Chapter 45

Time: Friday, February 1, 2019 11:02 AM

Mark drifted up slowly from his slumber. He was having a delightfully sexy dream, and as he stirred he realized a large part of the delightfulness was not fantasy. There was a naked woman curling up next to him in a huge bed, and she was gently caressing his scrotum as he slept. Toshi? Frida? No. Mark could tell from the tautness of the breast in his hand, and especially from the distinctive smell of the woman. It was a wonderful smell, faintly salty. It reminded Mark a little of fresh-cut grass or maybe hay. It was the wonderful smell of Jada.

And then he remembered a bit more, being led by Jada from the hospital room downstairs to the big corner bedroom that she shared with Emily. She had undressed him and then herself, joining him in bed and crying softly, telling him over and over how much she loved him.

Mark opened his eyes and saw Jada’s face right in front of him, her eyes wide open. They both rode the roller-coaster slide of linkage. The rest of the room seemed to be suspended in time.

“My love,” Jada thought. Mark couldn’t imagine her looking more beautiful. There was orange sunlight in the room, and it was catching in the stray threads of her thick hair.

“Hi,” he thought back serenely, and then he paused. “How are the others?”

“Fine. Our operations were a tremendous success. Your wife Frida will be fine too. The bullet was only a deep graze, a lot of blood on the surface but no internal damage. Emily is very happy with what the autodoc is saying.” Jada felt Mark sigh and relax within the link. “Mark?”

“Hmmm?”

“Frida and Toshi, and we suspect you too, your minds are much more powerful than when we last met. Will you do an experiment with me?”

“Uh ... Maybe. What do you want me to do?”

“Scan my memory. Don’t ask permission, don’t wait for me to offer it, just pick a memory and explore it.”

“Without your cooperation?! No way!”

“That’s what Frida and Toshi said too. They absolutely refused. But we need to know what your new abilities are like, what our abilities might become. Mark, you will be my husband. I will be your wife. There is no mental rape here. You have my permission. I’m just not actively supporting which particular memory you choose.”

Mark paused for a moment. While he considered, he felt the heartbeats of his beloved in his hand that was still holding her breast. “I love you,” he thought.

“I know, and I trust you without limit. So please Mark, pick a memory and explore.”

“Okay. Jada, you’re in complete control. Just think stop at any time and I will.”

“Okay.” And then the world transformed. Jada grunted from being slapped on her butt. That hurt! A huge adult had her across his lap, and Jada was so far over that the hair of her head was touching the carpeted floor. Jada’s mind gasped as she remembered the unusual carpet pattern. Holy Shit! This was the year she lived with her parents on Isla Grande, just south of Miami, Florida. This was her bedroom the year she was nine years old. And her father was spanking her. But it wasn’t just a memory. This was absolutely real! Another swat. Ouch!

The room faded for an instant and then reformed. The disembodied voice of Mark spoke to her. “I moved forward a bit, about twenty minutes I think.”

Jada was standing alone in her bedroom. She looked around in wonder, the tenderness of her butt ignored and then forgotten. Her bedroom! Yes! It was just like going back in time. She turned and saw herself in the full length mirror that covered the outside of her closet. It was a miracle. Staring back at her was her self-image as a nine-year-old, complete with the ultra-long ponytail her mother let her have. She was wearing a light cotton sundress, yellow with a thin white belt, and a worn pair of sandals were strapped to her tan feet.

Jada was stunned. This was so unlike a dream. Her surroundings were clear and sharp and had the complex completeness of true reality. But she was in her childhood body, and she gazed at her young image in the mirror for a long moment. “Oh, the wonder of it,” she whispered in her mind. “Mark, do you see me like this?”

“Yes.” And then a chuckle. “Wow, Jada. You were a really cute kid.”

“Uh huh. But I can’t see you.”

“Wait a minute. I can project myself into you memory.” A brief dimming of the dream, and then Mark was with her. Jada blinked in surprise. Her mind somehow accepted the image as Mark, but it was Mark as a nine-year-old, a simple red tee-shirt, blue jeans and black sneakers. “You’re a child too!” she exclaimed.

“I can project as an adult if you prefer. But I thought it would be friendlier if I joined you at your age.” The young boy looked at her and tried to give her a kind smile. “Oh hell, Jada,” he said. “You were much too old to be spanked like that. Was your father trying to humiliate you?”

“I guess so, yeah. It wasn’t sexual. Seriously, in all my life with him, he never displayed a sexual interest in me.” Jada walked up to the boy and offered her hand. He accepted it and together they walked to the window.

Jada sighed, admiring the yellow sunlight, brighter and sharper than the sunlight she had become accustomed to. “Oh wow,” she whispered. “Look at the color of the sky!”

Mark nodded in agreement, admiring the small residential boat docks a block away and the fresh salt air blowing in from the ocean. “Yes, it’s very pretty here. I picked up a time marker when I first entered your memory. Earlier this morning, you looked at a newspaper, August 4, 2009, a Tuesday.”

“Yep, it all fits. Man, that was one sticky summer.” Young Jada let go of his hand and walked over to her child-sized dresser and opened it. “Wow. And here are the bathing suits I used to wear at the beach.” She pulled out an orange two-piece and stared at it. “This is so incredible. The details Mark! This bathing suit means nothing to me now. Why should it? But here’s the little tear from where I brushed against some coral. I remember now.”

“Of course you do, otherwise the tear would not be there.”

Jada nodded and walked to her closet and opened the door. She stood for a moment staring at her clothes and shaking her head. She then closed the door and couldn’t stop herself from laughing. “The details, Mark! Even the patterns on my dresses, I think they’re all correct! And here’s that little white paint drop on the brass of the closet hinge. I used to think it looked like a little white bug. My God, Mark, the details!” Young Jada then gulped and her hand reached back and rubbed her rump through the sundress. “But I don’t feel tender anymore.”

Mark frowned and burst out, “What your father did was outrageous! All you did was sneak into your parent’s bedroom and look around a bit. All kids have that curiosity. And this was your first offense. He should have simply told you that you had to respect your parent’s privacy and let the issue go.”

The young boy sighed deeply and went on. “Anyway, regarding your butt, I’m suppressing that part of your tactile memory. This is why I really hate doing this. That decision should be your decision, not mine. These are your memories. You own them.”

Jada turned her nine-year-old self-image to the child self-image of her future husband. “Mark, you are an invited guest, and both of us have complete access to our adult memories and maturities. Correct?”

“Yes, correct.”

“So this is absolutely not mental rape. You are in no way violating a nine-year-old girl. At my core, I am an adult who is simply showing you what I once looked like. We’re simply sharing an experience I once had.”

“Well ... To tell you the truth, I feel like kicking your father in the balls. But that would be a complete mental fantasy.”

“Wow. Could we do that?”

“If you want us to play, yeah. The scene wouldn’t be quite this sharp though. This is real, or at least was real. Dreaming up a scenario like that would be very fuzzy by comparison, especially since...”

Understanding shocked Jada. “Because your mind would be the only mind running it!”

“Well, yeah.”

“My gosh, I see! But when you and Toshi link, or when all three of you link,...”

The young boy nodded. “At first it was as if we could look at old pictures in our minds. Then with some practice we could turn the pictures into motion pictures, movies. But it was Toshi who made the great leap. Her imagination is incredible. She discovered how to mix fantasies in with the memories, seize control of the memory and push it in new directions. And then she taught Frida and me. All three of us now have the power to make our dreams as real as our memories. We have the power to make our dreams be anything we want it to be. Well, there are some limits of course.”

“Oh, that’s a relief! Otherwise you would be a god now in my dream world. May I ask?”

“About the limitations? Sure. As a solo dreamer, I can make a very realistic solo environment, be in a forest or on a deserted beach, any area where I’m not interacting with other people. It doesn’t have to be a real memory. It’s as if I’m painting a picture and then the paints start to self organize and make all the logical connections. But if I imagined a busy city scene, the crowds around us would be indistinct. I can’t duplicate the purpose behind so many different minds.”

“No, of course not.”

Mark leaned over and kissed Jada’s cheek. “Were you ever in a dream Jada, back on Earth, where you realized you were dreaming? Did you ever try to seize control of a dream? Actively guide it in a particular way?”

Young Jada nodded. “Yes, once or twice perhaps. The realization happened very rarely. I think I understand. But this...” She waved her hand around the room. “But this is no ordinary dream. This feels absolutely real.” A worrisome thought occurred to Jada. “And if dreams and reality feel equally solid, isn’t that the same as editing your memory? Isn’t that dangerous? You won’t know what really happened in the past versus what was just wishful thinking.”

“Oh, that’s not an issue. Imagine you watch a movie and then imagine a different ending you like better. You can still tell the difference.”

“Ah, that’s good.” Jada grinned at him. “Gee, what a temptation it must be to spend your life in ... My gosh Mark! Why do you bother with reality?!”

The young boy grinned back. “That is a question, isn’t it? But the answer is obvious. There’s more to life than just play. For us to learn and grow from our dreams, we have to tether the fantasies back to reality. That’s where this ability becomes a true gift. Our dreams let us explore acting in different ways without having to accept the consequences of our actions.”

Jada’s hand came up and caressed the cheek of the young-boy / her husband to be. “But still, if you wanted to, you could live 99% of your time in your fantasy universe?”

“Well, yeah, the temptation is there, especially for playtime or studying. Our subjective lives can be vast.”

The young girl sighed and played with her ponytail. “And only you, Toshi, and Frida have this ability.”

“So far. But all three of us are convinced Emily is right. There was something explicit in our bee park, something that advanced us. The obvious candidate for the change is of course...”

Jada laughed. “The bees!”

“Yes. It’s very tasty honey, from some very ugly-looking bees which are in practice quite docile, almost friendly. They’re about the size of my thumb.” Young Mark glanced down at his hand. “I just felt your heartbeat again. I’m holding your breast, back in your bedroom at Red Mall.”

Jada glanced at her young body and touched her chest and laughed. “You mean back in a reality where I have breasts!” She took a deep breath. “Mark, you’re right. Standing here like this, it would be so easy to slip back and just remain in the memory, be a kid again and spend a new summer here, especially if I can change a few things and have this summer turn out better than the original.”

Mark nodded. “And we could really do it if we wanted to. I suspect all adults dream of it occasionally, reliving their childhoods. Maybe even older children dream of it. But there’s a danger in the temptation to spend too much time in fantasies.”

Jada turned thoughtful. “Yes, because eventually the dreamer must awake.”

Mark nodded. “Exactly. If the dreamers gets too greedy, they has to suffer the consequences of a reality left unattended.”

“Indeed ... Yes, I understand you now. So much power, Mark, so easy to make mistakes.” Jada sighed. “Let me tell you about our mission today. It’s not complete. Let me tell you about Amber...” Jada explained for a while, until Mark felt another heartbeat within her adult breast.

“So,” the young girl said with a smile, “why don’t we abandon Florida of 2009 for a while and get back to reality?”

“Sure. Ready to go?”

“Almost. One last peek.” The girl paused for a long subjective moment, enough to spin slowly around the bedroom and gape one last time. “I wouldn’t mind returning here. I want to play with you on the beach. Can we?”

“Sure.”

“Okay! But for now, let’s go!” Jada took a deep breath and opened her mind and eyes and felt the warmth of Mark’s adult body against hers. They were back in Jada’s spacious bedroom at Red Mall.

Time: 11:04 AM

“Finally!” Ricardo thought as he passed the locked Puppets Galore! “I’m back in the unlocked part of the mall, both sides of it.” He paused three doors later in front of a drug store. He was only a tad over 700 meters from home and could be drinking all the water he wanted in five or ten minutes in the kitchen. But hell, he was thirsty now. Ricardo went inside and started rooting around for a water bottle.

“Bloody Hell!” hissed Emily from the Hilton Center. “Charles, hold your position. Ricardo just went into the Eckhart Pharmacy.”

“Oh no, he must have seen Amber!” Charles, Tom, and Mandy with a side-car were holding at position 67,800 meters. They had been pacing Ricardo with a two-kilometer buffer for close to two hours, and now as they neared their objective Emily had them close to within a kilometer and a half.

It was enjoyable for Charles to be on a team with Mandy again. With their bikes, their job had been very easy, and they had even taken two store breaks, once for an early lunch and another for a toilet break in one of the many Mall lavatories. They now felt comfortably rested for the rest of the mission, in spite of being up the night before. Still, their energy now was a second wind. Bed would be very welcome tonight.

Lynn had been dynamically retargeting the sensors at every door Ricardo passed, and Emily could now see deep inside Eckhart’s from the opposing store on the outside arc. “I don’t think he saw Amber, Charles. He’s relaxed, just searching for something. There! He found it, a water bottle. Hell of a bad break. I hope Amber keeps a low profile.”