Chapter 433: Single-Minded Marks; Initial Introductions

Friday, July 25, 2008

I became a god at midday, and by dinnertime even the never-before-contacted, single-minded Marks had been connected to my network. One second they were living a so-so life, the next second they're told they're a God of the Universe who'll soon be linked with over a trillion other god-minds and they'll have astonishing abilities. It took them a few hours to get used to it - the other minds helped - and to have their links increased all the way to them being full members of the network.

At the family dinner table, I said ("I" is yet another Mark; one ignorant of parallel dimensions until a few hours ago), "Now that dinner's finished, I have an interesting announcement to make. It's a biggie so it's going take you a while to grasp it all, but our new vacation home is a good place to start. I recently put some of my close friends to work creating a vacation home for us. I call it our 'Refuge', a name I'll explain later. It's ready for your inspection now and I'd like to show it to you."

"Not until we've done the dishes," said Mom automatically. I'd raised the topic before we'd left the table because we'd start to split up then and it'd be too hard to get everyone back together again.

"I'll take care of those when we return. We won't be long." We will be long but I'd said that to stop Mom worrying about the dishes. I'll zap them clean and put them away just as we leave.

"This joke is too much of a nuisance," said Dad, sure that there was no such vacation home.

"If you're unhappy fifteen minutes from now, I'll paint the exterior of this house for you over the summer and even supply the paint myself." That being a job Dad had recently mentioned wanting to do soon. "All you have to do is cooperate for the next few minutes."

Carol said, "Tell me about it later. Anthony's coming to get me soon." Anthony was her boyfriend in this representative dimension. Further evidence that Carol didn't care much for her boyfriends and had chosen them somewhat randomly, was that she had different boyfriends in different dimensions. Anthony here, Eric and a couple of other guys being commonly chosen in other dimensions. They were all non-assertive, easily controlled, and I'm sure, highly frustrated guys.

"He's not due in the next fifteen minutes, is he?"

"No, but I have to get ready." Carol clearly didn't want to waste time on whatever silly thing I was doing.

"I don't want to go either," declared Donna, not bothering with an excuse.

This was typical in the single-minded Marks' families. They had little respect for me and didn't want to go out of their way for anything I wanted. I could spend the next several minutes trying to cajole them into cooperating, or I could be more direct. I said, "I can't be bothered arguing about it..."

"Good," said Donna, standing to leave the room.

" ... so I'm taking you all to see it anyway."

The next instant we were in their Refuge's living room.

Mom and Carol screamed loudly, while Dad and Donna were less noisy about being totally freaked out.

I casually leaned against the wall with my arms folded, waiting for them to stop panicking and calm down enough to be rational. I wasn't in a hurry; maybe next time they'd be more cooperative.

It took Dad several seconds to collect hits wits enough to angrily demand of me, "What've you done?"

"Brought you to your new vacation home. I hope you like it. If not, any part of it can be easily changed."

Mom accused, "Did you put drugs in our dinner?"

It took some more silliness, but surprisingly little of it before the angry accusations reduced enough for the first expressions of wonder to emerge. For a change it was Mom who calmed down the quickest. The speed of her change in attitude might have had something to do with the room being GORGEOUS.

My explanation GREATLY increased my family's confusion, creating the need for a great deal more explaining. I'm only a god so not yet capable of understanding females, but I am smart enough to have learned a trick or two: I quickly started the Grand Tour by teleporting them to a more important room, saying, "Mom and Dad, this is your new bedroom." My being a god, their being teleported to and around a planet 9.6 million light-years from Earth, and other minor issues, were relegated to the background of the females' minds when they saw the new bedroom. And those minor issues were completely forgotten when they saw the wonderful 'new' clothes - copied from the closets of those multi-millionaire Moms that lived in hilltop homes - hanging in Mom's large walk-in closet. Mom had even made it easy for me by having the exact same figure in both dimensions (she's very self-disciplined is my mom).

The Refuge Grand Tour and my family's reactions to it and my godhood don't need repeating in full. I'll touch on just a few differences:

Many of these Marks had different lives, especially the ones that'd moved to England. Those Moms had usually remarried a couple of years after their Marks had been born, and in most of those dimensions she'd later popped out another son, although sometimes a girl or multiple siblings. It'll be interesting to see what becomes of those Marks' lives given their very different starts. Their lives are so different from those you're familiar with that it's not worth explaining their situations here, especially as this autobiography is getting somewhat long already. Leaving them undescribed doesn't mean their lives are any less important than those you've read about. Those Marks will put just as much care and effort into their families as all the other Marks will. The Felicitys that left Steven because he played around are going to have an interesting adaptation to make when they encounter loving Stevens in their Communal Refuge. The English Moms' new husbands and the Stevens will have to get used to each other too. If anything, the English Marks are closer to their step-dads than the American Marks are to their biological dads. English-Dad was more intellectual than jocky, so I had more in common with him. I explain that so you know that in those dimensions, he'll get as much attention as the Dad you've been reading about, and his membership in the Communal Refuges is very secure. This issue is just one of the strange ones we're going to have to get used to. I can easily imagine that in the future, we're all going to love and marry different people, and perhaps non-people too, so cross-dimensional and cross-Time jealousy will have to be something we learn to let go. Intellectually I can accept it; emotionally I'm not looking forward to it at all.

All the still-living single-minded Marks, about 3.5 billion of them, had mostly been loners, that being my basic character, or perhaps lack of character. They generally weren't as bad or as sad as the Marks that'd suicided, plus they'd learned some social skills in the five years since the first suicides had happened, but their acquiring godlike powers and a suddenly assertive and confident personality forced a considerable amount of adjustment on their families, as did the rapid changes in lifestyle. I'll describe some parts of that process below.

My personality being what it is, in those dimensions where the single-minded Marks' circumstances closely paralleled that of most of the other Marks, I kept thinking about seducing my sisters. They were staring at me with gobsmacked wonder and were very emotionally open at the moment. I was tempted to make them gob-smacked and god-smooched.

They were very different girls from those I'd originally seduced several years ago. The Carols had just turned seventeen, the Donnas being only a few days away from sixteen, and in most of the dimensions I'm talking about they were both very used to getting attention from guys. Carol had more self-confidence than she'd had three years ago when Julia had first seduced her for me. Carol was now less uneasy with guys, although still very conservative with them. She'd had one boyfriend for the best part of a year and he was smart enough to take sex at the speed she wanted - which was glacially slow - because every boy in school would be more than eager to step into his shoes to get a shot at getting their hands into any of Carol's clothing other than her shoes. My trillion-mind proximity sense easily showed me that Carol still had her hymen and I almost felt sorry for her boyfriend.

Donna was much more enthusiastic about boys and seemed to have several boyfriends. Her eager attitude to the opposite but highly compatible sex was something that worried Mom and Dad. I wasn't going to invade Donna's privacy by reading her mind, but I strongly suspected that her lack of physical virginity was frequently reinforced. Donna probably had guys lining up around the block, and certainly didn't need for me to join her line.

Neither sister would be as receptive to my seduction as they'd been previously. On the other hand, my experience with girls in general, my knowledge of my sisters in particular, and my emotion-reading ability, meant I'd be FAR better at seducing them than I used to be. My self-imposed rule not to directly manipulate my loved ones' minds unless it was an emergency - getting into their panties didn't really qualify - stopped it being trivially easy for me, but I was still sure that I could relatively easily win my sisters' non-sisterly affections. However, my intent is to initially do nothing more than be very nice to them. The 42,000 previously single-minded Marks had started their seductions three or four weeks ago - in a VERY non-seductive, careful-as-you-go, indirect way - and I'll wait to see how those seductions work out before taking any irrevocable steps in all the other single-minded Marks' dimensions. (Not really "irrevocable" as I could remove their memories if I made a mess, but I preferred not to use that type of intervention on my loved ones.)

As is nearly always the case with so many billions of dimensions, there are exceptions. For example, in some of these dimensions Carol is very unhappy, so I'll be taking action to reverse that as quickly as possible. It won't be a physical seduction, but it'll still be a seduction because I'll have to get myself into her emotions deep enough to turn her life around. But in the majority of cases, I'll be an apparently pure-minded, loving brother for the next few weeks. It's not as if I'll be missing out on anything as I experience the other Marks' lives and am enjoying MANY sexual relationships with my sisters. For trillions of us to enjoy something, it only requires one of us to do it, which gives us an amazing diversity of experiences to enjoy. For example, one of us suggested we start a project to seduce his dimension's Jessica Alba, specifically so the rest of us can experience it. We thanked him for being so noble on our behalf, and then eagerly discussed how to help him because it wouldn't be fair to make one Mark do all the 'work'.

With my loved ones, my decisions about what I should do or not do are almost entirely based on what's best for them, rather than what would make me happy. That's often the same thing because making them happy makes me happy, but my primary intent is how to help them. I can be un-SELF-ish because I have trillions of other selves. There's no need for me to get greedy or impatient with the formerly single-minded Marks' sisters. Having said that, these dimensions' Carols and Donnas have only one life to obtain happiness from (at the moment; I expect they'll decide otherwise in the future). If and when I'm sure that my seducing either of them is to their benefit, then I'll act.

There's going to be an interesting wrinkle in that issue because I allocated a deliberately varied cross-section of 10,000 families to each Communal Refuge, thus sooner rather than later the non-lover sisters will meet lover-sisters there. That's going to result in some very interesting conversations! It might take a while, but I'm guessing that Carol will change Carol's attitude. Theoretically there are two ways you could interpret that, but in reality there's only one way it could possibly go.

I bet Donna will get Donna to try me MUCH sooner than Carol succeeds with Carol. That'll somewhat depend on the conversations Mom and Dad have with Mom and Dad. If Donna does want to jump me, I'll happily agree because with Donna it'll just be for fun. It'll be a very different situation with Carol. With her, it'll be much more about starting a lifelong partnership relationship. That's going to take much more time and conversation, especially as I won't be pushing her into it. I don't think I'll need to. She'll see hundreds of Marks and Carols loving each other, with hundreds of their parents looking on proudly and happily. It's going to be a weird situation for her, but Carol responds well to emotional situations, and especially well to love. I can't imagine her failing to respond positively to her own self's love.

Which brings me to Julia and the Williams family. The decision about whether to contact them wasn't as straightforward as it might seem. The previous subcategory's 42,000 Marks had planned to contact the Williamses, and would have within a couple of days of now if achieving godhood hadn't intervened. Achieving godhood meant that all the Marks that weren't already friends with the Williamses reconsidered bluntly intruding themselves into the Williams' lives. I didn't owe those exact people anything, so had no moral obligation or right to approach them, so I wondered whether I should.

Without godhood, the 42,000 Marks would've gone ahead and contacted the 42,000 Williams families (actually fewer, as some weren't available) despite the moral questions because those Marks wanted a Julia, Prof and Vanessa in their lives. Those wants were partly selfish, but they'd known that Julia and her parents would derive a great deal of happiness from their relationships with Mark.

Since godhood arrived, I didn't need to contact the Williamses to have them in my life, because "my life" now encompassed billions of them. Nor did I need Julia's and her parents' guidance because I not only had continual access to the guidance of many other Williamses, but I now have the capability to read the minds of the world's best psychologists, business people, or whatever group best suited the advice I needed, although I'll normally learn things for myself. A great deal of the original Williams' enjoyment had come from helping me become all that I could be, but I no longer needed their individual help, and in some respects I was already all that I could be. There was little need for the Profs to give me educational support, for example, although I could already foresee that Vanessas' role in my life was going to expand a great deal.

I was reasonably confident that I should go ahead and contact the stranger-Williamses anyway, but as I've just written, I'm not working alone. To be sure I would be doing the right thing, I got some Marks in other dimensions who already were friends with the Williamses to interrupt their Grand Tours to ask their Williamses whether they thought I should contact their unaware counterparts.

Those Marks cooperated with my request - I like to help other people, especially when they're not other people - whereupon their Julias hit me on my arm and told me off for being so cautious. Apparently, as Gods go I'm not a very awe-inspiring one. Julia added, "I'd never forgive you if you left another Julia alone." I'd always thought it was God who was in charge of forgiveness, but apparently I'm missing that responsibility along with my awesomeness.

I answered, "She's not alone; she's got a boyfriend and they have very good feelings for each other." My proximity sense is VERY large now that I'm connected to over a trillion minds. If Julia wasn't out past the orbit of Ceres then I could read her emotions. Julia had talked to her boyfriend on the phone before dinner and I'd detected their emotions for each other.

"{Raspberry}. He's NOWHERE near as wonderful as you."

This Julia hadn't bothered asking her counterpart's boyfriend's name, but she never lets anything - such as facts - stand in the way of her pro-me bias. It would've been illogical of me to point out that she was being illogical, so I changed to her parents, saying, "Julia's loyalty having decided her counterpart's fate, what about your counterparts?"

They were much more polite than Julia, not making rude noises or hitting my arm when they effectively blew more raspberries at me. They wouldn't have missed being part of my futures for the world - and they could have one if they wanted - and they were sure the unaware versions of themselves would be equally as excited to be part of my lives.

"How do you feel about me introducing you to them, and having you explain your perspective to them?"

"You can bring us together?" asked Julia with sudden excitement [in the dimensions this was happening, it was before I'd told them about Communal Refuge].

"Yeah. I thought I might pair up families who knew about me with families who didn't..."

"GREAT! I'd LOVE to meet other Julias and tell them what they need to know about you."

"I was thinking of pairing you up so you'd meet just one other Julia."

"If I can meet one of me, I can meet lots of me, right?"

"There are billions of you, far more than the population of any one Earth, but in principle you're right. What I've already done is created something I call the 'Communal Refuge' for groups of about ten thousand dimensions..." I went on to describe it.

Julia said, "Can you tell the other ten thousand Julias for my Communal Refuge to meet there at 6am tomorrow morning? Are they all on the same times?"

"Yes I can tell them, and yes they're on the same time. A significant proportion of them don't know about me or ANY of this stuff yet, so they won't be coming to your meetings until they're ready.

^-- "I wasn't expecting so many people to be in the building at once," infallibility apparently being another godlike trait I'd missed out on, "but I'll create an auditorium that'll seat ten thousand and that has great audio and visual properties. To jump there from the elevator at home, ask to be taken to Communal Refuge's Auditorium.

^-- "In many other dimensions, other Marks are having conversations very similar to this one, and quite a few of those Julias have had the same idea you've had. Most of them are allocated to other Communal Refuges, but there'll still be hundreds of other Julias at the meeting tomorrow morning that had the same idea. All the other Julias are very much like you, so you won't be able to order them around or anything like that."

"I'm not intending to give them orders. There's just a great deal of organization required, so the sooner we start the better."