Kinetic

"Hmm. Melanie too?"

"Oh, she was too rebellious. I was the obedient child, not her. And thus I always won. And Melanie would only be rewarded if she lost. I look back now, oh, it was so strange Eric! So bizarre, and cruel too." She sat up straight in a lotus position, right next to my hips. Her hand started idly caressing me, just above my half-pulled-down shorts.

I sighed. "And it's still going on, isn't it?"

"Yes, I'm ashamed to admit it, but it is. Ashamed for my parents, I mean. Eric, why do they hate Melanie so much?"

"We really don't know. Any ideas on your end?"

Patricia was silent for a long time, idly caressing the top half of my rump. "Let me think on that for a while. I'll have to explore a lot of memories from my childhood."

"Okay."

"Eric?"

"Yeah?"

"Thank you, thank you and Melanie both, for trusting me, for loving me. I can't tell you how excited I am about moving to Boston. I think I might spend a month or so getting familiar with my new job, but then I'm going to try to date. I can't tell you how happy I am that I have family with me, you and Melanie I mean." She leaned down and kissed below the small of my back, directly on my coccyx. And then she grabbed my shorts and pulled them up. "I should send you back now Eric. It's Melanie's bed you belong in."

I wound up staying about a half hour longer, chatting and having a box dinner with my sister-in-law. We gave each other affectionate pecks as we said goodbye. I thought a lot about Patricia on my way home, traveling normally and avoiding any unnecessary risks.

Time: Friday, May 9, 2008 11:23 PM

"Eric, wake up!"

I stirred in my troubled sleep. "Hmm? Melanie? What's up?"

"Your body just shook! I've seen you do this before. Everything okay?"

I was wide awake. "I think. Let me test. I think everything is still here. Wait a minute..." It only took a few minutes to confirm a change. I was in full growth mode again. After seven periods of growing just my sense sphere, I was back to growing everything again. My sense radius was over 21,700 kilometer.

Melanie stared at me. "So, full blown growth again, huh? That's exciting! Eric! You have any thoughts on what's controlling the schedule?"

I frowned. "A thought maybe, just a hunch. I'm thinking it's all me."

"Yeah? What do you mean?"

I spent a moment collecting my thoughts before responding. "I probe my mind, and it looks just like your mind. I just don't see any difference. Oh, in details of course, but nothing structural. My wild idea is, what if it's all me? What if I'm just the first person to discover how to link the quantum resonance of my mind into creating physical reality?"

I leaned over and kissed my wife. "And the growth rates! They seem almost whimsical, cute patterns just for the fun of playing with numbers. What if it's my sub-conscious that's controlling the growth rates? Maybe I'm getting new abilities at the rate my desire to explore becomes greater than my subconscious fear of the capabilities."

"You mean..." Melanie paused for a long moment. "Other people could do this too? I could do this to?"

"Maybe, if they knew how, if you knew how. Want me to try to teach you?"

"No! There's only room in reality for one god!" Melanie looked very distressed, and then looked at me with sad eyes. "Oh, I so sorry Eric. I was being flip and cruel. This is a lot to think about though. Give me some time?"

I held her and nodded. We cuddled with each other, slowly falling back to sleep.

Chapter 31.

Time: Saturday, July 12, 2008 3:32 PM

I was practicing with my abilities at home when the phone rang. I did a quick planet- wide search-pulse for Melanie's DNA. There were faint traces all over the Boston area, even a few micro traces in France, and then I found the mother lode. Melanie was at Biotherapeutics as expected. I zoomed in to see her on a phone waiting for a pickup. I picked up my phone without even looking at the ID.

"Hi Pumpkin!"

"Hi sweetie! How's your practice coming?"

I smiled. "Oh, just fine. I'll show you some neat stuff when you come home. Everything okay on your end?"

"Oh, I'm fine. I just called to check. Any changes?"

I took me a second to realize what Melanie was talking about. A new period was starting just as Melanie called. "No, no changes or bumps. All systems go."

"Well, that's good. Eric, I'll be working late again tonight. I should be home by nine though. Will that be okay?"

"Sure. Want me to pick you up?" Melanie knew what I was talking about.

She giggled. "No, I'll walk."

"All right. I'll have a nice dinner waiting. Lobster be okay?"

"Oh boy! Thanks sweetie."

We chatted for a few minutes and then hung up. I leaned back in my kitchen chair and did an inventory.

At five minutes into the tenth period of my fifth rotation, my sense sphere radius was 86,940 kilometers, I could generate a force of 5.43e20 Newtons, and lock photons down to station 1039 on the AM dial. That's frequencies as low as 1.04 MHz. My mastery of the EM spectrum is almost complete. There really isn't much below AM radio, mostly just some low frequency bands used for amateur radio and navigation beacons.

My biggest improvement though has been my power production. Over the last two months, my power output has grown a factor of eighteen squared. I can now create and destroy matter at a rate of 419 metric tons per second.

At my current ability, it would take me about forty days to reduce the worldwide concentration of CO2 by one ppm, forty days to turn 350 ppm into 349 ppm by destroying the carbon atoms and leaving the O2 molecules behind. I might get around to doing it. I would be so ashamed of myself if my powers suddenly disappeared, and through laziness I never took the opportunity to clean the planet while I had the chance.

Currently though I'm working on the world's waste dumps. I've have identified many billions of tons of crud and toxic sludge that's well deserving of my patented one-way ticket into oblivion. On a global scale, I'm just starting to make the tiniest of dents in it. But in a few local areas where my dents are, the world is a much cleaner place.

And now, back to practice! I was in the kitchen, sitting at our small butcher-block table and well out of sight of any windows. I placed my hand above the table and concentrated for a moment, and then brought my hand to my side, pushing it through the table as I did. The table offered only a touch of resistance.

How can I do this? Ever wonder why your body isn't pulled by gravity to the center of the Earth while you're standing? It's because the electrons at the bottom of your shoes start exchanging virtual photons with the electrons in the floor just underneath you. But I can suppress the interactions, down to AM frequencies, wavelengths 288 meters and less. These long wavelengths are ultra low-energy, 4 nano-eV and below, and the few ultra- low energy virtual photons just don't have the "ummph" to keep my hand out of the table.

I haven't tried to pass my brain, my mind, through solid matter yet. I want to do some thinking before I try something like that.

Time: Sunday, September 21, 2008 8:58 PM

"Melanie, how about a break?"

Melanie looked up from her work desk and stretched. In addition to being a third year med student, Biotherapeutics had waved some serious bucks at Melanie to remain affiliated with the company as a part-time consultant. "Oh yeah, sounds good! What do you have in mind?"

"Well, right now my sense sphere radius just passed 410,000 kilometers."

Melanie looked at me with a puzzled expression. "Okay..."

"The Earth to moon distance varies between 356,410 kilometers and 406,740 kilometers."

Melanie's eyes went wide as she realized what I was hinting at. "Eric, is this trip safe?"

"Oh, absolutely," I said. "I think... Just joking!"

Melanie gave me a playful glare. "Okay, I'll trust you. Is what I'm wearing okay?"

"Actually, no. How about a swimsuit?"

"What?! You're going to take me swimming on the moon?!"

"Did I say that?! Well, actually, yes."

Melanie laughed and threw out her arms high from her sides. "Do me!"

It took a second's thought, and then Melanie was wearing a two-piece swimsuit. She looked at her body at smiled. "Nice! Now, what do I have to do?"

"Nothing. Just relax. The whole trip will take about ten seconds. I don't want to get too close to light speed. You'll be weightless, and you won't be able to see anything. Just breathe normally and relax."

"Okay."

Ten seconds later Melanie and I were standing in a cavernous room in front of an Olympic size swimming pool. As Melanie stared in astonishment, I started to boast about my creation. "Full Olympic size, fifty meters by twenty-five, and it's twenty meters deep. That's 25,000 cubic meters of water."

Melanie was gaping at the ceiling far above us. "My gosh Eric!"

"The top platform near the roof is sixty meters above the water surface. It's the equivalent of a ten-meter platform on Earth."

Melanie nodded and tried a little jump. She went several feet in the air before slowly bouncing back down. "Weeee Eric! This is so cool!"

I smiled at her happiness. "Want to try diving?"

"Okay!"

We bounded up the stairs by the platforms laughing. Climbing stairs in one-sixth gravity is tricky, more difficult than I would have guessed. We finally made in half-way up and stopped. I smiled at my wife. "Want to try platform or springboard?"

"Uh, maybe platform for my first jump. Wow! It sure looks high up here!"

"This is the thirty-meter level, equivalent to a five-meter jump on Earth. That is, you'll hit the water with the same velocity as a five-meter jump on Earth, about ten meters per second."

"Okay." Melanie looked out over the pool. "What's the water temperature?"

"26C."

"Great, perfect. Okay, here goes!"

Melanie took a graceful leap, and started her long journey down. She hit the water six seconds after beginning her jump. It seemed an incredibly long time. She sliced into the water cleanly, and I looked in fascination at how high and slowly her small splash ascended into the air.

After watching the splash fall back into the pool, my eyes returned to Melanie. She was still underwater, not swimming to the surface. She swam left for a while, then right, and then she surprised me by starting to swim down. Then she started to wave her arms frantically. With a touch of force I had her and me standing by the side of the pool almost instantly. Melanie was gasping for breath.

"Melanie, my gosh! I'm so sorry! You okay?"

"Yeah! No need to apologize! I just have to catch my breath!" Melanie took a big lungful of air, and then another. "Wow!"

"What happened?"

"I got disoriented. The world down there is a universe of blue light. I couldn't tell which way was up."

"Oh my gosh..." I thought for a few moments and realized my error. I had made the cavern walls the same light blue color as the pool, and had very diffuse light in the room. And the real clincher was the one-sixth gravity. Immersed in water, it's very difficult to get a sense of direction in such a light gravitational field. There's just not that much of a pressure gradient descending into the deeper water.

I looked at my creation with a critical eye. "Let me change this right now." I redid the bottom with a black and white checkerboard, and painted the sides in various pastel colors of triangles tapering to the surface.

Melanie nodded in approval. "Thanks Eric. I don't think I'd have any problem now."

I whipped up a towel for Melanie, and offered to show her the rest of my creation before we tried diving again. At the top platform was an exit leading to living quarters, complete with a nice kitchen, living and bedroom areas, even a study and library. And above all that was an observation room.

Melanie spent a long time staring at the lunar surface through the large bay windows. "Is this safe?" she said at last.

"Oh yeah. These windows are made of a nano-tubular composite, transparent but incredibly tough. Above us is a mountain over two kilometers high. I also added some extra lead. We're very well shielded from any radiation."

Melanie nodded, walking to a window and gazing in silence. Eventually she said, "This is so beautiful... Eric, where are we exactly?"

"We're at the side of a cliff face, at the bottom of the inner rim wall of crater Daedalus. It has a diameter of 93 kilometers, and is almost three kilometers deep at the center. The crater is situated almost exactly at the center of the far side of the moon. We're at 5.9S, 179.4E, very near the equator. It's last-quarter moon on Earth right now, which means it's lunar sunrise here. In another week, it'll be new moon on the Earthside, and full moon on the far side."

"Sunrise on the moon... Oh Eric, this is so beautiful! And just think! We're the first ones on the moon in what, thirty-five years?!"

"Yeah, just about. And the very first ones on the far side of the moon."

"But what if someone finds we're not in our condo in Cambridge?"

"I've got a low-level lock on the place. Someone rings the doorbell, we can be answering the door in ten seconds."

Melanie nodded in approval. "Cool. And how long did it take you to make this?"

I shrugged. "A few seconds. My matter creation rate is up to 270,000 metrics tons a second. All the water in the pool took less than a hundred milliseconds to produce."

"So sweetie, is this project your god doctoral thesis?"

"Yeah, maybe." I smiled at her. "Uh, want to try out the bedroom?"

Melanie batted her eyes at me playfully. "In a bit! Can we try diving again first?"

Chapter 32.

One month later.

Time: Thursday, October 16, 2008 3:22 AM

Melanie was holding my body in bed and felt me jump. "Well, right on schedule. What do you think?"

"Yeah, a classic pothole feeling. Give me a minute to test." I took a couple of minutes just to be sure. "I'm back to growing only my sense sphere radius. Everything else is holding steady."

"Ah, just what we were expecting." Melanie hugged me and then started petting my stomach. "Relieved?"

I sighed. "Oh yeah. The power now, it's so awesome. I could use a break."

Melanie nodded. I lay there quietly, enjoying the light caress of her hand on my stomach and chest and thinking of my growth. My previous rotation had a pattern of 6-7-6 in its 19 periods, 6 periods of nothing, 7 periods of full growth, and 6 periods of nothing. This fifth rotation seemed to have a pattern of 7-5-7, 7 periods of radius growth, 5 periods of full growth, and now I was at the beginning of the thirteenth period and back to growing just my sense-radius again.

My radius now almost 700,000 km, I can lock photons down to 1425 Hz, down into the ultra-low frequency bands. About the only thing I can't lock now are a few ELF waves used to signal submarines.

I can exert a force of 2.223e24 Newtons. The Earth weighs 6e24 kg. The net result is I can exert a force on the entire planet a factor of sixty times greater than the sun. Push it right into the sun, if I wanted to destroy it. Or away from the sun, if I wanted to destroy the planet more slowly. In two months, I could have the Earth at the orbit of Pluto.

And my power output, 2.2e26 Watts, 2.44 mega-tons per second! It would take me just ten minutes to reduce the CO2 in Earth's atmosphere by one ppm. Or I could spend a day and remove over 200 billion metric tons of human garbage from the planet. That's all it would take, one day to make the Earth as clean as it was before humanity began to travel the road to civilization.

Should I do it? It's tempting, but man, talk about blowing my cover! Nothing pointing back to me perhaps, but how will all that magic affect Earth's societies? Earth has so many problems with religious extremism now. What would happen if I gave the fruitcakes high octane fuel to feed their extremist insanity?

Melanie brought me out of my dreaming. She had been playing with my nipples, and then her hand dropped down across my stomach and abdomen. She started giving gentle rhythmic tugs on my penis. Melanie already had me almost fully erect, just from arousing my nipples. She had done it so softly I hadn't even noticed myself getting hard.

Melanie scooted up and we started kissing as her hand gradually built up the tempo and the intensity of her jerk-off. All thought of getting up for work tomorrow disappeared in the building sexuality of her hand squeezing my penis. She started to pant in her arousal, her sweet sexy breath flooding my mouth as we French-kissed.

She turned and lay on top of me, our mouths locked, her taut breasts pushing into my chest, her hips searching for and finding my cock. Melanie spread her legs wide to the sides, and the rubbed her open labia up and down my shaft, rocking her hips as my hands petted her waist. We were both still kissing madly, our eyes closed and our tongues in a frantic dance, sliding and entwining with each other. So wet, so incredibly sexy...

My penis was a lubricated pole of eager desire sliding between Melanie's legs. As she felt my penis head catch in the entrance to her vagina, she rose up, a straight vertical backbone, her knees coming to my sides and locking my hip position with her powerful leg muscles. And then she rotated her pelvis, aligning her angle and opening herself for coitus. She lowered herself slowly and gracefully, my penetration was so soft it felt as if I were entering a cauldron of warm, moist feathers.

And then she changed tactics. She pulsed her abdominal muscles, locking my penis inside her with strong vaginal grip. My manhood up inside her to the hilt, her pubis pressing into the base of my groin around my cock, she began to ride me cowgirl style, working my erection with major rotations of her hips and legs, her knees holding me in position as she rode.

She's so beautiful. I gazed at her in love, her closed eyes, her soft, silky hair falling to her shoulders and ending about her breasts, the aroused state of her nipples, her flat, quivering stomach, her delightfully full and rich pubic bush. She rode for a long while and then collapsed on top of me, gasping and almost crying in her ecstasy.

Her legs kicked out and went between mine. Melanie was signaling me she wanted to be submissive. I reached with my hands and grabbed her low on her butt cheeks. I pulled and locked her hips into position, lifting her up for better penetration and separating her labia and butt cheeks. And then I began to pound her.

Swift, full thrusts, exactly what both of us were yearning for. Melanie whimpered in her pleasure. She once confided to me she has a favorite fantasy in this position, being a heifer and locked into a mating pen, having an aroused bull find her and shaft her, being helpless under his thrusts and loving it. I was pounding into Melanie's back vaginal wall and cervix. I probed with my mind and sensed her uterus "tenting" under the blows, deforming under the impacts and then springing back to form during my backstrokes.

Melanie cried out, trying to time her orgasm with mine but losing her hold on her body's arousal. Her orgasm took her, fast and hard, her body spasming with the intensity. I reached with my mind into the core of her womanhood, caressing with a light touch of force the inner linings of her uterus. Melanie shrieked with the pleasure.

And then I began to cum myself. One final, major hip thrust to bury myself in her, and then I began to spurt my seed. My penile slit was perfectly aligned with her cervical opening, and I blasted my seed against her moist and sensitive tissue. Melanie shivered in my arms as I emptied myself into her.

Both of us collapsed panting and exhausted. We both tried briefly to pet each other, to offer some sign of love and appreciation, but sleep and dreams took us almost immediately.