Chapter 25

Time: Friday, March 23, 2007 4:23 AM

!!! I woke up with a start. "Melanie, wake up!"

"Hmmm? What? Huh?" Melanie reluctantly opened her eyes. "What?"

"I just hit a pothole!"

"Huh? Oh!" My wife sat up in bed and turned on the light. She yawned as she stared at the clock. "Well, we'd be getting up in another hour anyway. How do you feel?"

"Okay, I guess..." I tested for a few moments. "Everything seems to be still here. I haven't lost anything."

"Well, that's good. Come! You can think us up some breakfast!"

Melanie and I chatted as we ate. By 5 AM, it was obvious what had happened. All my kinetic abilities had stopped growing again. I booted up my laptop and started doing a few calculations. After a few minutes Melanie came and put her hands on my shoulders.

"Disappointed?"

"Hmmm? Oh, you mean about stopping? No. I haven't learned to use what I've got yet.

This is actually a relief."

"Ah... Yah, you're pretty impressive now. Think this might be the last curtain call?"

I shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe not... Take a look at this timeline chart. We're still in my fourth rotation. The first six periods were zero growth on everything, then the next seven periods were full growth on everything, and the fourteenth period started at 4:23 this morning, and I'm back to zero growth."

"Oh, I see... So you think the last six periods in the rotation might also be zero growth?"

"Yeah, I think... There's a certain symmetry to it... 31 days, 19 hours, 56 minutes per period... The fourth rotation will end in half a year, on Sunday, September 30'th, at 4:07 AM. We'll just have to see what happens then."

Melanie nodded. We wound up getting an early jump on the day, watched the sunrise at the end of our morning run at the track, and then we headed off to our different schools.

As I headed to M.I.T., I started thinking about the last few months. So much has happened since Thanksgiving.

My kinetic abilities have been growing full throttle. At the end of my current growth spurt, my sense-sphere radius is now 169.79 kilometers, and I can lock extremely long wavelength photons (3.56 meters, 0.35 micro-eV). That's down to most of the FM and television broadcast bands. I'm still an order of magnitude from locking short-wave radio, and a factor of a hundred from locking AM radio.

My maximum force limit is 2.12e18 Newtons, and my power limit is 1.16e20 Watts.

That's the ability to push or pull 1293 kg per second to or from oblivion. Before we split up this morning, Melanie awarded me with a kiss my Masters of god-dom degree. And the power is awesome...

On other fronts, life is evolving pleasantly. Melanie's parents, sans Patricia, arrived for a five-day visit during Christmas. They stayed with us in our condo's second bedroom.

The visit was okay, they're both interesting to talk to, and we spent a lot of time showing them all the cultural and historic sites of Boston. Both parents commented at different times that they are surprised that Melanie and I are still such lovebirds with each other, but it's true. We are as overjoyed with each other as we were on our wedding day.

And the parents were a bit nosey too, asking about odd details in our lives. Nothing in particular to worry about, but Melanie and I both breathed a sigh of relief when they left.

My Masters thesis is effectively finished. I just need to work on the write-up a bit. My days as an M.I.T. are coming to a close. I've done a bit of interviewing in the Cambridge area, not as much as most graduating students, but with my Masters of god-dom in hand it's hard to worry about that.

Melanie and I have experimented a bit with having sex at lower gravity. No gravity at all was a comic disaster. Melanie and I have a private codeword for anything ridiculously funny, ZGS, which stands for zero-gravity sex. Seriously, trying to thrust into a female without something to anchor her down is absolute buffoonery. I highly don't recommend it if you have any desire to orgasm. Melanie and I sometimes joke about trying it again, when we want to be totally silly.

But sex at reduced gravity is really nice. Melanie and I have talked about our preferences, and she rates as her all-time favorite position for pure physical pleasure as something she calls point eight cowgirl. I lie flat on my back and Melanie sits on my groin facing me and rides me while I keep the effective gravity around us at 80% of standard. It gives her enough weight to hammer down into me on a down stroke, but still is enough of a change to give the feeling of floating in our lovemaking. And I love to watch her ride, she's so beautiful...

My own favorite position is point six missionary. I lie on top of Melanie and thrust her while she relaxes in the gentle gravity, her athletic legs are so beautiful held up in the air.

I love watching her toes curling as she approaches orgasm...

Friday evening I got back home first. We haven't cooked in months. It's just so much easier for me to create a couple of gourmet dinners instantly. The refrigerator and cabinets just have some snack foods for Melanie if she's here without me.