Chapter 77: Less Than a Game of Bowling

Tuesday, April 19, 2005 (Continued)

Robert, Julia, Carol and I were going bowling, but not before Prof had a few words, "Have you driven at night before, Mark?"

Not even in the dimension where #3 and #4 had got their license, as they hadn't had it long enough before merging away to be allowed to drive at night. "Not on roads, no. In a parking lot to show Dad I could drive, after dinner here a while ago. I don't expect any problems though."

"Let's be safe anyway. Robert, you sit in the front next to Mark to keep an eye on him. Girls, you can make it easier for Mark by not distracting him. Which especially means no sex in a moving car. Sex is very distracting. That applies to all of your trips, not just tonight's. It'd obviously be stupid to have sex in a moving car."

I had a feeling that it'd be a bad idea to try the Clinton Argument with Prof, so blowjobs on the way to school were off the agenda, damn.

#1: <If blowjobs were that important we could try the "I've got multiple minds" argument. One mind could concentrate on driving, while the others get blown.>

None of my other minds thought blowjobs were important enough to start a topic of conversation that could lead to the destruction of human civilization across every w-dimension. Not even #4, somewhat to our surprise.

Prof said, "Let me know how he does, Robert," and then we left, with me having no doubts that I'd better drive carefully.

While driving, I thought about bowling - unlike some drivers I've seen, I can both think and drive at the same time. The last time I'd bowled had been several months before my first merge. In other words, when I'd been physically inept. Back then it wasn't too uncommon for me to bowl gutter balls, which I couldn't afford any of if I wanted to get the maximum score. Because I was so coordinated these days, I was sure I could learn to avoid the gutter, but "learn" was the operative word, so that was on this evening's agenda. With my coordination, if I bothered practicing much I'd probably be a very good bowler even without cheating with TK, so learning enough just to look good should be easy. Provided I could get the ball to hit the pins plausibly - close enough to the center and with good speed - the next issue was how to ensure all the pins fell over. Knocking them over one by one would look silly, but I should be able to starting from the front pin and knock them over working backward fast enough. I'd try different methods out when I got there.

I suddenly thought of a worry, so I asked Robert, "If I bowl 300 I'm not going to be accused of cheating, hauled away for blood testing, have to pee in a cup and get the third degree the way I did after my running race, am I? Because I'd really hated that."

"No. There'll be lots of noise and excitement as you get close to 300, and even more if you achieve it, but you're not part of a competition and there's no prize money at stake so no one's interested in pulling you down. You're only playing for fun. Unlike your running race, if you bowl 300 the most you might get a tiny notice mentioning it buried deep in the paper somewhere, but that's about it, apart from a lot of yelling at the time."

"Phew. I can live with yelling."

Robert asked, "You sound like you don't know much about bowling. How often do you play?"

"My last game was about two years ago, I guess. Before then also about once every couple of years or so, although a bunch of us used to play it roughly once a month when I was about nine or ten."

"That's no experience at all! What's your top score?"

"I don't know. Probably about a hundred or so. I'm really not sure. It was a long time ago."

"And you think you can bowl a 300 game! Are you ever cocky."

There was some laughter from Julia in the backseat. After a few seconds she said, with a very put-on innocent voice, "I've got $10 bucks that's feeling lonely. I bet Cocky can do it. Care to match me, Robert?"

Robert quickly got her point, "Bowling is a whole different game than 8-ball, sis."

"Yeah. He's done bowling before. He'd never played 8-ball before in his life."

"Way to rub it in! Okay, I'm willing to pay $10 to see a 300 game."

I pointed out, "Sorry, but I'm not going to be trying for 300 now. In fact I guarantee I won't get it. I'm going to be playing around, getting a feel for it and that sort of thing. I just want to find out whether I can."

Robert protested a little, "Once you think you've got it worked out, you could have a second game where you go for 300. You're not in any hurry to get home, are you?"

"I guess I could do that."

Julia asked, "From what you were saying at dinner, it won't take you long to find out if you're good enough. Just a few goes. Is that right?"

"I think so. I won't know until I do it, but probably half a dozen balls, or maybe a few more."

"Is that more or less than a full game?"

Robert answered, "It's less. Each game is ten frames. Each frame is one or two balls, so ten to twenty in total. On the low end if Mark keeps making strikes."

Julia said, "If he can prove to himself that he can bowl perfectly in less than a game, then I'd like to stop there. I want to be able to tell all the girls that he hasn't bowled a game for two years, which will be true if he's only bowled half of one. Also, if he bowled 300 tonight, wouldn't people remember him when he came back on Sunday?"

"The staff certainly would. The customers would be different each time."

"Then I don't want that to happen. I want the girls to know that he hasn't played a game for a long time. If we come here knowing he's so good it'll look like we were showing off. The more I think about him stopping short, the more I like it. We can tell the girls that Robert is taking me bowling, but that Mark will be along to watch. Then we can talk him into having a game that he gets 300 in. Hmm, no, that might look too fake. I'll think of something else, but it'd be best if he didn't get 300 a few days before."

Robert said, "Okay. I'll leave that up to you. I can come to watch him on Sunday?"

"Sure," agreed Julia.

We soon arrived at the alley. It was a hard place to miss, as it's name was "Ten-Pin Bowling" and it had ten giant pins on its roof which flashed brightly at night. The guy who owned it was a strong believer in blatant advertising, so it frequently appeared on local billboards, in our newspaper, at sponsored sports events, etc. "Play Bowling at Ten-Pin Bowling" was his much-repeated, unimaginative slogan.

Robert paid for a game for him and me. At our lane he didn't bother putting on his shoes, telling me to bowl for both of us.

While I was swinging my first ball, I whacked it against my thigh, hurting and surprising myself. I dropped the ball, and it was in the gutter before it'd rolled five yards down the lane. Not exactly impressive.

Robert asked, "Do you want some pointers on stance, Mark?"

"Want and need. Thanks."

Robert spent a couple of minutes coaching me, and I quickly picked it up. My next ball knocked down some pins. For the next few balls, I concentrated on getting them to go fast and accurate down the center of the lane. I'd achieved that by my fifth ball. I was now bowling well enough that I could start adding TK into the process, while learning to put some spin on the ball to curve it like good bowlers do, so Sunday's constant strikes will look more believable.

For the sixth ball I tried to change its direction with TK, to see how that worked. Badly was how, which is what I'd expected. The balls are VERY heavy, moving rapidly, and rolling; a hard situation for my TK to work with. I decided not to bother trying to get better at TK-steering, especially as my bowling style was already good enough to get the ball to hit close to the center of the pins, and fast enough to make a strike look plausible. I hadn't had a strike yet, but Robert had commented that I would soon.

On my seventh ball I concentrated on observing the fall of the pins. As it happened I got a strike, but that didn't really matter, other than making my supporters happy. What I was interested in observing was how rapidly the pins fell, because that's the speed I had to reproduce. The occasional late wobbler that fell would be okay, but not several wobblers that fell over one by one, every frame. That would be very suspicious. Knocking the pins down with their usual speed was important. I was standing there thinking about how to get good at this while conserving the number of attempts, so Julia could tell her classmates that I hadn't bowled a game in two years. The method I was thinking about was to have one mind allocated to the pins to the left of center, another mind to the pins to the right. They were to tip their pins over as fast as possible, with the third mind helping where it was needed the most, as would the mind that cleared its side the fastest. The two main questions I had were whether one mind had enough force to push a pin over, and whether we could push them all over fast enough, "all" theoretically being just those pins that the ball hadn't knocked down, although both causes of falling pins would be happening at the same time.

For the first question I wanted clear proof that I could tip a pin over. Testing it while various pins were falling down around it wasn't a good test as it could be assisted by its being hit by the ball or other pins. I was thinking about simply tipping over one of my pins while I was still holding the ball in my hand. It'd look totally unnatural but it was otherwise a very good test. I was worrying whether this would cause me trouble when I realized I could do it to a pin in any one of the other lanes, so any suspicion would reflect onto someone else. I looked at the lanes to either side of me.

I didn't have to wait long for one of my neighbors' games to have a ball go through the pins without knocking them all down. I tipped one of his standing pins over using one mind's TK force. Its late fall looked strange to the bowler, but he happily accepted it. The important thing was that it was easy for me. The pin presumably weighed more than one mind could push (3.5 pounds), but tipping it required a force only a fraction of the pin's weight. The pin's narrow base meant that not much tilt was required before it fell under its own weight.

Continuing to abuse other lanes' pins, I waited until a guy in the lane on my other side was about to bowl. I watched until his ball reached his pins, then tried to push them all over as fast as possible. It was chaotic, fast and quite easy:

• "Chaotic" because often I'd be pushing on a pin only to have it get knocked over by the ball or another pin anyway.

• "Fast" because I had to change targets as fast as I could, which was virtually instantly. I don't even have physical reaction times to worry about, such as the time for the nerve impulses to go from my brain to my muscles. That means I can change targets incredibly quickly, far faster than someone shooting the pins down with a rifle could do, for example.

• "Easy" because so little force was required to tilt the pin, meaning I could accelerate the top of the pin very rapidly. A good bowl would often do most of the work for me anyway.

The guy in the next lane was happy with his strike. I was even happier with it, as I'd given him a strike without anyone noticing anything weird about it. I couldn't definitely say how many pins I'd accounted for because some I'd started pushing were undoubtedly also knocked from below, but I thought I'd knocked over at least two pins that wouldn't have fallen without my effort.

I waited until the lane to the other side of me bowled, and he also got a strike because of me.

All this was happening while I was standing staring down the lane, as if deep in thought about my next delivery, which I guess was true, but not in the way an observer would think. I turned to my supporters, saying, "My last strike was just luck, but I think I've got it worked out now. Strikes from now on."

My girls said, "Yay," or otherwise indicated faith in my prediction. Robert was more skeptical.

My seven previous balls had only used two frames of my and Robert's game, so I had plenty of practice left. I made four strikes in a row, to increasing applause and happiness, even from Robert. That took what the scoreboard showed as a game between "M" and "R" to the end of the fourth frame. I said to Julia, "You can truly tell your friends that I haven't bowled a game in two years. If I bowl another frame then I've bowled two half-games which could be considered a game, I guess. There's no need for me to bowl any more though so we can go home now if you want. I presume you're allowed to leave a game uncompleted?"

Robert laughed, saying, "Yes. You're allowed to leave. They don't have armed guards that force you to finish. You've only got five strikes, and one of those you said was an accident, so are you really sure you want to leave?"

"Yep. I'm fine now. It's actually easier than I thought it'd be."

Robert laughed at that. "Amazing. Your first ball nearly knocked you on your ass, and after eight frames of practice you declare yourself the perfect player. Are you really sure you can get twelve strikes in a row?"

"Twelve? I thought there were only ten frames?"

"There are, but if you get a strike on the last frame you bowl twice more balls to find out what the tenth frame's strike is worth. So twelve. Do you want to continue practicing now?"

"No. There's no difference between twelve and ten in a row. It just surprised me. I can get strikes every time from now on, so it doesn't matter how many."

"So you could bowl thirty six in a row?"

Julia said, "I've got $10 that says he can."

Robert wasn't going to fall for that! "Not this time, Julia. Besides, you don't need the money. Mark can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on the pro bowling circuit. More than a million probably, with product endorsements. Please let your poor brother keep his $10."

#1: <Let's not tell him what a slow-motion replay would show. That'd be more than suspicious.>

#3: <Not as bad as my Plan B for Sunday. If we hadn't been able to tilt the pins over the way we can, I was thinking about stretching some nylon fishing cord across the lane, flying it back and forth at the pins' neck height to knock them all over. That'd look even more suspicious on camera.>

Robert canceled our game and we took our shoes back to the counter. While there Robert said, "Let's book some lanes for Sunday while we're here? We can always change our booking later."

Julia agreed. Robert asked, "Do you think some of your friends will want to play?"

"I guess so. I don't talk about bowling so I don't know. I'm guessing there'll be quite a few girls that come on Sunday, so we might as well book some lanes in case they want to. Book three, I guess, and we can put Mark in the middle one."

So Robert booked three lanes for an hour starting at noon on Sunday.

I drove carefully back to the Williams' house. For a variety of reasons, not the least of which was Robert sitting beside me, I didn't request a celebratory blowjob.

Julia and Carol spent the return trip telling me how incredible I was. I'd have preferred a blowjob.

^

Back at the Williams' home, Robert reported to his parents that I drove fine, that I played eight frames with my last five balls being strikes, and that I claimed to be able to bowl as many strikes as I wanted now. The way he said, "Mark claims..." indicated that he still didn't quite believe it, but he'd learn.

Prof said, "Good. I'm almost tempted to come and watch you on Sunday but I think I'll give it a miss. I get more than enough of excitable teenage girls at work. Call me afterward if you can please, Julia, or just text. I'll be curious.

^-- "Mark, I'd like to spend some time with you taking you through your new computer system, particularly its access through to OSU. Also to discuss some of your educational options for the next academic year."

I felt very guilty that I hadn't even turned the computer on for the week it'd been there, especially as I expected Prof to be fully aware of that, so I quickly agreed.

Prof said, "Don't look so guilty. You got married last week and you've had very little chance to use it, especially as your getting back and forth between the two homes on a bike hasn't been convenient. I expect you'll use it a lot more now that your transportation is so much easier."

I expected I would to. If only so Prof would see me doing it.

Leaving the others to their own devices again, Prof and I went up to what I guess should be called, "The Anderson Study." Just "The Study" wasn't specific enough in this house, there being so many of them.

Prof booted up the computer, and showed me what software packages it had, how to access the various parts of OSU and some miscellaneous things like backups, using the printer, etc.

One of the software packages was a graphics package, which reminded me that I had noticed that my face seemed symmetrical. I said, something like, "Oh good," or some such.

Prof queried my reaction, and I explained, "I have a little idea that my face is more symmetrical than it used to be, or than most people's are. I was thinking of taking a digital photograph of my face and a few others, and putting them into a package like this, and somehow checking the left-right symmetry. It's not important, just a random idea I had a few days ago."

Prof said, "It's also easy to do. Let's do it now while The Boys and I are here." Prof got up and started walking out of the room. Following along behind him seemed best. We found everyone chatting in the living room. Prof got me to explain while he went to get the camera.

It only took a few minutes to get photographs of everybody. The females wanted to be included too. I didn't recognize the significance of it at the time, but Prof was especially careful about getting a good shot of Carol, with her long hair held back from her face. Everyone wanted to come watch us work on them, but Prof said, "It'll take us a few minutes to set this up. Leave it to Mark and me and we'll call you when we're ready to show you the results."

Back in the Anderson Study, we quickly decided that Prof would drive the computer as I'd never used this package before. Prof said, "I don't think we're trying to mathematically score the degree of symmetry. I think a simple strobing comparison is enough, don't you?"

After finding out what a "strobing comparison" was, I agreed (alternately flash the near identical pictures in the same place, looking for how much movement there is between them. For example, how much the ears moved between the two shots).

Prof quickly transferred the images to my hard drive. He then split each in half vertically, mirrored one half, then moved it on top of the other as two layers. Some careful positioning was required to get the two images as close to being perfectly arranged as possible, but it didn't take long. Prof did all of our faces, each in its own file. Then he wrote a little macro that strobed the layers. He got a bit fancy, having my face on one side of the screen, and his on the other, with both of them strobing. It was immediately obvious that my face was a great deal more symmetric than his.

Prof said, "That's hardly surprising, as my face is a lot older than yours. Distortions creep in over the years. I think we're ready for the others now." Which I took as a hint to go get them.

When everyone was gathered in the room, Prof said, "I'll leave Mark's face strobing all the time, and do each of ours on the right, starting with mine as you can see. What you're looking at is quickly alternating shots of our left and right sides, but with the left mirrored and placed over the right side." [[Prof wasn't as expert at software as I am now, so he wasn't aware that there was an easier way to do the test, with no cutting in half involved. Simply create another copy of the full image and mirror it. Lay it over top of the original in another layer, with a little care to get them lined up well. Strobe away.]] "Mark's facial layout is obviously much more symmetrical than mine, symmetry being an aspect of beauty. Let's say 'handsomeness' for the guys. By this test Mark is much more handsome than I am, a conclusion that will surprise no one, haha."

I thought it impolite to laugh, but everyone else did.

"Now to try the next oldest male, Andrew." Prof's face was replaced by Andrew's. Andrew's was more symmetric than we remembered Prof's as being, but still nothing like as much as mine, which hardly moved at all between strobes.

Robert's had a similar degree of symmetry to Andrew's (they're fraternal twins; not identical). This got The Boys on to a discussion on which of them was the most handsome. Andrew wanted Prof to bring up both their faces at the same time so they could check.

Prof said, "Symmetry is only one factor. Shape is important too. A guy with a perfectly symmetric pointy chin won't be judged as more handsome than a guy with a strong, square shaped chin, even if slightly asymmetric. Your competitiveness is pointless because the other factors will swamp any slight difference there is in your degrees of symmetry. The important point is that Mark's face is FAR more symmetric than any of the males. We're all from one family so we're not the best comparison, but I'm not aware that there's anything atypical about our faces. It appears that Mark's face is very unusual. Let's compare him to the women, all of whom are very beautiful." He's no dummy, is Prof.

Vanessa said, "Lovely compliment, but shortly to be shattered by the mercilessness of a software package, I fear."

Prof said, "Would you prefer me not to show your face, dear? We don't need to."

Vanessa said, "Thank you, but show it. I hope I'm never too afraid to face reality, excuse the pun. I'm curious too."

Robert's face was replaced by Vanessa's. As she feared, she was quite asymmetric. Prof said, "We make a good pair then, dear."

"I've always thought so," agreed Vanessa.

Prof said, "I imagine that age would turn even a beautifully symmetric face asymmetric over the years. Our bodies age in irregular ways. Moving to the next oldest female, Julia."

Julia's face was the second most symmetric so far, after mine. She was much more symmetric than our memories of The Boys' faces. Prof joked, "Andrew, do you want me to compare your face to Julia's?"

"No need. I will happy admit that my little sister is the beauty of the family. It's only Robert that I think is ugly." Which earned him a mock-punch to the arm.

Prof said, "And the beautiful Carol is next." Carol's face was similarly symmetric to Julia's.

Carol said, "I think Julia is the more beautiful of the two of us."

Julia disagreed, "I think Carol has the worst eyesight of the two of us."

Robert said, "I think Mark is the luckiest of all of us."

Prof cleared Carol's image, just leaving mine. He said, "Mark's face is significantly more symmetric than anyone else's. Do you have any photographs of you from about two years ago, Mark? They need to be straight-on face shots."

Carol said, "I'll ask Mom and help her look. I understand what you need. I'm sure his face is far more handsome now that it used to be a year or two ago."

Prof said, "A fun little exercise, and another little piece of information about Mark's uniqueness. I'll make sure the images are saved and maybe we'll repeat the exercise in a year. It will be interesting to see how Mark and Carol have changed."

#2: <Why not everyone? Oh, I get it. The people that might have the superhuman gene.>

#3: <I never thought of that. They would've seen that Carol was similar to Julia, so presumably isn't a supergirl yet. But no one thought she was, and it's all a fake theory anyway. They're not going to change how well they treat us because of that.>

#2: <No of course not, but we'd forgotten about that theory. There's no problem. The only consequence I can think of is that we should never try to pass Carol off as being like we are, because now they have a test for it. Not a perfect test, but it'd cause doubt. That's worth remembering.>

Prof said, "I was going to talk with Mark about some educational stuff, but there's no reason to do that here. Why don't we adjourn to the hot tub. I can see Mark likes that idea. Who else wants to join us?" Everyone was happy with that idea. Prof shut down the computer and we all headed off to our rooms to change.

[A few days later, after checking with me first, Carol passed on a suitable earlier photograph of me to Prof. Prof and Vanessa had a scanner in their study, so it only took a few minutes before we were watching my two-year ago and current faces strobe. My younger face bounced around considerably, even more than Carol's when that was brought up for comparison purposes. Carol was right that I'd become more handsome - or at least symmetric - over the last couple of years.]

Carol was not allowed to wear anything, not even a robe to and from the room. Julia put her little bikini on, the one that I'd completely failed to play with, and which had helped Julia realize how much I desired Carol.

I reminded Julia of that, and she said, "Yes, I know. That's why I'm wearing it. It has wonderful associations for me too."

Julia said, "Lead the way Carol, so Mark and I don't obscure anyone's view of you."

Carol was naked, standing in the middle of the room, looking downward and embarrassed, but loving every second of her exposure and our conversation. The Boys were in the tub, with Vanessa and Prof walking in just behind us. Prof in shorts, letting me clearly see his prosthetic leg. I couldn't help looking at it, although I tried not to.

Naturally Prof said, "You can look if you like, Mark. There's nothing shameful in it."

Vanessa said, "To the contrary, it's a badge of courage."

Prof just said, "Come over and have a good look. I'll show you how it works."

It's hard to say "No" to Prof, so I walked over and looked. He was standing up, leaning against the cubbyholes, so I crouched beside him, and watched as he unbuckled and removed it.

While I was doing this I heard Julia say, "Before you get into the pool, my naked sweetie, get everyone's drink order. Mark's first of course."

I looked up and saw Julia getting into the tub. Andrew said, "Nice bikini, sis!"

Robert added, "Yes, but not as nice as Carol's swimsuit though."

That caused some laughter, much to Carol's pleasure. After which she asked, "What would you like to drink, Lord?"

"Can I have a glass of milk please, naked sweetie?"

Vanessa said, "You really like milk, don't you Mark?"

"Yes. I sometimes feel like a pop drink, but I usually prefer milk."

"You must REALLY be looking forward to getting Carol pregnant then?"

My face turned red and I stammered, "Umm, I never thought of that." Actually I had but wouldn't admit it in polite company, giving this company the benefit of the doubt.

Julia enthusiastically said, "Yummy, and I'm not even fond of milk. I already like Carol's taste though, so it'll be good to have a choice of where to drink her from." That was getting quite rude, in front of Prof and Vanessa too! It seemed to worry only me though, because that's how these things work.

I turned to look at Prof. By now he was pulling his prosthetic away from the stump. He held himself upright by gripping a cubbyhole with one hand while handing me his leg and started explaining how it worked. It was a weird experience, but my squeamishness started fading as I got familiar with it.

Prof took it back, wrapped it in a towel and placed it in one of the cubbyholes. "Seeing you're here, lend me your arm to help me get to the tub please?"

"Ah, sure." He grabbed my arm with a hand, and used it to stabilize himself as he hopped to the tub. Quickly getting the hint I walked with him there.

"Thanks," he said, "I'm getting old enough that I prefer to be cautious rather than hopping around."

Carol had already taken everyone else's order and was walking around the house to get them. Most drinks were available in the Guys' Room next door but my milk required her to go to the kitchen, until she was pregnant anyway.

#4: <Drinking our sister's milk sounds deliciously depraved. I'm looking forward to that.>

#2: <Imagine my lack of surprise.>

Just before she got into the pool, Julia sent Carol to get the cordless phone from the Guys' Room, "In case another girl calls for Mark."

Once that'd been fetched, Carol climbed into the pool. Just as she was climbing over the side, and her legs were spread, Prof said, "You are a VERY pretty girl, Carol." It was obvious what he was looking at.

Carol froze in indecision for a brief second, which didn't do anything to preserve her modesty, then she resumed getting into the tub, saying "Umm, thank you."

Vanessa laughed, saying, "I think it was his pleasure, sweetie. I'm surprised he didn't want to photograph it, to see how symmetric it was, haha."