Chapter 282: End of Summer Vacation; Miscellaneous Tidy Up

Sunday, September 25, 2005

There's a bunch of small points I'll take care of here.

I'd had eleven déjà vu's in the 125 days since my last merge, which was starting to be a statistically useful number.

That meant an average of eleven or twelve days between déjà vu's. When they occurred didn't seem to be totally random. I'd never had two close together, for example, which a truly random frequency would've given sometimes. They appeared to have a normal distribution, as they most often occurred within nine to fourteen days of the previous déjà vu, with earlier or later than that being unusual.

Other Mark Andersons that we déjà vu'd with reported the same thing, including with all the other Mark Andersons they'd previously linked to (who reported the same with all the other... ). In other words, I had a substantial amount of data, and it seemed consistent everywhere our déjà vu recursions could reach.

The data wasn't even close to being independent though, as the other Mark Andersons' previous déjà vu's had usually been at the same dates and times, or very close to them, as ours. Not always though, just to confuse the situation. We guessed - but it was only a guess - that was because we most often linked with 'near' parallel dimensions, and their similarities to ours included déjà vu timings.

The timing of successive déjà vu's didn't seem to depend on whether the first one was early or late. If one déjà vu was 'late', the next would arrive after the usual nine to fourteen days, rather than with a shorter gap because of the first one's lateness, not like buses arriving at a bus stop.

The déjà vu's lasted quite a long time, on average just over a minute. One Mark we linked to told us that during his previous déjà vu, he and his partner had performed an experiment where the two ends of the link deliberately did very different actions soon after the link started. The link canceled much quicker than normal, which is what we would've guessed would happen, because déjà vu's somehow feel 'fragile'. We repeated that experiment a few seconds later, getting the same result.

The durations of our recent déjà vu's were a reasonably consistent 1.1 minutes, but they did vary somewhat. We wouldn't want to bet our life on their lasting even 90% of that length, as we'd nearly done when the last merge had happened. If we'd been slower to order 3B's body to die, the link might have terminated before we'd had a chance to transfer. [[As previously explained, there's no "transfer" at the moment of death. It feels that way though, and it makes no practical difference yet. If we'd been late to die, we would've lost the opportunity to merge, regardless of our understanding being wrong.]]

As far as we could tell, while we were in a déjà vu our abilities increased the same as if we'd merged. They increased by fixed amounts too, not erratically like the timings of déjà vu occurrences. Our maximum NP force always seemed to increase by exactly a factor of four per mind, our proximity range always increased by a factor of two, the number of fingertips we could create always doubled, etc.

There might be undiscovered new abilities that would become possible because of a merge, but discovering those in the average of 1.1 minutes we had wasn't possible. There was one qualitative difference we could detect in the time we had: proximity gave much better quality information. We could sense much smaller resolutions, so we could 'see' people breathing and swallowing, for example. If we ever get a déjà vu while sitting on a toilet, we'll probably be able to see the muscles at the other end working too. We could also sense people's emotions much more easily when we were in a déjà vu, including our own emotions. When I was outside of déjà vu, people have to be feeling an emotion so strongly that my emotion-sensing ability very rarely encountered such people, and when it did, the emotion was usually already obvious on their face or from the situation. During déjà vu, that threshold dropped considerably, so we got emotional feedback more often than not. That was confusing, because people are often experiencing three or four different emotions at the same time. If we ever merged again, it was going to take us a quite while to learn to read the new information.

Lastly, and most excitingly in terms of our non-déjà vu'd ki abilities, by the time school restarted we'd been practicing consciously projecting ki for five months, so we'd achieved about a 25% improvement over the unconscious amount. Our eight-mind maximum force had increased from 51.2 kg (113 pounds) to 64 kg (141 pounds). I was looking forward to the situation a couple of years from now, when I'd easily be able to fly myself around. ("Easily" in just the physics sense. In other respects it wouldn't be so easy, as it'd have to be only at night, I'd have to wear a mask and dark clothes, and be EXTREMELY careful.) If we merged today - NOT going to happen! - my 16-mind maximum unconscious ki would be 410 kg. Plus the 25% "Training Bonus" made it 512 kg (1,130 pounds). Enough to fly Carol, Julia and me together, and still have over 1 g acceleration available. The physics of it was very practical, although there were even more important practical reasons not to do it, like being shot down by the Air Force, or even more dangerous, it putting Rodeo Drive within easy reach.

The Department of Horrendous Stupidity incident scared me into action in a couple of respects. As a result of the kidnapping, I'd made a mental note to get my Last Will and Testament organized, but hadn't done so. Not that I expected to die, but with DHS's very stupid people carrying guns around, you never know what could happen, so I got my Will taken care of. Nothing fancy, just simple thirds of the net value of whatever I had to Mom and Dad, Carol, and Julia, with a variation depending on whether Carol or Julia were 'with child' to any degree.

I also followed up on Prof's suggestion that I bury some money for emergencies, although I waited a couple of weeks to make sure the DHS had truly gone before I withdrew the money.

I had three sets of three nesting airtight boxes and multiple layers of waterproof wrappings. I probably overdid protecting the money, but the thought of $30,000 of my money being eaten by worms or rotting worried me. Plus if I wanted it, then I'd REALLY want it, so overdoing protecting it was fine with me.

One was buried several hundred yards down our road, farther away from town. The idea being that if I was chased out of home for some reason, I'd have somewhere nearby where I'd be able to stock up with money.

The second I buried close to the "love-nest" where I'd taken Diana and Claire. I wanted a spot that was away from everything, but wouldn't take long to get to, and that spot had suggested itself for sentimental reasons.

The third I buried outside of Portland. If I was truly on the lam and needing to move too fast to stop to dig up the first two caches, I wanted one cache far enough away that I should be able to lose my pursuers and get ahead of them enough to have time for some digging.

I put a fourth $10,000 bundle in my safe at home, but that didn't seem to count as "money gone" as much as burying it in the ground did.

My poor bank account didn't have a good summer, what with our honeymoon, my very excessive landscaping project, my giving the mothers the money for the furnishing and decorating, and my burying $30,000 in the ground. I remembered how important having money had been when I was on the lam from Binion's PIs, so I knew I'd bless Prof for his suggestion if I was in trouble again, but I still winced at how fast my money was going. I made a mental note to keep my mind open for ideas on how to make more money. They say, "It takes money to make money," but from my experience the previous expression is a contraction of: "It takes money to make it necessary to make more money."