Chapter 35

Time: Friday, January 18, 2013 7:13 PM

I was swimming laps in my lunar pool when the phone rang through the interface with my apartment in Fresh Pond. I thought briefly around just letting the messaging system on Earth handle it, but then I pushed myself into my living room, thinking myself dry and into some clean clothes. I sat down into a chair especially designed for the low gravity and answered the call before the fourth ring.

"Hello? Eric?"

It was Melanie! I suddenly felt tongue-tied. "Uh, yeah. Hi Melanie! How are you?"

"Me? Oh, I'm fine. Eric, I know after all this time, you're probably surprised I'm calling, but I was wondering if we could talk."

"Sure! Do you mean now?"

"Uh huh."

My mind was flooded with painful memories, Melanie in fear of me, cringing that I was near her. "Melanie, do you want me to come over or, do you mean talk on the phone?"

"Well... If you don't mind... Actually, I'd like you to come over... if you would."

"Okay. I'm at Daedalus right now, but I can be in your entrance hall in a few seconds. Would that be okay?"

I heard Melanie take a deep breath. "Yes. Thank you Eric."

"Okay. Bye." I hung up and left immediately. I was so excited I forgot to cloak until I was almost in Earth's atmosphere. I de-cloaked while Melanie was still putting down the phone in the living room.

She blinked when she saw me, and then tried to smile. "Wow, that was fast! Are you traveling at light speed now?"

"Yeah, pretty close. What was two seconds for you was less than one second for me."

Melanie nodded and pointed to the other side of the couch she was on. "Would you like to sit down?"

I nodded and joined her, sitting only about a meter away. We stared at each other in silence for a while. I tried to smile at Melanie, and she tried to smile back. This meeting was turning out better than my fantasies of getting a call from Melanie. There was no fear in the eyes at all, and even more surprising to me no accusations. The two years of time had healed the wound of her parents' murders. The primary emotion I thought I was reading from Melanie was shyness, and I couldn't figure out why. I thought she had every right to reject me.

She seemed unsure of how to start the conversation, so I thought I'd take a whack at it. "It's nice to see you again Pum... uh, Melanie. Sorry. You're looking very well."

Melanie nodded, and then looked at me with great... It was hard to tell what her emotional state was. I didn't want to probe her body, certainly not without asking and I didn't want to ask. But she was clearly excited. She took a deep sigh. "Do you still think of me as Pumpkin?"

It was my turn to sigh and nod. "Do you mind?"

Melanie didn't answer my question directly. "You never called."

"I know. You told me not to, and I couldn't bear to frighten you."

"Oh." She was silent for a long moment before going on. "I was hoping that was the case. Eric, I asked you here for a favor..." More silence, and then she started to fidget on the couch. "Uh, would you like some tea?"

"Sure, that'd be very nice."

We both knew I could zip up some instantly, but Melanie quickly got up and headed off to the kitchen. I stayed behind on the couch. "You still like English Breakfast?" she called from the kitchen.

"Yep, still my favorite." I called back. I leaned back in the couch and closed my eyes, my mind flooded with so many memories. I didn't notice Melanie return until she sat down next to me and handed me my old mug. It was filled with hot tea with a touch of honey, just the way I like it. "Thanks," I said, as I took a sip.

We drank our tea in silence. Both of us were hesitant, unsure of how to start a conversation or what to talk about. I spent most of my time watching Melanie's eyes. She's very expressive with them. I was reading lots of precursors for play posturing, but she was too nervous to complete the expression. I decided to try to break the ice and start the conversation again.

"So, how's your junior year as resident coming?"

Melanie took a deep breath and nodded. "It's been a real transition year for me, a baptism by fire. Children's lives are in my hands. My decisions are reviewed by the senior staff, but I'm the one on the front line making the decisions. It's such an awesome responsibility Eric! And sometimes the battles are lost. When I was growing up, dreaming of being a pediatrician, I had no idea how gut wrenching losing those battles would be."

Melanie drained the last of her tea in one big gulp and changed the topic. "And how about you? May I ask? Have you been all right?" She looked at me with a surprising degree of timidity.

I nodded. "Last year was a transition year for me too. I spent a lot of time exploring. Uh, a couple of months ago I built some telescopes, some really big ones."

"Oh yeah? On the far side of the moon?"

"No, halfway across the galaxy."

Melanie blinked and then nodded slowly. "Your powers... I keep thinking of you as you were two years ago, but of course you've been growing, haven't you?"

"Oh yeah..." I took a deep sigh and decided to tell her how far I had evolved. "The large rotation structure seems to have disappeared after the sixth rotation ended. Just about two years ago, on January 21, 2011, I switched over to new growth rates. The period length is still the same, 31 days, 19 hours, 56 minutes. Every period I grow exponentially in my force and power abilities, and every two periods I growth exponentially in my sense-sphere radius. In my minimum lock limit too, though now it's so small it's no limit as all."

I saw Melanie staring at me. I smiled back. "You know. Exponential. 2.718281828."

She finally smiled back, and then that same tilt of her eyebrows, her wonderful offer to play. She was still very shy though, and I didn't think she was aware of what her eyes were expressing. She took a deep breath. "I'm familiar with the number! So how far can you reach now?"

"Right now my sense sphere is over 450,000 light years. I'm just under 5e36 Newtons, and just over 6e38 Watts. That's over 6e21 kg per second. I could create the Earth in a thousand seconds if I wanted to."

Melanie nodded and whispered. "Or destroy it. Eric, I want to ask your forgiveness for threatening you with the police two years ago. The concept is ridiculous! You're the only person who can decide whether to punish yourself. The concept of the police or the courts battling with you is absurd."