Chapter 424: Mom and Dad's Bedroom, and a Discussion About Becoming Moms and Dad

Friday, July 25, 2008 (Continued)

I teleported us into Mom and Dad's bedroom. It was a combination of two things I knew they enjoyed: their Corvallis bedroom's panoramic view, and the breakfasts we'd had high in the Cascade Range. Their bedroom was built into a high point on the ridge of a mountain range. The range was higher several miles farther north, but this was the most scenic spot. It was low enough to be pleasantly warm outside, and being below the timberline - the ridge itself was too rocky to grow trees - the 360-degree view encompassed plenty of trees and the forested lowlands out to the east and west, including a good-sized mountain lake not far to the west.

When everyone had finished exclaiming over the view and how wonderfully I'd decorated the room, I explained, "This is just one room of the three that makes up Mom and Dad's bedroom. As indicated by the bed, this is the fundamental room of the three. It's the middle of three levels built into a roughly dome-shaped rock spire. All the levels can independently revolve to face whatever direction Mom and Dad want, and to keep revolving if that's your wish. The level above is a small living room, with the glass sides extending over the roof so its view is totally unobstructed. The house can darken any part of the glass if you need shade or prefer to have the top seem more solid, or it can just as easily be changed into a normal ceiling and roof, or it can get rid of the sides and roof totally so you'll be sitting in the open air. You can have whatever you prefer, and you can change it as often as you want. Don't worry about overworking the House's minds because you can't, and it enjoys doing things for you.

^-- "This room contains nothing except the bed and bedside tables. I wasn't sure whether to put a small closet in here, but you can easily make those sorts of decisions yourself. Like the room above, it gets great views of the sunrises and sunsets. The level beneath us contains your en-suite, closets and a storage room, as well as a doorway to the outside. Your closets already contain copies of all the clothes you've got in Corvallis, and the en-suite contains all your lotions, potions, makeup and other mysterious paraphernalia. If you want, you can rearrange the rooms so a different one is on top, or you can get the house to put whatever room you're in on the top. I'll leave it for you to decide what to do if you're both here but in different rooms. There are no staircases going between the levels because you teleport like you do around the entire house. If you want to add staircases, just ask the house to do it for you.

^-- "There are several paths outside for nature walks around this area, including down to that lake where there's a boathouse with a dinghy in it. It's got fishing gear and everything else you might need for a lazy afternoon on the lake, including fish to catch. You can even cook and eat them afterward." Actually, the 'fish' weren't edible, but if any of us caught one and wanted to eat it, one of my minds would change its biology to make it delicious. That's much easier than making large changes to the living ecosystem which have to be carefully balanced with everything else in the ecosystem. I'm a lazy god; one who believes that some of the Deadly Sins are well worth indulging in.

^-- "The boathouse's storage room, like the storage room on the level below and every other storage room on Refuge, can make and store whatever you want. I've already placed lots of stuff on those shelves, but if you want something that I didn't think of, just tell the house and it'll make one for you. You can do that even if what you want is in storage. I had thought of doing without storage rooms, but I thought that it'll seem more natural for you to keep stuff somewhere rather than have it pop into and out of existence all the time, and that'll save you having to describe what you want to the house every time you want something. If you ask for a complicated item, the house might need a few seconds to locate one of them on an Earth to copy, or to invent something that works if you've asked for something brand new, but most of the time you'll get what you ask for instantly. It can be as substantial as a spaceship to explore this solar system in, or as simple as a picnic set. I can particularly recommend the picnic sets, because they'll come with a thermos that contains astonishingly good coffee.

^-- "Everything is top quality here. For Dad, I've got samples of every brand of beer I could find on Earth, including some historic and even prehistoric ones. Some of the historic brews are surprisingly tasty. I've also made a wine cellar that has one of every good bottle of wine I could find. The current era's wines are considerably better than those of the past so I'm only storing contemporary bottles. The contents of the cellar will serve as masters for me to copy whenever you order one of them. They'll age normally, so if there are some that are your particular favorites, ask the house to memorize them so you don't lose them after they age past their best. The mind in charge of the dining room is researching what wines go with what meals, so it should be able to provide good recommendations with each course, especially if you give it feedback about your personal tastes." One thing that had amazed me when we'd got rich was what a difference having wines that matched each course made, which usually required the chef to design the dishes to suit the wines. Get that combination right and the quality of the meal jumped to a whole new level. I'd put the dining room minds in charge of the wine cellar, and those minds - from every dimension with a Refuge - were having a lot of fun researching wines, beers and spirits all over the world, and creating historic copies to try too. They were repeatedly creating new bodies to taste with, sometimes getting drunk when their 'research' including carousing in Bavarian beer halls. Sober minds would stop them getting into trouble, and I'd never been able to get drunk before, so I was finally able to indulge in that teenage rite of passage.

^-- "I'll let you spend a few minutes looking around. You can say 'House, down please', or 'House, bottom level please, ' to teleport down. That's easier than 'Felicity and Steven's bedroom's living room.' Give it a try."

The females quickly conferred and agreed they wanted to go down, being eager to check out the essential facilities: the bathroom and one of the two closets.

I interrupted with, "If you all want to go to the same place, what'll work easier is if the host or hostess of the destination room - which is Mom in this case - says, 'House, take us down please.' The house has been watching and listening so it's got a good idea who 'us' means. If it's unsure about someone, it'll leave them where they are so they'll have to issue their own instruction. Try that, Mom."

Mom recited, "House, take us down."

All the females disappeared.

Dad, Prof and I stayed where we were to talk about how amazing I was now. Some of the implications of having a god in the family had started sinking in, and I spent several minutes assuring them that it really was true, and that I could really do these things, etc. I put off discussions about what I would do in the future until everyone was together again.

I could tell they'd calmed down when Dad asked, "So how do I get my new bedroom to rotate?"

"Just tell the house. It can change orientation instantly, very slowly, or you can have it rotating continuously if you like. You could have it take 24 hours for a complete rotation, or maybe 25 if you want a slightly different perspective each time you're in here, or 2 hours if you want to see the view change quickly. It's entirely up to you. Too fast might make you feel a bit queasy although that's a reflex you could ask the house to suppress. Feel free to experiment as much as you like.

^-- "Mentioning 'queasy' reminds me that there are a couple of medical matters that might interest you. I can stop your whiskers growing so you won't have to shave every morning, and I can stop your hair growing so you won't have the bother of haircuts either."

"That'd be great," enthusiastically agreed Dad. "You can restart them, right?"

"Any time you want; just tell the house, me or your bodyguard mind."

"In that case stop them now. I'll check with Fely later in case she has an opinion about my hair."

"It's done. Do you want me to get rid of the whiskers you've got? It'll feel like the smoothest shave you've ever had."

"Sure."

I did it by "canceling" - my word for turning to energy which I send back to the Dark Energy store - every millimeter of every whisker Dad had, including the lengths under his skin, then I said, "Rub your chin."

"Wow, that IS smooth."

"You've got the proverbial baby's bottom permanently now, Dad.

^-- "Prof, do you want the beauty treatment too?"

Prof asked, "There's no reason why not is there?"

"I know the girls wouldn't want their hair to stop growing because they like trying different styles, but for us guys stopping it is nothing but a time-saving gain."

"Sign me up for the full treatment then."

"It's done."

I waited for Prof to rub his chin, then I offered, "More importantly, how'd you like the missing part of your leg back?"

Prof's face registered shock. "My oh my! That's a major change. I've been without it for so long that I rarely think about what it'd be like to have both feet. It'd certainly make life easier, but some people are going to notice, especially my doctor."

"I can suppress their reactions. Just tell them you went to South Korea for some leading-edge stem cell therapy, and I'll make sure they vaguely remember reading something about it a while ago and that they accept it without suspicion and no more than idle curiosity."

"How long would it take you to do it?"

"So quick that if you blink you'll miss it. I'll just mirror-image copy your other lower-leg, graft it on and connect everything. There'll be a few rearrangements near the join because of things like your blood vessels not being in the same places in both legs, but none of that is hard. I genetically engineered and rebuilt a significant proportion of the animals and plants on this planet, so copying your leg over is a cake walk by comparison."

"Do you mind if I discuss it with Vanessa first and get back to you?"

"That's perfectly okay. There's no risk involved, either medical or social, and I can't imagine that you'd prefer to keep your prosthetic, but there's certainly no hurry. If you'll excuse the poor pun, I understand it's a big step for you, so take your time before leaping in."

"I'm doubtless being foolish not to grab it with both hands."

I acknowledged his little joke with a nod and smile, then answered, "Intellectually yes. You saw how quickly and easily I created the bodies for duplicate Donnas, so making your lower-leg is as easy as falling off a log."

I expect Julia to ask about changing her body soon. It wouldn't occur to her for a while because she'll be too distracted and thinking mostly about how to use my power to make external things happen, but it'll eventually occur to her. She's annoyed that the way she looks causes people to not take her seriously, which is about a bad a mistake as it's possible to make with Julia. She would prefer to look more intimidating - not scarily, just seriously - so we'll have some fun making that happen for her at some stage. I predict some "South Korean growth hormone treatment" in her future. They're clever people those South Koreans. They're also a good source of the fake treatments because it's difficult for people to check up on our claims.

I gave Dad and Prof a quick look at the mini-living room above, then at the bottom level where the womenfolk gushed about bathroom fittings at us until we could escape. I opened the exterior door and we wandered down the path a few yards to give them a sense of the outside of the planet. I told them, "It's 100% pure and pristine, and the animal species don't flee from us. They've never seen us before but most species would naturally flee out of caution, so I've given them instincts to be only slightly wary of us and a little curious too, as that makes them more fun. After we stand still for a little while, some of them will start checking us out." There were many bird-like species, squirrel-analogs, deer-analogs, and several others. My families wouldn't have enjoyed the wildlife if it'd looked too strange, so most of it that we'd see no longer did.

The females joined us outside, gushing over how wonderful the three-level bedroom was. I came in for some joking as they couldn't believe a "mere male" was able to design such an amazing bedroom. I might've been a god, but I was still only a male. In this case, a male who'd shamelessly copied other people's good ideas, but I didn't tell them that. To be fair to myself - a highly justifiable practice - I'd added quite a few good ideas of my own, which the house had described to the women during their poking around:

• Mirrors could show the viewer what they looked like from any point of view, as if an invisible camera was flying around them.

• The closets contained several advanced features: They expanded horizontally as much as required, making them effectively infinitely sized, which I expected Julia to strain the limits of. If necessary I'll introduce a distance-distortion effect along the length of them so females can walk along them quickly. The closet mirrors can display the finished look of an ensemble before the person had put any of it on, enabling the girls to play dress-up games more efficiently, or not, as they wish.

• The bath and shower would adjust the temperature to maximize the subject's pleasure from that sensation, could give massages, and provide instant dryness by teleporting the water away when finished.

• And in response to Mom asking me if I'd forgotten about it, I reminded her that I'd said the house would teleport away the contents of their bladders and bowels, so there was no need for a toilet. Theoretically there was no need for a shower or bath either, but I have a lot of fun in those with my girls so I'd included them.

Once the gushing about the décor was over with, Mom asked me, "Are you really as powerful as a god now?"

That resulted in me having to spend another few minutes making that point again. When the questions about what I'd do in the future started, I answered, "That's a major topic so let's wait so we can discuss it over dinner. We'll carry on with the Grand Tour for now so you'll have a better idea of my capabilities by dinnertime."

Prof used that comment of mine as an opportunity to tell Vanessa, "Mark offered to replace my prosthetic with the real thing."

"Show me," asked Vanessa eagerly.

"I haven't done it yet. This sounds silly, but I feel like I'd be losing part of me, and I feel scared of something going wrong." Turning to me, Prof said, "I know you've got amazing abilities, but I can't help worrying."

"I'll offer you a 'Try Before You Buy' deal." I created two more fully formed Profs, both with two flesh-and-blood legs. They were dressed in shorts so their legs could be seen. Everyone's eyes looked down, with the Williamses looking very intently.

^-- The new Profs stood motionless while I explained, "I haven't given them conscious minds yet. They both started with exactly the same body as you, Prof, except for having their prosthetics replaced. I've just finished giving the one in brown shorts a complete body overhaul, to make him as healthy as possible without it showing from the outside. I'm going to copy the mind you've got right now into both of them, and you can tell yourself what you think about your new bodies." I did that before anyone could get cold feet about it. (The Marks in dimensions who were just entering the little cliché duel with Prof of a few seconds ago noticed me thinking "cold feet" and decided to use it in their conversations.)

What followed was an amusing back and forth among the three Profs and Vanessa, with one theme standing out: the brown-shorted Prof RAVED about how good he felt. His comments summarized to, "You don't realize how far you've deteriorated because the process is so gradual, but getting it back suddenly is a real eye opener. You've GOT to choose this option, and then get Mark to do the same for Vanessa."

I invited everyone, "Put up your hands if you DON'T want your body to be made healthier?"

There were some quick agreements and some hesitations, which was good enough for me. I canceled the two new Profs and improved everyone's bodies. Prof's needed far more work than anyone else's because of his age and all the damage he'd suffered from being almost terminally dehydrated - much of that organ damage had been permanent, until now - so more of my minds worked on him than anyone else. Most of the changes were too subtle to notice so I hadn't bothered doing them to the brown-shorts version, so this was a much bigger job. It was a BIG job for everyone, even Donna getting dozens of minds created to work on her. I'd considerably understated to my families what I was doing.

Human bodies are, quite frankly, appallingly put together. The evolutionary process of designing bodies by trial and error has produced far too many errors, many of which have persisted through the generations. We developed from single-celled organisms into our current form with more and more functions being haphazardly added to the mix.

I can't write, "It was like building a house without any plans," because that would be far too generous. In that situation you'd know that you are building a house and what a house is. In the case of our bodies, there'd never been a final goal guiding the process, as evolution is a blind trial-and-error process. It has resulted in systems that do half-assed jobs, which requires other systems to fill the gaps, and yet other systems to counter the areas where the first two systems overlap too much. And then all those systems need a system to coordinate them, but that's often half-assed too, so it requires ... You get the idea: it's a god-awful mess. To call our bodies "inefficient" would be giving them a thoroughly undeserved compliment. Evolution does NOT result in efficient designs; it is FAR too blind and random to be able to do that. What it does is create designs that are slightly less inefficient than their competitors, whereupon they out-breed the others and then rest on their laurels.

As a simple example, I earlier mentioned how poorly our bodies handle oxygen. The reason for this is that very early multi-cellular life - not even advanced enough to be called worms - started before the atmosphere had much oxygen in it, but then plants evolved photosynthesis which proved to be immensely successful. One of the major waste products of photosynthesis is oxygen, which quickly polluted the entire planet. That caused massive trouble for animal life because oxygen was terribly toxic to their cells, inflicting several types of very serious damage. As a matter of life or death, animals had to evolve ways to eliminate oxygen radicals. Every modern form of aerobic animal life has oxygen-neutralizing systems that are modifications (i.e., mutations) of systems that the pre-worms had. They had to process hydrocarbons, and those systems proved to be fairly easily modified to handle oxygen. They handled it really badly, but good enough for some of the creatures to survive long enough to create baby worms. Oxygen does a great deal of slowly accumulating damage to our bodies, because our oxygen-fighting systems are only good enough to keep us healthy long enough to have and raise children. If an Intelligent Designer had ever existed at any time since we were pre-worms, and had designed animal cellular biology with an oxygen-rich atmosphere in mind, our bodies would work far better and remain healthier for far longer than they do now. Fortunately for my families' sake, an Intelligent Designer does exist now - me.

Even before I had the capabilities I have now, I'd intended to improve my families' health as much as I could. Now I could do that to a godlike degree. I'd done a great deal of research into human and pre-human biology, I'd practiced specific changes on people in hospitals (to their benefit), on my own bodies, and I'd even done some trial runs by creating bodies which were copies of my families' but occupied with my minds so I could check out how they felt. (Ava's felt particularly good, which was interesting. I'm still researching why that is. And yes, Carol's, Donna's and Nevaeh's bodes "felt" - using my hands - very good when I wore them too, but that's a different issue.) I had a very clear idea of what I was doing. It would have been impossible to try to educate them about the proposed changes in order to get their prior permissions, so I just did them and they can tell me what they think after they can feel the results.

I wouldn't go so far as saying "I rebuilt them from the ground up," because most of my changes were at the macro level. There were some cell-level changes, such as how they handle oxygen, but most of my work was at the organ and gland level. That was necessary because I didn't yet understand biology well enough to be able to design a working human body from the ground up, so I concentrated on systems that were reasonably independent. Previously, the lack of an Essential Chemical caused Gland A to release a hormone, which Organ B would detect, causing it to secrete a protein, which Gland C would detect, causing it to start producing something which would decrease the ability of Gland D to produce something else. The drop in the concentration of "something else" would trigger yet another organ to produce additional Essential Chemical. That's truly how haphazardly some of the systems in human bodies work. Provided none of those intermediary steps affected anything else, after the changes I made to my families' bodies, a lack of the Essential Chemical was detected by Gland A, which either immediately produced more itself, or if that wasn't possible, it sent a signal directly to the producing organ. I cut out the inefficient middlemen.

I did that for several thousand systems, as well as adjusted other systems' sensitivity, responsiveness, increased the number of chemical and chemical combinations they could detect, increased the range and quality of their outputs so they could address a wider range of situations and their outputs matched the needs more accurately, etc. I was particular thorough with the systems involved in repair and replacement. For example, my families would be able to stay fit with 10% of the normal effort human bodies require.

Their brains also came in for quite a lot of attention. I didn't supercharge them. I'd do it if they asked, but what I'd done would result in their feeling "sharp", like people do when they're having a particularly good day, except it was permanent. I improved their memories and a few other useful things, but most of my changes to their brains were with low-level software routines or improving their brains' electrochemical systems.

I also added a small new part to their brains that would tap energy from the Universe in proportion to how hard they were physically working above their normal daily baseline. Working normally got no assistance, but if they were working very hard indeed, then up to 80% of their energy would come from the Universe. That would increase their physical performance and endurance when it was most needed. For Donna and Ava, I blocked that from happening when they're running, so they could continue to enjoy that sport. If they trained hard, they'd improve at a faster rate than before, but it'd still take them quite a lot of effort.

A doctor would get heart palpitations if he saw some of the test results my families would generate now, but I didn't worry about that. None of my families would ever need to visit a doctor again for health reasons, and they'd certainly never need medical examinations for a life insurance policy. It's possible that they might be forced to take medical tests for another reason, say a Government requirement of some sort, but I'd just teleport their samples away and teleport in suitable replacements, or I'd manipulate the tests themselves, or alter the records after they were produced. All of those were trivially easy so my improvements to my loved ones' bodies weren't constrained by that issue. Knowing that they would always have a bodyguard mind looking after them meant I didn't have to worry about not noticing the need to do such things.

I didn't have to ask them, "How do you feel?" because they all suddenly started telling each other and me. I came in for some sincere thanks, in proportion to the age of the person thanking me, especially after I told Prof and Vanessa to take their glasses off.

When everyone had expressed themselves enough, I said, "I've tuned your bodies up quite a lot. Between that and having a bodyguard looking after your health, you'll never need to go to a doctor or dentist again. Not even a gynecologist when any of you are pregnant because your bodyguard's job includes making sure everything will be perfect during a pregnancy. Your bodyguard is a far better doctor than any team of human doctors will EVER be, let alone by the current medical standard.

^-- "Speaking of gynecologists, I've made an innovative change to the females' bodies. Your periods have stopped because you no longer drop eggs monthly. They'll stay where they are until you ask your bodyguard to restart your cycles. If any of you prefer to keep having periods, let me know and I'll put that system back to the way it was.

^-- "Even Donna's and Ava's bodies have been improved quite a lot, even though they were extremely healthy to start with, because most of the changes I made were improving faults in the way all human bodies operate.

^-- "Prof, all the damage that was done to you when we were dehydrated has been repaired and improved. You're now not only healthier than you used to be, you're healthier than any human of any age back on Earth has ever been, so you can relax about that. You'll easily live many thousands of years yet; millions or billions of them if you want to."

"You're not joking about that?" checked Vanessa.

I'd mentioned it to them before but my families hadn't taken it to heart. It was an unnatural concept and there were many major distractions going on all around them. This time my comment was listened to much more effectively because the adults were VERY aware of their sudden youthfulness. I confirmed, "No joke, Vanessa. I know the concept takes a while to sink in and it's impossible to imagine what living for millions of years will be like, but all of you can live forever. You won't get forgetful and inflexible like old people normally do because those changes are a consequence of age-related physical deterioration that will no longer happen to you. You'll be youthful physically and mentally for as long as you want.

^-- "Speaking of being youthful, I've boosted everyone's healing mechanisms, which means the adults here would rapidly become youthful looking as their age-caused damage is repaired, such as wrinkly skin becoming softer and more flexible. That would happen so fast that your bodyguards will have to slow it down substantially to avoid it looking suspicious. Especially in Prof's and Vanessa's cases because your bodies improving so much that you looked like you were twenty again wouldn't be acceptable to anyone. What I'll do is let you get ten or fifteen years younger looking over the next year or two, and after that hold you pretty much unchanging. At any time you can tell me if you want something else. Like if you leave town for two weeks, I could heal you quickly and you could come back and tell everyone you've had face-lifts and whatnot.

^-- "At the risk of wording this misleadingly, I haven't cured Vanessa's and Dad's inabilities to have children. Dad's vasectomy is trivially easy to reverse, as is your menopause, Vanessa. I can create fresh eggs for you and make all the other changes so there'll be no risk of Downs Syndrome or other age-related problems, and Prof's sperm count will be improving as an automatic result of the tuning I've given his body. I'm not suggesting either set of parents do anything about it quickly; merely pointing out that biologically speaking you can become parents again. You've got millennia ahead of you, so there's no hurry to decide that."

That started a conversation about what we could do with our lives over thousands of years. I won't quote from it as it was a fairly silly conversation. They'd only just accepted the reality of living forever, and they were throwing out whatever thoughts first crossed their minds. One thing that did surprise me - I'm never going to claim to be an infallible god - was that Mom and Vanessa were both surprisingly interested in becoming mothers again. My tuning their bodies might have made them feel even more youthful and vigorous than I'd expected, or perhaps the motherhood instinct is more powerful than I'd thought. I'll wait until I've lived a few lives as women before I comment on that because it's doubtless cultural as well as biological.