Chapter 238: Talks With My Fiancées; Part Three

Sunday, June 12, 2005 (Continued)

The first of Julia's questions started even before I'd pulled a T-shirt out of my drawer to mop the chair with. Julia had many questions, and more kept occurring to her, so our question and answer session spanned several hours. There were a few temporary interruptions - for our leaving my home and going to hers, while we had sex in her bed (I learned to proximity sense some new emotions), while she did some studying, and while I had a chatty phone conversation with Ava - but otherwise Julia bombarded me with questions. Even during having sex, although my greatly improved NP-anal probe rendered her incapable of speech for a while; after which she had some questions about what I'd just done to her. Some of Julia's questions had been those I'd refused to answer in Seattle, such has how I'd touched her in the waiting room when I was out of sight and my insisting on staying next to Prof so I could help heal him, and there were many others about my relationship with Carol, my apparent change in personality, how I knew so much about things I shouldn't (e.g., Carol's earlobes), why I was divulging my secrets to my parents after keeping them in the dark so long, and then even more questions about my plans for our future three-way relationship - Julia was VERY interested in that!

Julia had seen and heard enough to know that there'd been some major developments in my life, so her first questions were to get a handle on the big picture. She had apparently already decided that the answer to several of her questions was that I wanted to have babies with special abilities with Carol. Julia was so determined on that answer that I had to repeat my denial of it several times. She had a fallback theory that I knew Carol was about to start developing the same abilities and I wanted to keep her very close, which I also denied. My only possible answer to most of her questions was that I'd had some very deep insights while I was prisoner. I admitted that they were "special insights", related to my special abilities in some way, but I refused to explain further. One of my comments was, "It's not worth making a big deal about it, Julia. It's true that I've gained some very useful insights, and that I've got some very clear ideas about what I want to do now, but in two months or so all my insights will be out of date and I'll be operating in the dark just as much as normal."

Some of Julia's questions were easily handled, such as, "Do you know the next lottery numbers, or what house we'll be buying?"

"I have absolutely no special knowledge of the future Julia, none whatsoever! Everything I know is from understanding people's current personalities and extrapolating them into the future in exactly the same way you do when you think about someone, except that I gave it a GREAT deal of uninterrupted thought, I was semi-delusional for a while which gave me some creative ideas, and I have an unusual brain anyway. My unusual brain helped a great deal, in ways I can't explain, but certainly not in any future-seeing way. Everything I know about the future, I know by extrapolating from the past and present. I couldn't tell you any independent facts about tomorrow, such as lottery numbers, but I can extrapolate some of Donna's behavior out several months, for example."

"What will Donna be doing?"

"Presuming I'm successful at convincing Mom and Dad to let Carol and me become lovers, then Donna will become interested in having sex with me too. In some ways I'd like to give her what she wants, because she's a good girl and it'd be nice to give her something that she'd enjoy and appreciate so much. The trouble is she'd turn into a bit of a sex maniac toward me. It'd mostly be a pain, because she's too emotionally immature. There'd be tantrums and other childish crap. It'd be a lot more trouble than it's worth for everyone, including Donna. And it'll be very worrying too, because Donna thinks secrets are fun, as you saw earlier.

^-- "I'm going to try to draw a very firm line with her, between things I do with my sisters, and things I do with my girlfriends or wives, and hopefully she'll understand that some of the things I do with Carol won't apply to her. But if I can't hold that line, I'm going to have to spend months very slowly letting her get more and more sexual, hoping she matures enough during it. I've got no idea when she'll reach her menarche, but I hope it's soon. The faster she matures, the easier and safer life will be." Julia didn't appear at all impressed by my use of "menarche". Oh well, back to impressing her with my magical powers.

Julia asked, "Do you want to have babies with Donna?"

"Having babies is not causing any of my actions, not even with Carol. Wanting them eventually with Carol is the result of my feelings for her, not the cause of them. Your continuing to think I'm using Carol that way is starting to get a little insulting and annoying."

Julia apologized and that was the end of that theory of hers.

I did add one point, "I don't know when Carol and I will start having babies. Initially she'll want to have them early, even before she's eighteen, but I think that as she gains self-confidence she'll start to value herself more highly than just being able to provide babies, and having them will be less urgent."

Julia wanted more examples about the insights that I'd had about people, in particular Julia VERY much wanted to know about any insights I'd had about her.

I was VERY embarrassed, because the only things I could think of to say about Julia was that she'd very soon be getting along superbly with Carol, and that Carol would help Julia's security in our marriage - which were really the same point, but I was desperate. There was nothing else about 3B's Julia that was usable here, which would make this Julia think that I had very insultingly not bothered to do any insightful thinking about her - ouch!

I was totally unable to come up with any impressive new insights on the spur of the moment, so I tried the best other idea I could think of: "The way my special insight worked depended on how wrong I was. That's obvious, because you can't have insights if you already have a clear vision of the person. So I had most of my insights about Carol because I was way off base with her. I had quite a few about my parents, some about Donna and Ava, and almost none about you. That's a wonderful confirmation that my thoughts about how fantastic you are were right on target. The only insights I could have had about you would have needed to be negative ones anyway, because there's no way my opinion of you could be lifted even higher. You'll be glad to know that I didn't have any such negative insights. You truly are as wonderful as I think you are."

#7: <VERY good save.>

#4: <Thanks. I thought so.>

I got a couple of suspicious looks, but Julia couldn't find a way to criticize my logic. I acted VERY happy that there were no more insights, and I thought I got away with it.

When I asked Julia what she thought about loving Carol, Julia answered, "It's impossible to dislike Carol because she's very inoffensive and obliging, but loving her is something else again. Are you sure I'll love her, rather than just like her a lot?"

"Oh yes. And she'll love you too, although that's easier to see because she respects you so much already. You'll develop a very good relationship. It's a chicken and egg thing though. We need to keep improving her confidence and building her up before the reason for doing so will become clear. I know from all my phone calls with her that it's working well. I bet you've noticed a change in her over the last three weeks?"

"Definitely. She's much more outgoing now. I enjoy her company, so doing what you want won't be any hardship."

You shouldn't get the impression from this discussion that there was ever a possibility of Julia refusing anything I wanted. She would question and even argue to gain understanding, but she wouldn't ever refuse anything I wanted. That'd become the case only two or three weeks into our relationship, and since then her opinion of my worth had rocketed up. Julia would even obey my unspoken requests. That's why she was pushing me to date other girls, and that's how Carol and Julia's sexual relationship had started in 3B-land. 3B-Julia's initial friendship with Carol had been entirely because she saw from the too-small swimsuit incident that I fancied Carol a great deal, and Julia had made it happen for me, in the course of which she got very fond of Carol. To be somewhat brutally honest, Julia also got sexy with Carol as a way of making sure she (Julia) was not excluded from any aspect of my life, but fortunately Julia did develop honest feelings for Carol.

[[It was great for me that 3B had been able to tell 3A how wonderful their Carol would become, because 3A would have missed out on Carol otherwise. Without the merge, even if 3A saw Carol in a too-small swimsuit tomorrow, 3A had too much sexual experience and self-control to give their attraction away. And, quite frankly, 3A wouldn't have felt nearly as much attraction. Quite a lot of 3B's initial reaction had been immature lust, rather than having any real merit. 3A wouldn't feel that anywhere near enough to make them fixate on Carol's body the way 3B had.]]

Julia was also eager to learn about my 'new and improved' abilities. That topic was one that was much less likely to get Julia angry at me, so I was happy to have the chance to explain some of it. I started telling her the story, "I killed the baddies on the Saturday..."

"{Giggle}."

"Why on Earth do you think killing people is funny?"

"Not that. I think it's funny that you refer to them as 'baddies'. It's such a silly name."

"I agree, but it's convenient. Saying, 'The guys who kidnapped Prof and me' is too longwinded. 'Baddies' is how I think of everyone who attacks or mistreats me, from idiot boys at school who try to pick a fight with me, through to multiple murderers. But in case you think it's too immature, I'll change it for you: "After I killed the pooh-pooh heads on Saturday, Prof and I had a MAJOR problem, we were chained to the chairs and floor with no idea where the keys were, and no access to food or water. We'd been waiting for them to let one of us go to the bathroom before I killed them, so we could free whoever was still locked up. Unfortunately they refused to let either of us out of our chairs for any reason, and when they decided to kill me I had to kill them first. Prof and I were locked into those chairs for another two and a half days before I found a way out by improving some of my special abilities and inventing a new one."

Julia looked very eager and interested.

I carried on, but not with any eagerness of my own. I knew Julia was going to get all excited and gleeful over my new powers, while I felt HORRIBLE that gaining them had been achieved by leaving 3B's families in grief. I'd known this conversation was going to occur, and repeat with Prof and Vanessa when they got home, and I'd tried to think of a good way to convey the "deep personal cost" associated with my new abilities, but I'd completely failed to come up with a good way of explaining it. I couldn't say anything like, "Imagine that the only way I'd gotten my new abilities was as if the Williamses and Andersons had to bear the grief of Prof and me dying," because Julia would think I was losing my marbles. Every way of trying to explain it was bad either because it completely failed to explain the magnitude of the cost that had been paid, or it did explain it, but in a way that was far too close to giving away that there are multiple dimensions.

Several times in the previous weeks I'd tried to think of a good way of conveying my feelings to Julia, but I'd failed and had decided there was no way to convince Julia that there'd been any cost. She was going to get excited about my new abilities, and I was going to have to put up with her glee. The best I could do was to downplay my improvements. I explained, "I've got one new ability, and some of my previous ones have gotten somewhat better. You felt my improved NP in your asshole." This conversation was occurring after we'd had sex. I'd been horny after playing my sex-game with Carol, so having sex with Julia had happened immediately after arriving at her place. She'd been more interested in talking, but my picking her up and throwing her on the bed had resolved that difference of opinion. "My NP is a little stronger than before, although I haven't got around to measuring how much yet. I can make my light and heat blobs brighter and warmer than before, and I can make a few more of them. And I'm sure my kiatsu is quite a lot better. 'Kiatsu' is Japanese for ki healing. It's a part of Aikido, but it's something that I can do at a very special level of ability. I haven't measured it, but I'm guessing that while I'm doing it on someone they're healing somewhere between 20 to 40% faster. That's why I stayed with your father, so I could give him kiatsu all the time."

"I thought you said you healed five times faster?"

"That's what I guess my personal healing rate is. That's got nothing to do with the kiatsu; that's just my body doing its thing. Kiatsu is a mental power that I can deliberately use on anyone. If I used it on myself, I'd heal about 6.5 times faster than other people; the 5 times faster my body heals plus the 30% extra from kiatsu. I'm sure I would've died without Prof, so spending a couple of weeks giving him kiatsu was the least I could do." In a weird way, it was also a way of thanking the Prof that had died; or maybe apologizing to him, or making good, or something. I'm not sure, but helping this Prof was a kind of tribute to the other one.

"Dad says you saved his life..."

"AFTER I got him kidnapped in the first place! He never would have even gone to Vegas if it hadn't been for me..."

"The way I remember it," interrupted Julia, "was that you suggested you could win $50,000. I'm the one who got greedy and made it millions of dollars. You and Dad wouldn't have been kidnapped if you'd won only $50,000." Which, tragically, would be one of the many things 3B's Julia would be beating herself up for.

I ended this topic, "You're right. So the next time we have sex, you're getting it in the asshole as punishment. That'll teach you not to make me a multimillionaire."

"Now I want to make you a billionaire!"

"If that happens, you're going to need a LOT of lubricant! Changing the subject back to my abilities, I'd pretty much finished telling you about the improvements to my existing abilities, so I'll tell you about my new ability. To set the scene, Prof and I were chained to the chairs and floor, and were dehydrating to death, so it'd be a REALLY good idea if I could find the keys!

^-- "I'd used NP to search the bodies of both pooh-pooh heads, and neither had the keys. They might have been anywhere in the house, or possibly even thrown away. I used my NP-fingertips to search for them by feel, or better still, for a telephone to dial 9-1-1 on. As you know, fingertips cancel after being out of sight for half a second. I got it up to two seconds, but I hit a major problem. I didn't know that fingertips slow down and get less sensitive when I can't see them. They slowed down so much that I couldn't get them into the upstairs part of the house, let alone search it. We were up pooh-pooh creek without a paddle, unless I thought of something else.

^-- "One of the nice things about NP-fingertips is that I can feel things with them." I demonstrated by forming a couple of fingertips and twiddling one of my favorite things. "I had the idea that if NP-fingertips can send sensory touch information back to me somehow, maybe light blobs could send sensory light information back too. In other words, I could see through them. To cut a long story short, I figured out a way of doing exactly that."

^-- I created a yellow light blob beside us, sent it across the room, then held it motionless. "I can look through the light blob back at us. Wave to me." I waved to the blob, giving Julia the idea.

After a brief pause, she waved, while asking me, "You can see us from all the way over there? Like it's a video camera?"

"That's a good way of putting it, yes. I have to close my eyes to make it practical, otherwise I see two superimposed images. Superimposition is a pain with two images, and impossible with three or more. Which is a pity because it'd be a very nice safety measure if I could have a sight blob floating above my head and looking behind me all the time."

Julia exclaimed, "But it'd freak everyone out?"

"Haha, yeah. Sorry, I forgot to explain one very weird fact. I said I'd have a 'SIGHT Blob' floating over me. A sight blob is what I call a blob dedicated to my seeing and nothing else. It doesn't have to be, but I use a light blob with its brightness turned to zero, so it's invisible. No one could detect it if I had a SIGHT blob floating over my head all the time. Unfortunately, I'd have to walk around with my eyes closed, which would be rather inconvenient."

I'd been steadily dimming the light blob while I was finishing the explanation. It was now invisible, and I said, "You can't see the blob, but it's still there. If we could be bothered I could close my eyes and get you to write notes to it, which I could read out, but I'll assume you believe me."

Julia laughed, saying, "That's a safe assumption."

"I do like it when pretty, naked girls trust my every word. When I first started using light blobs to see through, I kept them shining light. Later on I tried them dimmer and dimmer, and they kept working, all the way down to invisible, which I think is REALLY weird. Invisible things shouldn't be able to 'see' anything, because the light passes straight through them. THAT'S what 'invisible' means! Seeing with them should be completely impossible, so there's something going on that I don't understand."

[[Not only is it possible for a sight blob to detect light, it's actually easy. As previously explained, every 'pixel' of the Universe is made up of three components: Matter-Energy, Space-Time and Consciousness-Ki. When a photon reaches the sensing surface of a sight blob ("sensing surface" was fiction of my preconceptions because of the two dimensional way human eyes and brains process sight. There's no reason the entire volume of a sight blob couldn't detect light), the Consciousness-Ki of the sight blob can easily interact with that of the passing photon: "Hi, what are you?", "I'm part of a photon of green light", "Thanks. I'll see you later", "Not if I see you first." I'm pulling your leg with the dialogue, because Consciousness-Ki has no mind, although I do suspect the Universe has an absurd sense of humor, as how else could you explain the existence of men's G-string swimsuits?]]

"Haha. I don't understand ANY of this, but there are so many impossible things you can do, what's one more?"

"I would like to understand as much as I can. There are rules about how all this stuff works. The more I understand, the more I'll be able to do..."

"You're right. It's just taking me a little while to get over the impossibility of it all. I guess 'Sight Blobs' meant you could search for the keys?"

"Yes, although that turned out to be much easier than I thought it'd be, as I almost immediately saw that the keys were hanging on a hook in the next room. It'd taken me two and half days to discover sight blobs, and less than a minute later I was unlocking myself."

"My hero!"

Heroes have to be rewarded (I think it's in their job contracts), so there wasn't any intelligible conversation for a while.

While I think to mention it, it's now FAR easier for me to carry things with my improved NP, mainly because the maximum force is nearly 113 pounds, or 99 if I keep one mind on duty (this assumes the fourfold improvement in NP force per mind, and is ignoring the training bonus. I really should weigh them soon; not right now though). Most of the things I want to carry weigh very little - except me, dammit! - so I've now got huge accelerations available. That means I don't have to fiddle around getting the item to move in exactly the right direction or worry about decelerating too soon or too late. I can NP things to exactly where I want very quickly and easily, correcting any navigation errors in moments. Small objects are so easy to move around now that my using "float" to describe the action rather than "carry" is starting to become true.

I can also change the shape of NP-fingertips more flexibly than I could before, including making a four-inch wide concave bowl. One of those can lift fourteen pounds unassisted, which makes carrying small items around very easy. I'm very experienced at carrying things between pinching fingertips, but a single bowl is simpler and more elegant.

[As an off-topic digression: what English word has its first two letters mean a man, its first three letters mean a woman, its first four letters mean a great man, all but its last letter is a path to destruction and death, and the entire word means a great woman? I've been using most of it recently, so it shouldn't take you long to solve. I'll give the answer at the end of the chapter.]

When Julia finished rewarding her hero, I finished explaining the other properties of sight blobs:

• Unlike what Julia already knew about my abilities, sight blobs could be sent out of my line of sight because they gave me a new line of sight, with all that implied for where I could use all of my abilities: I'd been able to NP her in the hospital's waiting room because I was using a sight blob to see her.

• Their maximum range was five hundred feet, but that reduced if I didn't know the area well, if it was laid out in a complex way, or if there was solid matter between me and the location (such as walls or the floors of a multi-story building). Near the current maximum range, the vision quality degraded quite quickly, until the blob self-canceled.

• I could use them to read the eight screens at once, by making a sight blob of roughly the same size and shape as the wall of screens.

"WOW! That's INCREDIBLE. Five hundred feet is a LONG way."

"That requires ideal circumstances: outside on a sunny day with a clear line of sight all the way. Inside a building, the walls, doors, and corners all reduce the range considerably. Sight blobs can move vertically too, but passing through solid floors reduces my range even faster. In the hospital I could only go up or down three or four levels."

To my surprise, Julia asked for more details about how I could read eight screens and study eight subjects at once. I'd expected her to ask me about that sooner or later, but I was amazed it was her very next question. I'd expected her to mention the obvious use of sight blobs: to perv on girls. But she never mentioned it. Girls think WEIRD!

"I just make one giant sight blob, like a giant eyeball. It's big enough so that it can look straight ahead at all eight screens. That way I get one clear image in my brain, which completely does away with the need to slowly move my real eyeballs back and forth."

"But how on Earth can you think about eight subjects at once?"

I waved my hand dismissively, "That's no big deal. I've been able to read two books or two screens for ages, and I probably would've been able to do more if I'd known about sight blobs earlier. I don't think that's anything miraculous. I wouldn't include it in my list of 'special' abilities. It's just because I've got a very smart brain. By the way, I haven't quite reached eight subjects yet."

If the environment was distracting, such as in class, then I'd 'lose' two minds: one to be on duty, and the other to maintain the sight blob and monitor the environment, respond to anyone talking to us, etc. That'd leave six minds for reading. It takes only one of my minds to be centered to enable my ki abilities to work, exactly as for every other aikidoka, so if I had all of my minds active and trying to maintain center, then all eight would have to lose center for our abilities to fail. But in our training for active centering, we have only one mind try to hold center. That way, when it loses concentration we immediately know it, making it easier to know what went wrong, and easier to improve. We'll probably continue with that approach when we're trying to study with eight minds reading, which will mean we lose center more often since it'll be quite easy for one mind to get too interested in what it's studying, especially with something as interesting as math.

Julia dismissed my attempted distraction of my not reaching eight screens, with, "You'll do it. You can do anything." Which could safely be classified as an exaggeration, and not a small one either. [[Only a small one now.]] Julia added, "Why don't you get another row of screens, so you can do twelve subjects at once?"

"My brain can't handle more than eight." I'd been hoping to avoid this issue, but here it was anyway.

"Why not try to increase it again? Being able to study even more subjects would be very useful. Light blobs, sight blobs and some of your other things don't have much practical use, but increasing your studying rate another 50% would mean you could do another degree next year."

Julia was seriously excited over the prospect. I knew I could order her to drop it, but I also knew she'd get frustrated by my not improving my studying rate. I tried a halfway answer, hoping it'd be enough. "I need to explain the difference between potential ability, and actual ability. To give you a silly metaphor, if I was already good at playing the piano, and then I grew a third arm overnight, that wouldn't instantly make me a 50% better player. I'd have to work out how to take advantage of it, practice using it, etc. Potential ability is the maximum anyone can achieve, actual ability is how much they do achieve. Do you understand?"

"Sure. Anybody can train at a sport and improve themselves, but some people have more potential than others. I have very little potential as a basketball player, for example."

"Yes, good example. When it comes to thinking of different things at the same time, eight is my potential. My actual ability is somewhere between 6 and 7.5 depending on how much distraction is going on. I will try to increase my actual ability to eight because you're right that as many as possible would be useful, but eight is my maximum potential. I cannot increase that any further, no matter how hard I tried."

"You know that for a fact?"

"There's no doubt whatsoever. I'd love to be able to read more screens at one time, because I could either do another degree, or do the same two degrees in less time and have more sex with my wives."

"Haha. I guess that would be a good incentive. I guess I'll have to be satisfied with your 'only' doing two degrees next year."

"Yeah. Sorry about that. I'm only human after all."

"You're getting so amazing that's becoming hard to be sure about."

"I never knew you were interested in science fiction. My opinion of you just rose even higher, haha. I'm positive I'm human, but that still leaves the deluded possibility, as in the Matrix."

"The movie? I never saw that."

"My opinion of you just dropped back again. Don't worry about my Matrix point. I'm sure I'm human. You could ask Mom where I was sixteen years ago. That'd be pretty good proof. If you want, I'll give you a sample of my sperm - in a test tube I mean - so you can send it to a lab specifically to be tested for what species I am."

"Nah. It's all right. I don't really believe in aliens anyway."

"Oops. My opinion of you just dropped again. How can you not believe in aliens? The Universe is billions of light-years across. That's so huge there MUST be aliens."

"I think all the talk about UFOs and flying saucers is stupid."

"I agree with you, but that doesn't disprove aliens. It just means none of them buzz around the Earth in flying saucers."

"I'm sorry I mentioned them now," confessed Julia. "Let's get back to talking about something interesting, like what all your plans are. I need to know all of them so I can make plans to help you."

"Not because you're nosey?"

"Haha. Okay, maybe that too."

I was glad my half-answer about why I couldn't read more than eight screens had worked, although via a route that'd caused Julia to reveal inexplicable attitudes and disappoint me slightly (hehe). I guess she must have spent too long thinking about clothes, and not long enough wrapping her head around the awesome magnitude of the Universe. [[Julia is eating her words about aliens now. Well, she's not, but only because she's far too busy talking about all the other new things I've just showed her. But she should be eating her words, especially because I showed her some truly bizarre aliens, i.e., species that don't have clothing stores.]]

I described my main plan for how to get the parents to bless our three-way informal marriage, and the spin-off plans. Julia was happily engrossed for quite a while, suggesting additions and improvements. I asked her, "What can you tell me about your parents' beliefs about the source of my abilities, and their attitude to my having babies with Carol?"