Chapter 158: My Second Foursome that Wasn't Really

Sunday, May 1, 2005

I woke up at the expected time, checked to make sure I was still crazy enough to study, decided I was, so started climbing over Ava. I created a very dim light blob to light my way, ready to cancel it if Ava started waking, but the only problem I had was that when I was halfway over Ava, she sleepily decided to hug me. Even with proximity, it's pretty much impossible to dodge something like that when you're straddling the perpetrator, so I got caught. It took me a minute to gently disentangle myself, and finish climbing out of bed.

I had early breakfast, during which my minds joked about trying to get the Andersons and Williams to adopt Hobbit mealtimes: first breakfast, second breakfast, brunch, elevensies, lunch, etc. It'd suit me very nicely.

After early breakfast, the first thing I did when I got to the study was a lot more memory tests. They refined last night's discovery about the importance of the attitude of the owner of the memory. A positive or negative attitude allowed or disallowed access. As best we could, we tried to do an experiment where the owner was indifferent to his memory being accessed. It was impossible to guarantee complete indifference, but we got a result anyway: the owner had to be positively eager to share the memory, or else it didn't work. Similarly, the other minds had to put quite a lot of effort into retrieving the memory, so this process only functioned when both ends of it were striving to make it succeed.

That reasonably well matched our remembering Katrina's name at the Athletic Club. We had been trying hard to remember names during the Duckling lunch introductions, and more importantly, all four of us had been trying reasonably hard to make sure we called the girls by their right names at the club.

Tests confirmed that memory leakage worked the same regardless of which mind was the memory's owner or retriever. We'd have been very surprised if it hadn't been consistent.

Nor did it matter how many owners there were. We did an experiment where three minds looked at the page number, and the one mind left tried to retrieve it. It took just as much effort. Interestingly, he didn't have to specifically 'target' one of the three minds' memories; merely visualize the event and 'read' the page number out of someone's memory. We repeated the same experiment with three minds all trying to block the access, and they succeeded in preventing it. Then two trying to block it and one wanting to share; the memory was accessed successfully.

We found out that the 'content' of the memory - whether a page number, picture, graph or anything else - didn't make any difference. As far as we could tell anyway, as testing some non-sight memories wasn't easy.

Very happily, we discovered that "understanding" was a memory. Or maybe it was bundled with the memory that it was the understanding of. We discovered this by reading through a textbook until we found a concept we couldn't understand. We let one mind work on it, while the other three chatted about something very distracting: how INCREDIBLE Chloe would look in a small, thin, bikini top. The three minds involved got VERY worked up thinking about that, so much so that one of them forgot the purpose of the distraction and sent the studying mind a visual image of what they imagined Chloe would look like. Needless to say, that significantly delayed the studying mind's understanding of the textbook's concept.

When the studying mind eventually managed to regain concentration long enough to understand the textbook material, we did the test. The other minds accessed his memory, they got more than just the text he'd been reading, but a "bundle" of other stuff too, such as that the material had been on the right hand page of the book, some of the studying mind's impressions and opinions of it, and - most importantly - his understanding of it.

We immediately wanted to test to make sure we could access each other's college studies, but ran straight into a mental brick wall. The accessing minds didn't know what to visualize, so they had no idea how to 'get at' the memory. Even when the two owner minds wrote down quite explicit descriptions of the material (a sample formula, for example), we couldn't get it to work. Memory is supposed to be associative, so associating off a formula should've worked, but it didn't.

We did a few minutes of real studying, then tried to access each other's material. This we succeeded at, so long as both sides of the process put in the necessary effort.

We kept trying other things:

• Re-accessing one of last night's page number tests (succeeded).

• Accessing the memory of a very recent event without telling the owner mind which memory was the target (failed).

• Accessing an old memory that the context was very well known and which had made a strong impression: our first visit to "Raging Rocky's Rags" (the mind that had been on duty then, #4, learned something he'd not been told about. He didn't thank us for the memory).

Both sides of the process had to have a VERY clear idea of what memory was being targeted, the owner had to be deliberately positive about his memory being shared, and the retriever had to try hard to get it. When it worked, it worked perfectly, especially with how it included understanding, but it was far too limited and too difficult to be of much practical use to us. Bummer!

My brain was frazzled from the testing effort and the depressing results, so I wandered downstairs for a cheer-me-up snack. While walking, I wondered whether I should immediately drop back to studying only one course at a time, and maybe even restart the courses from where I'd first started studying them simultaneously.

Restarting would be a waste of a week and a half if I never needed to have all four minds know both courses, so that implied I should wait and see. On the other hand, if I carried on studying two simultaneously, and did hit a real need, then I might need to repeat four weeks of studying. The middle option - not restarting, but only doing one course at a time from now on - wasn't possible as my minds didn't have the background knowledge in the other pair's course to let them start midway like that. It was either restart, or carry on as I was doing. If I carried on at double the rate, I would face another decision when I was ready to start the third course.

By the end of my milk and cookies, I'd decided to carry on at my double-speed rate until the end of these two courses, and then reconsider. It shouldn't have been so important, but the killer issue was the embarrassment of admitting to Prof and OSU that my studies were going to take nearly twice as long as I'd previously indicated, and almost permanently turning off one computer. I'd only be able to use two when studying two BCC courses simultaneously because all of those were totally independent, which wouldn't happen for months yet.

I'd practice the memory retrieval tests frequently and look for better techniques, and hope I got usefully better at memory sharing by the time I finished these two courses in about a week and a half. Or maybe something else might happen. This was my main hope, as I keep discovering new things about myself. There's no guarantee that there's any more left to discover - for all I know, this mentally exhausting memory retrieval ability is my last 'trick' - but I'll keep my fingers crossed and hope like crazy that something useful turns up in the next one and half weeks. I knew I was being foolishly optimistic, but it put off the evil day of having to come clean to Prof about my studying rate reducing.

I went back upstairs and studied. Initially not as enthusiastically as before I realized how troublesome my double-speed approach could be, but after a while I cheered up and starting enjoying myself, because math is fun.

I stopped early to go to the bakery for croissants, getting three dozen, because there were nine of us in the house this morning and I'm a staunch believer that there should always be leftovers. (You may not know this, but the word "leftover" derives from the ancient Greek, meaning, "for Mark to have later." Especially if it involves roast chicken.)

To get Julia's anniversary breakfast ready, all I had to do was follow Vanessa's instructions. They weren't difficult, so I soon had two trays ready to take upstairs. I had a momentary temptation to put all the heavy stuff on one tray for me to carry, and use NP to carry the light one ahead of me. It was a humorous image, but it wouldn't be so funny if Sophia happened to get up early. Not to mention that her screaming might make me drop the NP'd tray, and that'd be a waste of good food.

I carried one tray up and put it on the floor outside our bedroom door, then popped into the study to write a note, "Spare croissants. Help yourself." Back in the kitchen, I left the note on top of the bag of spare croissants. I'd put plenty on my two trays, so the bag contained leftovers, but I still hoped there'd be leftover leftovers for later in the day. I took the second tray up.

Julia was conveniently sleeping on the edge of the bed, so she was wakened by the smell of a fresh croissant being waved just under her nose.

The first words Julia said were, "Mmm. You remembered! How lovely."

I answered quietly, "Actually Mom reminded me yesterday. And before you ask, pretty much everyone has reminded me not to forget the 14th. Apparently that'd be VERY bad! Before Ava wakes up and I have to keep to my "Mark Knows Everything" act, let me say that a month ago I knew NOTHING. Somehow a couple of croissants seems a rather inadequate way of acknowledging how HUGELY I owe you."

"{Raspberry}..."

#2: <So much for romance!>

" ... It's me that feels honored to be able to..."

The ensuing 'discussion' about who owed whom the most, woke Carol and Ava. They congratulated me for being such a wonderful boyfriend. In other words, for my being able to follow Mom's and Vanessa's instructions. Which, when I thought about it, probably was what becoming a good boyfriend required. God knows there was no chance of a boy working it out for himself.

Everyone said nice things to everybody else, and we all had a very pleasant breakfast. Is there anything better than sitting in bed with three almost totally naked girls and plenty of food? (Other than the obvious: there being even more food.)

Eventually Ava thought to ask, "Carol, did you like sleeping in Mark's arms last night?"

Carol enthused, "Oh yes! It was wonderful. Thanks for letting me do that, Mark. I've never felt like that before. Would you mind if I asked Mom and Dad if we could do that sometimes at home?"

I inhaled some croissant flakes in surprise, including at Carol's smartness. It took me a few coughs and mouthfuls of drink to clear my throat. While I was doing that, I couldn't help think that Mom and Dad probably already suspect that Carol and I might cuddle sometimes, in our new double bed.

Ava asked Carol, "Would your parents really agree to that?"

"I think so. They trust Mark, and they know he'd never do anything I didn't want him to do. Also this is my idea, not Mark's, so that should give them even more confidence. I'm not worried about them, only that Mark hasn't agreed yet?"

"Ahh, it's okay with me, sweetie. I only hesitated because I was surprised. The only thing that worries me is that word of it might get out. People would get all worked up about it, so the four of us will have to keep it a secret. I don't mean to pick on you Ava, but I've only known you a short while. Can you keep this secret?"

Ava said, "I TOTALLY approve, so NO WAY am I going to spoil it! You two love each other so much, you should sleep together EVERY night!"

I couldn't resist a little subtle tease to get Ava even more worked up, "Nothing like that's going to happen. As it is, Carol and I are hardly ever home on the same nights anyway because either she's sleeping with Julia here, or I am."

Ava answered much as I predicted, "You can BOTH sleep here! You could do that as often as you wanted."

"Haha. Now you're being REALLY cruel to poor Julia. Making her sleep in a bed with both her lovers but not be able to have sex with either of them because Carol and I would both be terribly uncomfortable. Are you trying to ruin Julia's sex-life? Haha."

"No, no. Nothing like that! I don't understand why all of you can't have..."

"Ava! No more please. I'm Carol's big brother, and I take protecting her very seriously, so please don't go in that direction, or you'll upset her. Carol's request to sleep with me is 100% pure. She's a lesbian, remember? So your thinking would be as upsetting to Carol as suggesting that I sleep with another guy; and that's NEVER going to happen! No more talk about this please. I'm going to change the subject, and remind you that we're now trusting you with three secrets. Can you keep them all?"

Fairly obviously Carol was laying the foundation for her telling Ava in a few days that she [Carol], wanted to have sex with me. In which case, enough had been said already.

[Carol's plan was to confess her new desire for me to Ava, and ask Ava's help. Initially Carol would ask for help to resist her desire (we all expected Ava's advice - in the unlikely event that she tried to give any - would prove to be terribly unsuccessful), and then Carol would ask Ava's help in Carol's seduction of me. Carol would be having fun tricking Ava, and Ava would end up taking a lot of the responsibility for bringing us together. Ideally, if Carol did it right, Ava might end up thinking that she was almost totally responsible for making us lovers. Not only should that make Ava far less likely to blab, but we'd also make sure Ava told any future core group girls, such as maybe Chloe when the time was right, that she [Ava] was responsible for pushing Mark and Carol together. My role would be to be EXTREMELY reluctant, which would be fun for me too, as long as it didn't take too long.]

Ava looked puzzled for a second or two, then, "Three? I can only think of two: you and Carol 100% pure sleeping together, and your marathon run."

"The third secret is that you've got magic nipples."

"{Giggle}. I'd look stupid trying to tell people I had magic nipples! That'd be very funny, haha."

"I bet that at least half of them would want to check your nipples though. You understand, don't you Ava, that your magic nipples are really a secret of mine, not of yours?"

"I thought there might be a hidden light switches somewhere that you or Julia were using, and you were fooling me by claiming it was to do with your squeezing my nipples. It's VERY funny though, so I enjoy it."

"That's a good theory, but how do you explain your magic nose then?" Now I had to quickly think what her nose could do, that couldn't be explained by hidden switches.

Ava asked, "I've got a magic nose too? {Giggle}. What does my nose do Mark?"

"You don't know?"

"No, but I can't wait to find out."

"Let me show you."

I'd had an idea, it would be fun, I saw no strong reason why not, and Ava was conveniently sitting up in bed, so...

I reached out and squeezed the end of her nose. I then held up my watch (with by my hands clearly visible), and counted down, "5, 4, 3, 2, 1, now!"

"EEK!"

That'd been caused by two pairs of NP-fingertips briefly squeezing both of Ava's what the "N" of "NP" stood for. (I had tried to think of another use for a magic nose, but for some reason my minds were fixated on Ava's nipples, so this is what we decided on.) Let's see her explain this with a hidden switch!

Some of my more astute readers might have discerned by now that I'm rather attracted to breasts, which naturally includes nipples (by which I mean that "my attraction to breasts naturally makes me attracted to nipples." What I wrote also ambiguously means, "breasts naturally include nipples", but as this paragraph is addressed to my more astute readers, I figure you should've already astutely discovered that fact for yourselves). Being attracted to breasts, and - naturally - to nipples, this effect of Ava's magic nose was irresistible.

"See! You have a magic nose."

"HOW DID YOU DO THAT?"

"I just reached out with my hand and did this." I reached out and squeezed her nose again, then raised my watch, "5, 4, 3... ,"

Ava suddenly realized she had an excellent opportunity to observe her magic nose in action. She quickly tilted her head down, staring at her nipples intently.

"... 2, 1, now!"

"Eek! I SAW IT! I saw my nipples move. Something squeezed my nipples, but I didn't see ANYTHING! I felt it too. That's IMPOSSIBLE! How on Earth did you do that?"

"I just reached out with my hand and did this." I reached for Ava's nose again.

She pulled back, saying, "No, no! How did you touch my nipples?"

"Would it help you if I showed you what Carol's magic ear does?"

Julia and Carol were sitting behind me (during breakfast I'd been placed in the center position of the bed again, this time with Julia next to me, as it was our anniversary), and they were both laughing happily at poor Ava's amazement. My unexpected mentioning of Carol caused her to stop laughing in surprise. Julia laughed even louder though.

Carol recovered almost immediately, asking, "What does my magic ear do? {Giggle}." (I wonder if my astute readers can guess? That's assuming I've got any astute readers left.)

I had to climb out from under the covers to do this properly. I moved so I was kneeling on the bed, toward the bottom of it, facing all the girls. I asked, "Ava, I should ask you whether you want me to demonstrate Carol's right or left ear? They give slightly different effects."

Ava said, "I don't know! I don't know what they do. I'm very confused. What do your ears do, Carol?"

Carol answered, "I don't know. I didn't know I had magic ears, {giggle}."

"Just pick 'left' or 'right', Ava. I doesn't matter which, and you'll understand in a few seconds."

"Ahh, okay. 'Right' then."

I stretched out, Carol turned her head to help, and I squeezed her right earlobe briefly. I sat back on my heels, held up my watch, and called, "5, 4, 3, 2, 1, now!"

All of the girls had been staring at Carol's nipples (showing remarkably good taste, in my opinion), so Ava's "EEK!" took everyone by surprise (including Ava, but you probably already knew that, as that's pretty much the only time people say "EEK!" I thought I'd explain though, just in case you're not very astute).

I had NP-squeezed Ava's right nipple. Ava's, not Carol's, because it was a better way to tease Ava.

Ava quickly grabbed her breast and examined it, looking for ANY explanation. All she saw was her usual, lovely, breast. She quickly gave up on that, looking up and stating, "Something squeezed my nipple again! Just one nipple this time. What's going on?"

What was going on was mostly lots of laughter from Carol and Julia. Which pleased me, as they could have been warning me to stop this game. They must've felt good about trusting Ava with some more knowledge about NP (not theoretically detailed "knowledge"; more the hands-on experience kind of knowledge). Their laughter also reassured Ava.

I said, "Let me show you what Carol's left ear does Ava."

Without waiting for an answer, I stretched for Carol's left ear, and squeezed it.

"5, 4, 3... ," Poor Ava didn't know where to look. Her attention jumped around between me, Carol's nipples, and her own.

"... 2, 1, now!" I NP'd Ava's left nipple

"Eek. The other one this time. What's going on?" Then in a fearful voice, Ava asked, "Is it," she added in a breathless whisper, "a ghost?" I presumed she'd whispered so the ghost wouldn't hear.

Ava looked quite worried, so I hastened to reassure her, "No, sweetie. It's 100% me. I REALLY like your nipples! That's why when I squeezed Carol's ears, I still squeezed your nipples. Besides, I wouldn't touch my sister's nipples, would I? That wouldn't be right."

"But it CAN'T be you! You're way over there. I was watching one time and saw my nipples move and there was NOTHING there! It's IMPOSSIBLE! But I don't..."

"Ava, sweetie. I promise you that it is me. Remember that I am super, super intelligent, aren't I?

"Umm, yes?"

"I discovered how to do something special. There are no ghosts involved, or anything like that. Not that I believe in them, but aren't ghosts supposed to be cold and clammy? What touched you wasn't cold or hot, was it?" [NP-fingertips have no mass, so they cannot have any heat, as Heat = Temperature times Mass. I'm simplifying somewhat, but not unfairly in this circumstance. Not being able to have any heat, they can't seem cold by drawing heat from Ava's flesh.]

#1: <I think we've already been more explicit than we intended when we started this joke. I don't think we should have said it's a mental power of ours, which we effectively just did. Let's stop it now?>

#4: <Okay. I did get a bit carried away. I didn't like to see her look so fearful. I'll try to reassure her with hugs now, rather than explanations.>

#2: <I agree.>

I started moving back to my position in the bed, so I could hug Ava properly.

She answered my hot/cold question while I was moving, "No, it didn't feel cold. It really is you, and not a ghost?"

"It's me. It's not a ghost, an alien, an angel or a devil. Not a leprechaun, pixie, or invisible unicorn either. Thank God it's not an invisible unicorn! Can you imagine the invisible piles of horseshit on the floor! I wouldn't be walking around this room in bare feet, that's for sure, haha. It's 100% me, Ava. Remember I told you a few days ago that I called my trick of turning off the lights 'Nipple Power', in honor of your lovely nipples..."

"Oh! It's the same trick as the lights! I'd forgotten about that. So there are no hidden light switches, are there?"

"Nope. It's all me. Well, to be more accurate, it's me and your nipples. That's why it's called 'Nipple Power'."