Chapter 26

Time: Thursday, June 28, 2007 6:40 PM

Melanie gave me a beaming smile. "Ah, a great dinner sweetie, as usual. And I really liked the floral pattern on the plates tonight."

I smiled and nodded. "Okay to clear then?"

"Sure."

A second later all the dirty dishes and utensils at our table disappeared, gone from the universe forever. Melanie asked for some music. I locked her selection from our collection and duplicated the CD in the player. Talk about instant requests! I had the music going before she finished describing it.

It's brutally hot outside, the third day in a row the temperature got over 100F. Our condo is delightfully cool of course, 66F. And it would be so easy to pull some serious heat from the great outdoors. At maximum pull, I could drop the temperature of the entire dome of atmosphere in my sense-sphere, all 9e14 kg of it in my 105.5 mile radius. I could drop it 123C in a single second.

Of course, that would be mass murder, but the idea of just taking the edge off the heat is tempting. Melanie talked me out of it. We still are nowhere near deciding how to interface my powers with humanity's needs, and until we do we have decided I shouldn't intervene overtly.

Which isn't always the case. We've also agreed that I can use my spare power to zap pollutants in the region's aquifers, making the nasty stuff disappear at a rate of 1292 kg per second. Over the last two months, all those seconds have added up. I've removed some serious mega-tonnage of crud from the air and water table. I've got the coordinates of hundreds of landfills locked in my mind. I usually work them simultaneously, from the bottom. Less noticeable that way...

My wife and I went to the living room to hear the music better. "You all packed?" I asked as we sat down on the couch.

"I guess. I've got my passport and the plane tickets; that's for sure. And you can whip me up anything I've forgotten..."

Melanie looked very thoughtful as we held each other. Eventually I asked, "Having second thoughts about the trip?"

Melanie shook her head no and rested her head against me. But she knew the deep meaning of my question.

Early tomorrow we'll be catching an overnight flight to France. It's time for our yearly trip with Melanie's parents and sister, and we'll all be spending a week together in Paris.

The trip is a good fit for Melanie's schedule and a perfect fit for mine. I've got my Masters from M.I.T. a month ago, but my research grant lasted until the end of June and I've spent the extra month just playing with some interesting engineering problems with my thesis advisor and having a great time. The Paris trip will be over the Fourth of July week, and then Monday, July 9'th I start working for a small engineering firm on Glenwood Avenue in Cambridge. It's less than a mile from my old dorm and less than two miles from our home. My starting salary is $69k, a bit on the low end of the offers I got, but the work is in energy resource management, something I love, and the hours are very flexible and my boss is a really nice guy. And it's so close to home and being with Melanie! I'm very happy with the offer.

It might seem odd with my abilities, but I do normal commutes. Melanie and I have decided to be very, very careful about how we use my ability to become invisible and zip around the planet. With all the surveillance cameras around, I don't want to take a chance and leaving evidence of me being in multiple places at almost the same time. So Melanie and I sometimes "cloak" and spend our evenings at our second home in the Allagash, but otherwise we keep completely normal travel arrangements.

Our home in the Allagash is really nice, by the way. With the ability to create or destroy matter at a rate of 1293 kg per second, it didn't take long to create a cozy palace carved into a rock ledge, complete with fully functional power, water, and a sewer system that flushes straight into oblivion, as long as I'm on site. Melanie thought I went just a bit "over the top" with the opulence, but I figured, what the hell. The multi-media theater is really something...

Over the last three months, we searched the news for any hint of a sighting of my cosmic bowling balls. I guess I lucked out. They would have crossed the orbit of Pluto three weeks after being launched, and I doubt that even the best telescopes could see them now. I had fired them after sundown, down the shadow cone of the Earth. They didn't see sunlight until they were well passed the orbit of the moon, about three seconds after launch.

They are brilliantly clear and glasslike, and without facets don't have the typical sparkle of diamonds. But they do refract light like crazy, and Melanie is right. It was a totally unnecessary risk.

Melanie stirred on my shoulder. "I called the Bursar Office today. The check for next year's tuition cleared."

"Ah, that's good... Melanie, we really have so little to worry about. Don't go to Paris for the tuition money."

"Oh, I know. Stable debt, $17,000 in blue money, more green cash than we'll ever spend, and you'll have a nice paycheck in a month. Life is good... But my mind keeps drifting though to Paris, and the yacht last year..." Melanie leaned up and kissed me. "But I think our plan is correct Eric. If I know my parents, they'll want to spend lots of time with me and leave you alone with Patricia, which will fit our plan perfectly. Dearest?"

"Hmmm?"

"I trust you, 100%. Never worry about the appearance of... uh... delicate situations. I really do trust you."

I nodded and buried my nose in Melanie's hair, butting her gently and kissing back by her ear.

"Oh! By the way, I got a peek at the report on the virus samples you substituted. Fully viable. You can do it Eric, create life."

"Ah... Even the smallpox sample?"

"Yep."

As part of some research into infectious diseases, Harvard had received some very small samples of killer viruses. Melanie and I talked about added an experiment of our own. I locked the viruses and committed their sequences into my kinetic memory, which seems to have an unlimited ability to remember details. Then I destroyed the samples, and recreated them a few seconds later.

The polio virus was the simplest. Its DNA series was only 4,741 code units long. Then there was Ebola (18,959 codes) and Marburg (19,112 codes), and a few common cold samples for controls (the corona viruses, those were just shy of 30,000 codes). The big test was the smallpox virus, 185,578 code units of DNA. It was no problem to duplicate. Melanie has asked me to promise to try with bacteria within a few months...

I know what she's after. I guess I should be after it too, but I'm so afraid of playing god with life. Melanie though has a vision of her future with a child patient with incurable cancer. Incurable by normal means, that is...

Time: Thursday, July 5, 2007 7 PM local time

Well, it's been an interesting vacation, and extremely hot! Paris has been almost as bad as Boston, but the people here are so much less prepared for the heat. Our rooms at the Chateau we're staying don't even have air conditioning. It was over 90F in the rooms last night, and with the high humidity absolutely brutal for sleeping. No problem for Melanie and me, of course. No way I could resist locking our two bodies and setting up a slow drain for the heat.

It's a strange but not unpleasant feeling. We can sense the heat at our skin, but we're delightfully cool inside. Imagine walking into a very warm room after freezing outside. My wife and I are having a wonderful time, and are just ignoring the odd looks from people who wonder why we aren't sweating.

Paris is a beautiful city, is spite of the heat. And Melanie speaks much better French than I realized. We've spent two solid days at the Louvre, and my wife wants to go back for a third. I totally agree. The museum is fascinating.

The city is ridiculously expensive though. Forty euros for Patricia and me to have a couple of baguettes and small bottles of water at an outdoor cafe! I argued with the proprietor for several minutes, thinking he had confused us with some other bill. But no. Ah well. I've gone back to the Allagash twice for more walking-around money. Nothing like free cash to take the sting out of being fleeced...

Melanie has been super sweet about Patricia and me. Patricia has been eager to have some one-on-one time with me, both parents have been asking Melanie to come with them on side trips while leaving Patricia out, and it all suites our interests fine. Melanie has complete trust in me, and is genuinely curious and supportive of my effort to develop a friendship with her sister.

This evening is a prime example. The parents invited Melanie to join them in an evening dinner cruise down the Seine on the Bateaux-Mouches. Patricia begged off, saying the heat was just too much for her, and she and I have a plan to hang around the hotel swimming pool.

There was a knock at my door. I called out hello, and Patricia entered, wearing a swimsuit and sandals and carrying a large beach towel.

"You're not going to believe this! They've closed the pool! There's a sign saying the bacteria content is too high."

"Oh wow..." I looked at Patricia in sympathy. Her body looked really stressed out by the heat. "Want to go for a walk?"

"Maybe in a bit. Could I just sit down for a moment? I'm so tired."

"Sure! Here, I'll get you some ice water."

Patricia laid her towel on a large couch to protect the fabric, and then just sat down and collapsed. She smiled gratefully when I gave her the drink a moment later. "Thanks! I don't know how you and Melanie always look so cool. This city is a sauna!"