Kinetic

The search for the party hosts took on a festive and playful atmosphere, as the guests called out the parents' names in laughter. They went through the house haphazardly, looking into all the closets, under the beds, even opening all the kitchen cabinets. They started rattling their car keys as they searched, as part of the game.

And I watched this all from Exeter. My heart felt leaden and full of sorrow. Did I really have to kill three people? How could I ever explain this to Melanie? My gosh, my beautiful and gentle wife! She swore a life oath to care for human life, to hold all human life in reverence. How could I ever tell my wife that I murdered both her parents?

I murdered in cold blood too. They were no physical threat to me. I lay beside my sleeping wife crying silent tears. Did I really have to murder? My God... I lay there struggling to find an answer to that question.

Midnight came and went in Sterling. The guests held onto their beliefs for another hour, but after 1 AM local time, they began to worry. They organized into teams and did a full, no-nonsense search of the house. Scared and bewildered, they made one final pass through all the rooms, calling out and pleading with the parents to end the game. Then they called the police.

Chapter 34.

Time: Saturday, January 1, 2011 4:10 AM Eastern Standard Time

I drifted in and out of sleep, having an awful night. I watched the police search the house in Sterling. A lot of the guests were now bone tired, and several were borderline drunk from their earlier partying. They all wanted to go home, but the police were retaining them for depositions. Everyone was still in the "very confused" stage.

I forced myself to switch my thinking, from what I had done to what I should do now. Tell Melanie? Yes, a must. But when? I decided to wait until we got back to Cambridge tomorrow.

Anything else? My mind drew a blank with the parents, but Jason... I scanned our condo, picking through the miniscule skin flakes in the rooms. I found Jason's DNA, and then did a world-wide scan with the pattern. Interesting. I found numerous hot spots in Illinois, including Melanie's parents' house. I scanned closer. The strongest source was the bed in the master bedroom. Oh shit. I left Illinois in disgust, and concentrated in Cambridge.

I found his car a few seconds later, on a side street about a kilometer northeast of my home, Illinois plates, car registration in Jason's name. I scanned around the dark street, totally deserted, perfect. A second later the car ceased to exist. Then I zapped his DNA pattern over the whole of Massachusetts. Any bloodhound would now swear Jason had never been in the State. I lay back and closed my eyes, and collapsed into sleep a short while later.

I was "out of it" the next couple of days. My dad and step-mom asked me Saturday morning if I were coming down with the flu. Melanie knew better but also was concerned. In the early afternoon we got a call from Melanie's aunt. She told us the police were still at her brother's house; investigating what they were calling a baffling "Houdini" mystery. Then the police got on the phone. They said it was all routine; but they asked for witnesses for where we all were Friday night. We gave them a large list of names of the neighbors that had seen us then. With the distances involved, we all had an airtight alibi with the police.

But I did not have an airtight alibi with Melanie. She gave me a number of thoughtful looks Saturday evening. When she got me alone in bed, she asked what was going on. I asked if we could wait until we got back to Cambridge. Melanie was clearly unhappy with my request but agreed.

We had a very quiet ride back to Cambridge on Sunday. Melanie drove most of the way. I quietly kept track of the police investigation. I decided the detective in Sterling was a really sharp guy, but I thought I was safe. I wasn't on his radar scope, not directly anyway, and I didn't think I ever would be. I did make the effort to lock his DNA pattern, just so I could keep an eye on him in the future.

When we got back home, Melanie closed and locked the door and went straight to the couch and sat down. "Well?" she said.

I sat on the other end of the couch and began to tell her everything, starting with my sensing the break-in here at our home. Melanie turned and stared at the end-table when I told her about the radio, and otherwise kept her gaze on me. Her face went stiff and wooden when I described the end of Jason, and became a mask of pain when I finished describing my encounter with her parents.

She could barely talk, her voice a whisper. "You... murdered three people?"

"Yes." It was the most difficult word I ever had to say. I felt my soul breaking as I spoke it. I looked at Melanie, pleading with my eyes for understanding and forgiveness. But all I was getting back was a look of shock mixed with denial and bewilderment. Melanie looked at if she were staring at a stranger, as if she were struggling and failing to recognize me as her husband.

"Bring them back!"

"I can't."

"What do you mean, you can't?! You can both destroy and create, can't you?!"

"I can't bring a person back to life Melanie. I can't. I can create simple patterns and even replicate cells, but the detail of an entire human body?! I couldn't replicate that even if I had the body for a template! The fantastic detail of a person's memory, their personality, I'm nowhere close to duplicating that. I don't think I ever will be."

Melanie was in tears. "So my parents are truly dead?"

"Oh Melanie, I'm so sorry!"

"Sorry?! Is that all you have to say?! Eric! Did you think you had no other option?" she whispered. She was trembling and crying and absolutely miserable.

"Oh, I've thought of this so many times! I had tons of options. I could have created a statin in Jason's blood, wipe out his short term memory, then just knocked him out and transported him back to his car. He would have waked up with no suitcases, no house keys, and no idea of what happened."

"But you didn't do that, did you Eric?"

"No. I made a mistake."

"A mistake?! You murder three people, you murder both my parents and say, oh, I made a mistake?!"

"Melanie, please..."

"Please what?! Please shut up or I'll make you a mistake too?!"

"Hey!"

"My God, my God! I'm married to a monster! You have no regrets, do you?"

"Hey! That's not true! I have lots of regrets!"

"So are you going to turn yourself in?"

I sighed and considered her question. "No, I'm not."

"Would you kill me if I try to?"

"Huh? Oh Melanie, please don't talk like that."

"Would you?!"

"No, of course not." I stared at the floor in misery. A number of moments passed before I could bear to look back at Melanie. She was shivering, backing away from me on the couch. I gasped in agony as I realized she was afraid of me. "Melanie..."

She shook her head no, tears flowing from her eyes. It wasn't just fear. I could also see her beginning to grieve for her parents. After all the years of manipulation, she still had a dream of having a loving relationship with them one day, and now...

"Do you want me to go?"

Melanie nodded her head.

"Okay. Just call me when you want me back." Melanie shook her head no, her face strained by her fear and misery. I felt so ashamed, I couldn't bear to have her look at me any longer, and I think I was scaring her greatly. An all-powerful monster was next to her, and she was helpless against it.

"Good bye," I whispered, and left for the moon.

And the days passed.

I went back to work on Monday. It was nice to have the routine of my job to keep my mind occupied. I waited for a phone call from Melanie. A week passed and it never came. I wondered a lot if she would turn me in, go to the police with her fantastic story. Did she have any proof? Well, her engagement and wedding rings maybe. I scanned her once lightly, and realized with dismay that she had taken them off.

I did a lot of serious thinking. What would my life be like if the world knew about me? I think they would try to kill me. The concept of jail would be ridiculous. The only alternative would be death, or keeping me in drug-induced coma. Not the way I want to spend the rest of my life.

I think Melanie realized this too. One week turned into two and still she said nothing to the police. But she didn't call me either. I monitored her lightly. She tried to lose herself in her work, keeping very long hours and collapsing exhausted in an empty home. My lunar palace was much more opulent but just as empty.

On Friday, January 21, the day my sixth rotation ended, a bombshell came out of Sterling. It seems there was a huge, three-way embezzlement scheme between Benjamin's bank, Rita's law firm, and a nearby CPA firm. They had elaborate safeguards to hide their activities, but with both Ben and Rita gone, the investigation into their disappearance uncovered all the corruption.

In the following months, the Illinois courts tried to recover as much money as they could. The parents' house and yacht and possessions were sold at a sheriff's auction. The courts even demanded the $10,000 that Ben and Rita had sent us to help pay off Melanie's student loans. Melanie was rather strapped for cash, and her research grant wouldn't even cover our mortgage payments. So I sent a check to the Illinois courts, and also kept up the mortgage and property taxes of our condo, her condo I should say. I started renting a small apartment near Fresh Pond, just to have a legal address for myself. I spent almost no time there. It was just a safe entry point for my travels.

I worried a bit about Melanie's other expenses, so one Friday when she came home there was a $1,000 in a stack of small bills lying on the kitchen table. Melanie looked at the bills for a moment, and then left them exactly were she found them. On Monday I took the hint and removed the stack.

And the months passed. Melanie was accepted into Boston Children's Residency program. She started her intern year there in June. The Sterling police investigation went nowhere of course. They're assuming the disappearance was a brilliant act to run off with all the stolen money. There was no sign of a struggle in the kitchen, and Ben's voice was heard shouting about a lost key; seconds before the room was entered. The police are convinced it was a joke, and Benjamin and Rita are probably in Mexico or South America somewhere leading the good life.

With regards to weather protection, during the summer of 2011 I decided to back off on my efforts of active hurricane management. I had protected the Gulf and Caribbean for four straight years, not against all hurricanes but I certainly took the edge off the big ones. People responded with huge housing booms along the coasts, right up to the water's edge, something I had no desire to encourage. So in August of 2011, I shut down my influence on the storms. The result was hurricane Rina and a horrific loss of life in both Cuba and Florida. I wondered what Melanie thought.

And I am grateful to her. She's told no one about my abilities or how I murdered her parents, not even her sister. I'm still good friends with Patricia. In the fall of 2011, Patricia tearfully asked me not to come to her wedding, saying she knew how much it would distress her bridesmaid Melanie. I totally agreed. And the months passed. I began to find it difficult to relate to people, my issues and concerns seemed so different from everybody else's. I began to fear my humanity was slipping away from me. I came to appreciate how much Melanie had been my moral compass, as well as my wife. I pined for her, and then the time began to deaden the pain.

I turned to exploration, exploring my universe, exploring my abilities, exploring my desires. What did I want, what were my goals? I kept postponing my plans for cleaning the Earth and terra-forming Mars. I did a lot of thinking about accountability, in particular my accountability. I made a commitment never to murder again, unless perhaps other people's lives were in immediate danger. Melanie was right. I had killed not just in anger. Especially in Benjamin's case, I had murdered to protect the revelation of my powers. I would not make that mistake again.

Accountability! Such an infinitely fascinating and complex concept! Should I be the world's policeman? Destroy all illegal drugs, or hunt down terrorists? Should I cure all sickness? I don't know if I can do that, but should I try? What would that do to society and to population pressures? Maybe just cure all childhood illnesses then? But where do I draw the line? What's the moral argument for curing a 17-year-old with cancer but not an 18-year-old? What should I be responsible for?

I decided to look to the example of the true God for guidance. He leads but does not manage. Life is dangerous and unfair, people have the freedom to be unjust and ruin their lives and the lives of others. I figured if the true God saw this as appropriate, then I with a mere doctorate of god-dom should do the same. I would not hold myself accountable for other people's decisions, and I would let them keep their liberties and their successes and failures.

Sounds nice in theory, but in practice, how to implement it? I can't isolate myself from the world around me. And I don't like the Earth suffering from the consequences of humanity's pollution. So I made a decision during my Christmas visit with my parents and the end of 2011. I would use my abilities as a gift to the oceans. The atmosphere was under too much detailed observation to clean unnoticed, but the dynamics and natural cleaning cycle of the oceans were still so poorly understood, I decided I could do some major oceanic repairs without revealing my existence.

And the months passed, and slowly turned into another year. I watched New Years 2013 arrive, alone in my apartment at Fresh Pond. The memory of my wife seemed like a wonderful and beautiful dream, but the dream was starting to fade.

Chapter 35.

Time: Friday, January 18, 2013 7:13 PM

I was swimming laps in my lunar pool when the phone rang through the interface with my apartment in Fresh Pond. I thought briefly around just letting the messaging system on Earth handle it, but then I pushed myself into my living room, thinking myself dry and into some clean clothes. I sat down into a chair especially designed for the low gravity and answered the call before the fourth ring.

"Hello? Eric?"

It was Melanie! I suddenly felt tongue-tied. "Uh, yeah. Hi Melanie! How are you?"

"Me? Oh, I'm fine. Eric, I know after all this time, you're probably surprised I'm calling, but I was wondering if we could talk."

"Sure! Do you mean now?"

"Uh huh."

My mind was flooded with painful memories, Melanie in fear of me, cringing that I was near her. "Melanie, do you want me to come over or, do you mean talk on the phone?"

"Well... If you don't mind... Actually, I'd like you to come over... if you would."

"Okay. I'm at Daedalus right now, but I can be in your entrance hall in a few seconds. Would that be okay?"

I heard Melanie take a deep breath. "Yes. Thank you Eric."

"Okay. Bye." I hung up and left immediately. I was so excited I forgot to cloak until I was almost in Earth's atmosphere. I de-cloaked while Melanie was still putting down the phone in the living room.

She blinked when she saw me, and then tried to smile. "Wow, that was fast! Are you traveling at light speed now?"

"Yeah, pretty close. What was two seconds for you was less than one second for me."

Melanie nodded and pointed to the other side of the couch she was on. "Would you like to sit down?"

I nodded and joined her, sitting only about a meter away. We stared at each other in silence for a while. I tried to smile at Melanie, and she tried to smile back. This meeting was turning out better than my fantasies of getting a call from Melanie. There was no fear in the eyes at all, and even more surprising to me no accusations. The two years of time had healed the wound of her parents' murders. The primary emotion I thought I was reading from Melanie was shyness, and I couldn't figure out why. I thought she had every right to reject me.

She seemed unsure of how to start the conversation, so I thought I'd take a whack at it. "It's nice to see you again Pum... uh, Melanie. Sorry. You're looking very well."

Melanie nodded, and then looked at me with great... It was hard to tell what her emotional state was. I didn't want to probe her body, certainly not without asking and I didn't want to ask. But she was clearly excited. She took a deep sigh. "Do you still think of me as Pumpkin?"

It was my turn to sigh and nod. "Do you mind?"

Melanie didn't answer my question directly. "You never called."

"I know. You told me not to, and I couldn't bear to frighten you."

"Oh." She was silent for a long moment before going on. "I was hoping that was the case. Eric, I asked you here for a favor..." More silence, and then she started to fidget on the couch. "Uh, would you like some tea?"

"Sure, that'd be very nice."

We both knew I could zip up some instantly, but Melanie quickly got up and headed off to the kitchen. I stayed behind on the couch. "You still like English Breakfast?" she called from the kitchen.

"Yep, still my favorite." I called back. I leaned back in the couch and closed my eyes, my mind flooded with so many memories. I didn't notice Melanie return until she sat down next to me and handed me my old mug. It was filled with hot tea with a touch of honey, just the way I like it. "Thanks," I said, as I took a sip.

We drank our tea in silence. Both of us were hesitant, unsure of how to start a conversation or what to talk about. I spent most of my time watching Melanie's eyes. She's very expressive with them. I was reading lots of precursors for play posturing, but she was too nervous to complete the expression. I decided to try to break the ice and start the conversation again.

"So, how's your junior year as resident coming?"

Melanie took a deep breath and nodded. "It's been a real transition year for me, a baptism by fire. Children's lives are in my hands. My decisions are reviewed by the senior staff, but I'm the one on the front line making the decisions. It's such an awesome responsibility Eric! And sometimes the battles are lost. When I was growing up, dreaming of being a pediatrician, I had no idea how gut wrenching losing those battles would be."

Melanie drained the last of her tea in one big gulp and changed the topic. "And how about you? May I ask? Have you been all right?" She looked at me with a surprising degree of timidity.

I nodded. "Last year was a transition year for me too. I spent a lot of time exploring. Uh, a couple of months ago I built some telescopes, some really big ones."

"Oh yeah? On the far side of the moon?"

"No, halfway across the galaxy."

Melanie blinked and then nodded slowly. "Your powers... I keep thinking of you as you were two years ago, but of course you've been growing, haven't you?"

"Oh yeah..." I took a deep sigh and decided to tell her how far I had evolved. "The large rotation structure seems to have disappeared after the sixth rotation ended. Just about two years ago, on January 21, 2011, I switched over to new growth rates. The period length is still the same, 31 days, 19 hours, 56 minutes. Every period I grow exponentially in my force and power abilities, and every two periods I growth exponentially in my sense-sphere radius. In my minimum lock limit too, though now it's so small it's no limit as all."

I saw Melanie staring at me. I smiled back. "You know. Exponential. 2.718281828."

She finally smiled back, and then that same tilt of her eyebrows, her wonderful offer to play. She was still very shy though, and I didn't think she was aware of what her eyes were expressing. She took a deep breath. "I'm familiar with the number! So how far can you reach now?"