Chapter 11

Thirteen months later...

Time: Thursday, January 1, 2004 12:03 PM

My morning flight from Philadelphia into Logan Airport got in on time and I took public transportation back to campus. I was carrying two suitcases, and the new laptop I was lugging was quite heavy too. But I'm an expert now in taking weight off things that I'm carrying. I was maintaining a very normal looking gait, and the stroll back to my dorm room was easy and uneventful...

So much has happened in the last year. It's been a whirlwind of activity and change. But the most important fact is that Melanie and I are drifting apart.

We still love each other, there have been no fights, but our affection for each other seems to have evolved into more of a friendship kind of love. And I'm the cause of it.

Brooding... Professor Hanson once asked me what I wanted out of life. I had no idea at the time what a profound question that was. I loved my role of being Melanie's knight in shining armor, but I struggled a lot with what I wanted our adult relationship to be, especially since I seem incapable of trusting her.

Looking back, I think my one chance to treat her as an equal occurred shortly after I rescued her from Sterling. If I had to do it all over again, I would have told her about my kinetic abilities right then, got it over with. But I was so uncertain, so worried that she would think of me as non-human. And once I started the trend of not telling her, I became embarrassed about how I wasn't trusting her, which made it even more difficult to talk. How do you tell someone you love that you don't trust them?

We still take time to see each other, even give each other goodbye pecks when we part. In fact, we have a "date" this Saturday night. The Rover Spirit is scheduled for touchdown on the Martian surface a half hour before midnight. M.I.T. has a direct feed from JPL coming into Kresge auditorium, and Melanie and I will watch and hope together.

As for Melanie herself, I couldn't be more proud of her. She's secured her own package of scholarships and loans that will see her through to graduation; she is excelling in her classes and also one of Harvard's top athletes, she's... well, she's launched! She's a beautiful, accomplished young woman.

And as for my kinetic abilities, rock solid for sixteen months now. I'm beginning to think of them as permanent. There's also one aspect of them that did not stop evolving...

I sat idly at my desk, staring across the river. I haven't tested in several days. Time to practice! I picked a random micro-dot of air, and then started to zoom down. Within a second, I sensed my intended target, a single H2 hydrogen molecule. I could sense the quantum roughness of its existence, sense the rough dipole nature. I could sense it, but not lock it, not push it, not by itself. My limit for minimum mass for a lock was about 9.6e-27 kg, and my elusive target was three times smaller. After all this time, still another sixteen days to go...

And as for my version of the Great Train Robbery? I still have it. I try to spend cash whenever possible, something Melanie finds a bit odd but I've given up trying to hide from her. I've done a bit of snooping, very discretely. My target that night turned out to be the Russian Mafia, and they are a powerful enemy.

They know nothing of me, but they know they were attacked. They never found a trace of their platinum in the incinerated vault. I rode the bus route by their site for a while, just to scan them. It took them over two weeks to open the mess up...

Oh Melanie, my heart still dreams of you...

Time: January 4, 2004 1:15 AM

"Want to come in? I could make some tea. It'll warm you up!"

I looked at Melanie and smiled. "Sure! That's sounds great! Err... I don't want to disturb Betsy though..."

Melanie gave me a thin smile as she unlocked her dorm door. "Oh, Betsy won't be back till Monday. Come on in!"

I soon had a large mug of steaming English Breakfast in my hands. Melanie and I sipped our tea and chatted for a while about the success of the Spirit landing, and how our classes were going. Melanie is one of the top students of her class. I'm also doing fine, but not quite at that level.

It had been pretty exciting, cheering the signal of a successful landing at Kresge, but shortly after midnight we both decided we were too sleepy to stay up for the videos. I walked her back to Harvard.

Melanie took a long sip of her tea and changed topics. "So, how's your dad doing?"

"Just great. He sends you his love. And he's got a girlfriend!"

"Really?! Wow, that's great! Did you meet her?"

"Oh yeah, a few times... She's very nice..."

Melanie nodded, and then looked thoughtful. "Do you think it's serious?"

"Well..." I thought for a moment and then smiled. "Yeah, maybe... It's pretty obvious they love each other. And they're both... well, yeah, it's probably serious."

"Wow Eric... And how do you feel? Will it be like getting a new mom?"

I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes and thought. "No," I said after a while, "More like getting a mother-in-law maybe, I don't know. Maybe if I were still a minor living at home, it'd be different..."

I heard the squeak of Melanie's chair, she was getting up. I sighed. I thought Melanie was signaling it was time for me to leave. But then I felt her chair bump into mine, and she sat back down.

"You look tired, Eric, and it's a cold night. You really didn't have to walk me back."

"Ah..." I sighed. "I really enjoyed being with you again. We saw so little of each other last semester."

Melanie sighed too. "Yes, I know. Life has gotten so incredibly busy for both of us..."

"Still seeing Richard?"

"Ah, Eric! Don't tease me! It was only one date! And no, we're just friends..."

I nodded my head. I still had my eyes closed. I was relaxed and very sleepy and profoundly at peace, more so than I had been in a very long time. I felt Melanie's hand come and touch mine. I turned my hand palm up in invitation and we were soon holding hands. I sighed in contentment. We hadn't held hands in many months...