Kinetic

"Ah, mom..." Melanie was clearly uneasy. "Be careful. You might jeopardize my loans and scholarship."

"Nonsense!" said her dad. "We were just talking to the Financial Aid Office this morning. They assured us that your scholarship and loan will be reduced equally for any contribution we make. So if we contribute $10,000, your consequences will be to have $5,000 less in student loans."

"And we'd like to contribute much more than $10,000, isn't that right Benjamin?"

"Oh yes, much more! We want to put the past behind us, what do you say, a clean break? All we ask is that we become a family again."

I looked at Melanie. Her jaw was hanging open. I didn't know what to think. Without my kinetic abilities and extra supply of cash, these offers would sound unbelievably good, a Godsend. But we really didn't need them, and what the hell was going on?

"Mom, dad," said Melanie at last, "This is quite unexpected... We appreciate your kindness... But what exactly would you expect from us?"

"Why, nothing at all," chuckled her father. "Just to spend some time together. For instance... How about you and Eric come boating with us on the lakes this summer? We'll pay for your tickets to fly here of course."

I cleared my throat. "Well, that's a very nice offer, Mr."

"Oh, just call me dad! So, what do you say?"

...And so the conversation went. Melanie and I stayed a bit noncommittal, but by the end of the evening, there was a general agreement we would try to visit for a week in August. Melanie and I retired soon afterwards.

It was touching. Melanie had been so distressed over this upcoming trip, we haven't even consummated our marriage yet. And we weren't about to in a house of horrors either. But was it still a house of horrors? Melanie cuddled in my arms and shivered as I turned out the lights. She questioned me with her eyes. I knew what she was asking, and reached around with my sense sphere.

"No. No bugs. You can talk," I whispered.

Melanie nodded and whispered, "Not what we were expecting, is it?"

"No... Get a chance to talk to your sister?"

"Yeah. It's as if she never wrote her letter."

"Oh... Well, that puts a damper on things, doesn't it?"

"Yeah. Either we completely misinterpreted what dear Patty wrote, or she's in on the conspiracy."

"Are you 100% certain there is a conspiracy? I was watching your parents' eyes. They seem genuinely happy for us."

"They can be incredible actors!" Melanie hissed. "Eric! Do not let down your guard!"

I sighed. "Yeah... Okay... I guess I'm just not used to dealing with people like this... Did Patty really ask for our help?"

"Her plea was never stated, but always implied. It was a masterpiece of deception. This whole day has been. Eric, do not trust these people!"

"Hell... I am so not used to this... What do we do?"

"Play along for now... We have to let them make the next move... I'm so glad you're my god in training Eric..."

We kissed for a while. Neither of us wanted to make love in the house, but the kissing and the petting did turn a bit sexy. In the quiet of the night, I unbuttoned Melanie's pajama tops and began petting and kissing her breasts. Eventually I started giving playful licks to her nipples.

"Ah... You're so beautiful Melanie..."

"Ah, Eric... I know you think so..."

"Huh? Not just me... Any guy would think you're gorgeous!"

"My sweet and darling husband..."

"Melanie, I'm serious."

"I know."

"For instance, your breasts here..."

Melanie giggled. "Yes?"

"Exquisite, perfect breasts! Guaranteed to cause a raging erection in any male who would have the privilege to see them."

"Really? A B-cup could do that? Freckles and all?"

"Huh?! But of course! I love your freckles! You are so beautiful Melanie. My heart aches with your beauty..." I kissed and licked her breasts, trying to kiss each freckle in the dim light from the window. Eventually I felt Melanie completely relax in my arms, cooing in love and then her breathing became deep and even. I stayed awake for a long while, gently caressing her and thinking about the day. It was well past midnight before I joined her in sleep.

Chapter 18.

Time: Saturday, June 24, 2006 2:47 AM

Melanie sat on the couch in her dark living room, her stopwatch running in her hand. The glass doors to the condo's small balcony were wide open, and over the last few minutes Melanie could feel the warm, muggy air from outside begin to invade the room. She looked again at her stopwatch, and realized Eric could be arriving at any time. She focused her eyes at Eric's planned destination point and stared.

"Oh!" she cried softly as Eric suddenly appeared at the spot. Melanie felt a brief rush of air and she looked down at her stopwatch. "Two seconds less than seven minutes! How far did you go?"

Eric was dressed entirely in black, and he pulled off his black ski-mask before replying. "The full great-circle loop! I've just been around the world. There's not much to it, once I have the technique down. Melanie! How visible was I?"

"I don't think I saw anything before you stopped. Maybe just a hint of a flicker of speed. And the rush of air this time wasn't bad either, just a breeze and almost no sound at all. Eric! Congratulations!"

As Eric sat down on the couch with Melanie, the balcony door magically slid closed and locked, and the air temperature of the condo suddenly dropped from 78F to 62F."

"Brrr," said Melanie.

"Oh... Too cold?"

"No, just leave it. It's been such a hot day, this feels kind of nice. Around the world in seven minutes, huh? My god in training gets a gold star!"

Ever since getting back from Illinois, Eric felt intensely motivated to experiment with his kinetic abilities, with the goal of understanding their full value. He and Melanie had experimented with flying together in the Allagash in the early spring. The wind against their bodies had stopped Eric from pushing their speed past 100 kph.

But over the past week he began to rethink the issue. His idea was to create a vacuum tube in front of where he wanted to go, and *push* himself and a bubble of air down the vacuum conduit. The main limitations were the length of the tube (1100 meters in front and behind), and the speed at which the tube was opened. Opening the tube too fast produced a supersonic shock wave. Over many trials, Eric decided to limit the radial expansion and collapse of the tube to 100 meters per second, well below sonic velocities.

A tube radius of one meter was more than sufficient for his needs. When combined the limit of 100 m/s for the radial velocity, the result was a 10 ms lead time needed to open the tube. So his maximum speed was 1100 down the axial length of the tube every 10 ms, over a hundred kilometers per second, fast enough to circle the globe in seven minutes. It took almost a giga-Newton of force to hold the vacuum tunnel open, but that was still only a small fraction of his force capability.

"You want to try it?" asked Eric.

"Uh... Okay! What should I do?"

"Just stand and hug me. There'll be no feeling of acceleration. Our bodies will be pushed uniformly. You'll feel weightless. Just try to hug and relax. Keep your arms and legs next to me."

Melanie gulped and hugged Eric. She saw the balcony door magically sliding open again. And then her world was a rushing vortex of flashing lights. There was no apparent motion, but the visual effects and the weightlessness made her feel dizzy. Fortunately the ride ended very soon.

Melanie looked around and recognized that she was standing on the Allagash plateau. "Home on the range Eric! Wow! How long did that take?"

"A little less than eight seconds. I didn't quite push for maximum speed. You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine... While we're here, mind if we pick up some cash?"

"Oh, good idea, I'm about out too..." Less than a second later Eric had whipped out a few thousand dollars from their "vault", a deep crevasse accessible only through his force. With the cash in his pocket, he and Melanie returned to Cambridge.

Back in their condo, Melanie walked over and closed the balcony door manually. She then yawned and joined Eric on the couch.

"Want to sack out, pumpkin?"

"In a bit. I'm too excited right now. Eric, can I ask you something?"

"Sure. What?"

"How do you keep track of where you're going, when you're traveling that fast?"

"Oh... yeah... It's a little bit like writing a program, and having the computer run it much faster than you can think of all the steps being executed... Really, it's no trouble at all... As long as I have a high-level description of what I want, it's no problem."

Melanie just stared at him. Eric realized he wasn't getting through.

"I started thinking about this months ago, when I was joining wood. I could twist many trillions of fiber-pairs together, but I didn't have to visualize each pair. I just think of a high-level goal, and then *push* the high desire down to the micro level. When I'm creating the vacuum tunnel, I've got individual locks on trillions of trillions of individual air molecules, but the effort just feels like one holistic dance... I don't know how else to describe it... It actually very easy..."

Melanie nodded and kissed him. "That's okay. I think I get the idea. Want to go to bed? I'll pet you... anyway you like!"

"Uh... Yeah, sure... Actually, there's one more thing I should tell you about."

"Oh?" Melanie waited patiently and then realized Eric seemed embarrassed about something. "What's up?"

"Yeah... Maybe we should have talked about this together first, but... Oh heck! Here, I'll show you..." Eric opened his hand and their checkbook snapped into it. He handed it to his wife.

Melanie opened the checkbook and saw the balance. "$13,000! Wow, what did you do, deposit some cash?"

"Uh... No, not that..."

Melanie leaned over and kissed him. "Sweetie, just tell me. What did you do?"

Eric sighed. "I sold some coins."

"Coins? What coins?"

"Well, it was a combination... I went to a landfill Tuesday night, did a bit of probing. You wouldn't believe all the treasures mixed in with the mountain of trash. Old coins down the backs of decaying sofas, stuff like that..."

"Oh... I see..."

"A lot of the coins were over a hundred years old... the bottom of the fill is a goldmine..."

"Ah... Yeah, I guess."

"So I touched them up a little and took them to a coin dealer in Boston."

Melanie looked puzzled. "Touched them up?"

"Well, repaired damage, took away the wear, stuff like that... It's very easy to bring a coin back to uncirculated condition... I just have to think the new atoms into place..."

"Ah... And the reason you didn't tell me about this beforehand?"

"Well... I was worrying you'd think of this as forgery. I wanted to see if I could do it first..."

"Oh... I see... How much did you sell?"

Eric smiled. "Over three mortgage payments, close to $8,000!"

"Really?! Wow... And it's all blue money too... Wow..." Melanie sat back in the couch and considered.

Eric and Melanie had code words for their resources, green money being their huge supply of cash and blue money (from the color of their checkbook) being their assets legal and visible in financial statements.

Melanie still felt faint pangs about doing this, but she and Eric combined were spending close to $40,000 a year of the green money. Clothes, books, food, entertainment, even furniture for their condo, it was so easy just to pay cash and keep their blue money for major purchases like their condo and their land in Maine. As students, they found people were very accepting to being paid in cash.

But now they were both past graduation, and they felt awkward about trying to pay adult- type bills of mortgages and property taxes with cash. Until Eric had sold his coins, their blue-money balance was down to $15k, $5k in checking and $10k in a savings account. How to keep up the mortgage payments until Eric got his Masters degree and started working was a bit of an unsolved problem. The living stipend with his grant would only cover a portion of their mortgage...

"Oh, Eric! You should have talked to me first!"

"I know! Sorry! Really... I am sorry."

Melanie thought for a moment and then kissed him. "I forgive you. Now, let's talk. You can really make this much money dumpster diving?!"

"Oh yeah. The landfills, they're amazing, if you can see what's there."

"I guess... But... Isn't this forgery?"

"Well... I'm using original coins... I am improving them... creating atoms of the various metals to repair scratches, stuff like that... But at the quantum level, the concept of original versus fake doesn't exist. Down at the atomic level, there's no such thing as antique atoms and modern atoms... It's all just atoms..."

"Well... yeah... I see what you mean... Eric, you're worrying about my parents, aren't you?"

"Yeah, sure. I have to hand it to them. It was a brilliant maneuver to force themselves back into our lives. Once they agreed to become part of the equation for your financial aid, all your scholarships and loan programs disappeared."

Melanie nodded. "Yeah. My parents bagged us very neatly. Harvard was very happy to hang onto their scholarship money. Once my parents made their offer, we had no say at all in the matter. My parents did deliver on their promise too. I checked with the Bursar Office. Their check for $28,000 cleared. They'll owe about another $14,000 in September, and then I'll be paid up through the year."

"I don't trust them Melanie."

"Well of course not!"

"So I was thinking, we should build up our supply of blue-money, have at least an extra $14k around that we can use for tuition if we have to."

"And you want to do this by dumpster-diving?"

"Well..." Eric laughed. "It's so funny! If I could just sell my 87.7 giga-Watts of power on the open market, we'd be in fat city in a day!"

"Oh yeah!"

"Instead, I'm converting the energy to copper atoms and boosting the value of old coins... It's kind of stupid..."

"Hey, it works! Eric, I guess I don't mind. You think we're safe creating blue-money like this?"

"Well, the dealer wrote me a check. He's happy, I'm happy, the bank is happy. I don't know how much I want to do this... but an extra three mortgage payments are nice."

Melanie nodded and kissed him. "Indeed... Ready for bed, oh great entrepreneur?"

Melanie found herself tired but also interested in sex when she sacked out with her husband. They spent several minutes petting each other and shedding their clothes, Melanie shivering a bit in the cool air. She warmed herself by pulling Eric to lie on top of her.

Melanie felt his stiff erection pressing into her thighs and then sliding through her pubic hairs. She lifted her legs and held his head, kissing him deeply and spreading her legs wide, opening herself for coitus. His penis started to butt her labia, searching for her entrance.

Eric soon found her warmth and moistness, and he slowly slid inside her. Melanie cooed in appreciation and pointed her toes, arching her back to create an easy thrust angle for him. Their lovemaking drifted between fast and slow, urgent and gentle. And then Eric quickened his pace. Melanie felt the penis inside her lengthen and become super stiff, and her love for Eric and the intense pleasures of her body carried her to orgasm.

She had been curling her hips and contracting her abdominal muscles in rhythm with Eric's downstrokes, forcing Eric to work to penetrate her. As her orgasm began to wash over her, Melanie cried out in primal pleasure. She arched up and suckled and bit Eric's nipple. Eric pushed down upon her, thrusting himself fully into her, offering her his breast, feeling the hardness of her bite and the wildly erotic sensation of this beautiful and precious female orgasming underneath him. He gasped and released, quick tiny thrusts spraying his seed deep inside Melanie, this most delightful and willing of creatures, his beautiful wife.

They both shuddered from the sensations of the penis sliding against the vaginal walls, moist and slippery and now super-slick with Eric's ejaculation. Melanie rode her orgasm for the longest time, drifting down so slowly she was half asleep by the time her vagina quit pulsing. The warm semen began to dribble out of her vagina, across her exposed butt hole and onto the sheets. She was too far gone to care.

Eric gazed down at his drifting wife in pure love, her teeth still locked on his male nipple. He slowly turned himself and Melanie on their sides, and let Melanie suckle in her sleep.

Chapter 19.

Time: Tuesday, August 1, 2006 2:00 PM

After a hectic, transition-filled June, the month of July turned out to be peaceful and relaxing. Melanie and I were both surprised to discover that being legally married has changed our relationship in subtle ways. We had thought of ourselves as secretly married even before the wedding, had pledged lifetime commitments to each other years ago, but still...

I guess at the core humans are very social animals. Expressing our union to the world in our marriage made our bonds seem more real. Melanie and I both can feel it. She is my wife, I am her husband, the social roles mix in with our concept of identity. I like the change, Melanie does too. We are incredibly happy with each other.

And I'm collecting a paycheck on my research stipend, $1,365 a month after taxes. It's not what I've earned in the previous summers, but it feels like free money. I have totally free tuition and am being paid extra to write my Master's thesis. It feels like a very sweet deal.

And Melanie got a summer job with a bio-tech company. It started out part-time and then quickly went to full-time as Biotherapeutics realized whom they had hired. So Melanie is pulling in some impressive bucks, not for long but it's a nice boost to the checkbook and she really enjoys the work.

It took a bit of shuffling for both of us to free up a week in August, but we kept our promise to spend a week boating with Melanie's family.

I never realized how much fun boating can be! Their boat is a 47-foot yacht, a two- stateroom Carver 450 Voyager. It even has two bathrooms (which are called heads, I never knew that). Melanie said her parents weren't into boating at all while she was living with them. They must have developed the interest, or bitten by the bug as Benjamin puts it, while Melanie was an undergrad.

Courtesy of Melanie's parents, we flew out to Minnesota on the last Friday in July and took a small chartered plane from Duluth to Silver Bay Municipal Airport. Melanie's family was waiting for us with their car, and we drove to Beaver Bay where their boat was anchored. It was the first time I had ever slept on a boat. I liked it. The rocking motion was soothing.

The next morning we diesel-ed up the boat, over 500 gallons for the twin inboard engines. I gulped a bit when Benjamin wrote a check, thinking about how much it must be for. And then we were on our way.

We've spent the next few days touring the north shore of Lake Superior. It's beautiful country. Melanie and I both loved Gooseberry Falls. I never realized boating could be this much fun! The yacht is opulent, though a bit cozy for five people for a week. We have camping equipment to sleep on land if we want to, and some of the deserted islands are very tempting for an overnight stay.

And the water is cold! Low 50F, too cold for swimming. On our third day out, Patty dared Melanie to an endurance contest. Melanie tried to concede defeat without taking the plunge but then her parents started challenging her to do it too. It all seemed good- natured, just a friendly contest, but Melanie and I still exchanged a quiet look together, trying to figure this out.

Patty is an interesting woman. She's three years older than Melanie, and like her sister has a very keen mind. I never asked her about all the shoplifting in her earlier years, but she has been out of jail for almost four years now and all of that seems behind her.