Chapter 49

I woke up happy Sunday morning. A little stiff and sore, but happy. The skiing had used muscles that I hadn't exercised recently, and they let me know about it. The happy was entirely based on Kelli Montoya. A quick run around the property loosened up the muscles enough to stop their complaining, then I spent an hour in the basement working them over so they wouldn't be so eager to complain in the future.

As for my Kelli Montoya smile, I would send her flowers tomorrow, and call her later today and thank her again for the wonderful date. I would leave her morning to her and her family. I knew that church was important to them, and didn't want to intrude on that time.

Church was on my mind for other reasons this Sunday. There were two places I hadn't visited yet that were long overdue, and my parent's church was one of them. I fixed myself a breakfast of coffee, toast and two soft boiled eggs, and when I was done, went down to the cavern and spent an hour working with the sample slabs. Before I began I had a talk with Bud.

"Bud, how aware of things are you? Are you self aware enough to perceive the passage of time?"

"Of course, Cooper," he responded.

"How do you keep track of time?" I asked.

"Well, there are a variety of ways, but its simplest to just say that I am always aware of the date and time, down to the microsecond, actually," he said with some trace of boastfulness.

"Good, then from now on you will be our timekeeper," I told him. "I'm getting tired of being surprised by how much time has passed when we're down here training. You will keep track of the time for us and be our alarm clock and appointment reminder. Agreed?"

"Well of course," Bud sounded offended. "That is the least of what I can do."

"Well then you haven't been doing the least thing for me, because you haven't been doing that, have you?"

"You're right," he said, then went silent.

"Good, now lets get busy, but we've only got an hour, so in exactly one hour, interrupt whatever we're in the middle of and remind me its time to go."

"Got it," he said with some of his normal cheer.

"Yesterday on the lake there were several times I wanted to play with locking some water molecules and move them around, but you discouraged me. Why?"

"Because it was too dangerous with others around," Bud said as if it was obvious.

"Dangerous?"

"Yes, extremely. You are quite capable now of locking on macroscopic quantities of water, are you not?"

"Yes I am," I said proudly.

"And so far you are locking on what amounts to monomolecular sheets of water molecules. Sheets a single molecule thick, like the graphene."

"Right," I agreed.

Now, what happens to an object if you hit it with your single molecule thick group of locked molecules edge on?"

"But its water," I blurted out at first thought. "It would be pretty harmless, wouldn't it?"

"Left to itself, of course," Bud lectured. "But it isn't being left to itself, is it. You have the molecules locked. Their behavior and physical properties, such as hardness, are modified by your ability. Given that, a monomolecular line of water could and would act like the sharpest knife ever seen. It could potentially slice through almost anything."

"Oh my God!" I gasped as the realization hit me. "That would be extremely dangerous."

"Yes, and for that reason you must move beyond your natural tendency to grab molecules in the two dimensional way you do now. That ability will be the key to much of what you will be able to do, but you must train until manifesting that aspect of it requires conscious intervention."

"So not so much going with the flow and more building three dimensional locks."

"Correct, and you must move much further into the macroscopic with it. Even something hundreds or thousands of molecules thick could potentially be sharper than you could imagine."

"Especially when I have those molecules locked."

"Yes," Bud agreed. "When you begin manipulating molecules with more structural integrity, greater hardness and durability, you could probably make permanent blades of incredible sharpness. But even then, your ability to apply a telekinetic lock would amplify the effectiveness of any blade you wielded in that way."

"I see," and I was, in my mind, seeing how horrible such 'blades' could be.

"Beyond that," Bud continued when I paused. "You move these molecules from place to place faster than the eye can see in some cases. The speed at which they move and the thinness of the cuts could mean that you could cause a great deal of damage before you even realized it."

"So my training will have to be as much about how not to do things as it is about doing them," I said aloud as I saw the other side of the coin for the first time.

The rest of the hour seemed almost anticlimactic after that discussion, but I spent it growing my ability to 'grow' the amount of molecules I was grabbing.

"Time," Bud said at last.

The regulations regarding the wearing of the uniform post-discharge were pretty specific, but I was managing to bend them a little today. The regs said: 'A person who is discharged honorably or under honorable conditions from the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine Corps may wear his uniform while going from the place of discharge to his home, within three months after his discharge'.

I had already traveled from the place of discharge to Santa Rosa, but today's events would for me, signify the final steps to being home, so I considered this a valid interpretation. I walked through the doors of the First United Methodist Church wearing my Dress Blues. The church itself was beautiful, with that large, inspirational and impressive style common to churches. I didn't stand at the back of the church long before an older gentleman came quickly but solemnly from the front of the church. He was eying my uniform as he came near.