Chapter 432: 42,000 Marks; Flying Family

Friday, July 11 (Continued) to Tuesday, July 15, 2008

My other-dimensional moms had been no more than slightly nervous on their first flights, and had quickly gotten used to them so much that they would suggest going to the Cascades for breakfast if the weather forecast for the next morning was suitable. This Mom being such a wimp was either a dimensional difference or her lack of faith in me was the explanation. My parents' characters could vary across the dimensions - Dad's did when it came to speaking up on a family issue, varying between very quiet and average - but I suspected Mom's wimpishness was caused by her lack of faith in me.

I said, "It's no good me flying around overhead to show you it's safe because it's too dark for you to see me, and for obvious reasons I can't risk illuminating myself or doing it in daylight. Is there anyone here with enough trust in me to let me take them up so they can tell the others how much fun it is?"

There was certainly no one with any enthusiasm, especially Mom at the thought of anyone participating. I was trying to think of an effective Plan B when Carol found the courage to ask, "Are you SURE it's REALLY safe?"

I'd used the phrase "trust in me" in my question to encourage Carol. I didn't care who agreed, but there was no harm in asking in a way that might cause Carol to rise to the occasion by demonstrating the thing I'd praised her for just a few minutes ago. If she signed up for this, she'd be getting a GREAT deal more praise from me soon.

I answered, "I'm 100% positive, Carol. I know EXACTLY what I'm doing. There's no equipment to fail, no fuel to run out of or any of those sorts of worries. It's a purely mental technique and as easy for me as doing two times two. I absolutely promise you that you'll have a wonderful birthday tomorrow without a scratch or bruise on you; just a brother who's highly appreciative and impressed by the trust you have in me."

I truly was very impressed because Carol was quite scared but she still said, "Okay, I'll do it."

"Well done!" I gave her quick hug, lifting her off her feet so I could create a platform underneath her. I lifted each of my feet in turn to extend it under me.

Mom and Dad both started expressing concerns, but I cut them off before they could get too worked up (that being the only "up" they were likely to do). I put my foot down, "For goodness sake! You haven't got a SINGLE clue how I fly so there's ABSOLUTELY no way you can judge how safe it is. You've seen me perform miracles this evening and STILL you think you know more about what I can do than I do. No wonder Carol's and my personalities have been so passive; you're so discouraging of anything that you fear might possibly hurt us. I wouldn't DREAM of hurting Carol and this is EASY for me!"

They seemed abashed enough, so I said, "We'll be back in a minute or two."

With just Carol and me to lift, I could create a platform with a couple of handrails to make Carol feel secure and still have 1 g of upward acceleration. I hugged Carol tightly in a way that'd support her body when we accelerated. I placed the NP-fingertips under my supporting arms and we took off. In three-quarters of a second we were nine feet high and out of reach, not that Mom or Dad tried to physically stop us. I cut the upward acceleration down to 0.5 g.

As we cleared the tops of the trees, I reduced the acceleration to 0.2 g, rotated our platform a quarter circle, then said, "Open your eyes and look at the view, my courageous, trusting, sweetie."

Carol risked a quick look, seeing the nighttime lights of Corvallis come into view over the intervening hills. "Oh. That's nice."

"Not as nice as you, but you're right." I put on a very somber voice to say, "Thank you very much for trusting me."

"I was VERY scared! But this is nice. I shouldn't have worried, should I?"

"You should ALWAYS trust me, especially when I tell you that I washed the dishes the previous evening so it's your turn next."

"Haha." Then Carol made the mistake of looking down, "Oh!"

"You can trust me to always look after you. After some practice you'll like that the view is unobstructed in all directions, but for now I suggest you only look sideways. You're safe in my arms."

#3: <Physically anyway. I have my doubts about morally.>

I slowly rotated our platform to give her a 360-degree view as we rose higher in the air.

I told her, "You're standing on nothing four hundred feet in the air. Other than me, you're doing something that no one else has EVER done."

"Haha. I'm not doing ANYTHING. If you let go of me I'd be in BIG trouble!"

"If I let go of you the floor would stay there, but I'm happy to make you feel safer by holding you. We'd better go down to check in with Mom and Dad."

On the way down I asked, "I have to stay within five hundred feet of the others so their light blob doesn't go out, because if that happened they might worry that we're in trouble. If you agree I'd like to take you higher so you get a better view, but I'd need to warn them about the light going out first. Do you want to do some more flying?"

"Yeah. This is nice."

"Good girl."

We descended toward the others.

When we were still about fifteen feet up and a similar distance to the side, Donna called out eagerly and way too loudly, "What's..." I pinched her lips hard enough to hurt, then released most of the pressure.

I said quietly, "I've asked you several times to be careful, Donna. That was VERY bad!"

"I'm sorry. I forgot."

"Is that the excuse you intend to use after your lack of self-control gets us all killed?" It wasn't a particularly logical question, but I was talking to a female so it didn't matter. Maybe the lack of logic even helped, because Donna looked very sheepish.

We'd stopped about five feet up, ten feet away from them. I prompted Carol, "Quietly tell them what you think of it so far."

Even quieter than me, Carol declared, "It's AMAZING! It's scary not seeing anything holding me up, but I feel safe with Mark holding me..." They talked back and forth for a couple of minutes, Carol selling the experience, and then moving on to praising me in general.

I interrupted, "Carol and I are going to go higher for a better view, which will make the light blob go out when we get five hundred feet away so we've come down to warn you about that. Find yourself somewhere comfortable to sit in the dark, and we'll be back in a few minutes."

It seemed that Mom didn't like the idea of "higher" and she was about to start speaking, so I pushed Carol and myself up into the sky.

It was a nice summer's night and the view was great; much better than from a plane at the same altitude because standing in midair with openness in every direction is a very different experience. We eventually reached about four thousand feet but then had to descend as it was too cold up there and I didn't have enough NP-squares to make an airtight box to keep us warm, nor did I want to cover us with a big heat blob as that too greatly increased the risk of an infra-red sensing satellite spotting us.

Even though I was hugging her tightly, Carol was beside herself with amazement. Her emotions were running strong and she was raving about how wonderful I was, causing me the greatest difficulty I'd had so far in my plan for her: stopping myself from responding too strongly. She'd accept almost anything I said now, but I feared saying so much that it would scare her once she calmed down. I held my tongue - almost literally, as the rest of us were VERY firm with #1 that he wasn't allowed to say anything - and kept my responses on safe ground.

I had less trouble keeping my hands on safe territory, as Carol wasn't feeling any sexual attraction for me at all. The idea hadn't occurred to her, and it won't until I plant the seed. I'll not do that until much later, when her non-sexual feelings for me are very strong. Introducing sex too early would throw suspicion on everything else, killing my plan. It'll be much more fun to introduce sex 'too late', when Carol's about ready to burst. #1 would no doubt be bursting too, but the other seven of us would enforce patience on him. One thing that did work very well with #1 was explaining what our proximity sense showed us about Carol's emotions. Before #1 had been multi-minded, every time he'd been with a girl he'd had no clue about what she was thinking, and even less clue about what she was feeling. The several times he'd tried to get sexual with a girl had been after desperately hopeful guesses that she fancied him, and he'd almost invariably been very wrong. His being able to proximity sense that Carol had no sexual feelings at all made it much easier for him to know to behave himself, because he could very easily imagine how badly she'd react to his making what would obviously be a wrong move. Knowing what someone is feeling is a huge help in avoiding mistakes. The need for caution about sex is particularly important with Carol since she's beautiful with a figure MANY guys try anything to get their hands on, and those attempts annoy her considerably. If I was tempted to segue from our current activities to all the Peter Pan movies she's seen, and use that to show that I know her sexual fantasies, she'd be embarrassed in a bad way and suspicious of me in the future. So I controlled myself, being nothing more than a perfectly well-behaved, trustworthy, miracle-performing brother.

During our flight Carol's conversation was mostly about me and feelings, rather than questions like "How fast can you go?" She did ask a few like that, but I told her, "I'll answer the technical questions when we're all together to avoid having to repeat them four times. What I want to do now is tell you how impressed I am with you..." then I'd praise her some more.

When Carol started losing interest in the view, I asked, "Now that you've experienced the view, would you like a somewhat more adventurous descent?"

"Whatever you say."

<She's a good girl.>

I couldn't make a sled because I currently had only sixty four fingertips in total, and although my control over their maximum width and shape had improved compared to when I'd been eight-minded the first time, it hadn't done so by enough, especially because I needed to keep an energy sink blanket over us to hide our heat emissions. What I could do was be her sled by orientating us so Carol was lying on top of me and my body was uncomfortably supported by only a few NP-points. I'd be very comfortable in the other direction though. After warning her not to yell in excitement, I started us doing some dives and swoops. Nothing too dramatic initially, but I built it up using her proximity reading as a guide.

Carol enjoyed it so much and was so trusting, that when we were most of the way down, I introduced her to the idea of our separating and flying independently, reminding her, "I didn't have to hug the TV remote to make it fly. I've enjoyed making you feel safe by hugging you, but by now you should trust me enough to fly solo." Trust is a wonderfully useful emotion.

"What do I do?"

"You don't even need to flap your arms; I'll do everything. You'll feel lots of fingertips holding you. It won't be particularly comfortable, but it is 100% safe. It feels like this..." I gave her a lot more fingertips than me, to make the experience more comfortable for her.

After little more explanation and reassurance, we started doing some formation flying, dog fighting, and general aerobatics. We had a lot of quiet fun for a few minutes, until I started worrying about leaving the rest of our family alone for so long. We descended and I restarted the light blob next to my family when we were within five hundred feet of them, then Carol and I swooped in for cool-looking, independent landings.

Donna didn't have to ask what Carol thought of it, as Carol's face was glowing with excitement and happiness. Even before her landing swoop ended, she started quietly raving over how much fun it was and how wonderful I was. I let her rave. There was no need for me to say anything as Carol was doing a perfect job. I waited, and it took only a few seconds before Donna started impassioned begging for her turn.

I could've made an issue out of her little cellphone drama or her yelling too loudly earlier, but I resisted. It'd be better to give her a session of the same duration as Carol's and point out the lessons later. There was no possibility of Mom and Dad stopping Donna's turn, so Donna was quickly into my arms, warned not to yell in excitement, and then we were rocketing up into the sky.

There was much less sentimentality and much more swooping, giving Donna, "The BEST time!" She was even adventurous enough that after warning her, I accelerated her upward and then cancelled all of her NP support. I flew nearby to keep the energy sink in place and so I could catch her if she looked panicky, but she was so into the experience that she'd stopped worrying about minor things like gravity and death.

Near the end of the session, I showed her how to steer herself using the same system I'd used with the LA lifeguards and let her swoop around the treetops. She loved that too. She loved ALL of it.

I let her control her own landing and I let her do a poor job of it, which predictably led to her excitedly demanding a LOT more practice.

Mom, Dad and Carol had naturally been talking during my absences, so I wasn't surprised when Mom took advantage of Donna's need to take a breath to say, "You've convinced us to give it a try, Mark."

"Okay. Gather close. Donna and Carol, I know you're both excited, but please keep your voices down while we're away." That instruction being aimed mostly at Donna.

Mom and Dad wanted their session to be a sedate one, which I had no choice about as I didn't have enough force to swoop them around. We did some sightseeing, and after they'd overcome their being overwhelmed, there was too much talking. A lot of it was useful talk though, as this demonstration of my power shook up Mom's and Dad's opinion of me even more than my noisily fucking Alexis for four hours, not that I considered that a waste of time.

After I'd made the necessary number of refusals to answer "How?", the conversation boiled down to my telling them in several different ways that they needed to give me a lot more free rein and authority than they had previously, and them semi-agreeing to it. In other words, the big picture hadn't changed: I'd be able to do everything I wanted, as long as they didn't disagree with it at the time. Nonetheless I thought I succeeded in substantially reducing what they'd disagree with.

After landing, I asked Dad, "Do you want a quick, aerobatic session with just the two of us?"

"Me too!" declared Donna, surprising no one.

"Sorry Donna. I don't have enough NP force to take three people up for aerobatics. We'll come back here at the same time next year though..."

"Argh! I don't wanna wait THAT LONG!"

"I guess it'll depend on how many of my chores you do then."

"DEAL! Every time I do one of your chores I get another turn."

"Haha. Good try, sweetie. We'll talk about it on the way home because Dad's waiting to do some swooping."

Dad was adventurous, getting almost as extreme as Donna had.

After returning Dad, Mom said she didn't want another turn.

Donna eagerly volunteered to have Mom's turn, which didn't work. We walked back to the car instead.

Donna dogged my heels, asking about her next turn, expressing her excitement, asking about her next turn, etc. I couldn't resist commenting, "Now that you know what it's like, there's no need for you to do it again. It'd be better for you to stay on the ground in case Michelle calls."

Judging by Donna's reaction, I'd foolishly overestimated how important she considered phone calls from her girlfriends. Rather than apologize for my mistake, I said, "Maybe in the future you'll believe me when I recommend you should do something."

"I'LL SAY! I'll never make that mistake again!"

<Not until the next time anyway, but hopefully the tenth time will go easier.>

During the walk back, I'd been searching around for nocturnal animals. My EKP was stronger than the previous eight-mind amount because I'd seen through that +5% per month silliness, giving me an amount of EKP that was slightly more than the previous sixteen-mind amount, but I didn't want to create a whole zoo now. I just grabbed an owl and a jackrabbit and had placed them on the roof of my car to placidly wait for us. I had NP-boxes around them too, just in case my EKP couldn't suppress their wanting to flee when they saw us.

I was leading the way back with Carol and Donna close beside me, with Mom and Dad bringing up the rear. The girls were so focused on their conversations with me that we were only a few feet from the car before Carol noticed our spectators. "Oh, look!" she pointed.

I said, "I put them there. I carried them with NP, and one of my minor abilities is to keep little creatures placid. Hopefully they'll remain stationary."

They did, even when my family gathered around the car.

I said, "I'm just showing off about another minor ability. Very unfortunately it doesn't work on excited sisters, but I can make animals with very small brains behave placidly by swamping their physical intention to run away. Pat them if you want, then I'll let them go."

A minute later I floated them into the forest and released them.

In the car, I took control of the conversation, starting with, "The first and most important topic is security. That's ALWAYS the most important issue because a few minutes of fun counts for nothing against the possibility of all of us being imprisoned for the rest of our lives or killed. Dial down your excitement and listen!

^-- "I needed to convince you how much I'd changed and I thought flying you was the best way to do it, even though it risked our being seen. What you don't know is that I carefully searched that area before we did anything, and I was keeping a very close watch on the whole area while we were there.

^-- "There are radars which can pick up how fast individual birds in a flock are flapping their wings, and one of those radars would've been able to find out all of our shapes, making it easy for the Government to find us." That's not how Doppler radars work, but it sounded plausible and scary so I used it. "Plus they would've sent helicopters full of agents and soldiers straight to us the moment humans appeared in midair. I can see radar beams so I knew none of those radars were operating near us; only radars which bounce off metal, which is why I got you to leave your metal things behind."

"You can see RADAR?" checked Dad in amazement.

"Yep. Radar is a form of light so I can tune my sight blobs to see it. Same for the radio frequencies used by various cellphone services and the communications frequencies used by the armed forces and law enforcement agencies. I know all those frequencies and I was searching for them around us. I can see infrared too, so I can easily spot bodies in the dark. Had I caught a glimpse of any of those near us, we would've been outta there as fast as possible.

^-- "My point is that I was FAR more careful than you were aware. Flying around is fun, but it's also very risky, very dangerous and is very definitely NOT a game. Even though you thought it was exciting fun, you do NOT tell ANYONE else about it, you don't mention it to each other over the phone or in emails, you don't talk about it at home, you don't even make jokes about it like saying 'I've gotta fly'. You don't do ANYTHING that could draw attention to us. If you absolutely MUST mention the subject, don't refer to it as flying. I call it 'NP'. Anyone who overhears you say NP isn't going to freak out. And if they ask you what NP stands for, tell them it's none of their business. You do NOT talk about this stuff with other people. Donna, you're the most impulsive one of us, so let me specifically warn you to be careful. You do NOT ask me to give you another flight if we're anywhere other than at home by ourselves and you're using a very quiet voice. If you mention it in public I'll be incredibly angry with you because you'll be risking all of our deaths just because you selfishly want some fun." I could sense that Donna was feeling some caution. Not nearly as much as I would like, but she had the idea. None of them were as scared of the Government as they should be.

^-- "If I'd told you not to do something two weeks ago you'd have ignored me, but you MUST listen to me now. I know for a fact that if any of you fuck up over this, then our lives will be over. If one of your friends comes up to me and says things which make me suspect you've told her about any of my abilities, then almost certainly the only way I'll be able to keep you safe is to murder her immediately and go on the run for the rest of my life. If any of you open your mouths, you'll be ruining my life, causing the death of your friend, and probably destroying your own lives too if she or you mentioned it to anyone else before I killed her. I am VERY serious about killing people if I have to. If you tell any of your friends about this, you are probably going to force me to kill them. Have I made myself clear?" I couldn't tell them that I'd already had to kill many people to protect myself, and especially couldn't tell them about already killing people to protect my other families, but I did my very best to make sure they understood that I really would kill people, including their friends, to protect us in the future.

"Surely you're exaggerating?" asked Mom.

"There are only two issues that you need to accept to understand my commitment: First, I've seen so many thousands of pages of evidence of Government crimes that I'm totally convinced that if it learns about any of my abilities, then its agents would kidnap us and our lives would be totally fucked forever. Second, to keep us free I am willing to kill someone to stop the Government hearing about us, because one death is better than five. It would be truly insane of any of you to risk all of our deaths and your friend's deaths because you want someone to have a little bit of fun, so keep your mouths FIRMLY shut about my having abilities. In a few months I'll start leaking the Government's secret crimes, and you'll see that I have very good reason to be scared shitless of them. Until you see what I've seen, don't be so stupid and naïve as to trust them not to ruin all of our lives."

There were some muted acceptances of my statements, even though no one believed them fully.

I sensed that I'd beaten them up about security as much as I practically could now, so: "We'll discuss security and keeping your mouths shut from time to time, but for now I'll change the subject by answering several of your previous questions about technical aspects of my abilities. I can lift a total of about 925 pounds with NP, but I need some of that to push with... ," etc.

They had several more questions, so we talked all the way home and didn't stop even then. The questions ranged from "WHAT are you?" through to, "If you want to keep it such a secret, how come you're going to tell Julia's family?" Or, from Donna after I'd laughed at a joke so was apparently in a good mood, "So when can we go flying again?"

The conversation lasted a long time, so it moved to the kitchen as I made myself a snack. I could now explain to Mom, "Now you know why I need to eat so much these days. My mind is doing a great deal more than other people's. An MRI scan or EEG would freak out the doctors because of how much activity there is." There's probably a way to increase the amount of ki my subconscious uses to fuel my body so I wouldn't need to eat so much now, but I didn't have enough minds to solve that problem. By the time I had gained enough minds to do so, I wouldn't need to eat hardly anything, which is why the Voyaging Mark had never bothered to learn how to reduce low-minded Marks' Mom's grocery shopping bills.