Chapter 124: a Divine Being Gets a New Computer System

Tuesday, April 26, 2005 (Continued)

By the time Julia had brought me up to date about Chloe, we'd dropped my sisters home, driven to Julia's, had a snack, and were in her room. We'd been talking the whole time, as Chloe was a subject that I was VERY interested in. Then I remembered that my computer system (using the word "my" loosely) might already be upgraded. We shot around to the study, but sadly nothing had changed.

We went back to Julia's room, and she started telling me what to do next with Chloe and why, in case I had to improvise. I didn't write "we planned what to do with Chloe," because it mainly consisted of Julia telling me what to do. I didn't need any advice about the general theme, as it was pretty simple and I understood the psychology of it well enough. Mostly Julia was talking about specific things we'd be doing soon.

One of Julia's ideas, for example, had Carol coming to one of the classes that I shared with Chloe, and deliberately displaying her tits - nipples and all! (Eat your heart out Janet Jackson, Carol's are far better!) Julia needed to tell me what verbal points Carol and I had to make with Chloe. Julia told me about this while she had Carol on the phone, so it only needed to be described once. Carol had to wear appropriate clothes to school for the next few days, to be able to do it whenever I thought Chloe was ready. Hopefully soon, as I was impatient for Chloe to progress as fast as possible, although Julia told me it probably wouldn't be for at least three or four days, and could be longer. Damn! [[I'm writing this autobiography by reliving my thoughts, typing them up as I go, although I'm not "typing", as such. I'll retain topical comments such as references to Janet Jackson's closet malfunction. It was old news by the time this was written, but it accurately reflects my thinking at the time.]]

We were discussing another idea fifteen minutes later when Robert knocked on our door to tell us one of the university's computer technicians was installing the new system. We hadn't heard them arrive because of the soundproofing. I had to go see that!

It was exciting for about thirty seconds, and then it got boring. Certainly not as interesting as planning our seduction of Chloe. Or, perhaps, "tricking of Chloe" would be more accurate as it was Julia at her tricky best. She'd obviously put a lot of thought into it, and I understood that a significant part of her motivation was that we'd be helping Chloe. The way it'll unfold, Chloe will get most of her benefit before I get any of mine, so if it fell apart for some reason we wouldn't have taken advantage of her. Julia hadn't tried to make it happen in that order; it was just a nice accident. Watching the computer guy put together the brackets for the two screens had gotten old, especially as all the new stuff was still in its boxes or wrapping, so I asked him and Robert, "Do you need me? Julia and I were discussing something important in her room."

Robert said, "You need to check it all works before we leave, and it'd be a good idea for you to pop back in ten minutes or so, just to make sure we're putting everything where you want, but otherwise we don't need you."

The computer guy - Logan; we'd been introduced - said, "I've already installed a lot of software packages on the new computer, a lot more than your first system has. That software isn't going to be installed on the other one, so the machines will be a little different. Do you want the new one on the left or right when we set it up?"

I was about to say, "It doesn't matter," when I realized there was a small reason. "Put the one with the most software on the right, thanks." That was the side of Carol's desk, so if she wanted to use any of the packages she could easily roll her chair over, and I could move to the left and use just the old computer for a while.

Julia and I went back to our bedroom, and resumed our planning.

It didn't take long to finish discussing Chloe as her situation was really quite simple. That made it an opportune time for me to check up on the progress. I popped back into the study to check all was well, which it was. The only thing to watch happening was Logan's ass while he crawled around under my desk plugging in cables, which got old REAL fast. I said, "It looks great," (the setup, not Logan's ass). "Come get me when you're ready to test it?"

Robert and the ass agreed, so I popped out again.

Back in the bedroom, I told Julia what I was intending with Mom and why. She thought it was good, but pointed out that if I showed my light blobs to my parents then I better show them to hers, because our parents compare notes about us so often.

I had no problem at all showing Prof and Vanessa my light blobs, but I was surprised at Julia's saying they talked so much. "Do they really talk a lot? I haven't noticed much."

"Because they don't do it when any of us are around. Not that it's a secret or anything. They just do it when it's convenient for them, and if we're around they're usually busy with us. I know about it because I spend so much time asking Mom for advice about many of the things that we do, and she often mentions her talks with your mom. Like I've told you before, many of the clever things I do for you, I can only do because Mom has given me the idea or helped me plan them. I'm not nearly as smart at this stuff as you probably think I am. Mom says she's always known I was going to be some sort of manager, because I've been bossing my playmates around since I was a toddler. She's encouraged me to learn more about it, but I still get a great deal of help from her.

^-- "Anyway, back to our parents conversations. Our moms talk the most, of course. Every day I would imagine, because there's a lot going on. More often if something new happens, or either of them thinks of a reason for another call. There IS a lot going on, and mothers need to keep a very close eye on their kids. Most of it happens here, and two of your mom's kids are involved, so your mom needs to talk with mine a lot. You should assume that anything any one parent knows, all four of them will very quickly know. Mine would keep a secret for you if it was necessary, but you'd have to convince them they should, like with the roulette scheme. Speaking of keeping secrets, I suggest that when you show your blobs to your parents, tell them you'll show mine in the next couple of days, but ask yours to keep them secret because it'll be more fun for my parents if they don't know about it in advance."

#1: <It's good to know that Julia pulls the old, "You'll enjoy it more if you don't know" trick on other people.>

"Sure to everything you just said. I'll show my parents, ask them to keep it quiet, then show yours the next time I'm over here. And you'll have a hard job convincing me that you're not as smart with people as I think you are. I've seen you act on the spur of the moment, and you're extremely good at it. So you haven't burst any of my illusions about you, because they're not illusions. But speaking of something that is an illusion, I need to take some time to work on the halo thing, to find the best way of doing that before my light blob demonstration."

I moved to one of the many mirrors in Julia's room (its being a girl's room, it was excessively equipped with mirrors), and thought about how to create the most realistic halo. Given that halos are myth, trying for a "realistic" one is a stretch, but the look I wanted was what is painted in those religious artworks: a ring of bright light above my head.

Because I wanted "bright", I'd use the maximum amount of light, and it'd have to be yellow as white is too awkward to create. The tricky part was my wanting it to be a circular ring, because blobs are spheres rather than rings. I thought of two ways of creating a ring effect: either the maximum number of small blobs circling extremely rapidly, ideally so fast as to smear into a solid looking shape; or a large, bright blob with a slightly smaller very dark, ideally black, blob inside it, 'eating' the lighter colored blob's light.

The second idea was almost certainly nonsense, but then the whole light blob concept was seemingly impossible anyway, so it was worth a few seconds to try the second idea just in case yet another seemingly impossible thing happened. If it worked it'd be a very simple and easy solution, because I could create a ring by having one head-sized yellow blob, with two black blobs mostly inside the yellow blob, but one above and one below the yellow blob's center. With the correct sizes and positions, all the yellow would be canceled out except for a single ring. It'd have a slightly weird cross-section, but it'd be acceptable for my purposes. The image of that idea had occurred to me quickly, almost immediately followed by the thought that it wasn't likely to work, but it was worth a try.

First of all I tried creating a black blob. That didn't work as there isn't an electromagnetic frequency for black. I could make a red blob and then make it vanishingly dim, but that just left the ambient light, exactly as if there was no blob there at all. I tried creating a largish yellow blob, and then a dark-red one (which was as close to black as I could get) inside it. It didn't cancel any of the yellow at all, it just added dark-red to the full amount of yellow. I tried again using dark blue rather than red. And then I tried a third time using dark red and dark blue at the same time. Nothing worked. There is no such thing as black light, unfortunately for this purpose. I spent a while trying to create two yellow blobs that were somehow "out of phase" with each other, so their light canceled, but had no success with that either. I gave up.

I returned to the idea I'd had for a halo back when I'd first discovered light blobs: many rapidly spinning, small, yellow blobs. For my parents I wanted to create the halo in an instant, so that meant creating all twelve blobs and have them rapidly spinning right from the get go. I started developing that in easy steps, first creating twelve small, yellow blobs. I moved them into position, then adjusted their diameters and spacing to change the diameter of the ring they formed, also adjusting their vertical distance above my head so they looked as 'realistic' as possible. Stationary, the twelve blobs didn't look great, although they did at least suggest a halo, but if I could make them move so fast that they blurred into a solid looking circle of light, that'd be wonderful (literally).

First the good news. Normally I can't see what's happening above my head, and looking up wouldn't help as I should have the halo tilt backward to stay 'above' the top of my skull. Not seeing the halo would normally make coordinating its visual effect very difficult, but my proximity sense gave me all the information I needed.

The bad news was that it took an awful lot of concentration to move all twelve blobs rapidly, especially as they had to remain roughly equidistant from each other and not deviate from the ring. The equidistance requirement wasn't too important, because when the blobs were moving fast enough they were a blur anyway. What was harder was keeping on the track. If my head moved a little we had to change the position of the halo, the result was very ragged as individual minds adjusted their blobs differently, until they settled into their new, consensus position. It'd be a REAL mess if my head was frequently moving, the way it does in a relaxed setting.

We tried for a few seconds, hoping it'd get easier with practice, or a more efficient way of managing them all would occur to us, but without luck. The best we could do was to take an intense amount of concentration to produce a ragged result. What we could achieve looked impressive if we kept our head very still, but it was only doable for a short time without its deficiencies becoming too apparent. We canceled them, and stopped to try to think of another way.

#1 was clearly not focusing on the job, because, #1: <Hey! I just had a cool idea. We could set up an INSANE game of snooker. Unlike 8-ball, snooker uses solid-colored balls, so we could have nothing but light blobs on the table, rather than real balls. We could pretend to hit the cue ball with the cue, and have the balls do absolutely insane effects - slaloming around obstacle balls to get to the target ball, jump over obstacle balls, create a bizarre series of multi-ball cannon shots, and stuff like that. We could tease Robert and Andrew horrendously with that! They'd be out of their minds at the should-be-impossible things we could do. It'd be such fun.>

#4: <As long as they didn't notice the absolute silence and the balls being fairly transparent.>

#1: <Haha, yeah. There are some small technical problems, but it's still a cool thought.>

#4: <It's an even cooler thought than you think, because when you were talking about the ball doing the slalom I had an image in my mind. Only I don't think I imagined that image; I think it came from you. Can we send each other images now?>

That got everyone's attention!

#2: <I saw a slalom image too, but I think I assumed it was my own imagination.>

#1: <I'll send a completely different image now. See if you can guess what it is.>

Almost immediately afterward #2 and #4 (#3 being on duty) confirmed that the image of Carol's breasts was very nice.

#4: <Thank you. Now try sending something which isn't such an easily guessed image.>

#1 sent the image of Prof's study, of which we were envious and had a good mental picture. Both the other minds got it. We 'fetched' #3, as this was more important than being centered. We told him what had happened, we all tried it, and we could all do it. It also worked with sounds and smells, the latter test being something #1, #2 and #3 did not thank #4 for, given the example he'd chosen.

#4: <Next time you tell me one of my jokes stink, that's what you're getting back!>

We tried private sendings, i.e., #4 sent an image only to #3, keeping #1 and #2 in the dark. We knew this worked for our internal 'verbal' communication, although we rarely use it except to keep whatever mind is on duty out of the loop, to make it easier for him to retain concentration. We quickly confirmed that it worked with the new forms of communication too.

#1: <#2 and I tried some of this stuff right after our first merge and we couldn't do it. And you would have thought we would have noticed it long before now if it came with the second merge. I think we must be getting better somehow. It can't be "with practice" because we never practiced that, but something seems to be improving.>

We all agreed that was the only likely explanation.

#3: <Next time we are in the science lab we should try weighing our TK force again, in case it's increased, in case the recent change in our head affects that.>

We all agreed with that too.

^

[It was two weeks since we'd first weighed our TK ability. In that time we'd been pushing against walls or the ground so often that we should've noticeably affected the Earth's rotation by now (joking, although it's theoretically possible, to a tiny degree). We hadn't consciously noticed that our TK ability was any stronger, but the science lab's scales would be a far better way of determining that.

The next chance we got at school we re-weighed our TK force. It was fractionally higher, our maximum force was now 14.2 pounds, up from 14.1. Hardly impressive, but at least it was improving. Hopefully by a compounding factor of 1.007 per two weeks - rather than just +0.1 pounds - because after several years' compound growth would eventually produce a very large force: 20 pounds after 2 years, 35 pounds after 5 years, 88 pounds after 10 years, 221 pounds after 15 years. I was very much looking forward to year 13 or 14, provided compound growth applied. If it was a simple growth, then 15 years would produce only 54 pounds, and my dream wouldn't get off the ground.

We resolved to continue to practice strengthening our TK as much as we possibly could. We were practicing two ki skills: the mind that was on duty was practicing consciously projecting ki, and the active minds were consciously creating TK-fingertips and pushing with them as much as possible. The first exercise was no problem at all. It was even good, as it was meditative for the on-duty mind. The second exercise was an EXTREMELY tedious, time-consuming, repetitive, boring exercise, but we couldn't think of any other way to make our TK stronger.]

^

We got back to the job at hand: how to create a plausible looking halo.

We tried moving all twelve blobs closer together, until they touched, making the ring they formed much smaller. That looked fairly silly stationary. We tried moving it only moderately fast. It looked a little better, but nowhere near good enough and it still required a lot of concentration.

We tried having just one blob, moving as fast as the mind could make it go. We were hopeful for this approach because it eliminated most of the problems caused by moving our head. We knew we could move blobs incredibly quickly, so this should work.

Unfortunately it didn't. Moving the blob, per se, wasn't the problem; it was doing the necessary thinking about where to move it to. We could streak a blob across the room so blinding fast that it looked like a blur (we did that, for fun and to double-check we were right about that [[we were actually wrong because light blobs don't really "move" as such, but it didn't matter because they look like they do]]). Moving them across the room was so quick because almost no thinking was required. A halo required constant thought about where the blob was to go, especially if my head moved, because then thinking about the blob's course took so much time that it either slowed it to a non-blurring speed or sent it flying away from my head, both looking silly. We were stumped again.

After some more thought we tried to see if we could flatten a blob any more than we could when we first discovered them, which was to make the long axis about 25% longer than the short, i.e., increase one by 11% and decrease the other by 11%. If we were lucky we would have somehow got better at it, and could now make a wide variety of shapes, perhaps including something more useful. As it turned out, we had no luck at all, as it was still about a 25% ratio.

We crossed our fingers and tried to create a blob shaped exactly how I wanted it: as a halo. Nope, it didn't happen. Stumped yet again.

Another alternative was to use somewhat larger blobs moved closer together so that they nearly touched, giving far more yellow around the 'ring' than blank space. It created a solid-ish impression. I couldn't rotate them fast enough to look like a ring while moving my body moved naturally, which I wanted to do with Mom and Dad, but at a slow rotation they still looked impressive; even 'regal', somehow. Not exactly like a halo, but recognizable as a kind of one. If I walked into the Vatican with that going on, I'd be sure to get some serious attention.

A slow rotation reduced the head-tilting problem too. We decided to have one mind in charge, so that when the head tilted, its job was to adjust the orbit of its four blobs, which were one after the other, not alternated like we do with juggling. The trailing blobs owned by other minds would just follow the leader. That would distort the ring a lot if I rapidly moved my head through a large angle, but I had no intention of doing that. I just wanted to be able to move my head naturally, to avoid looking stiff and unnatural.

I said, "Julia. What do you think of this look? I don't think I can make it any more halo-like. If I told my parents I was walking into the Vatican like this, they'd get the halo connection wouldn't they?"

"Absolutely. Even without mentioning the Vatican they'd make the connection. It's not the usual halo look, but there aren't many alternative explanations for lights floating around the top of your head! Mentioning the Vatican will make their knowing what it's meant to be a cinch."

"Good, thanks. I just need to practice creating it instantly now."

I had to remember the size, positions, frequency and brightness of each ball. We assumed #3, who was currently on duty, would be put back on duty just before the demonstration. Someone had to be, and there was no reason to bother changing it around. So the currently active minds memorized their data. Only the positions were different for each blob. Frequency and brightness were especially easy: the frequency was the same as we used when we got up every morning, and brightness was "max".

We practiced creating all twelve and immediately making them rotate. The first couple of attempts were ragged, because each mind had different rotation speeds, but the third attempt was close, and the fourth apparently flawless. I practiced one more time looking away from the mirror, which I didn't really need, but sight is a hard habit to break. It seemed fine, so I canceled them all then asked Julia to watch.

I did it again, and she declared, "It'll knock their socks off."

I got her to keep watching while I moved my head a bit, then I tried walking slowly forward. "It's fine. Honestly, they're going to be blown away. They're not going to be checking for accuracy. You'd better make sure they're sitting down when you do that!" Good point.

I'd also been talking to Julia while walking, and I was pleased that I could do that and still keep the halo going properly. The concentration required was a major commitment. I had seriously considered using only eight blobs to free one mind up for conversation, but eight would have been a significant reduction in quality.

I canceled the blobs, happy to stop the mental effort required.

I had another topic to discuss with Julia: the revenge gropings, but Julia got in first with, "I've been thinking about the problem with your mother. I think we need to build up the genetic theory. So far we haven't done a single thing consistent with thinking that Carol or Donna might develop the same abilities that you have, the genius IQ and sporting skills especially, as your TK didn't develop until later and I'd rather not discuss that much anyway. We shouldn't have forgotten to do things to confirm we believed the genetic theory! Not only would it keep reminding your mom why you and Carol are having sex together - Donna too, to a lesser extent - but it'll show her that you think genetics is the real reason. If we do nothing then the parents are eventually going to realize that we don't believe it's genes, and that could mess things up very badly, especially as your parents aren't going to react well to being deceived about your justification for having sex with their 13-year old daughter."

"Ouch! Yeah, put like that it'd be a real good idea to keep that theory alive. How do you suggest?"

"Exactly how old were you when it started happening to you, to the nearest month?"

"Umm, November 2003, so I was fourteen and a week or two."

"Carol will be that age in three months. We should definitely be expecting her to show some abilities, especially because girls mature faster than boys. Girls that age are a year or so ahead of boys, so she could be overdue. You skipped forward a grade in January 2004 didn't you? Just one or two months after whatever it was happened?"

#4: <Jeepers, Julia is well informed: Carol's birthday and when we skipped our first grade. Julia didn't even know we existed back then.>

#1: <Have you noticed that girls are nosey? But it's not like either of those is secret or damaging.>

#4: <No, that doesn't worry me. I'm just amazed at how many details she knows. I trust her with them, it's just amazing. How do girls have time to learn all that stuff AND do all the shopping they do?>

I confirmed when I'd skipped 8th grade, "Yes, that's right, about one and a half months after."

"Which doesn't compensate for girls being about a year ahead of boys. All the parents are probably expecting Carol to change any day now, so we definitely need to show them that we're taking this seriously right now. What I want are a couple of things that Carol can do frequently - say once a week - to test herself for your abilities. One mental test, one physical test. I was thinking about having her do an IQ test every week, but we don't want them to be difficult or time consuming. You know which of your skills your parents learned about first, so we should choose quick and easy tests that match their knowledge, but not so 'quick and easy' that they don't notice Carol doing them. They have to be noticeable, as that's the whole point. Do you have any ideas what the tests should be?"

#1: <Good grief! How can Julia give us a whole lot of constraints and conditions, and just ask for a solution? Two solutions actually, for mental and physical. I'm not good at thinking up things out of the blue, especially with all sorts of special conditions on them. And if I'm not, none of you are either.>

#2: <Let's just think through all the new abilities we discovered, and see which ones match Julia's criteria. That's much easier.>

We thought through our discoveries in chronological order, dismissing most of them but suggesting a few. Julia and I decided Carol's tests would be juggling and reading two books at the same time. They weren't perfectly acceptable according to Julia's criteria, but Julia fixed that by changing her criteria. I wasn't going to point out that I only got really good at both those skills when I got to four minds, but I did say, "I don't think my parents have actually ever seen me juggling since I got good at it. Mom has seen me read two books, but only a couple of weeks ago though."

"That doesn't matter. They're both believably consistent with your superb physical and mental skills, and you can juggle for your parents any time you like. The important thing is that Carol can frequently walk around your home trying to juggle, to show your parents that she takes testing herself seriously. It's such an unusual activity that every time they see it they'll be reminded what it's for. We should get her to walk around doing it tonight, and when she's asked about it, say, 'Oh this. I've been doing this as a way of testing to see whether I've got Mark's gene and it's turned on yet. Mark said it was one of the first things he discovered about his physical skills, so it's a good test for me. He also suggested seeing if my mind can follow two books at the same time, which I've tried but can't do either. I'm going to keep trying though because Mark and Julia have explained how important it is to find out as soon as possible, so we can all plan what to do about it.'

^-- "If she talks like that it'll show your parents that we're serious and have the whole thing under control already. Carol can also occasionally ask your mom or dad to look at her eyeballs while they move two fingertips around on either side of her head. That'll also remind them about the genetic theory."

Julia called Carol, and started relaying it all to her. Not long into that conversation Robert knocked, "The computers are set up, Mark. Can you please come and test them out, to make sure they'll do what you want?"

I raced him back to the study! I was excited. I wasn't sure why, but that didn't matter, I just wanted to see the new set up going. When I got to the study, I was stunned - literally stunned - my footsteps faltered and I stood there with my mouth open. I managed to use it to say, "Wow!" The side-by-side 30" screens looked incredibly impressive.

Robert and Logan (the computer guy) laughed good-naturedly. Robert agreed, "Yeah, they're impressive all right. I'm as envious as hell, of your computer setup AND your sex-life, haha." Logan looked at Robert with curiosity. Robert answered the unspoken question, "You wouldn't believe me if I told you, even though you can see what he looks like." (I was still in my school clothes, and you know what that means.)

Logan said, "Can you do whatever it is that you do that needs this setup, so I can see that everything works the way you want?"

That I could; I was even looking forward to it. I didn't want him to see my eyeballs moving independently, but he would be standing far enough behind me that I was safe from that, and I didn't need to do it anyway. All I needed to do was fire up two lectures and scroll up and down in them.

The old computer had the link saved as a bookmark in the browser, but I had to manually type it into the new computer's browser. Logan saw me doing that, and offered, "I've got a little program at work that copies clipboards across a network. Do you want me to send it to you so you don't have to retype like that?"

"You mean I can copy on one computer, and paste the stuff on the other?"

"Yeah, except you have to hit a key between the copy and the paste to tell the software to transfer the clipboard, and to where. I'll have to talk you through setting it up, because it's only a little hack program that I threw together myself. You need to tell it the names of all the computers on the network, install it on each machine and put it in the Startup folder. Then I'll have to tell you how to use it. It's very simple so it won't take long."