Chapter 218: I Add "Typist" to My Job Skills

Monday, May 16, 2005

I woke and climbed out of bed over Carol, who remained dead to the world throughout my graceless clambering.

I collected my gear and the clothes, loaded up the car, and drove to the Williams'. I put the clothes away as I'd been instructed, had my first breakfast, then went to the study where I did the job of transferring the photos from my phone to the memory stick. It was surprisingly easy, so that was a relief.

Inspired by some of the photos, I decided to check out online bikini stores. Julia is often telling me I should google more, and this was an EXCELLENT learning opportunity. To my delight there were heaps of places. Some of the best ones (i.e., those that sold the sexiest bikinis) were in Australia, which put Australia on my list of countries I'd most like to visit, especially its beaches. I was amused to see that G-string type bikinis were nearly twice as expensive as boring bikinis. They obviously used far less material, and the work involved in making one had to be the same or less, so that didn't make any sense to me. I've noticed that all the best things in life seem to be more expensive, even if there's no rational reason for it.

Next I googled something else that interested me, "How many senses do humans have?" I was surprised to see that estimates ranged all over the place, from three to forty or so, none of which included an even vaguely accurate description of my proximity sense. I didn't spend long on this, as clearly there was no firm answer, or even much understanding.

The next subject I wanted to google was "kiatsu" again. My experience with the pregnant woman in LA had rekindled my hope of being able to help Ava's parents. I followed all sorts of links that took me to many strange sites, all of which strongly reinforced my impression that people get VERY weird about spiritualistic or magical healing, but I read nothing whatsoever that gave me any confidence that it had any merit. I stuck at it for quite a while, but it was a total waste of time and I felt sorry for the electrons that had delivered so much dreck to my computer. Not finding anything encouraging, plus my knowing that my kiatsu increased healing rates about 15%, killed my hope for Ava's parents. If I spent four hours a day giving them kiatsu, so two hours each, then their healing rate would improve by 15% times 2/24, being 1.25%. Their cancers were virulent, aggressive, and would have effectively eaten them alive in a few more months, so their spending four hours with me every day for a paltry 1.25% bonus to their healing rate was pointless. They'd waste more time making themselves available for me than I could possibly gain for them, not that they'd let me grab so much of their remaining time for something so silly.

In the movies, and especially in the fantasy books I used to have time to read, the hero has some magical power that saves the day, but this wasn't like that, and not just because I didn't need to do it to "win the girl" because I already had her. I obviously didn't see myself as a hero either. The main difference was that there wasn't enough difference: my ki was just like everyone else's. I had more of it, but it was otherwise the same. Every time Ava's parents moved, they were generating their own ki and it was flowing through parts of their body. They would be subconsciously projecting their own ki through their cancers very often, and they were still facing death in only a few months. Cancers are NASTY, and I knew kiatsu was very weak. I wasn't going to be able to save them.

My last non-college studying activity was to type up the extra speeches I had made during my pipeline dates, as part of my learning to type faster. I'd never had the need to do much typing before, as my long-ago-learned, two-fingered, "hunting and pecking" style had done the job, especially because I had the keyboard layout memorized so the "hunting" part took no time.

I started by googling "Learn to type", and reading what various sites said. Most of them offered typing training in a form that didn't suit me. I didn't want to use both my physical hands, nor did I want to use enough NP-fingertips to simulate two physical hands. I wanted to use one mind only, which meant a maximum of four fingertips. Multiple minds would have coordination problems, not just in hitting the keys in the right order, but in composing the text to type. I couldn't think of any disadvantage in using only one mind to type with, because one unencumbered NP-fingertip, being massless, could range over the entire keyboard as fast as my mind could think, producing a one-fingered, super-high-speed version of my physical "hunting and pecking".

I wouldn't be able to do all my typing with one fingertip because of the occasional need to simultaneously press an ordinary key with the "Shift", "Ctrl" and/or "Alt" keys, although I rarely used the latter two. I would have been better off with a keyboard with two complete sets of keys, one set unshifted and the other set shifted. That way my NP-fingertip could have flown all over the place very quickly, and I wouldn't have had to bother learning to synchronize with the "Shift" key. That'd be a very impractical setup for an ordinary typist, so I doubted such keyboards existed. [[Had I know a little more about writing software, I could have easily got it going using the two keyboards that I already had on my desk, but a software solution never occurred to me.]]

All the sites made a big deal about not looking at the keyboard when typing, which made sense, so I did some experiments with trying to type the alphabet with an NP-fingertip without looking at the keyboard. I made so many mistakes that the 26-letter result looked like a long Czechoslovakian word. The problem was that I didn't have an accurate enough way of knowing exactly where any letter was, so I'd often hit one of its neighbors.

Some more playing around let me find a solution: I created one NP-fingertip and placed it on the center of the left "Shift" key. I placed another fingertip on the center of the "Backspace" key. Then I typed with a third fingertip. The first two fingertips gave me fixed points to navigate from, so it was just a matter of learning where each letter was relative to my two markers. I looked at the keyboard so I could accurately place my typing fingertip on the "a", then I memorized its position in proximity. I looked away from the keyboard, then practiced moving the fingertip away, then moving it back to type an "a". I did that several times. I got it right every time. Then I repeated the exercise for "b", etc. I ignored the numeric keypad as all those keys are pointless duplicates for me, but it still took nearly half an hour to memorize the locations of all the other keys.

Then all I had to do was practice. Knowing the layout of the keyboard from my previous experience made the task easier, and soon I was able to type accurate sentences, admittedly without capital letters and fairly slowly compared to what I should be able to do, but it was a good start.

One of the websites had a typing game, where I had to type words that were the names of alien spaceships that were trying to land on Earth. It had caught my attention because of its sci-fi theme. When I got a name right, the spaceship would blow up. I started at level 1, getting only a few slow-moving spaceships called names like: "red", "cat", "big". I upped the game to level 3, getting more and faster-moving spaceships called four- or five-letter names. That was already within my capabilities, so I changed the game's level to 6. That was harder, and I'm sad to say that the aliens conquered Earth a few times (sorry about that).

After a bit more practice, I was good enough to keep Earth safe, so I incremented the game's level to 7. That was easy, so I went to level 8. Before long I was on level 10, then 12, etc. The game topped out at level 20, which was REALLY fast, with fun spaceship names like: "eat all humans", "suck your brains", "cow vivisection" and "take me to your leader". I didn't see "anal probe", but probably because that spaceship was sneaking up the back way.

The game had been fun, and it's always satisfying to save the Earth from alien invasions. Plus my typing had gotten REALLY fast and necessarily accurate too, because if I mistyped a spaceship's name it wouldn't blow up. The game didn't have any capital letters, numbers, punctuation or any of the other symbols ($, %, ^, etc.) in it, so I needed to do something to learn to use those.

I left the fate of the Earth in the hands (literally) of the next person to go to that site, so I could spend some time practicing the use of the "Shift" key. I found a website that had plenty of text, and I practiced retyping it into a Word document, capitalizing the first letter of every word.

Once I had the "Shift" key well coordinated, I opened a clean Word document and started typing up my pipeline speeches. I flew through the job, typing the speeches in about half the time it'd taken to speak them on the date.

When that was finished and emailed to Julia, I carried out an interesting little test. When I'd been learning to type, all three of my active minds had learned while #3 had remained on duty the entire time. Because only one mind had typed at a time, each of the active minds had taken turns every few minutes. Once a skill (or skill level) was learned by one mind, the second mind to learn it took about half the time, and the third mind taking about a third of the original time, on average (it varied somewhat). We'd repeatedly altered the order of the minds, so we knew the time reductions were probably a memory sharing effect, rather than one of my minds being smarter. We'd deliberately left #3 on duty the whole time because we wanted to confirm that memory sharing included mental skills. We were already pretty sure it did, but getting #3 "up to speed" would be starting from scratch rather than a series of incremental improvements.

We called #3 off duty and got him to learn to type starting from the beginning: memorizing the key positions. It'd taken about two hours for the three minds to learn to type, but it only took quarter of an hour for #3, which was consistent with it being about four times faster than the first mind to learn a skill. Memory sharing was conveniently broad in its usefulness.

We patted ourselves on the back happily, had a celebratory cookie, and then started our college studies.

I finished all the posted Algebra lectures well before breakfast, despite the wasted time. Although time spent researching tiny bikinis should not be considered "wasted". Nor, I guess, should time spent learning to type extremely fast. Calculus was still a few hours away from catching up to the real-time class, but that didn't stop #1 and #2 moving on to the third subject - Calculus 252. The Calculus course I'd not quite finished yet was Calculus 251, the prerequisite to 252. Starting 252 a few hours before I'd finished 251 was unlikely to cause any problem, and if it did we could easily find something else for #1 and #2 to do while waiting for #3 and #4 to finish. More 'research' on tiny bikinis perhaps.

At breakfast, I told Prof, "I've finished all the posted Algebra lectures and have just started on Calculus 252. I haven't quite caught up in 251, but should do that tomorrow morning."

"Very good. That's a couple of days ahead of the last indication you gave me."

"Yes, it's going well."

Mostly we talked about our weekend in LA. Julia wasn't here to defend herself, so I had the freedom to entertain them with stories about the insane attitude to shopping the girls had repeatedly demonstrated on Saturday. On second thought, the "repeatedly" wasn't correct, as they'd been insane just once, for eight hours.

I arrived at my home a bit early, so I went in to chat, and especially to make sure dinner for my Aikido evening was under control. I also told Julia, "I typed up the things I said during the last pipeline date that I think should be part of the website, and emailed the document to you. I did the photo transfer too. The memory stick is in my pocket."

Julia said, "Thanks. We'll go to a photo store after school to get some sets printed, and I'll update the website when I get home."

Mom said, "If you're going to a photo store, please get some passport photos for you, Carol and Donna. I'll need them for the passport applications. The store will know what you need."

"Sure."

Julia informed me, "Plan to be busy a few afternoons after school, because we need to start shopping for a new car for you. I'll do some googling this evening, and we'll start visiting car lots tomorrow after you've dropped your sisters home from school. Okay?"

Julia's question was more rhetorical than anything else, and I accepted the inevitable by saying, "Yes."

Carol said, "I'd like to help Mark shop, please?"

Julia answered, "The beginning will be tedious. Wait until we've decided on the shortlist, and then you can come with us to help with the final choice."

#1: <So we're not going to walk onto a lot, say "I like that one", and buy it, are we?>

#2: <{Sigh}.>

I said, "How are you going to help me buy a car and choose which properties get on the shortlist? Both of those are going to happen over the next few days."

"I know! I want to do both, but I don't want to delay either of them. Even if I can't revisit the properties, I'll make sure I get a chance to talk with our moms about the shortlist before it's finalized. Someone has to make sure your best interests are being looked after properly."

"You mean that you get a big enough closet?"

"That's not a 'best interest' item, that's an 'essential item'. If you're making mistakes like that, it's just as well you've got me looking after you."

"It was your idea we get a mansion in the first place, so I guess it's only fair that you have to do all the work of choosing it."

"Exactly. Good boy."

Ava was waiting for us at the school's parking lot. As she was rushing over, I told everyone in the car, "I'm going to tease Ava. Keep a very straight face and look serious."

Ava arrived, eagerly asking, "What'd your parents say about you-know-what?"

Keeping a serious look on my face, I said, "Let's get away from other people, so I can tell you."

We walked to the side of the main path, away from other ears, then I told Ava, "I've been kicked out of my bedroom. Donna's always wanted a room for herself, and now she's got mine."

"Oh dear." After a brief pause, "What's going to happen now?"

"I've been forced to share Carol's room."

It took her a couple of moments, then a suddenly hopeful look appeared on her face, "What! You and Carol together?"

I smiled, "Yeah, I have to share a double bed with her. I hope she doesn't snore."

"YAY!" As Ava started dancing for joy, bouncing from person to person, hugging and telling us how she knew she was right, how happy she was, etc.

When Ava got around to me again, she told me off, "You had me worried! I thought something bad had happened."

"Sorry, I couldn't resist. In my defense, I did suffer through a whole day of shopping with half a dozen girls on Saturday, and I only teased you for a few seconds, so you're still miles ahead."

Ava was in too good a mood to hold my tease against me.

Donna finished laughing then took off at her usual speed.

Carol gave Ava a kiss, then said, "Thanks for bringing Mark and me together. Mom and Dad let the three of us sleep together last night, and it was wonderful."

Ava was beaming with pride, very happy with herself.

After some more expressions of happiness, Carol said, "I've got your vibrator in my bag, thanks Ava. Donna loved it. I know what to buy her for her birthday now, if she can wait that long."

Carol handed it over then left us. Julia, Ava and I headed toward our classes together, Ava still chuckling over how wonderful it was that my parents agreed. I remembered my mental note, so I asked Ava not to let Donna talk about it anywhere that wasn't very private, and preferably nowhere at all.

Alexis, Pat and Katelin were very affectionate in their "Good mornings" to me.

Pat had gotten away with her subterfuge, although her parents had been suspicious about her being away for the entire weekend. Pat's only having one dress to show for her trip was suspicious too, until Pat pointed out the tag to her mom, and explained that she'd blown all her budget on the one dress, but she'd still had a great time helping all the other girls shop.

Alexis' only trouble with her parents was her mother's teasing her about not buying something as sexy as the triangle outfit for her mom.

Katelin was less forthcoming about her reception at home, but reading between the lines, it appeared that she and her mother had had some sort of serious discussion after Katelin's return. Katelin didn't provide any details, but she said, "Everything's okay."

[[Her mother had started a conversation about whether Katelin had had sex with me. Katelin answered by giving her mother both barrels, telling her how wonderful I am versus what a loser her mother had married, including, "Mark earned more money last week than Dad's earned in his whole life, and Mark's only fifteen." Katelin insisted she was going to take her chance with me, even if it was a very small chance, and her mother had to be crazy to object to having a tiny chance of having Mark as a son-in-law. It was quite a serious conversation, Katelin saying that her mother had done such a poor job of choosing a husband that she no longer had the right to control Katelin's sex-life. Katelin's Mom wasn't much of a mother, so Katelin was probably right to assert her independence, although that was more true in general than specifically with me, because Katelin never stood any chance of marrying me, not even with her improved attitudinal flexibility to non-normal sex.]]

Lily joined in with being more affectionate toward me than she'd been in school before. I asked her why, and her answer translated to, "Safety in numbers." She didn't want our relationship to be known, but she was very happy to be affectionate with me if she could do so without standing out. She also wanted to know when she could serve me again, with a look on her face that clearly indicated that "serve me" didn't mean "wash my car", except euphemistically.

I enjoyed our last session, so I answered, "I've got another pipeline date tomorrow evening. Does that suit you?"

"ANY time suit me. You number one."

"Okay, tomorrow evening it is. I'll give you a call like last time. We may not have as much time though, maybe only an hour or so."

"One minute, one hour. Only important you happy and," Lily looked around, then concluded, "you cum."

I could live with that.

Last Friday's pipeline date came in for a great deal of discussion, including some sarcastic comments from guys. I told them that their comments were almost enough to make me give up dating anyone other than Julia. The guys had been sarcastic to me, so I'd been sarcastic right back at them.

The pipeline was the main topic of conversation at lunch, which was another mass meeting. I refused to answer questions about what individual girls had done right or wrong. My position was simply, "It truly was a very enjoyable date. All the girls did very well, and I'd be very happy to have another date just like it again, but the pipeline rules require that half the girls have to be eliminated no matter how fantastic the date was." I repeated that several times, in different ways, explaining again that the purpose of the pipeline was to find just the best few girls for me, not to rank the girls that were eliminated along the way.

I repeated and expanded on my justification for having more than one girl 'winning' the pipeline process, "Many of the girls who'll be entering the pipeline won't know me well. I'll be doing my best to choose girls whose personalities SEEM to suit me, but when the pipeline process ends it'll still take a few months for the final girls and me to get to know each other very well. That's why it makes sense for there to be something like three or four 'winners', because our feelings for each other will continue to evolve when the pipeline ends."

It was just crap, as I had no intention of ever choosing a final girl to be my final girlfriend, let alone a traditional wife! But there was no need to say that. The girls had been told over and over again not to think about me as a normal guy, so if they assumed I'd be having a lifelong monogamous relationship with the final winning girl (singular), then that was their problem. Julia and I had never promised that I'd marry the final winner, only that by participating in the pipeline system, the girls had a better chance, which was true, because their chance improved from zero to tiny.

Another consideration was that because my college studying was going so well, I was beginning to hope that I MIGHT (highly uncertain!) be able to finish my degree next year. IF that happened (a big "IF"), I'd almost certainly be leaving Corvallis after next summer. If the pipeline system was kept operating next school year, there might not be any time after the pipeline ends. I'd be declaring who the winner was, and then leaving. I didn't mention that issue either.

Julia told the girls there'd be some new material added to the website later this evening, and she checked with members of Group 1B how their date planning was coming along. They answered, "Fine. We're sure Mark will enjoy it."

After school, we headed to the photo store. On the way Donna asked, "Julia, can I bring your bikini to school tomorrow please? I want to put it on to show the Ducklings what your older girlfriends are wearing."

Julia answered, "Anything to do with the Ducklings, ask Mark. They're his project."

I said, "Funny you should mention that, Donna. It just so happens that I was thinking about the Ducklings and those bikinis earlier today. Isn't that a coincidence? Haha. Here's what I think you should do. First, don't say anything until Thursday. We're letting Alexis have the fun of telling our classmates that I'm rich. She's doing that on Wednesday, so on Thursday you can take Julia's bikini to school, show it to the Ducklings, and talk all about the trip to LA. We'll even give you a set of the photographs so you can show them around. That should get the Ducklings excited."