funds. Allison didn’t answer so I left a message, Heather was at school so I sent her a text, Aunt Lauren had said she would use the money to move at the end of her kids’ school year when I got her account information, and the others thanked me but said they needed time to consider their options.

After lunch, it was time to give Sally my thank you gift; the problem was, I had no idea what to give to her. The only real conversation we’d had in the last three years was that 20 minutes on my birthday. I went to her room to see what she might like. It was decorated with reds, pinks, and flowers; it had been yellows, greens, and safari animals when she was talking to me. Presumably, her room reflected what she liked now. An idea came to me, but I would need my crystals.

After a quick round trip to my room, I was ready to begin. Much like I had done with the diamond, I started with a small piece of brown jasper and grew it into a trellis arching from the foot of her bed to the headboard, then a piece of emerald into entwined thornless rose vines with leaves and stems along the trellis, and I finished it with pink and red calcite buds and blossoms. I had to redo most of the vines and leaves two times, and most of the flowers three to four times, before I was happy with the result. However, I became more experienced as I worked and the last few blossoms turned out right the first time.

This larger, more detailed project taught me a few things. I found, regardless of the type of crystal and magic I used, the Life I got back for the act of creation was a quarter of the Power I used.

I finished the crystal growing a few minutes before school got out, and went back to my room. I wanted to create a temporary Q before Sally got home. I put my unused crystals away and took out my padlock and tèarmann crystals, placing them on the desk. As I reached out to create the barrier, I decided to see how large I could make it. I created a spherical barrier that contained both the main house and the staff quarters. I started expanding the barrier, and with it the volume of matter in superposition. It was well beyond the Castle Grounds when I started running low on Life and shifted, creating a new Q.

When I arrived in Q^C, the Castle Q, I felt a huge flood of Life from everything I had created; more than it had taken to create it. I also felt a strong, steady stream of Life that I believed must have come from all the grass, trees, etc. that now lived in the Q. This was just a theory since I had never made a Q with anything living, bigger than an insect.

I picked up the new copy of the padlock crystal^C and was intrigued but not surprised that the triquetra crystal didn’t get copied because crystals respond to magic in unique ways. I used Death to telekinetically slice off the padlock glyph and etch a castle there. In Rachel’s room^C, I cut the largest teardrop from the diamond doorway using the same technique.

I was about to use the two doorways to create a portal home⁰ when I noticed Rachel’s birthday dollar^C; a gift from Dad, a silver dollar he had told us was minted on the day we were born. Each of us kids had one. I took it and crossed back over.

Back in Rachel’s room⁰ I cut the matching teardrop from that doorway as well. As I was cutting the teardrop, I realized, although the rules, as I was taught them, say no Power can pass between Earth⁰ and a tèarmann, I still felt the stream of Life from the Q^C; instead of stopping, it had only slowed to a trickle.

I touched the two teardrop diamonds to each other, and crossed back through the portal. In the Q^C, I tested the water; there wasn’t any and I added the new information to my mental database. Pocket Dimension Factoid 216: Qs with 1 mile radius are too stable to let water through. I wondered about the air, but there were living plants and it wouldn’t be around long enough to find if the air would grow thin.

In my room^C, I took my birthday dollar^C. Planning for my explanation to Sally, I destroyed everything in my room except the crystal loop. Up until then, I had only used crystals cut from the doorway around the portal I wanted to use, or magic, to cross over. Now, I was about to try to use the diamonds to pass through my quartz doorway. Holding them against each other, I walked around and through the doorway, and was back in my room⁰. Pocket Dimension Factoid 217: Any quantum twined crystals will open a portal between their corresponding dimensions.

Back on Earth⁰, I took the copied silver dollars and, using telepathy, stretched them into small pieces of sheet metal, cut one edge and formed it into a spring, and using the sheet metal and the spring I made a box to hold the diamonds. One diamond was fixed and I could slide the other till they were touching. When I released it, the spring would separate them; an inter-dimensional garage door-opener; an I-GDO.

I was sealing the last seam just as someone knocked on my door. “Come in.”

Sally put some papers on my desk. “I’ve got your homework and time for that answer.” She was looking at me instead of her feet again.

“We’ll need someplace we can’t be overheard, and I’ll need a promise from you to keep it a secret. Or, I can only tell you the parts that I don’t mind being overheard. It’s up to you.”

“I want to hear everything. I promise I’ll keep it secret.”

I stood up and took the padlock crystal, adding it to the castle crystal in my pocket. Twin crystals are the only way to know which Q you’ll end up in when there are multiple portals connected to the same crystal loop. “Come with me. We can get there through the closet.” She gave me a confused look, but took the hand I was offering her. Together we stepped through the closet door and crossed through.

Sally looked around; her confusion clearly showing. “What just happened?”

“See that crystal doorway, there is one just like it hidden in the walls of my room. They act like a door between my room and this place, which I made.

“To answer your next question, I made this place using a technique I came up with. It combines quantum mechanics and magic. I call it a Q and it allows me complete privacy because it copies everything except people.”

“How did you learn to use magic?”

“Most of that story is a secret that I’ve sworn to keep. But, you’d be surprised what you can learn at summer camp. We came here to talk about us, not me.

“How much do you know about the history between your mother’s family and mine?”

“Not much. I know her mother worked for your grandfather, and that she started working for him too, when she turned 16. What’s that look; is there more to it?”

“There’s a lot more to it. Let’s take a walk while we talk. It started in 1632. Your family was working and living on a tenant farmer’s land. Siobhan, the oldest daughter, was working alone when the tenant farmer’s three sons came by. Seeing she was alone, they accosted her. She was raped by the oldest brother while the other two held her down. They traded places and the middle brother was on her when her father arrived. He pulled the middle brother off her and struck him with a shovel. The oldest brother attacked him and ended up dead as well. The youngest brother ran off and his family gathered a lynch party of other tenant farmers.

“At that time my family were land owners, a higher status than tenant farmers, and we also had a stronghold, a reputation for fairness, and the respect of many people from every tier of the social structure. Siobhan came to the castle that has been recreated here. She begged my ancestor Kieran for protection for her family. She swore that she, and her line, would serve his family if he would protect hers. When he accepted her oath it created a bond of Divine magic. Since then, the oldest daughter in each generation has been compelled to serve my family, and my family has been obligated to protect yours.”

“So, you’re nice to me because you have to be, but I’ll never be more than ‘the help’.”

“No. I’m nice to you because I like you. I like you because your smart, funny, and beautiful. But when I think of a more physical relationship I am overcome by the knowledge that I’m breaking that oath. I have several ideas why, but I don’t know which, if any of them, it is.”

“Then break the oath, or I will.”

“The way the oath is worded you don’t have a choice. As long as I don’t allow your family to come to harm you will have to serve my family. For my part, I’m not willing to let you or a member of your family get hurt so you can become one of my lovers.”

“One of your lovers?”

“I have no intention of being monogamous; I don’t even intend to pretend to be monogamous.”

“And Free-be is one of your lovers?”

“First, cut it with the ‘Free-be’, please. There is nothing wrong with enjoying sex, and slut shaming is wrong on many levels.

“And no, she isn’t. In fact, I’ve never had a lover. That was a trial run for one of my legacies, and an attitude adjustment for her. She has been convincing my nerdy friends to do her homework in exchange for sexual favors and then backing out. So I convinced her that a nerd would give her the best sex she could get, and then I followed through. I thought, she might finally keep her promises to my friends once I refuse to do it again. I figure that’s even more likely now that Brad is not an option.

“I’ve had four study partners in the last three years and the one fuck with Phoebe.”

“Study partners?”

“Friends, female friends, we tutor each other in human biology and safe sex practices.”

Sally rolled her eyes at me. “And legacies?”

“Legacies are inherited magic. Magical spells have their effect, then they’re gone. Magical constructs stick around until they run out of Power or they can no longer do what they were made for. Legacies are constructs that have lasted long enough, usually a century or two, that they have become permanent; they are recharged from the latent magical energy around them. Legacies are tied to objects or bloodlines.”

“How did a legacy allow you to convince her.”

“First, a little more history to explain it. You might have noticed, my sisters and I hate each other ... That legacy goes back over 3000 years to three brothers that did terrible things for ‘the greater good’. The only survivor was cursed so siblings in his family couldn’t work together.

“About 300 years later, that hatred caused a sister to betray her entire village during the Scythian invasion of eastern Europe. Her brother survived and he had a spell cast on his heirs. In modern terms, the spell allows the men in my family to use mind control with their DNA as the catalyst. It’s why our family gatherings never got out of control until after my grandfather died. Until a couple days ago, there were no men in my family; only boys, and boys weren’t included.

“Over the years, we discovered we could use the ability outside of the family; all we need is a little saliva or any of our DNA really, and we can control a person.”

“So, you raped her. That’s sick!”

“No. I didn’t. Taking control of someone is wrong; unless it’s the only way to stop something worse. What I did do, was read a sex manual in front of her and put the thought If a nerd studies sex, he probably learns all the best tricks, in her head. Then, I added a few short visuals over several minutes. She could have ignored those thoughts, texted Brad, or left to take care of herself; she chose to ask me. Does that mean I deserved to get shot?”

“Well, no. What else have you done with this legacy?”

“That morning, I needed to finish some things before school, so I put a thought into Rachel’s head urging her to want to drive.”

As we were discussing my family legacies, we were walking to the castle. We were now in the banquet hall on the second floor. I pulled one of the sconces revealing an old book in a hidden alcove.

“Grandpa showed me this after my dad’s funeral. It’s my family’s record. Specifically, it details our genealogy, the different magic that has been cast on us, and what we have learned about dealing with them. It records dozens of them but only nine are still active. One of them is the book itself. You can’t move it, or even open it unless your name is in it.” I opened the book and flipped past the family tree to the first entries in which Asmund recorded the oral histories in Old Norse and Medieval Latin.