Chapter 416: The Upgrades; Meanwhile, on the Home Front

Sunday, May 25 to Wednesday, June 18, 2008 (Continued)

My Voyage of Discovery had started seven months ago and I've not written much about my life over that time, other than the interlude to describe my SCS project. There was little point in writing about lives I was going to be continually leaving. There was also less reason to write because there was less to write about, as I focused my successive lives on my families instead of the external activities my unlucky hosts had started after their victorious removals of their Surveillance Problems.

By coincidence, the Voyage of Discovery had sailed into homeport, dropped anchor and paid off the captain just after the end-of-year exams finished. I'd CREAMED my degrees. That's a more complicated statement than it seems. When I had merged for the eighth time I'd decided to stay put for several months. I'd upgraded my computer system to sixty four screens because I had a great deal of reading to do and spare minds that weren't being utilized well. After the computer upgrade, I'd had 128 minds studying on sixty four screens for five months, so I'd screamed through the huge amount of work that all the courses for fifteen MS degrees entailed. I'd been doing INCREDIBLY well and blowing OSU and the world's other universities away, and then I'd killed myself. The Mark that I merged into in mid-May, just a month before finals, had spent all the year studying with thirty two minds on a 36-screen computer system. On the other hand, the Mark-minds that arrived remembered everything they'd learned, so it didn't matter too much that the host Mark had been cruising along previously, except that the host had already taken most of his exams. By May 17 there had been 320 of us. My discovering upgrades soon thereafter meant I'd had a very rapidly increasing number of minds, so the last few exams couldn't have been easier. Like I said, my education performance was a complicated issue, but I - however you define "I"' - had still creamed the degrees. If I'd had trouble in the recent exams, I could have quickly déjà vu'd repeatedly until I found a Mark that knew the answer - that being a technique which will be very useful in our future science careers.

I'd done all the reading and assignments for the fifteen Master of Science degrees that OSU provided, even though I was formally doing only two of them:

• Physics: Experimental Physics, Computational Physics, Theoretical AMO Physics, Nuclear and Particle Physics, Solid State Physics.

• Mathematics: Algebra, Analysis, Applied Mathematics, Computational Mathematics, Differential Equations, Geometry, Number Theory, Numerical Analysis, Topology, Probability.

I'd taken all the exams for the first Physics and Math specialties listed - ExPx and Algebra - plus as many other exams in the other specialties as time permitted, letting OSU randomly choose which custom-written exams to give me as a way of proving I was on top of everything.

In the middle of the academic year, Prof had started the bidding war for the universities that wanted me next. The competing universities weren't bidding money, although research funding was one item in their offers, but were 'bidding' how far they'd go to offer me the environment that best suited me. I had strange learning processes, I wasn't willing to be given scut work as a TA (Teachers Assistant), nor willing to work on theses that supported professors' areas of interest. For the next couple of years the plan was for me to continue to take in a huge amount of diverse information, and only when I was at the leading edge in several fields would I turn around and start trying to produce new output, hopefully amazing stuff because of how much synthesis I could do.

Despite my strange requirements, the universities had all been FRANTICALLY eager because my exam quantity and quality proved that I was the greatest math and physics genius the world had ever seen. In one sense, I was misleading them as my IQ, although into genius territory, wasn't anything special. So far my studies had been almost entirely book learning, so my lack of extreme genius had yet to matter. That it will matter later doesn't worry me because, as all guys' know, quantity is at least as important as quality: I'll have a billion or more Marks helping me produce a quantity of science that will be able to far exceed everyone's expectations and hopes for me.

On May 24 I'd discovered the non-death upgrade method, which had two important implications in addition to the FANTASTICALLY wonderful aspect of leaving me alive. First, my staying in this dimension meant I could make some serious plans. For example, I'd chosen to go to MIT in Boston, was enrolled for 6 PhDs plus several undergraduate and master's degrees, and was now thinking of increasing my workload because I have over a thousand spare minds.

An even more amazing implication of the new upgrade method is that ALL of the Marks are in the same boat. Certainly the fifteen Second-Tier Helpers that'd gotten up to at least 448 minds, but every other Mark when we start upgrading them in three months. They might start their education a little slowly with their meager 32-mind setups, but they shouldn't have too much trouble catching up when they jump to having about 1,500 minds. I want the "Universal Mark Upgrade" process to go slowly for safety reasons, so some of them should wait a few months, but the delay would be irrelevant compared to a lifetime of benefits thereafter.

I could live a life of physical pleasure - lying around on tropical beaches with dozens of bikini-less babes - while I simultaneously have a sight blob in my downstairs study with 1,000 minds working away diligently. Two things were for sure: I want to have FAR more sight blobs, and then I have to take over part of one of the tunnel's excavated storerooms and turn it into a massively upgraded downstairs study. Even when I'm in a lab or attending a guest lecture at MIT, I want to be studying, and doing that at our hilltop home would be the most secure. Being able to protect myself from bombs and bullets, as well as any of my loved ones near me, made me far less reluctant to stand out - as my MIT educational plan implies - but my reading so many screens at once while my body was miles away is an ability I need to keep quiet. The Government would freak out if they knew I could very remotely operate and read computer screens through walls and solid rock.

If I can get even one more sight blob going, then I'll install MIT's entire online database on our intranet at home so my accessing so much of it won't be trackable, and I'll leave a sight blob in my downstairs study permanently (I'll only create a much larger study if I can get multiple sight blobs going, as one or two of them don't have enough resolution to read hundreds of screens).

I'd LOVE to have far more sight blobs - having only two sight sources with 1,792 minds is TERRIBLY limiting. If I can get enough sight blobs going, I could have one on permanent overwatch for everyone in my families, which would let me keep them covered by energy sinks. And if I can develop multiple proximity blobs, then those can protect my loved ones as well, as they would let me detect almost anything untoward happening nearby. Not just people feeling worrisome emotions - hatred, anger, extreme caution, righteousness, etc. - but even just the presence of guns or explosives as I can detect different types of matter far better than airport X-ray machines. As hard as it's been to get more than two sight blobs going - i.e., impossible so far - multiple proximity blobs is likely to be even harder as the nature of my proximity sense is quite special, being wrapped up in my sense of self. Even though I have multiple selves mentally, that seems not to help me get past thinking of myself in the singular. I've spent a lot of time trying to make multiple proximity blobs, but it's proved surprisingly impossible. I blame my formative years because they deeply trained me into thinking of myself as a single mind and body. [[The Universe was blaming something else: when it came to my special abilities, it was interacting with my collection of multiple human-sized minds as if it was one huge mind. That was fantastic to me because it made all my special abilities possible, but it also automatically restricted me to having only one proximity sense 'organ'.]]

Another major change I think I want to make to my and my girls' lives - if the girls agree when I bring it up with them shortly - is for us to remain in Corvallis. I can put the "Oops, I Left My Jacket At Our Restaurant Table" plan into top gear, so I can fly across-country in minutes, removing the need for us to move away from Corvallis in preparation for my starting at MIT. Carol and Nevaeh can finish school here, Julia can continue to attend OSU for her BBA rather than transferring - although she plans to do an MBA at Harvard after she finishes her BBA here - and I'll commute back and forth to MIT. I can probably get there quicker than Dad can to his work. Staying in Corvallis would mean that we can continue to live with all our loved ones and see our friends. The world will have to get used to the Guardian Angel flying me around. With my massively upgraded abilities and new ones such as my energy sink, I have a great deal more confidence about being able to handle any problems that are likely to come up, and quite a few problems that are unlikely too.

My security will be especially assured if I can develop multiple sight and sound blobs because then America's and even the world's leading spy agencies are going to be THOROUGHLY snooped on, if not actually supervised! At the least, once all my 'spies' are in place, including on the President and all his top advisors, I'll do something spectacular in public, and then watch VERY carefully to see how the people in power react. Anyone that tries to make me or my families part of his business will be surprised by a Guardian Angel popping into existence right in front of him, to deliver a very painful, public and quite possibly terminal lesson. It'll be interesting to observe how the others in power react to that. After a few such lessons, I imagine the people in power will have some SERIOUS respect for God's servant on Earth.

Overcoming my horrendous input constraint will be my top research priority. If I succeed at that, asking the girls about canceling our proposed move across the country is next, then my beginning to do a great deal of flying in public. Meanwhile I'll enjoy bikini season (a.k.a. summer)! Life is going to be AMAZING.

My life's amazingness is not just in the short term either. As Prof has long been, I'm extremely excited about where my scientific career will take me. None of the courses I'm learning are useful yet, but the PhDs I'm going to be doing at MIT during the next academic year are going to have many elements of leading edge material in them, and the work I'll be doing after that will be pushing hard against MANY leading edges of science. With the stupendous amount of new knowledge that I'll be accumulating, the enormous multiplier of my inter-dimensional grapevine, and when I get to having people working for me, my ability to direct hundreds of them through emails, will mean I'm going to be unprecedentedly productive.

Shortly after the Mossad Problem was solved, the grapevine of Marks agreed that one of the rewards of my being the Voyager is that I'll get first pick of what university subjects I want. The rest of the Marks will randomly determine their degree specialties from as many subjects as we can summon any enthusiasm at all for, which will be damned near all of the useful ones - so excluding English obviously, but including almost every possible science, engineering and business major. Each Mark can share any dull-but-potentially-useful topics across his many minds so it won't be too onerous for any of them, probably including a few foreign languages in case of more spies and because I see my future impact as global. With a billion 1,500-minded Marks, plus however many of the currently smaller-minded Marks there are to upgrade, doing research in pretty much everything useful, and synergizing internally and externally, our collective discoveries are going to change the worlds in God knows how many different ways.

Other than the phenomenal advantage my internal and external networking will give me, my special abilities aren't otherwise directly applicable to my science career. Even with my IQ having been raised because of my merges - and diminishing returns will have limited that increase a long time ago - my abilities don't solve mathematical equations for me or give me insights into string theory. I somehow suspect that Prof will still be happy with my accomplishments though. I'll be VERY happy to prove that the parents' faith in me, and their hard decisions about protecting me, were not only right but understated my value enormously.

As you can tell, I'm very excited about my future.

^

Almost immediately after the Voyage of Discover paid off its captain, I pushed Nevaeh to visit her family in the evening to get her out of the way so I could have a frank discussion with all of my families. Unlike as has been the case with Ava, Nevaeh's deeply ingrained Christian upbringing makes her intrinsically untrustworthy. She's too irrational, too unpredictable, and too likely to try to harm us if she suddenly learns we're not 'officially' Good, because Evil would be the only other alternative that she'll see. Christians too easily see Evil in everything they don't agree with, and the truth about me is not Christian, which she'd too easily take as anti-Christian. Encouraging Nevaeh to visit her parents was the best way for the rest of us to have a long conversation about my abilities. [We are trying to SLOWLY edge her closer to the truth, but we're being very cautious. It's not clear that we'll ever get there as the final revelation will be very hard to introduce in acceptable stages. It may be that she leaves us before we get to the truth's point of no return, although there's no sign of her leaving as all of us are very happy with the status quo. It's a strange moral situation: Yes, we are lying to her, but she's EXTREMELY happy, and if we did tell her the truth, she'd be extremely unhappy while she judged us from a very Christian perspective, which is another bunch of lies. It would be great if I could disabuse her of both sets of lies at the same time, but I can't think of a way to do that. Judging by her happiness, two wrongs are currently a wonderful right, and divulging my truth or asking her to leave to avoid the ongoing deception would be more hurtful than anything else.]

The parents had a large ongoing worry about more gunmen coming after me or us. I've only written at length about two such sniper attacks and the guy our guards shot running toward the Adults' House just after my resurrection, but there were also two imminent handgun attacks on me that I intercepted myself (one guy the angel shot in his knees, the other in his head), and our security guys and the local cops have also intercepted a couple of would-be shooters. Plus there have been several spontaneous attacks from unarmed people angry at the suddenly sight of me. Some of those could have got nasty as the attackers grabbed whatever improvised weapons were handy. The parents' worry was a very real one and I wanted to ease their concerns about it.

I wanted to show them what will happen when someone shoots a gun at me or anyone near me from now on. I gathered them in the living room, warned Mom not to panic, and slowly pulled out a pistol. I let them see me pointing it at the TV, I put an NP box around all of us to prevent the sound getting out and alarming our guards, and an energy sink in front of the TV, then I pulled the trigger. The bullet stopped halfway to its target, then dropped to the floor.

[Just as heat blobs had one setting for how much energy they emitted, energy sinks had been invented/discovered with only one setting. It wasn't for how much energy they absorbed as, for an unknown reason, energy sinks were more discriminating, working on a threshold system. The setting effectively meant: "Anything with more energy than the setting has its energy reduced to that of the setting." Unfortunately, if I set it low enough to stop a bullet hurting, then the energy sink interfered with other energies that I wanted to carry on working unimpeded, such as internal combustion engines. I'd had to dial the setting high enough not to interfere with useful energies, in which case if someone did shoot through a shield, the bullet would hurt like a bitch! Chances were that we wouldn't be too badly injured if shot, but the situation had hardly been ideal. I'd been unhappy enough that I'd managed to get the Universe to let me independently control the two 'judgments' that energy sinks made. Now anything with more energy than Control#1's value gets its energy drained down to Control#2's value. Control#1 is set at a high value, and Control#2 at a very low one. We're vulnerable to someone hitting us on the head with a club, but bullets will stop almost dead and then fall to our feet.]

I explained, "I call it the 'Ava Shield' because Ava's arm's injury was my inspiration for inventing this. It functions similar to a blob, but it's easiest to think of as a shape made out of thick NP-plates. Anything moving at normal speeds passes straight through the Shield without any effect at all, but anything moving very fast, such as a bullet, will be almost instantly slowed to a crawl and will then fall to the ground normally. The Ava Shield will also block any explosions outside it from affecting anyone inside it, so we're also safe from those. Even something as big as a bomb or cruise missile aimed at our property will be slowed down when it touches the Shield." Something long, such as a cruise missile, won't pancake itself if the front of it suddenly slows down when it enters an Ava Shield. That portion of the object outside the shield will also slow down as it transfers its energy forward through its body to that portion of it inside the shield, where the energy will be removed.

^-- "I've recently placed an invisible Ava Shield over our ENTIRE property, like a tent from the walls up to a peak about twenty feet over this house. Anyone trying to shoot into our property from anywhere outside it, even from a helicopter, will have their bullets rendered harmless like I just demonstrated. I've left a 'well' directly over our helicopter pad so helicopters can land there. No one can shoot out of that well, and if helicopters try to land anywhere else on our property they'll have major problems when they contact the shield, and will have a hard landing or worse if they were coming in at a bad angle. We'll have to alert our staff to make sure they warn any low-flying helicopters to keep far enough away and only to descend onto and off our pad vertically. I'll make sure that the FAA issues a NOTAM requiring that." (NOTAM is "Notice To Airmen": a warning and advisory system that pilots receive and had better pay attention to.)

^-- "The Ava Shield over our property has a thickness of a foot. It's only things that are within that thickness that could be affected, so people can shoot guns on our property unhindered. To help protect us from the danger of a shooter on the property and from bombs placed on the property, I've put domes over the two homes and the Office, and I've created two connecting walkways over the outside paths from the Adults' Home down to the other two places. Imagine three igloos connected by two smaller tunnels. Those shields have been in place for a few hours already and none of you noticed them. You can't see them, can't feel them, can walk right through them, etc. They're undetectable unless you're going very fast, in which case you'll suddenly slow down. If you tried to you could go fast enough to trigger a Shield's effect as you entered it, so you'll be reassured that slowing you down won't hurt at all." Kinetic energy = 0.5 x mass x velocity^2, so more massive objects don't have to go as fast as bullets to have the same energy. Bullets weigh about 10 grams, so about 0.0001 the weight of a largish human, therefore a human only has to go 0.01 times as fast to have the same kinetic energy. Bullets travel over 1,000 feet per second, so a human going faster than 10 feet per second (7 mph) in the Shield's volume will be slowed. I won't be surprised if I see Donna having fun running full tilt toward the side of our houses.

^-- "The Ava Shields are protecting those buildings and our property 24/7 if I'm on the property, and they'll last for twenty seven hours after I leave the area, but then it's likely that they'll turn off. Depending on how far I am away, I can turn them back on if you give me enough prior warning, but it's time consuming, especially if I'm hundreds of miles away. It'll be best to assume they're inactive if I've been away from home for twenty seven hours. I'm trying to develop a way to make them stay active permanently but that's not easy.

^-- "In addition to protecting the property, I can also protect other things, such as I just did with your TV. There'll always be a Shield around me and whoever is with me from now on. There's one around me and each of you right now, which you're very unlikely to ever feel. I won't scare you by doing so, but I could shoot any of you or myself right now and the bullet would stop just before it reached you.

^-- "If you walk out of my sight then it's likely that the Shield will cancel immediately. I can keep the ones over our property going for twenty seven hours after I lose sight of them because they never have to move, but I can't keep one going around any of you unless I can see you or know you're going to be stationary. I can use sight blob to see you, but you know I don't usually do that and that my use of sight blobs has several limitations, especially how few of them I have. I've been trying for a long time to find a way to have more of them, but that's been impossible so far."