Chapter 2

Chicago time: 02:20:44.384

Tesseract subjective time: 1 year anniversary of balance mode, contest day!

"Thanks for making breakfast, Kathy. These new berries were superb! Up for starting the contest soon?" Matt was speaking in English today. Over the last year, he and Kathy were making intensive efforts to learn Arabic. They were making great progress, and had recently switched to conversing in it every other day. But today was contest day, and Matt was glad that it fell on an English day. Kathy would not have cared. She was the better linguist by far, and was now close to fluency in Arabic.

"It's already started. This is the first time I've served non-Earth food. It was a little difficult for me to be sure about this, but I think the genetic-coding for these berries comes from the creature's home planet, the one where it was constructed."

"Wow!" said Matt thoughtfully. "Food from 7 billion years ago and another spacetime. Definitely worth a few points. We could make a fortune selling these on Earth. They are like a cross between a raspberry and a peach, with a delicate hint of whipped cream. A lot of subtle flavors, I really like them."

"It'll be a challenge to score this contest, everything is so subjective. Do you want to go next, Matt? Should we take turns with our Wows?" Several weeks ago, Matt had proposed a one-year anniversary contest, a challenge to Kathy to see who could come up with the best new Wow ideas for ways of using the tesseract technology. Kathy had enthusiastically agreed. Matt and Kathy would both contest and judge, an added challenge to their competitive natures.

"Well, to be honest Kathy, I have only one Wow to present, but it's a humdinger! How about you?"

"I've got a basketful. Okay, why don't I go through mine, and let you go last? Great! Okay, for my next Wow, watch this!"

Kathy stood up with Matt, and looked up high to one of the top Kitchen cabinets. She then teleported almost 40 feet up, her head inches from the ceiling, and two feet away from the top cabinet. She started to fall from gravity, but kept re-jumping to her target position.

Initially she fell about one foot before re-jumping, making four jumps a second. But as time went on, the jump rate increased to more than ten, then to more than fifteen a second, Kathy falling less than an inch between jumps. Her image began to flicker; Matt was getting dizzy trying to focus on her. Then Kathy said "Nuts!" and jumped down to stand by Matt's side. "I could do this yesterday!"

Matt waited a few seconds, then reached over and hugged her. "I love you" he whispered in her ear, and then he softly began to kiss her earlobe.

Kathy hugged Matt back. "My dear husband, I love you too... I have a sharp memory from a year ago; lying with you just after you put the tesseract in balance mode. I was wondering what impact six years of isolation would have on our marriage. Wondering what the danger signs would be. I figured if we started to quarrel a lot, that would be a danger sign. But we never have, not once. And it's not that we have everything. The tesseract is wondrous, and we have tremendous liberty to do what we want, but the human mind can always find something to complain about... I love you, Matt. And I love how you're always so gentle with me..." Kathy gave Matt a fierce hug. "Ha! Let me try again!"

Kathy teleported back to her high position. She flickered for a second, and then suddenly her image was stable, floating in midair. She opened the high cabinet, and called out "This one's full of wines, looks like some good vintages too." Kathy calmly floated to several different cabinets, calling out their contents. She then smiled at Matt in delight, folded her legs underneath her in a lotus position, and calmly floated to the floor, extending her legs just in time to catch an upright standing position.

"How in the world did you do that?" asked Matt quietly.

"It's an offshoot of our ability to teleport. I kept thinking the creature had to know what it was doing, putting all these cabinets up so high. I finally figured it out. I'll teach you how to do it. In a nutshell, don't release the space fold after you teleport. Keep jumping to a mid-air destination point at first, that's how I practiced. After a while, the mind is trained to just hold the fold, the feeling is one of floating in water. Next is the really neat part. I call it differential teleporting. Instead of desiring a destination point, desire instead a velocity from your current position. The mind picks up on this, and you can push around the space-fold you're standing on. It's a really neat feeling. It does take quite a bit of concentration at first, but I've got a hunch it'll be as natural as walking with enough practice."

"A major-league Wow, Kathy. Great work!"

"Will you head south to the Gym with me? My next Wow is related to this."

Matt was surprised to see the Gym ceiling was only about 15 feet above his head. The quarter of the room they had set aside for their martial arts training was now equipped for table-tennis. Matt followed Kathy up the spiral staircase into a new room. Kathy said "I figured, why should the Manufacturing cube be the only one with a second level? The entire floor here, as well as the walls and ceiling, are padded. Even the staircase is padded. With the 30 feet ceiling, I feel we still have enough height to practice differential-teleport fighting. You know, 30 kicks within one leap, just like in The Matrix and all those funny impossible Bite the Dragon's Tail Gung Fu movies. Let's see if we can do it without laughing too hard..."

"This is really nice, Kathy. A great idea!"

"Next we head west to Manufacturing. The rest of my Wows are there."

Kathy led Matt to the Medical bay on the main level of Manufacturing. Kathy had set up two diagnostic/operations couches, and had them running in full stand-by mode. Matt turned to Kathy for an explanation, and was surprised to see her snap her body into a very well executed roundhouse kick, targeting a metal cabinet with full force, equal to what they both had been using to break pine boards in the Gym. "Ou... ch!" cried Kathy. Matt turned back to the couches, Kathy had already teleported in mid cry, and a full body diagnostic scan had already begun. After a few seconds, the couch released everything but her left foot.

"Our days here are peaceful and joyous, Matt, but we both know it's the calm before the storm. Our days of reckoning and confrontation with Eternal Jihad are coming. I want you to practice this too. For any serious pain, make it instinctive to teleport to your medical couch. We might get caught in a booby-trap or an explosion someday, and this reflex could save our lives." The couch released her foot, and Kathy stood up smiling and at ease.

"A very thoughtful idea. Bravo, numerous Wow points."

"My next Wow is right next to here. Move over with me to main power generation. Thanks. Remember a few months ago we were wondering if there were any limits to the manufacturing arrays? Would I one day run out of fresh spinach leaves, or could we create millions of cubic kilometers of water and air and start terraforming Mars? I have the answer, and it is that terraforming Mars is peanuts. This system is tied to a huge black hole at the center of our galaxy, many millions of stellar masses. When I order up my spinach leaves, the black hole loses a few spinach leaves worth of matter. I've tried to get the operations logic to explain to me how this works, and have failed miserably. You and I have both have been trying to study quantum mechanics, to get a dim understanding of how some of the tesseract technology might work. But this is something completely different, something the log calls singularity mechanics, a field of science totally unknown to Earth. The creature left a few notes in the operations log about it. It was at a loss for words to describe how this worked. It finally decided to call our power source a singularity cascade, using a dark-matter / dark-energy resonance pump for entropy reduction, but then it apologized that this wasn't the right description."

"I've now got three Wows left to show, all by the primary time controls. Jump with me there?" Kathy held Matt's hand, and an instant later they were both at the northwest corner of the mezzanine. "Thanks. For my next demo, I need to move the tesseract slightly away from balance mode, just for a moment or two. Is this okay with you?"

"Sure" said Matt. "Actually, for my Wow, I have to put the tesseract in full interface mode to show it, maybe for about 10 minutes. Do whatever you like..."

Kathy typed a few keystrokes on the console. "Try teleporting anywhere in the tesseract, Matt, even a foot away from where you are now."

Matt frowned after a moment. "Absolute zero. My teleport ability is totally shut down."

"Take a look at this console. I have our time dilation ratio with Earth sweeping from 4096 to 3900, on a 10 millisecond cycle time. It's defocusing our echo gravitons. Remember our first night after returning to Earth? I was wondering what kind of crib we could use for a baby who could teleport. Once our future child is here, we can all give up teleporting until we can teach the child not to teleport in public. Not a perfect solution, but at least a doable one." Kathy typed a few more keystrokes. Matt felt his ability to echo locate the rest of the tesseract return, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Kathy continued typing...

"There, I've just implemented my next to last Wow. The switch in the wing box in the Entrance hall has just been rerouted to here. If it's flipped, it will lock all the entrances to Manufacturing, bring the Manufacturing room to interface mode with the Entrance Hall, and then unlock the south door of Manufacturing to provide access from the Entrance Hall. This way, neither of us can ever be locked out of the tesseract, even if it's running in balance mode."

"And now" continued Kathy, "my last Wow. This is just a concept. I haven't implemented any of this, but take a look at the display here. It's a plan to turn the Poolroom into a Prison. Each cell can be individually controlled for temporal gradient, and will be accessible only by teleporting. We can get our initial visual locks during construction. This sensor here would be in each room. It's a safety feature so we can't get locked in. If it senses either of us in the room, it'll automatically run the cell's time in synch with Manufacturing. The design is modular, if we decided that a 15 ft by 15 ft cell with 8 ft ceilings is not inhumane, we could have up to 45 separate cells. We could slow time down, put someone on ice, so to speak, or speed things up. In one week of Earth time, hand someone a sentence of 4,096 weeks, 78.5 years, a lifetime. It's depressing to think about this, I know. I don't want terrorists in my dear home at all, and I hate the thought of punishing people, but we are heading to war against Eternal Jihad, and we might need this... Forgive me, Matthew, this really is depressing. I can see it in your face too. I didn't mean to take the fun out of contest day... Will you pet me? Nothing too sexy... Please?"

"I'd like to very much. How about our favorite couch in the Living room?" A short time later, Matt was sitting on the couch with Kathy's head in his lap. After dimming the lights a bit, Kathy had kicked off her shoes and was resting comfortably. Matt was using his right hand to caress the underside of her left breast and ribcage, and was using his left hand to pet her head from temple to ear. Neither had spoken for quite a while. Kathy's breathing was deep and relaxed, but her eyes were wide open.

"I remember you holding me just like this Kathy, our positions reversed, the very first day we met. I felt that I had woken up from fainting being cradled by an angel. And I was right..."

Kathy smiled up at Matt, remaining silent for a moment. Then she asked "You don't blame me, do you, for being reluctant about taking on Eternal Jihad?"

"Blame you? Oh no! I've been doing a lot of reconsidering about this myself. What we're planning, being vigilantes, taking the law into our own hands, goes against all my training as a lawyer. And it's not just going against the letter of the law. I actually believe in what I was taught. There's a damn good reason for separating the powers of the prosecution and the judge. Both functions are noble and just, but there's an incredible conflict of interest between the two. We're assuming both functions, prosecuting a war against Eternal Jihad, and judging and punishing the murderers we find... God can do it. He is a perfect and merciful judge, as well as being the offended party, the plaintiff. And God has a good case. Our sins are real. God has every right to be offended with us... But how can we judge someone not guilty by insufficient evidence, without feeling like failures, that as prosecutors we failed in our discovery to find enough evidence? It's inherently a tremendous conflict of interest..."

"We've talked a lot about revealing our abilities to our government, having us focus just on warfare, letting the government judge the people we catch. My gut still says not to do it. I think our government is mostly filled with good, honest people, but I just don't want to trust a bureaucracy to make the right calls on this. They might fear us, and fear our children..."

"I agree, Kathy..."

"It's a war, not a court case. The standards have to be different... My gosh, Matt, that's it! In warfare, prosecutor and punishing judge are intrinsically the same job! To prosecute a war is to punish the enemy. To go to war at all, we must do both..."

"That's an incredibly perceptive point, Kathy. Obvious now that you've made it... Very profound..." Matt bent down and gently kissed Kathy's forehead.

Kathy nestled her head against Matt in response, silent for a while. She then briefly petted Matt's hand and said, "Eternal Jihad is tearing the European Union apart over this question of warfare. France capitulated without a shot being fired, releasing its few suspects, and shutting down its terrorist court. Spain balked, and last year Barcelona was the result. Their upcoming elections will be diagnostic on how things are evolving... And now Portugal is under the gun. Why is it so difficult for Europe to unite and stand against this horror?"

"I think because Europe is so secular. They see Eternal Jihad as a political movement with a religious focus. It's really just the opposite, a religious organization with a political agenda. Their trademark phrase "You love life, we love death!" is not a political statement. It's a religious statement. Europe is still searching for a political compromise, but they'll never find it. Eternal Jihad won't stop until their caliph is ruler of the world. Their current focus against the Jews in the Middle East is just a convenient place to park their hate for now. History is filled with injustices, but that's no excuse for fighting your grandfather's war. They fight from religious zeal. They're telling the truth, their hate makes them crave the death. No compromise will be acceptable to them..."