Chapter 302: Hollywood Makes Better Exoskeletons

Thursday, May 4 to Friday, May 5, 2006

I'd been on the job as a mechanic's helper for a week now, and was getting pretty good at it. You wouldn't want me to repair your car unsupervised, but BB was increasingly often giving me a job, telling me what to do, and leaving me to it. It was a pity for the boss that I didn't intend to hang around for long; Vanessa's garden needed me more and being a gardener paid better. The fringe benefits were better too, as the company of grease covered mechanics couldn't really compete with that of my girls.

Thursday afternoon the weather looked like it might hold off, so I asked Julia and Carol if they'd be free to take a walk with me if I returned to their home after I'd had dinner in my tent.

"Aren't you staying for dinner?"

"No. I don't want to do that too often. I'll make myself something simple in the camp ground's kitchen. If it's not raining I'll come back after dinner. If it is raining I won't turn up, okay?"

"You've GOT to get a phone, Ron," insisted Julia. "You can't live a civilized life without one."

"There's no hurry for that. I need some regular income first."

I arrived back early that evening to take the Carol and Julia for the walk, telling them, "You won't need your phones and keys, so please leave them behind."

"But what if someone calls?" asked Julia, with concern.

"I'm sure they'll be able to call back, if they're civilized."

Julia managed to put her phone down and walk away from it. We strolled down the road heading away from town, with me forcing our talk to be about inconsequential topics. There are plenty of large fields and trees down that way, so it wouldn't take long to reach a row of thick, tall trees.

Before I led them off the road, I said, "Stand still a little while please." I shut my eyes and created a large sight blob, sending it up a hundred feet and zooming around the area to look for any possible surveillance.

While it was doing that, Julia asked me, "What are you doing?"

Having thirty spare minds, it's easy for me to talk at the same time. I just can't leave my eyes open because of the visual superimposition that causes. I answered, "I'm just checking something. I'll tell you more in a couple of minutes." I didn't want to spoil their surprise. "How are Ava's grades at school?"

"She's getting by. The teachers are being as flexible as they can."

It doesn't take long to scan an area from hundred feet up when you can see as if it was daylight and can move your eyeball as fast as you want. Because we'd been walking, any CIA guys spying on us would likely have to be mobile and they wouldn't expect me to be able to see at night. (I mention these issues not because there was anything special about this particular takeoff. This was my thinking and procedure every time; I'm just giving you an example of it.)

There was no sign of any baddies, so I said, 'I'm going to show you something special. Follow me." I led the girls through a gap in the trees so we'd be out of sight of the road, just to be even safer.

"What?" asked Julia, always eager to know everything.

I suddenly remembered a line I hadn't used in far too long. It was irresistible, "You'll enjoy it much more if you don't know in advance."

It wasn't Julia's favorite line (to hear), but she didn't have much choice. Once we were behind the trees, I got them to stand on either side of me, I bent down, put an arm around them just under their asses, saying, "Put your hands around my neck and jump up so your legs are around my waist, so I can carry you both."

They liked the sound of that, so it was quickly accomplished. I formed a couple of NP-'fingertips' (not really a good term by now, but you know what a mean) to push up against the arm I had under each girl's ass. When we took off they'd get heavier and I wanted them to feel securely held. I created an NP-floor that was 4' x 4', stepped onto it, then added walls and a flat top. I wasn't worried about wind resistance for the takeoff, but I did want to shelter them from too much wind.

"See the houses with their lights on through the trees over there?"

They stopped looking at me to look at the houses I'd nodded at, telling me, "Yeah?"

"Watch them." We took off with about 1.5 g's of upward acceleration. They suddenly weighed 2.5 times as much as normal, so they definitely felt it, and their legs slid down off my hips, but I had plenty of NP force under my arm so I held them securely.

A second later we were twenty five feet in the air and accelerating rapidly upward. They could see the house lights dropping beneath us, as well as the lights of town coming into view.

"YOU CAN FLY!" screamed Julia; her loud screaming making me happy I'd put us in a windproof/airtight box.

"My NP is a LOT more powerful now. Easily strong enough to lift us."

I kept us rising while Julia and Carol yelled several versions of, "You're INCREDIBLE!" and other praises.

I leveled off at what I thought was 2,000 feet. I had used a sight blob to read my wonderful watch under Carol's ass, but discovered that it didn't work too well in an airtight box. I said, "You've felt what NP-fingertips feel like. I can now make them four times larger than before, so I've created a box for us to fly in. Reach out with your hands so you can feel the sides. They're about a foot away from you."

They'd tightened their grips around my neck CONSIDERABLY once they realized they were going up, so I expected them to be hesitant to let go my neck. But they both must've had a lot of faith in me because they both relaxed their grips immediately and stretched out a hand to touch the sides.

When they'd felt the walls, I said, "There's also a roof to keep the wind out, and a floor that I'm standing on. I'm going to keep hold of you, and I'm going to slowly crouch until your legs touch it."

When they'd made contact, I added, "Put your weight on the floor, so you're standing next to me."

They were much more cautious about that, their hands returning to grip my neck tightly before they begun to try to stand up. Slowly they did so. They found it hard to have faith in an invisible floor when they were 2,000 feet in the air, but they got it eventually; Carol being the first one to nervously take her hands from around my neck, to stand totally separated from me.

"Wow!" Carol nervously exclaimed. "This is the weirdest thing you've ever done."

"I've always wanted to be able to pickup pretty girls. Now I've picked you 2,000 feet up."

"We're 2,000 feet up?"

"Thereabouts. When I fly by myself my usual cruising speed is just over five hundred miles per hour. With three of us the speed will be slower, but I'm not sure how much. We've got a lot to talk about so we'll be up here for a while, so how about I time the trip to San Francisco and back while we talk. Is that okay with you?"

Julia joked, "I don't know how we could refuse! We're not going to get out and walk home, haha."

I explained how important wind resistance was to my flying speed, the Magic Flying Sled shape, and how I'd create a larger version for the three of us. "It'll have quite high sides and I'll run NP-straps across your waists and upper-thighs to restrain you, so you will be safe. You don't have to worry about falling out because I'll enclose the sled enough to stop that being possible. The straps are just to stop you bouncing around uncomfortably if we hit any turbulence, although sleds give a smoother flight than I've experienced in big planes."

When I fly alone my NP-plates are positioned relative to me, so they stay with me if I bounce up or down, but passengers could bounce up and down off the sled's floor. I wasn't worried about them falling out because I'd have the sled mostly enclosed so we could talk easily, but I was worried about them having an uncomfortable ride. One good thing was that turbulence was much less of a problem for my Magic Flying Sled than it was for a plane. If a plane hits an updraft or downdraft, it can be bounced up or down to a scary degree because the large, flat wings offer a perfect surface for the drafts to push against, and planes also need airflow to stay up. My sled was tiny and had no wings, so gusts of wind (from any direction) and sudden air pressure changes had far less effect, but they still had enough for me to create 'straps' of NP running across our thighs and waists. Julia and Carol assured me VERY EMPHATICALLY that they'd lay VERY still.

"Don't let the sled's invisibility and not being able to feel the roof worry you. You're not in danger of being tossed out. We'll probably spend hours flying around from now on, so getting comfortable with it would be good. You'll get tired of lying in the same position, so you'll need to move around, roll onto your back, or whatever. Especially if you need to go to the non-existent bathroom. When I need to go, I slow down to about 5 mph, stand up and piss downwind. It's going to be amusing to watch you do that. Anyone need to go now?"

Julia half-joked, "I thought I was going to when we first started going up, but I'm okay now."

"I'm okay too," echoed Carol. "Peeing over the side is so crude."

"I could create an NP-cup for you to pee in, or an NP-bedpan, whichever you prefer. It'll still end up being tossed over the side when you've finished."

"I hope no one's looking up."

"They might see a very nice pussy if they do. Getting back to creating the sled, please walk so your stomach is against this wall." I leaned against a wall, got the two girls to lean against it to either side of me, then I tilted the box over so we were lying flat. I canceled the panels I didn't need, then created the larger sled. I got them to feel its shape so they knew what they were in. I could've created light blobs in a way to reasonably well represent the shape of the sled, but that'd make us visible so was a very bad idea.

I pulled the map out from my pocket, laid it on the floor of the sled and covered it with another NP-plate. I took a compass bearing and the time, "Here we go." I oriented the sled in the right direction then started accelerating it. I put a nice heat blob over us too.

"It's warm all of a sudden," commented Carol.

"Here at Magic Flying Sled Airlines we take passenger comfort seriously, except for not providing bathrooms, meals, drinks, in-flight movies or reading lights."

"No cellphones either," complained Julia.

"No. Sorry about that, but I don't want to carry metal if I can avoid it in case it shows up on radar, and the cellphone company would have records of your phone moving from area to area very rapidly. If we did that often enough they might get suspicious, or if someone else got suspicious about us, that'd be a big giveaway that something weird was going on. By the way, I fly with my eyes shut most of the time because I can see much better that way. I hope that won't make you nervous."

When I fly by myself, I only need to push with sixteen minds to get up to the cruising speed I prefer. On this flight, I kept adding minds to the 'engine' until the sooner of either my running out of minds, or the turbulence started bothering me. It was minds I ran out of first, stopping when I had twenty seven pushing; losing one mind on duty and four for the sled. I didn't need four minds to cancel our weight, but to construct all the panels the sled needed.

It's 470 miles in a direct line from Corvallis to San Francisco (I'd bought a little tape measure ruler to use on my map's scale to give me straight line distances), and it took only a few minutes longer than 1.5 hours, so the speed worked out to be a little less than 300 mph.

^

[[The sled had 1.5 times as much frontal area as the one I used for myself, as my one-man sled was larger than it needed to be (I had more than enough force available, so there wasn't any reason not to make it comfortable, and it's not as if I had to make any effort at all to push with thousands of pounds of thrust). Drag was related to square of the frontal area, so with the same pushing force the three-person sled being 1.5 times larger meant it had 1/1.5^2 as much velocity, so 510 mph/1.5^2 = 227 mph. Drag was also related to the square of the velocity, so if I pushed with 27 minds rather than 16, then the velocity rose by the SquareRoot{27/16}, or 1.3, making 227 x 1.3 = 295 mph.

When I was by myself, I could've increased my 510 mph cruising speed in two ways:

1. Pushing with 29 minds. 510 mph x SquareRoot{29/16} = 686 mph.

2. Making the sled smaller. If I reduced it to 2/3rds my usual sled size and pushed with 29 minds, then my top speed would be 686 mph x (3/2)^2 = 1,543 mph, which is almost exactly Mach two.

Even ignoring the physical risk of going through the sound barrier, I hadn't wanted to create a record of sonic booms into and out of Corvallis, so my flying faster than Mach one wasn't going to happen. (There were no airbases anywhere near Corvallis to excuse sonic booms; thank goodness, because having the military flying all over the area would've made it MUCH riskier for me to do so.) Even more than 500 mph hadn't appealed to me because I was scared of turbulence and losing stability. I hadn't wanted a sudden gust of strong wind to make my sled spin out of control. One taste of having to recover from an unstable spin had definitely been one taste too many.

By the way, when a mind 'pushed' the sled, there was no effort required, except for a tiny amount of concentration. Ordering an NP-fingertip to push is much the same as ordering a person to push something for me: I tell them what to do, and they do it. With NP I have to keep aware of it, and continually want it to keep pushing, but that had long since become a subconscious habit. It was astonishing how easy it was after so much practice and having such an unbelievable amount of force.]]

^

We admired the Golden Gate Bridge from a safe height and distance. I couldn't help thinking about doing a loop under and over it, but as cool as that would've been it wasn't worth the risk, so admired the view some more then turned and headed for home.

We talked nonstop on both legs of the trip; especially me, catching them up with everything I'd been through, right through to my taking Ava for a flight already, my last visit to Fort Dodge, and some of my short-term plans (I didn't have any medium- or long-term plans). The one question that I had to duck was Julia's asking me, "How did you increase your powers so much?"

I'd learned the best way of answering that by now: "Sorry, that's a secret from everyone, even from you two." It wasn't worth trying to convey that there'd been a personal cost, because I could never explain it well enough for them to understand, not without actually giving away the secret. I hadn't for a moment forgotten the cost though. In three out of the four dimensions that my minds had come from, my families would never see me again. That was better than four out of four, but it was still 100% wrong.

That I'd survived in this dimension was random luck; not because this CIA and DHS were any less evil than those in the other dimensions. I couldn't do anything to those dimensions' agencies, but this dimension's had to be taught the error of their ways.

[[If you feel my killing over two hundred people during my escape was excessive, think about my anger that three-quarters of my families would never see me again. Second, quite a few of the lab inhabitants had participated in various experiments on me, with never a sympathetic look. They were participating in the long-term kidnapping, torture and murder of a child, which would be a death-sentence crime if the Government ever took them to court, not that it ever would. The lab workers who didn't have anything to do with me were still working on developing illegal biochem weapons of truly appalling effectiveness. They can't claim any moral justification because they weren't doing so for defensive purposes: I'd seen how excited and happy the staff became over minor advances in lethality, and how much they disliked an advance in a defensive measure. They DISLIKED finding ways of stopping their deadly weapons! By reading a lot of their paperwork, I'd learned that the purpose of the much smaller defensive team was to uncover problems which were then fed back to the weapon developers to fix. It'd been obvious what the priority and purpose of the facility was. Nor was there any moral justification in their providing a deterrence for other nations, as the CIA's work was being kept secret. Everyone in the lab was a heinous criminal, because it IS against American law to work on biochem weapons. Because the Government was employing them to do so, someone other than the Government had to enforce the law. I'd had no compunction in enforcing death penalties on people who were building weapons to kill hundreds of millions of people in terrible agony.]]