Chapter 59

The BFD was interesting stuff. I realized almost immediately that I didn't need the applicator tool that had come with it. I was able to pull it our of the container in a molecular stream that was far finer than anything the applicator was capable of doing.

I had a bunch of 3 inch square pieces of the three materials that I was testing it out on.

"You can ignore everything else in that canister except the Fullerene," Bud told me. "The other stuff is there merely to provide a means of delivery,"

"Easy enough," I said, sort of bragging.

"Let's get some between two of our sample pieces," he suggested. "Right along two edges."

Since I was moving the material with my telekinesis, my placement of everything was far finer than it would have been if I had been trying to do it by hand, and I have good eye-hand coordination, better than most. It was one of the reasons I was so good at what I used to do for a living.

"Okay, got it," I said when everything was in place.

"Now, feel the Fullerene. It's made up of lots of long tubes, isn't it?"

"It is," I agreed as I 'tasted' the shape of the molecules.

"Now," I could almost hear Bud take a deep breath. "The reason they need to apply heat and pressure to this is to encourage the molecules to change from 'this' to 'this'," he sent two images to me and I saw how the molecules changed, flexing and stretching like the old Chinese finger traps. Only in the image I saw, the molecules 'grabbed' all along one edge where the bonds along the Fullerene tube suddenly aligned with the bonding sites on the material, in this case the sample of Impervelon as Harley had named it on one side and the sample of Kinetex on the other.

Did I mention the names Harley had come up with for our other two materials? Kinetex was the one Bud told us could be modified to store and release energy. The one that could be made into circuitry he dubbed Technetrene. I had no idea where he pulled those names from, but Bud was pleased, so I was too, I guess.

Getting all the Fullerene to flex the way Bud wanted was simple. Getting it to remain that way took a moment while I figured out how to transfer enough energy to the conversion to make it permanent.

When I was done, Bud made me open my eyes and examine my two samples. They were now perfectly joined along a single seam, and because of the precision with which I'd aligned them, you couldn't really even see a seam. It just looked like the material went from one kind to the next, just like that.

"The seams are perfect," Bud told me as Harley and I marveled over the effect. "They're as strong as the original materials, stronger than the Kinetex actually."

"So what next?" I asked. "Do we start assembling pieces now?"

"We do. Things must be done in a particular sequence, and we will have to apply modifications to the Technetrene as we apply it. The modifications to each piece is generally unique, though there is some occasional duplication, quite intentional and necessary when making something that features bilateral symmetry, after all."

So at Bud's direction, and with the speed and unerring precision only my telekinetic feel for the materials could achieve, we began putting the pieces I had cut together, and making the molecular modifications to each piece of material, all at Bud's uncannily exact direction. It was repetitious, unfathomable and boring, so I semi-tuned out the specifics and just let Bud's directions flow through me.

It went quickly, but three hours later, when Bud called a halt for dinner, he told us we were about one third of the way done. I refocused on what we'd made, but at this point it didn't look like much of anything, let alone a super suit.

"You're doing good work, trust me," Bud reassured me as we went up the stairs.

Dinner was left over casserole from the night before. I thought about adding some spice to the remains of the pitcher of Nojitos and making them into actual Mojitos, but decided I wasn't going to risk it while we were doing all this detail work.

I checked my phone while I was waiting for things to heat up and saw that had a missed call from Kelli.

"Hi," I said when she picked up. "Sorry I missed your call, I was in the basement working out."

"I figured you were either down there or had forgotten your phone again," she teased.

"Hey, I"m getting better at remembering it. I only forget it half the time now," I joked.

"I just wanted to call to let you know I emailed you the rest of the details on what you need to bring and how much your share of the trip is."