Chapter 293: I Start Escaping from the CIA

Sunday, February 19, 2006 (Continued)

5B arrived in 5A's head, increasing its population to thirty two. Just that fact alone is going to make life interesting. Plus we are going to be meeting LOTS of other Mark Andersons, thirty two more of them every seventeen hours - the Universe is WEIRD!

We'd had an unconscious (meaning "natural" rather than "asleep") maximum NP force of 51.2 kg two merges ago. Now that'll be 51.2 x 8 x 8 = 3,300 kg. We've had ten months of practice, gaining 5% per month: 3,300 kg x 1.5 = 5,000 kg (11,000 pounds or 5.5 tons). I weighed about 90 kg, giving me over 50 g's of acceleration available for flying myself. If I used that much, I'd turn myself into a smear. I made a mental note not to give myself a maximum acceleration flight.

Using a 50 g acceleration isn't a mistake I'm going to make. Each of my minds has about 150 kg of force now, so when I want to fly, one mind cancels out my weight and provides the windshield, and every mind thereafter adds 1.5 g to my maximum acceleration. I'll make sure I add motive power in sequence, starting with the lowest mind number not on duty, that way we won't all start pushing at once. I'd rarely want to use more acceleration than one mind could provide. With 1.5 g's of acceleration, 0 to 100 mph would take 2.5 seconds! That's PLENTY of acceleration. Carol and Julia added together weigh not much more than I do, so I could fly the three of us with only 4 minds, leaving 1 mind on duty and 27 minds to carry Julia's shopping.

Having so much force means that flying faster than Mach 1 (760 mph) should be possible, but I've got no real idea what would happen to me at that speed. That's going to need some careful experimentation, while wearing a self-opening parachute in case I pass out. I doubt going that fast would be a good idea anyway, because the authorities would get concerned about so many sonic booms happening around Corvallis. Even if I restrict myself to 500 mph, I'll be able to cross America in a single night, which is likely to start happening soon. Fort Dodge, Iowa to Washington, DC to Portland, Oregon being my immediately itinerary.

NP-fingertips can now range from one-sixteenth to sixteen inches in width, and each mind can have thirty two of them, making 1,024 in total. That total is shared with blobs, not that it'll ever matter!

Heat blobs can put out over 2,500 watts per mind (I've never measured this, only extrapolated the value from how hot the first heat blobs had felt compared with a known wattage lightbulb). Thirty two minds with over 2,500 watts each meant close to 100 kilowatts in total! Those little, domestic, fan heaters use not much over 1 kilowatt, so I could output as much heat as nearly a hundred of them in one place. Anyone want to start a fire? (Because I do!)

NP-fingertips don't self-cancel until they're out of sight for thirty two seconds. For some reason, that goes up by a factor of four every merge, but I don't know why. [[For the same reason that I can tap four times more ki after I merge: both are the result of my 'willpower', the Universe being increasingly more responsive to greater minds.]]

My proximity range is 24 feet! Proximity is very a useful sense, so that's going to be amazing. Even more amazing is my proximity sense of myself. The detail is - quite frankly - far too detailed. I can easily see the drill hole in my head, my breathing, my swallowing, my heart beating, the muscles around my stomach working, the expansion and contraction of most of my major blood vessels. I can even 'see' the blood flowing [[blood cells themselves are far too small to sense, but their moving rapidly and en masse in the major blood vessels make them detectable]]. I could see the marrow in my bones [[a lot of new cells are created in bone marrow, and the creation process shows up particularly well in proximity]], and even the very small lump that's hopefully the start of the regenerating finger. I could sense my body WORKING! Not every detail as I'm sure there are countless small processes I couldn't sense, but I still got an amazing view of it in action. More than I ever wanted to, that's for sure! It was going to be VERY weird to be in a room with other people, because I'll be getting this much information from everyone within twenty four feet of me.

This much detail would have its uses though. For example, I thought it likely that I would've been able to 'see' any foreign object in my brain - had the assholes put one in - by the gap in the living tissue it created, presuming it was as large as I imagined anything useful would have to be. I couldn't sense any such object, so I couldn't confirm my belief, but not sensing one still made me feel better.

There were also "layers of swirling colors" (an inaccurate metaphor, but it'll do). From past experience I knew that the simple 'colors' I'd seen before had been associated with emotions, but what the much more multicolored and vibrant 'display' now meant would take quite a lot of experience to learn, presuming the new information still was to do with emotions.

My head didn't get hotter. I'd been somewhat worried about that. From eight to thirty two minds is a HUGE increase in the amount of mentation, so overheating my brain might've happened. I hadn't thought so, because I'd never noticed any increase from the earlier merges and déjà vu's. It was very nice to have that confirmed by my head not exploding. [I checked it repeatedly over the next hour or so, and it never heated up or exploded.] [[Because the heat is a byproduct of the process of burning fuel for energy, but I was tapping nearly all the energy I needed directly from the Universe. So much of it was coming from the Universe that I should've gotten colder, but that wasn't healthy or comfortable, so my subconscious used the body's homeostatic thermo-regulating mechanisms to ensure that didn't happen. In a few days, my subconscious got better at using the new level of Universal Energy, and started using it to warm my body directly.]]

On the topic of my new levels of ability, I hoped that my body was now responsive enough to achieve the disguise I needed. My body had changed a great deal back when I had four minds. Those had been 'natural' changes (i.e., bodies do grow taller, can get fitter, etc.) and it'd taken months for those changes, but how long the changes I needed now took to happen didn't worry me much, just so long as the changes were possible. Once I was out of here, I could easily lay low for a few months if that's what it took. With thirty two minds - which is a shit load more than four! - surely my body should be able to achieve the changes I need, even if they are peculiar changes ('growing' shorter) and outright unnatural (regenerating a finger). If my body can't adapt itself in those ways, I hoped like hell that not too many more merges would be necessary. I absolutely had to have ten fingers when I rejoined my families, and a prosthetic finger would never be good enough. One thing is for SURE though, I am not going to hang around here while I find out how adaptable my body is now!

It was time to get down to work, or as I liked to think of it, "Time to rain death and destruction down on the assholes."

By now, in my autobiography, you should know that I'm not an aggressive person. If jocks attack me while I'm having a pee, I'll defend myself, but I much prefer to be left to myself, especially at a time like that. I have never gone looking for a fight. The fact that I was actually looking forward to dealing out death and destruction should give you an idea what the fifteen days in this place had been like. I haven't said much about the individual events, and I'm not going to start now, but my overwhelming impression is that these people have been so dehumanized by their work that they can no longer be considered human. Surely to be human requires having empathy?

These people delight in improving a weapon so it'll kill a few more million people, and they even write reports about whether their agents can cross the placental barrier (meaning, can poison or infect an unborn baby). They show as much sympathy to the thought of killing humans as they do to the many experimental animals they kill, which is to say, none at all. They certainly didn't treat me with ANY degree of humanity. It's a very creepy feeling to be treated with TOTAL cold indifference. I treated Patch far more warmly, kindly, and with more 'humanity' than these people treated me. I was a 'thing' they were using, who would obviously be killed in due course and then discarded without a second thought. I was going to treat them with as much regard as they treated me.

I had three different ways I could choose to leave this place:

1. As quickly as possible. I could be outta here in seconds if I rushed to the elevator shaft then shot straight to the surface, bulldozing anything in my way to the side. But the evidence I'd leave behind would be extraordinary and the CIA would quickly discover that I was missing. While they might never suspect a short, ten-fingered Black guy, it was almost certain that they'd cause my family a great deal of ongoing trouble - for example, to find out whether anyone else in my family had my 'superman' abilities. I rejected this option.

2. Quickly and also quietly. From the CIA's point of view, I would've escaped in a way they couldn't identify. They might question my family, and maybe even put them under surveillance, but hopefully no more than that.

3. Slowly and very, very NOT quietly. I'd take the time to leave MASSIVE destruction behind me. I could leave so much destruction that many people's bodies would be missing, enough of them that my body's being missing shouldn't be thought of as significant. That'd make it easier for my family and me to live happily ever after. That it would also allow me to exact a great deal of revenge and remove a large number of evil people from the world would be VERY nice bonuses.

Because of the way they'd treated me, the third option had irresistible appeal. That it was also the safest for my family and me was going to make me smile even more.

I didn't need to wait for the nurse to open my door for me, as 5.5 tons of push would take care of that. If, miraculously, it didn't, I could apply the 5.5 tons on a 1/16th-inch diameter area. That'd punch a hole in most things, I imagine. [[My abilities being so incredible now were making me too gung-ho. The front fingertip would start flattening if under much more pressure than its mind could exert, and certainly wouldn't retain its shape under thirty two times that force. Nonetheless, 5.5 tons of force would have opened the door very effectively.]]

I preferred not to bust my door down with superhuman force in case the baddies discovered that fact after the fire went out and the place was made safe. To ensure death and destruction spread throughout the entire facility I'd have to severely damage all the elevator lobby doors, but that wouldn't be connectable to me specifically, whereas smashing my room's door would be, so I'd wait for the nurse to open the door.

I could hurry her up if I wanted to, by picking her up and flying her down the hallway, holding her hand against the keypad on the other side and using NP to key the password, but there was no hurry. I was quite enjoying the wait, knowing they weren't going to touch me now. (I knew I was being silly, as creating video camera evidence of a flying nurse wouldn't have been a good idea. I was just enjoying the feeling of power.)

I did a little sight blobbing while I waited, checking that the vials I wanted to use on the animals were where I expected them, and the vials I wanted for the humans were in place too. 5B missed out on the pleasure of getting some revenge before they left their previous dimension, but they wouldn't miss out here.

I sent my sight blob down to level 12 and NP-punched the heads of the few staff down there. I didn't pull my punches, so they had mercifully quick deaths. I ripped the backup generator's two diesel tanks wide open. They had been - until just now - EXTREMELY large tanks, holding a phenomenal amount of fuel, which was now a deluge all over the level 12 floor.

I went around all the level 12 places I'd decided to sabotage, wrecking the various automatic fire extinguishing systems they had (they had several, some liquid, some gas). In most cases that was best done just by turning some valves off. In other cases I crimped a pipe shut, starving all the downstream sprinkler heads. I opened the control panels of the two backup generators and ripped the guts out of them, turning then into useless lumps of metal. There was a large bank of batteries for emergency lighting, which I disconnected. I'd thought of breaking them open, but the fire should do that. Then I turned all the AC units' temperature and fan settings as high as possible, to help the fires I'd be setting later.

A quick sight blob check showed me that this shift's nurse was walking down the hallway toward my anteroom door, but she was still several seconds away yet.

I checked the caches of money, that the ID I wanted to steal was where I thought it'd be, and the clothes I wanted to steal were in the locker I expected them to be. I checked the location of the six elevator cars. They were on different floors, not side by side anywhere, so the shaft was open. I could push a button on a floor if I needed to move them, but the cars were fine where they were.

Just as the nurse entered the anteroom, I started pretending to have the initial symptoms of the bioweapon I was going to use on everyone else. I was deliberately facing the camera when my face flushed bright red. I uttered a groan, tried to step, then stumbled, falling toward the door just as the nurse was opening it. I NP-punched her in the belly to keep her quiet while I 'fell' out of the door. I used NP to pull the other end of my EEG 'ponytail' out of the machine to give me the reach I needed to leave the room. I punched the nurse on the side of the head to knock her out, removed my helmet and laid it on the floor so the ponytail ran into my bedroom. I assigned some NP-fingertips to give it rapidly decreasing wiggles as if I had fallen into the other room and was having convulsions before I died.

From Asshole's point of view through the camera lens, I appeared to have succumbed to something and had collapsed just out of his view. My flushed face before, and the ponytail of wires lying still now, would convince him that I was lying on the floor rather than escaping. All of this was for the benefit of the people who will later be trying to work out what had happened. I'll try to cover my tracks in a number of ways. The first being medical, by showing clear and normally unfakeable symptoms of the same problem most of the other people would have died from, so the authorities shouldn't have any doubt that I'd also been killed. That's assuming they see the video footage. I'll be trying to destroy that along with all the other data the CIA has on me, but I may or may not succeed at that. I'll further mislead the investigation by 'disappearing' most of the nurse and the nearby guard, thereby making my disappearance seem more natural and less suspicious. And I'll also make sure that there's a big fire in this area, further destroying evidence and creating a greater reason for my body's absence.

The speaker in my ex-bedroom started yelling questions that I felt no desire to listen to.

It was time for the lights to go out. Each level had its own fusebox, so it was the work of only a few moments for me to start at level 12 and work my way up, pulling them off the wall, one after the other.

As soon as my level went dark, I moved the sight blob to the hallway outside my anteroom, increasing the blob's size so it filled the hallway. My level was pitch black so I had the blob radiate a tiny amount of light, far too little to appear in the video camera if it was somehow still getting power from somewhere. Now that I could see the hallway's guard, I knocked him out with a reasonably strong NP-punch on the side of the head. He never saw it coming. I'd taken him down because I didn't want him coming closer while I was busy sight blobbing elsewhere. I would sense anyone coming with my marvelously extended proximity range (twenty four feet now), but it'd taken less than second to put him down, so I'd done that in preference to having an armed man on the loose.

I resumed destroying fuse boxes the rest of the way up to level 5. I had previously thought that to be the limit of my range, but I reconsidered that now because I could see the level 5 fusebox better than I used to be able to. The fuse boxes are all in the same places on every level, so I hopefully moved the sight blob up to level 4, but it self-canceled before it got through the ceiling.

I stopped my destruction to do a quick sight blob range test at a location I knew was the extreme limit of my range. I discovered that I could see with less degradation than before. I moved the blob farther away horizontally, with success for an extra ten or twenty feet. I'd spent fifteen days sight blobbing from my room, so I had a very good idea where my maximum ranges were on every floor, but now I definitely had a little more that I should've gained by being a few feet away from my bed. I hadn't noticed any increase in the long testing I'd done between the two merges, so maybe it was happening because of the excitement of the situation.

#14: <Or maybe it's because our proximity range has increased a noticeable amount now. From six to twelve feet probably wasn't noticeable in itself, but adding on the next jump to twenty four feet is noticeable.>

#All: <Agreed.>

Sirens started going off (they must have had their own power supply). My very first action, ripping open the diesel tanks, had been nearly a minute ago, but the sirens would be in reaction to the power failing on several levels. Their response had been very quick, not that it mattered. I needed to maximize the destruction to cover my body not being in the building afterward. It was going to take a while, but it was a job that had to be done well to be effective. As Mom has often told me, "If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well." I doubted she'd had destroying a top-secret, underground, bioweapon development lab in mind, but I did.

The next job would take much longer than ruining the fuse boxes. I needed to have airflow through the whole place, so the elevator lobby doors to the shafts had to be opened. Simply pushing them open wouldn't work as there was mechanical pressure on them to shut again (that was part of their design). The two choices I had were to disable the doors' mechanical workings so they could be retracted, or simply to fuck with the doors themselves. Their mechanical parts were hidden behind panels. I could easily send a light blob through the wall then create NP-fingertips to do the work, but that would look freakily suspicious afterward. It was less freaky just to fuck with the doors.