Chapter 53

The fabric needed a sealer to make it work best. Sewing the damned stuff was possible, but didn't make for the kind of seams we would need. So said Bud. At least this was true when it came to making seams between two different fabrics. Turns out my telekinetic ability with molecules also made it possible to encourage identical materials to 'reconnect', even if they hadn't been connected in the first place.

So I was set to be my own super hero seamstress. No Edna Mode for me, I would build my own suit – and no cape! Edna was right. Capes are dangerous.

This was all a bit in the future, I rationalized as I stared at the swatches of fabric I'd cut of my three rolls. The rolls themselves were huge. I had enough to make a hundred costumes each, if that would have been the way it worked, which I already knew it would not.

Tuesday afternoon I called ADT Security and asked to have a technician come out and take a look at what I wanted to protect. They said they could have someone out tomorrow afternoon. Next I called Darius.

"Hey, what's up buddy?" he asked when he picked up.

"Do you know who owns the properties adjacent to mine?" I asked.

"No, why? You having problems with the neighbors already?" he joked.

"No, in fact I don't see anyone living on the properties on either side of me. Its heavily wooded and undeveloped in both directions."

"Okay, then what do you need?"

"I'm thinking of buying them, if I can."

"What for, isn't your place big enough?"

"For the extra security. I'm getting a security contractor out here today to look the place over. I'm too rich on paper to continue taking security lightly. I need cameras, sensors, better locks, you name it."

"You're probably right," he conceded. "I can't help you on this one, but I''ll give the realtor I dealt with a call and have her call you."

"Thanks buddy, I appreciate it."

"So, you got another date with Kelli lined up yet?" he asked.

"Maybe. I should know more tomorrow. She's got something we might enjoy doing this coming weekend, but I don't know what yet."

"Well good luck, she's quite a girl."

"I couldn't agree with you more," I laughed.

My next call was to Sonoma Pool & Spa. They agreed to send someone out at 10am the next day when I told them I was interested in a custom pool, and that I was more worried about getting what was right for me than I was about price. It felt good to be able to say that and be able to mean it. I guess I'd been capable of saying it since I got back, but I was beginning to appreciate it more.

That had left me down in the cavern, playing with my swatches. I learned something immediately, once Bud let me play with them. All three fabrics were very responsive to my ability to lock and to my telekinetic touch. Very responsive. Water molecules seemed standoffish in comparison.

Batch AG951 was the first one Bud asked me to look at. I locked on the molecules of the swatch, 'tasting' them for the second time.

"Kind of gooey," I thought.

"Yes, nowhere near the impervious substance our friends at FiberDyne thought, eh?" Bud asked.

"Doesn't feel like it."

"You have all the molecules locked?" he asked, rhetorically. He knew as well as I did what I had locked. When I didn't answer with my thoughts, he continued. "Tell them to be impervious."

"What?" I asked, confused. Bud laughed.

"Okay, okay, not exactly that way. What you need to do is move those molecules each against the other, like this..." his mental voice trailed off and was replaced by an image in my mind of each molecule moving in a particular way, shifting just slightly to change the way they aligned with each other. I 'twisted' them with my mind and suddenly my swatch went from gooey to hard and smooth.

"Wow," I thought. "That's quite a difference."

"It is, and the change is permanent," Bud told us. "Feel it." I reached out with my hands to touch it and strangely, the material actually felt softer than it had before, not harder. When I pushed a finger into it through, it seemed to stiffen up slightly, and felt rougher, like sharkskin.

"Bullets, knives, bombs, lasers, radiation, you name it – if its energy based, it gets absorbed, if its material, it gets impeded."

"They were so close," I said, thinking of Lloyd, Sam and Ben.

"But they had no way to take it that final step. What you did is the only way."

"So we took their AG951 and turned it into ... what?" I asked.

"Impervilon," Harley thought to us after a moment of silent thought by all three of us.

"Impervilon," Bud and I echoed.