Chapter 360: Studying: Noumea, CNN's Tapes, New Special Abilities

Tuesday, June 5, 2007 (Continued)

Some of my families had already visited Ava in the morning, and the rest visited her after lunch. Not me unfortunately, because the parents thought my appearing in public would cause too much trouble. The town's population had quadrupled, and the last thing Ava needed was three-quarters of them trying to crowd into her hospital room to do insane things.

Donna couldn't go in the afternoon either, much to her distress. She'd visited Ava in the morning, but she wanted to visit again because she had FANTASTIC news to add about her going to Italy and Noumea. Mom made Donna stay behind to study, telling Donna, "I'll tell Ava about your trips." Donna was dissatisfied by that, but she had no choice.

Ava had already been told something else almost as important as Donna's news. In the morning, Dad had quietly told her, "Don't worry about some scary news that's going to happen tonight about home. It's a trick of Mark's. We'll be hiding out for a few days and won't be able to visit you, but it's all part of our plan so don't worry. Just pretend to worry, to fool everyone, okay?" This was about our declaring war on the US Government. It'll actually look like they're declaring war on us, but it doesn't really matter who starts a war; only who finishes it.

Ava is very used to our games and enjoys them, so her reaction was amusement. Dad ramped up his warning because what we were intending to do went beyond our usual level of "games". It was likely that the authorities would question Ava quite insistently. She was too injured to be taken with us when we went into hiding, but we thought her being away from all of the events and 'only' our young friend rather than an Anderson would stop the authorities getting too heavy with her. She has our security guards guarding her in the hospital but they'd be unable to keep the authorities away, so that sort of security wouldn't help. Dad just repeated his insistence that she not worry about us, and that she says she knows nothing when asked about what will happen.

Prof visited Andrew in the early evening, giving him a similar warning, and asking him to call Robert when it hit the fan, "Reassure Robert that we're fine, but don't mention ANYTHING about getting advance warning about it. We'll call you and Robert when it happens, but we'll have to speak as if our calls are being recorded.

Our security guards were not warned, not even Paul, so they'd be in for a very worrying time. We had no choice about that.

[A related safety issue, and quite annoying for the parents, is when we're in a heightened security level like we are now, Paul strongly advises that we travel in small groups, and don't congregate anywhere other than at home. He also prefers that Mom and Dad don't go out together, nor Vanessa and Prof. So the parents 'wife swapped' to visit Ava: Vanessa and Dad in one group, Mom and Prof in the next. The idea being that if the worst happens, then neither of our two families would lose both parents.]

Being left at home while half the parents went to see Ava and the rest of the kids were studying, I did something fairly unusual: I went to my upstairs study. I did some reading about Noumea. It's the capital of New Caledonia, and although you'd think you wouldn't want to stay in a capital city when you wanted a relaxing seaside vacation, that's where the vast majority of the tourists in New Caledonia stay. I'd seen some gorgeous pictures and read a little about the place when I'd been choosing where to go for our honeymoon. I'd settled on Ko Phi Phi, but I remembered that Noumea sounded appealing.

The whole country had 240,000 people, with nearly 100,000 in Noumea, so the city has twice the population of Corvallis (not at the moment though). The girls would want stores and fancy restaurants; the guys would want beaches where the girls could go topless. I was a guy, plus I wanted access to the coral reefs for scuba diving, and we needed a fancy hotel that could cater to the size of our group, and especially to the size of my personal group. Noumea had it all; amusingly, even a casino near the hotel that I liked the look of, although the last thing I needed was another pissed off casino operator. The hotel was advertised as five star - although the online reviews said it was more like four - and it was on the ocean and had some large suites, so it sounded pretty good to me. For anonymity reasons I sent them an email using Julia's computer and email address describing what I wanted, then went to watch some TV to catch up on what might be happening.

The good news was that when I turned the TV on, the current news story wasn't about me. That was a good sign because I very much wanted interest in me to diminish. The good news lasted all of three minutes. The Church of Galloping Ninnies had gathered in a large group half a mile from our home and were conducting a mass-exorcism in our direction. Apparently they'd been doing it for the last hour and none of us had even noticed. I hadn't gone back to Hell either, which was very inconsiderate of me.

They truly were stupid people. For a start, they're Christian. I'd read somewhere that IQ is negatively correlated with the amount of superstitious belief a person has, into which basket I include Christianity as it meets every definition and test of "superstition" that I can think of, especially after seeing the three priests dance around my chair reciting mumbo-jumbo nonsense and waving symbols in the air to exorcise me. It was identical in form to every primitive superstitious dance by tribal witchdoctors that I've ever seen on TV. I'd ask "How on Earth can a religion take itself seriously when it trains its priests to conduct rituals indistinguishable from those of a witchdoctor?", but the answer is obvious: both types of religion cater to the same human need, so they look the same. Not that I'd had much to start with, but my respect for the Catholic Church had taken a large nosedive after seeing its magic dance. I wondered if they had a magic dance to make it rain, because quite a few of the visitors to Corvallis would need a shower by now.

In addition to the church attracting stupid people, I suspect they get even stupider after they become Christians, as their preachers encourage them to not think for themselves. Seriously! They're told that faith is a virtue and exhorted to practice it as much as possible. By definition, faith requires the suspension of intelligent thought. From what I've seen, most Christians get VERY good at faith, certainly including nearly all of them that I've recently listened to on TV.

It can't be easy, but somehow the Ninnies were succeeding at being even more stupid than most Christians, by a thousand of them being PROUD of being recorded on TV while standing half a mile away from our home and fervently chanting mumbo-jumbo at it. Lastly, overwhelmingly, and increasingly temptingly, the Ninnies were proving their stupidity by badmouthing me and my Guardian Angel when their brand new, very expensive church was literally only a stone's throw away from our wall. Archangel Michael hadn't shown any compunction at all about being destructive, and the Guardian Angel had been advertised as being even more deadly and physically powerful, so how could the Ninnies be so stupid as to badmouth me and the Guardian Angel when they were obviously such a tempting and vulnerable target? (Don't bother answering; my questioning their degree of stupidity is rhetorical.)

They clearly do not want to be our neighbors, which was VERY agreeable with me, and I had a method of achieving that outcome which would be a great deal more effective than what they're doing. I couldn't flatten their church now, as tempting as that was, because I'd have to walk to our eastern boundary to be within range of their main building. There was no way I could risk doing that with the fucking UAV recording everything. I couldn't do it at night either, because the UAV's sensor pack certainly included infrared. It was a prototype plane so there was nothing definitive about its capabilities online, but it would be able to carry a standard sensor pack and the FBI would hardly have it patrolling night after night if it couldn't see then.

Despite the Ninnies begging for a response from me, it'd be best if I got my war against America sorted out first before I declared war on the Ninnies. If they don't change their tune in the next few days, they're going to get an entirely predictable - for anyone with half a brain - surprise.

[[By this stage of my autobiography you will have noticed my derogatory attitudes toward Christians and politicians. At this time - when I'm 'typing' this - I've had WAY more than a gut's full of both groups. They maligned me to an extraordinary degree, attacked me verbally and physically, even attempted to kill me several times, and have caused my families some terrible troubles. Their persecutions of us never had good reason, but were always motivated by the persecutors' arrogance, selfishness, greed, aggressive insecurity, and other reprehensible emotions. A few years ago I couldn't have cared less about politicians and I merely thought religious people were silly. I was happy to ignore both groups, but now I hate them. This is not an apology - because I consider my attitude justified - but an explanation that my attitude isn't one of blind prejudice, but the predictable consequence of their deliberate verbal and physical attacks, and obvious stupidity. Call it "post-judice".]]

Tired of watching the Ninnies be ninnies, I starting playing each of the CNN tapes about Archangel Michael, although not paying much attention to them. Mostly I was concentrating on my schoolwork. I had needed to publicly ask for the tapes so I could talk knowledgeably about Archangel Michael. To date I'd had to restrict my comments considerably, and what utterances I did make had to be prefixed by, "From what I've heard," which couldn't be said too often. I didn't really need to watch the tapes now, but there was no reason why not, as I had to be somewhere while I was studying, and in front of a TV kept me from interrupting the girls' studies.

When I'd been Ron and watching the news of Archangel Michael's 'visit' to Earth, I'd often been swapping channels and hadn't paid much attention to which one I was watching at any given moment, but I paid enough attention now to pick up several of the CNN commentators' opinions, so in the future I'd be able to say things like, "On the tapes CNN sent me, one of their news anchors said that..." and then whatever relevant point I wanted to make. It'd reinforce that I knew nothing about Archangel Michael other than by watching these tapes.

After I'd seen enough of the tapes, I kept watching TV. One contrast between the pre- and post-resurrection TV commentaries that was easy to notice was the reduction in the number of agnostics and atheists appearing to promote their non-religious theories. There were still some, but considerably fewer than before. That would make TV viewers think that such people lacked the courage of their non-convictions, but I knew that impression was mostly false. From the conversations my families and I were having with other people, we knew there was still a great deal of uncertainty, disbelief and many weird theories out there, but the TV networks weren't giving them as much airtime as they had earlier because people saying, "We're not sure"-type comments makes for Dull TV. There were still some crackpot theories being aired; the latest I heard said that Mark's body had not been found in the CIA lab because I'd been snatched by aliens and was now back in a fake copy of Ron's body; for what purpose no one could say, although the crackpot had several silly ideas. That the networks were erring toward the religious explanations pleased me because I did need to be accepted as Mark Anderson. That acceptance would gain great credibility when my body slowly transformed, but hopefully by then most of the extreme excitement will have dissipated.

Despite my moaning to Donna that nothing in my life worked out well, one thing that had narrowly escaped working out badly was the distance from the Adults' House to both the Kids' House and my secret study. The living area of the Adults' House was JUST within usable range of my secret study. Likewise from the Kids' House back to the Adults' living area. I'd made use of their being within range many times, and it now meant that I could sit in the Adults' living room to watch TV while studying, without distracting Julia and Carol at all. They were in our upstairs study, but even having me in the Kids' House might've distracted them. Given that Donna and I were in the same building, theoretically she might've gotten distracted, but there were also at least two parents in the Adults' House, so Donna wouldn't dare take her nose out of her books.

The bedrooms of the Adults' House, especially Mom and Dad's bedroom, were too far away from the Kids' House for me to see inside them. The voyeuristic possibilities weren't the issue as I have less than zero interest in that. Mom has a good figure, but it's MOM'S! I'm as likely to get voyeuristic over Mom as I am over Dad. Even less likely actually, as looking at Mom would feel wrong, whereas looking at Dad would just be boring. Prof and Vanessa were safe from me too, because who wants to look at old bodies! I was concerned about the distance between the Kids' House and the Adults' bedrooms because their being slightly too far apart could be a disadvantage in an emergency. Such an emergency hadn't happened yet and hopefully never will, but had I thought about it when we were planning our hilltop home, I would've had the Kids' House built fifty feet farther up the ridge. It would've caused it to intrude on the Adults' House's view a little more, but it would've been very worth it had an emergency happened. As it was, the two homes' living areas being in range was sometimes useful several times a day, so I'd been lucky about that.

The closer I got to the end of the schoolwork, the less often I was slowed down by as yet unknown knowledge. I'd divided the handwritten notes for each subject into several piles (how many depended on how thick the original stack of notes was), then I'd allocated one mind to each pile. So the minds reading the piles below the top one were often reading material that assumed prior knowledge. In some subjects that was rarely an issue as they had several independent chunks, but in others it was a significant factor. But as I said, that was happening much less as I got near the end. Some minds finished their stacks early and I was able to grab half a remaining stack from slower readers, bringing forward the completion time even faster.

Only one mind at a time could read textbooks, as their owners wouldn't appreciate me ripping them into smaller piles. Another approach would have been to double the textbook reading rate by holding pages upright and reading both sides at once, but that required considerably more sight blobs than I had. I 'solved' the problem of textbooks being slower reading by skimming them faster, only getting serious about reading sections of them when the mind reading the handwritten notes couldn't understand the material. That was usually because 'my classmate' (so to speak, me being semi-officially dead at the time) had made a copying error in his or her notes. The first time I encountered one of these mistakes, I flew a pen to my secret study and corrected the notes. Writing with a pen being held by NP was tedious, so I kept the corrections minimal.

I finished my schoolwork half an hour ahead of my initial 5pm estimate, flew it up the emergency tunnel toward the parents' panic room, then up a convenient chute into the Adults' House. I bundled each classmate's items together, put their address on each bundle - I'd gotten them to recite their addresses at breakfast, deliberately not writing them down as part of my proof that I was Mark now - then I intercomed security to collect and deliver them for me. I was now very confident that I'd cream the school exams, provided my war against the United States of America was over by then. That gave me five days, but that should be long enough as I was planning to use "Shock and Awe." They'd provide the first shock, then I'd provide all the rest of them and a fair bit of awe too.

^

Seeing how I've been writing about impressing my families with my constantly improving 'new' abilities, I'll take a moment to say that my attempts to develop new abilities were very much stalled. Adding infrared, radar and radio capability to my sight blobs had been amazingly easy. So much so that I'd kicked myself for not working on developing my abilities earlier. I'd resolved to get busy on that.

In accordance with my resolve, I had been busy trying to do so over the last several weeks, but not as successfully as I would have wished, although I had made some improvements.

I was NOT going to experiment with emitting high-energy electromagnetic radiation. Radiating ultraviolet light would enable me to give people suntans, disinfect water and erase EPROMS, none of which provided me with any motivation to experiment. Being able to emit X-rays and Gamma rays was even less useful and much more dangerous. I preferred not to risk giving everyone around me cancer. I could make emitting those radiations safer by tuning in my sight blobs to see them, so I could manage the emissions better, but I couldn't think of a practical use for any of that stuff. [[One use that didn't occur to me which would have been handy very soon, was having my light blobs emit a very large amount of microwave radiation to fry electronic chips.]]

I did make two small improvements to sight blobs though. The first was to give myself a really good sense of direction by seeing the Earth's magnetic field, giving me the direction of magnetic north and south, provided I wasn't standing near high-voltage power lines. My new direction sense initially required conscious use of a correctly tuned sight blob [[to extract additional information from the photons the blob was already interrogating as they passed]]. I soon became consciously aware that there's a subconscious part of human brains that has a very rudimentary magnetic sense. An evolutionary hang-over, I suspected. I wished it worked better, and soon it did, so I became permanently aware of where magnetic north and south were, which was very helpful of my brain and replaced my need to use a sight blob to sense direction. I continued to use my watch to navigate by, to double-check my new sense of direction, which was soon as good as my watch's compass. Plus, geosynchronous satellites were useful beacons because they stayed in the same place and constantly transmitted radio signals.

The second improvement I'd made to sight blobs in the last five or six weeks was a special case improvement. Previously, it was the sight blob's 'front' surface (in whatever direction I wanted it to look) which detected light. I'd improved that so now when I made the mental effort to want it to, the entire volume of the blob detected light. Doing so degraded my vision for two reasons: a photon passing through the bulk of the blob was unfairly brighter than a photon passing through an edge, and the result was a 3D image which caused a problem because my brain was set up to process 2D sight (each eye gives 2D images). It couldn't handle 3D, and I want to become capable of it because I could imagine that resulting in a massive increase in the size of my brain. What I saw was an image as if all the 3D "slices" (planes cut through the blob) were compacted into a 2D image. That caused superimposition but the images were mostly the same, other than tiny parallax differences, so all that usually happened is that my vision became fuzzy.