Chapter 242: The First Saturday of Summer Vacation

Saturday, June 18, 2005

Two and a half hours of sleep is a ridiculously short period. If I go to bed at 10pm, then it's only half past midnight when I wake up. The night's barely started and I've already finished all my sleeping.

I decided to go for a run. Ever since my last merge my body had felt more energized. Not dramatically so, but it was noticeable and I was very curious about it. Now that my casts were off, and my leg seemed unlikely to break in half again (I'd take my cellphone with me just in case it did), I wanted to find out if my optimal running speed had changed.

I dressed in some running gear then headed out. If my optimal speed has changed, I wouldn't be able to determine its exact value because I didn't have a measured distance to use, but I knew what my previous optimal speed felt like, so I'd be able to roughly estimate how much faster any improvement was.

I ran for a while at my previous optimal speed, to make sure nothing had happened that was even weirder than my being able to run a marathon in sub-world-record time without getting fatigued. That was fine, so I sped up about 10%

After a while of no fatigue, I sped up again. Then again. Then again...

I started having trouble speeding up any further, and not because I was getting tired.

^

[[Sustainable running speed for short and medium distances is not limited by available energy. Long-distance runners use orders of magnitude more energy than a sprinter who runs himself into apparent exhaustion in ten seconds. Sustainable running speed for less than 20-odd miles (when "the wall" becomes an issue) is limited by getting enough oxygen to the muscle cells so they can burn the sugars stored there to extract energy from them, and by getting the waste products from the chemical 'burning' process (such as lactate) away from the cells. With insufficient oxygen or waste removal, apparent exhaustion occurs because more energy cannot be obtained until those two limits are removed.

Living cells interact with ki, which is why ki is called a "life-force". Normal humans and other animals, having only one mind, receive only a minor supply of ki, which means the ki's interaction with the cells is also minor. That's not the cells' fault. Back when I had four minds, my optimal rate was determined by the speed of my body's normal physically sustainable jogging rate (i.e., how fast my body could supply oxygen to the muscles and remove their waste products), plus the additional speed gained from the supply of Universe-sourced energy. If I ran faster than my optimal speed, the energy had to come from my body, which consumed oxygen and accumulated waste products faster than my body could transport them, so fatigue built up. If I slowed to below the optimal rate, then my body's systems caught up and the fatigue drained away.

My previous optimal running speed was determined by the amount of sustainable energy I got from two sources: my body and the Universe. By coincidence, they each provided roughly equal amounts. My running was previously powered half by my body and half by ki transformed into cellular energy. I now had twice as many minds and could produce four times as much ki as before, so the second factor was now four times better, so my cellular energy supply went up from (0.5 + 0.5) to (0.5 + 2.0), so from 1.0 to 2.5, a factor of 2.5.

My previous optimal rate of 15.45 seconds per 100 meters was - as far as energy supply was concerned - now 2.5 times faster, so 6.18 seconds per 100 meters. Energy supply was no longer the limiting factor; instead I was now mechanically limited, so could run at my maximum possible sprinting speed for as long as I wanted.]]

^

I spent the last part of my experiment sprinting as fast as I possibly could. I kept it up for fifteen minutes with no sign of fatigue, being amazed at the improvement. I'd been hoping to be able to run noticeably faster, say 5 or 10%; but endless full-tilt sprinting was amazing.

I'd been worrying about someone seeing me run so fast for so long, so I'd been running an erratic course rather than repeated laps around my home's block, and I'd also been looking around in case some curious person was following me in their car. There'd been no sign of problems, but after fifteen minutes I didn't see that any risk was worthwhile, so I slowed down and jogged for home.

#1: <I guess our 100m sprint time might be something like 12 seconds, although never getting any muscular fatigue might improve on that. That means our marathon time is reduced by a factor of 12/16, = 0.75. 75% of 110 minutes = 82.5 minutes, or 1 hour 22.5 minutes, so almost an hour under the current record. If we could run 100m in 10 seconds, which MIGHT be possible if no muscular fatigue helped a lot, then 10/16ths of 110 minutes is 68.75 minutes. So a one-hour marathon would be out of our reach. That'd need more than a 10% improvement, so less than 9 seconds for 100m. I don't think we could do that.>

#5: <Possibly we could if we used NP to push us or lift some of our weight. We'd have to experiment to find how best to do that. I suspect it'd be tricky, because giving ourselves a 110 pound push on the back when we're already sprinting flat out could very easily cause us to be "flat out" on the ground.>

#6: <Yeah. The limiting factor is probably how fast we can move our legs forward for the next step. Maybe we could use NP to push them forward faster, but that'd be a very weird feeling and pretty tricky to get right when running full speed.>

#3: <There's nothing important about breaking a marathon in an arbitrary unit of time, and I can't see that we'll ever need to sprint that fast. We're going to be able to outrun people anyway, especially because we can give them 50kg ankle-taps.>

#4: <Agreed. Donna and Ava would be gobsmacked by this development, although I don't want to even think about showing Donna until she grows up. Ava would be amazed if she saw us sprint a whole marathon, but I can't see much point in showing her. Maybe if it comes up naturally, somehow.>

#3: <Yeah. Changing the subject, what do we do after we get home? Go do some studying at Julia's as usual?>

#5: <Seems wrong on the first day of summer vacation, but I can't think of anything else to do.>

#2: <Do you think Mom might object to our driving on one of the previously forbidden nights? She might object even stronger now that school's over because we had no urgent need and she might worry about seniors driving around drunk from their end-of-school celebrations.>

#6: <I'd like us to be able to be more independent of Mom, so let's take the risk by doing it, but play safe by leaving her a suitably worded note.>

#1: <Back to running. We can probably run world-record times for distances down to a mile. There are 1,760 yards in a mile, so about 1,600 meters. If we could run 100 meters in 12 seconds, then it'd be 16 x 12 = 192 seconds to run a mile; 3 minutes 12 seconds. I think the world record is several seconds under 4 minutes, so it looks like we'd blow that out of the water too, presuming the 12 seconds per 100 meters estimate is reasonable. Running around in circles quickly might be a good way for us to earn money if we need it. There's no NP to show up in any slow motion replays, no drugs, etc. Just all the usual competitive crap and dipsticks like Mr. Millane.>

#2: <And more highly intelligent questions by reporters. Somehow I'd rather find a way of making money that wasn't athletics. Being in the public spotlight is a pain in the ass no matter which way you look.>

We left Mom a note outside her bedroom door:

Gone studying at Williams' as usual. Prof and Vanessa want me to do two degrees so don't want to lose the time because of the 'No driving on Friday or Saturday nights' rule, especially with our going to England soon.

We should discuss the No Driving rule, so I know if I have to stay at Williams' those evenings.

I'll call you after breakfast.

Love,
Mark

I figured that'd guilt her into forgetting about the rule. By the way, the family trip to England was definitely on, the date yet to be determined as Mom was still arranging it with her parents.

I was glad Prof and Vanessa were back in town for several reasons, one of which was that I wanted them to get some things organized for me at OSU. I'd finished Calculus 252 before the exams had finished, so I was now studying:

• Calc 253 and 254. They could be studied together, as 252 was the only prerequisite to both of them.

• Physics 211, which is fun.

• Math 341 (Linear Algebra). This is a second year course, so OSU's numbering system seems a little messed up. I was surprised the Math department had gotten confused between two and three.

The main problem was that I was studying only four courses because I had to complete these before I could do any of the others. That meant I had to allocate seven minds across four courses, so three minds were starting in the middle somewhere. That was inefficient because they kept hitting stuff that the first mind on that course hadn't gotten to yet. What I wanted was to be able to access the BCC and Business courses. That'd give me plenty of independent choice, so I'd easily be able to find seven courses to do.

After some incredibly productive studying - having eight screens more than compensated for the problems - I spent some time working on simultaneous sight blobs again (simultaneous with either another sight blob or my eyes). That was something I REALLY wanted to be able to do, but as usual, I failed to achieve any progress.

So far the only things I'd been able to do with sight blobs were:

• Find some keys with them, which had been a MIGHTY good thing to do!

• Have roughly normal vision through one if I closed my eyes, which was great for looking at eight computer screens at once, or for getting a close look at something farther away.

• Have a 360-degree vision blob with my eyes closed. It was quite easy to do, but misleading, or very misleading if anything moved, or VERY misleading if I moved.

• Horribly confuse myself with superimposition if I had my eyes open or tried multiple sight blobs.

It was great being able to send my vision hither and yon, but they had many annoying restrictions, especially in having to have my eyes shut to use them.

After failing to make any progress with sight blobs, I spent a couple of minutes trying to think of a way of making a "Sound Blob". I could think of three possible avenues:

1. Making what was literally a "Sound Blob", a remote ear that could send me what it heard.

2. Using a sight blob at the remote location to see the air vibrations caused by sound, and somehow translate that into whatever the sounds were.

3. Using an NP-fingertip at the remote location to detect the sound waves, by vibrating as a microphone does. I knew NP-fingertips were subject to wind resistance, so a zero force, max-sized, ultra-thin NP-fingertip should vibrate back and forth. Being massless, the "ultra-thin" was only necessary because fingertips had some internal flex resistance.

A quick google (Julia would be proud) taught me that humans hear sounds in a range from 20 to 20,000 hertz. I certainly wouldn't be able to see or feel thousands of vibrations per second, let alone reproduce them with another NP-fingertip near my ear. That pretty much sums up the situation: sound blobs seemed to be far beyond my capabilities. I got nowhere.

Julia came in while I was busy getting nowhere, which was a good place to stop, especially because we had a busy day car shopping ahead of us.

At breakfast, I talked to Prof and Vanessa about getting access to the Business and BCC courses online. Prof said he'd get it done through OSU's President.

Prof also explained a little problem, "The lectures you'll be reading were all for last year's courses. In the coming academic year the lecturers might make some changes, especially if a course gets a new lecturer. Obviously the exams at the end of the year will be based on the latest lectures, not the ones that are online now. Probably something like 90% of the learning would be the same though, so it'll still be worth your while studying the ones you are, but you'll have to review the new lectures as they came out. Which reminds me that I'd better make sure you get access to where the old lectures get archived, because they'll be taken down soon."

"I don't mind doing it the way you described. It's the understanding time rather than the reading time that makes doing the lectures so slow. It'd be quick to read a new lecture that has 90% of the same material."

Vanessa added, "We need to have a meeting with the Dean to discuss how to schedule your exams because waiting until the end of the year and then having you take something like sixty or seventy exams doesn't seem practical to me." [[Vanessa said "President" as that's the title used in this w-dimension for the top dog of a university, but I'll substitute "Dean" in this document from now on later on the actual President - of the country - features prominently in my autobiography. Having two Presidents being referred to would be confusing.]]

^-- "There are also potential problems with the BCC and Business courses. Math courses might be almost unchanged from year to year, but subjects like Marketing will change much more, possibly substantially. I think we should talk with the Dean, then for him to ask the lecturers for the first and second years' courses to stick with last year's material as much as possible. By the time you get to the third year courses it'll be far enough into the academic year that you should be able to cut over to the current year's lecture notes. What do you think, Mark?"

This was a good opportunity to raise something I'd been thinking about. The second year college courses I'd started were looking to be no harder than the first year courses. In fact, they even seemed easier so far, which was weird. As part of convincing me to do two degrees, Prof had insisted I wouldn't have serious troubles with third and fourth year courses. I hadn't really believed him then, but I was starting to now. He'd also said my doing two degrees wouldn't freak people out too badly - not like my NP would - because super-genius was just more of an existing human ability. I'd have to tell people I only slept for three hours a night to explain how I had time to read so much, but there wasn't anything superhuman about that either, as quite a few people needed considerably less than eight hours of sleep per night. Next year at school, I'd only need one mind to listen to the teacher (actually, about one-third of a mind, because school teachers are so slow and repetitive), so the other seven minds were going to be bored stiff if I didn't think of something else to occupy them with. I could work on my college courses during school hours, but that'd result in my finishing all the reading well before the school year had finished.

I said, "Let me expand on your question somewhat. I've been averaging about three weeks per course per screen just working during my early morning sessions. You said 'sixty or seventy exams'; seventy is an easy number to work with because I use seven screens. Seventy courses for seven screens means ten course per screen. At three weeks each, that's thirty weeks to do them all. Call it roughly half a year to finish both degrees. Prof's said I'll need to go into OSU for various reasons, such as Physics 211 requiring lab work and the BCC running course will require that I show them I know how to run, etc., but all of those visits will be during the day so won't intrude on my early morning sessions, so the half-year calculation stands.

^-- "I won't need to eat into that time to catch up with my schoolwork because I'm expecting that to be boringly easy. It was fairly easy back when I could only read two things at a time, but next year I'm going to be able to read seven and I'll only being doing one grade at school, so I'm going to get very bored if all I do is schoolwork. I'd like to do some of my OSU studying at school. I can have one eye on the teacher, and six eyes - as it were - reading OSU material. Carrying my computer system and six of those big screens back and forth to school every day isn't exactly practical. Even buying another such system for my use at school doesn't work because we change classrooms every period. I've thought of printing out OSU's lecture notes to take to school, but six piles of notes are impractical too."

^-- "If I don't do any college studying at school, I'll still finish the first two years of the two degrees by the time summer is over. You said that by the time I'd be ready to start the third year courses I'll be able to use the current year's online notes, but it's not going to work that way if I'm ready for the third year shortly after OSU reopens. If I can study OSU material at school somehow, then I could double the speed I'm getting through college courses, so I'd finish both degrees about two months into the year. In short, I've been wondering whether I should do three degrees next year."

^-- "I probably can't wait until I've finished the first two before I start the third, because looking at the way the BS is structured, it's often hard to find seven courses that I can do at one time. Presumably other degrees might be like that too, so it'd be better if I could do all three degrees at the same time, so I can get the maximum use out of my multiple-screen studying method."

I had more to say about wanting to overcome the problem of how to do OSU work at school, but I had to stop because Julia looked like she was about to wet herself with frustration if I didn't let her speak. So I shut up, creating a momentary silence which Julia very enthusiastically and noisily filled. She was VERY happy with my news, and gushed about how incredible ... yadda, yadda.

When Vanessa could get a word in, she said, "I think it should be easy to get your school to build a small glass-walled office in the back of a classroom for you. A six-screen computer system could be set up in it and the teachers would come to your room rather than you go to them. It's been a long time since I watched school lessons being taught, but I imagine that's doable?"

"Ahh. It's not normally done that way, but I guess it could most of the time. The teachers have resources in their rooms so they can grab what they need during a lesson, but they don't do that often and they could often anticipate the need and bring it with them to my classes. The obvious exception is science labs. I'll have to go to them of course, but that's not a big deal. Would school really spring for the cost of setting up an office just for me? It'd be pretty damned expensive with all that computer gear."

Vanessa said, "Between the school, the Corvallis and Oregon Boards of Education, OSU, your parents and us, I'm sure the money could be located, especially if we wait a couple of months before we ask them, and you've got the number of courses finished that you indicated. What did you say? 'Three weeks per screen per course? That'd be seven courses every three weeks, right?"

"Yes. So twenty one courses in two months, more or less, depending how much time we spend in England."

"That's roughly double what most college students do in a year, so that'll get everyone's attention."

Prof said, "I've been thinking about your not wanting to finish the first two degrees before you start the third. It seems to me you should be able to do the first two years' courses of the BS and BBA," (BBA is Bachelor Business Administration) "and then starting a third degree. You could prioritize its courses so it caught up with the other two by the final exams. I'd prefer to see that you can keep up with the workload and pass the first two years' exams comfortably before trying for a third. Plus how long it takes you to do the first two half-degrees will enable us to easily work out whether a third degree is achievable by the end of the academic year."

"That's fine, but I thought I'd have to wait until the end of the year to take the exams?"

"You might have to, but at the least we could get the lecturers to give you some tests to confirm that you've learned the material. That's all we really need to know. We should do that regardless of whether you start a third degree or not. You'll know whether you understand the material, but OSU would like confirmation of that because it'll need to do a lot of additional work to handle you."

Vanessa added, "I'm worried about burnout. You're talking about a prodigious amount of work, Mark. I thought two degrees was in danger of being excessive, but surely three must be?"

"Actually, it's far easier than you think. My studying more than one subject at a time is essentially the same as everyone else thinking of multiple things at once; like this conversation, keeping track of the time, planning what you want to do today, and huge numbers of other things that everyone does simultaneously. I can direct those extra thought processes at a computer screen and study with them, but I'm really only doing the same amount of thinking I'd normally be doing. Maybe it's a little more focused and intense, but it's not even twice as much effort as normal, let alone seven times. It's just aimed at more productive subjects. I'm more worried about getting bored than getting tired. Provided I enjoy the courses it'll be fun rather than work."

Andrew said, "If you take all your exams at the end of the year, you'll have something like a hundred of them. Doing three, 3-hour exams each day will take thirty four days. That's nearly two months if you take the weekends off. That wouldn't be practical, would it?"

"I could probably do six exams a day. That halves it to seventeen days, so three weeks, more or less."

Andrew exclaimed, "You could do six exams a day, day after day for seventeen days! If I tried that, I'd end up in a padded room."

"It's easy for me. My memory has gotten so good that I'm not bothering to take notes anymore. I'm memorizing the lectures as I'm reading them, so I won't have to do any reviewing before the exams. And doing the exams themselves is much less of a worry when you know you've got the whole subject memorized."

Prof said, "I must admit to being very curious about your two college results. They'll be a good indication."

"Yeah, I'm curious too."

Robert said, "What bugs me is how it can be physically or mentally possible for you to study from seven computer screens simultaneously. Leaving mentally to one side because I'll never understand your intellectual ability, how is it physically possible to read seven screens with two eyes?"

Prof and Vanessa looked at me to answer, so I said, "All the screens are in my field of view, so I just have to be able to concentrate on them individually, which makes it mainly a mental process. If you could think of seven different subjects consciously at the same time you'd probably find it quite easy too."

"I doubt it, but I'll take your word that you do."

I said, "That reminds me that if we can get that little office built, it'll need to have wooden sides and only glass to the front, otherwise my classmates are going to see me studying six screens at once, and that's going to cause too much talk. I'd rather keep that as low key as possible."

#1: <Yeah, especially because they won't see what's making the screens scroll, so we'd have to hide the Scrolling Keyboard. On the floor under the desk probably, so no one can see it.>

#3: <Good idea. Let's put the one upstairs on the floor too, just on the small chance that someone peeks in the door when we're studying.>

Julia asked, "You haven't said what you want your third degree to be?"

"Ideally another BS but in Physics. Can someone do two BS degrees in different subjects, Prof?"

"It's unusual, but it happens sometimes and is perfectly valid. Physics would be a good choice for you."

Back in Seattle, when we'd first talked about my doing a second degree, I hadn't pushed Physics as a possible choice. But since then I'd gained motivation from my failed experiments in getting multiple sight and sound blobs working. Not only because I'd like to reverse those two failures, but also because they highlighted that I had very little understanding of my abilities, and it'd probably be a good idea if I did something about that. Since I'd gotten back home from the hospital, I'd confirmed that I could study seven subjects at once and cream exams, which gave me the confidence to suggest a third degree now.

I could see Prof understood why a Physics degree suited me, but I don't think Julia had worked it out. The Boys had no idea since they didn't know I had any special abilities. The only weird things they knew about me were that I: had independent control of my eyeballs, had a bizarrely high and flexible intelligence, had cost them some money by learning 8-ball astonishingly fast, and could run a marathon faster than the world record - none of which explained an interest in Physics.

Julia said, "You're already doing a science degree, so wouldn't it be better to get some balance by doing a BA or maybe Law? There are many Arts courses that could be of use to you, including several of Mom's."

"And I might do some of them, because every degree allows or requires a few extra courses outside of its main subject. Or I presume OSU would let me audit them if I wanted to, or Vanessa could simply bring the notes home for me to read. I want to do Physics. It's my second favorite subject close behind Math and I'm interested in several areas of physics." I used a couple of NP-fingertips to squeeze her nose, to remind her of my abilities.

"Oh. Okay." Julia agreed, as it's hard to argue with a nose squeeze.

"I'm trying to imagine what you're going to be doing in five years," said Andrew. "I haven't got a hope of guessing that, but I'm sure it's going to be something very impressive."

"That's for sure!" agreed Julia. "I don't even know where he's going to go after he graduates. THREE degrees! That's amazing. A normal person would be thirty by the time they'd done that, but he'll only be sixteen."

Prof corrected, "With cross-crediting, especially in the two BS degrees, it's more likely to be nine or ten years work, Julia, not twelve."

"Twenty eight then. Even though you've watered down my story, that's still very impressive. The kids at school were very impressed by Mark doing two or three college courses. Two or three degrees is going to blow their little minds."

Vanessa said, "I doubt they'd grasp it, Julia. But if they did, it'd most likely frighten them off. You might want to stick to your current story that he's doing a BS in Math. That's enough. You're not going to gain anything by adding more, and you could cause trouble."

"You're right, Mom."

The rest of our breakfast conversation was less insane. I phoned Mom when it was over.

She told me I needed to work on making my attempts to manipulate people more subtle, but she agreed with my note, so the "No Driving on Friday and Saturday Nights" rule was officially canceled, after Mom warned me to be careful of drunk drivers, because that's what moms do.

Prof and Vanessa were going to have a busy day with visitors, so I wanted to escape in case I got roped into "What's it like to be tortured?" and "What's it like to think you're about to die?" conversations. They'd remind 3B of the horrible disaster that'd happened in their dimension, so we very much didn't want to sit through polite conversations about it. Julia grabbed her car notes and we made an early departure.

During the drive home, where we'd kill the hour or so until the car lots opened, I abided by my decision to tell Julia everything that I could, so mentioned that my marathon time was now about half an hour faster.

"WHAT! Did you say 'half an hour'? As in thirty minutes?"

"Yep. That's getting reasonably impressive, isn't it?"

"Weren't you already fifteen minutes under the world record?"

"Something like that, yeah."

"So now you're forty five minutes under?"

"Thereabouts. I went for a run this morning, before I came to your place. I didn't have a measured distance so I only estimated my speed, but I should be able to do a marathon in about one hour fifteen minutes or so."

Julia just shook her head. She was amazed and thrilled by my doing 50% more degrees next year, but reducing the world marathon record by another 25% didn't mean much to her. Nor to me either, come to that.

We chatted with my family for a while. Donna had her running club, Carol was doing something with some of her friends from school. Mom and I briefly discussed my studying, confirming that it was okay for me to drive back and forth any time, provided I assured her I'd keep my eyes open for drunks who would otherwise try to ram into my car. I told her that I might do a third degree next year, but we wouldn't decide on that for a few months. It was too uncertain to catch Mom's attention, especially as she was more than a little focused on and excited about choosing our new home tomorrow.