Chapter 403: Seventh Merge to 96 Minds; Into the Unknown

Tuesday, November 27 (Continued) to Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Arrival at the other side was much the same as usual too.

My girls and I were sitting in our study, it being homework time for everyone again. None of the girls had noticed anything, as I study by sitting motionless with my eyes closed. It's pretty easy to carry on doing that without giving anything away.

I conversed internally for a minute or so about what was happening, what we'd learned already, our lives, etc. 7A knew that someone had rolled the twelve 6s but he hadn't gotten any word of any results from the experiment, so 7B's experiences were all new to him. 7A had some differences in his life compared to the other two contemporary versions we'd experienced, but there's no fucking point in bothering to list them. [It took a few hours, but I discovered that about ten years ago, all but two countries on this Earth had standardized on a date format of "day month year" (e.g., my birthday was now the 9th of November) rather than the widely varying mishmash used in every other dimension I'd been in. That was the geographically largest dimensional difference I'd personally encountered, although I'd heard grapevine stories of bigger variances. This autobiography will stick with its usual format.]

I stood up and asked my girls, "Anyone for a drink or snack?"

I took their orders, then wandered down to the kitchen to test my new level of abilities in private.

I soon confirmed that all the abilities had progressed in the expected fashion, by factors of 1.5, 1.5^2, or 1.5^3 because I had merged with a 32-minded Mark, which had increased my number of minds by a factor of 1.5. My total NP force was now 226,000 kg (500,000 pounds, or 250 tons). It was a good thing that all of my minds were well behaved because each of them had enough force at their command to do some very serious harm.

I hadn't known about this metaphorical 'room' back when we were so stupid as to roll twelve 6s so it was officially new territory, but because of all the "look ahead" déjà vu's 7B had experienced over the previous ten days - twenty six of them, plus probably one while asleep - 7B knew what it'd be like. Our current level of ability was new to 7A and he was impressed to see how much better the abilities of 96 minds were than 64. 7A felt some excitement, but 7B was just depressed. The next déjà vu should be in around 5.7 hours and I didn't have any real hope that it wouldn't come. I was only a factor of three above the 32-minded Marks, and I expected to be able to déjà vu when I was a factor of four ahead, and probably further than that. I'd be doing this a few more times yet, unless something else intruded, like my head hopefully exploding.