Kinetic

"Really? Great! As a Star Trek Ferengi would say, I'm all ears!"

I nodded. "I'm so embarrassed Melanie."

"Oh, don't worry about that... Eric! You weren't... uh, there wasn't someone else, was there?"

"Huh? Oh no..."

"So what'd you do? Rob a bank?"

"Well, no... Not a bank exactly."

"Huh?!"

"But it wasn't that. I was afraid..."

Melanie looked at me quietly for a long time. And then she leaned over and kissed me.

It was a wonderful kiss, nothing like the pecks of friendship we were giving each other last year. This kiss was long and slow and intimate and playful, full of forgiveness and intimacy and promise. When we finally broke apart we were both panting, but it was more from the emotional intimacy of the kiss than its physical arousal.

Melanie smiled at me, and it was an expression of pure love. "Still afraid?"

"No."

"Good! But before... What were you afraid of?"

"This is it!" I thought. "Eric, don't be a fool! Trust her!" I stared straight into her eyes, so she could see my sincerity, and whispered, "I was afraid you would think me non- human."

Melanie looked puzzled. "Inhumane? Did you do something cruel?"

"No, not inhumane, non-human..." I took a deep breath and started to talk.

I will give Melanie enormous credit, she listened to me very politely, and she didn't even pull back from lying against me on the bed, but I could see the disappointment in her eyes as I detailed the last two years of my kinetic life.

"Want a demo?" I asked when I was through.

"Sure," she said listlessly.

I got out of bed and sat lotus-position on the floor, after checking that the window gave no good view into the room. And then I elevated myself a meter off the ground.

Melanie stared at me in utter bewilderment but no shock, which astonished me. And then she started to giggle.

"Oh, bravo Eric! How are you doing this?!" She got up and stood before me with a playful look on her face.

"Melanie..."

"Hush! I think I can figure this out!"

With a laughing face she started walking behind me. There was a long pause, and then I saw a broom handle sweep the space under me and above me. Melanie made a very strange gurgling sound, as if she swallowed something wrong, and the she walked in front of me from the other side, completing her rotation. I looked into her eyes. They were filled with terror. And then she passed out. I caught her with my force, and gently laid her body back upon the bed.

Chapter 12.

Time: Sunday morning, 7:39 AM, January 4, 2004

I *pulled* up a chair behind me as I stood by Melanie's bed. I wanted so much to lie down and hold her, but I sensed her stunned body and felt her tight neck arteries relaxing. I thought she would recover in just a moment, and if she were still thinking of me as a monster, well, being in my arms would not be exactly where she'd like to wake up...

I sat in the chair and watched her breathe. "Oh Melanie," I thought and prayed. "I'm so glad I told you. No matter what... I'm so glad I told you..."

She blinked open her eyes, looked around the room for a second and then gazed at me. "How long was I out?" she asked.

I was desperately trying to read the neutral expression on her face. "Uh, not long; four minutes, maybe five..."

Melanie nodded her understanding. "It wasn't a dream, was it?"

I shook my head.

Melanie frowned and then asked. "Another demo?" She took a pen from her nightstand, and held it in her open palm. "Take the pen?"

I lifted the pen and held it in mid-air for a moment, then opened my hand and guided the pen to my fingers. After a few seconds, I let go and lifted the pen back to the nightstand.

Melanie stared at me for a moment, and then blew of full load of air through her cheeks. "One more? Wait a second..." She got out of bed, got her tea mug and opened her dorm door, looking up and down the vacant hall before exiting in her pajamas. I tracked her with my sense. She was back a moment later from the water fountain with a full mug. She placed it on the nightstand and sat back down on the bed. Her knees were almost touching mine, and there was no fear in her gaze at me. I thought these were extremely hopeful signs.

"Freeze it," she said simply.

I stared at the mug for a second. It was an expensive, vacuum thermos mug, solid steel construction. It was part of a package of birthday presents I had given to Melanie last year. I smiled and said, "It's 552 cc of water, plus the usual traces... Current temperature is 18C. I have it scanned and locked. Give me a go to start."

Melanie nodded and stared at the mug. She seemed to be mesmerized by it. "Go!"

I pulled at the heat with full throttle, 46,485 Watts flowing from the water, taking the water down to 0C in nine-tenths of a second. It took me another four seconds to freeze it solid, and then I kept pulling for another twelve.

I looked up at Melanie. She looked fascinated by the fractured, frosting ice, but there was no fear in her eyes. She lifted a finger as if to touch the ice.

"Oh, don't touch it! I took it down to -230C!" The core of the ice was 34C below the gas/liquid transition temperature of nitrogen, and Melanie knew it.

"Yes..." Melanie whispered as she stared in wonder at the frosting surface. "I can see tiny nitrogen droplets... fascinating..." Then she looked at me. "Wow!"

I was overjoyed that she was smiling at me. "So I'm not a monster?" I asked.

Melanie looked at me, and then briefly raised and lowered her eyebrows in a peculiar way. I let out an explosive gasp of relief. It was one of our secret eye signals, from our year before Junior High. It was our secret offer-to-play signal. From so long ago, I had almost forgotten. I gave the secret acceptance signal back.

We were lying down in her bed together a moment later, holding and kissing and crying. Neither of us talked for a while, and then Melanie commented, "The day your universe changed, huh? Good way to put it. I feel as if I'm in a different universe right now! Eric, do I have to throw all my physics texts away?"

"Regarding me, yeah, I think so. I think I'm violating every formula in the book! Conservation principles, Maxwell's equations for light, Einstein's equations for gravity, all sorts of quantum constraints... I'm like a sledgehammer on the structure of the universe, doing what I'm doing..."

Melanie cocked her head. "And the heat from the water..."

"... is nowhere at all. It's gone from the universe... or at least this universe..." I smiled. "Don't ask me what I mean by that! I've been thinking for two years, trying to think of some way to explore where these abilities are coming from. I've come up with zero."

There was a moment of silence. "Can you probe your own mind? Sense your own brain, where you think ground-zero of your sense-sphere is? Does it look different from my brain?"

I shook my head. "No. It's like a lens that can never bring its focal length inside the lens itself. I can scan as close as my own nose, but not any closer."

Melanie nodded, and then leaned against me and rubbed her nose against mine. It felt wonderful to feel and hold her body. She gave my nose a playful kiss before backing off. "Ah, your nose... Your best feature perhaps..."

"Melanie... I can't tell you, how wonderful it feels, to be forgiven..." I sighed and whispered, "Thank you!"

Melanie gave me a quick smile and nodded. "You're welcome. Here, let me get dressed."

She got up and pulled out a new outfit from her dresser. I lay in her bed watching and admiring her. With her back to me, she took off her pajamas and panties before starting to dress in her new clothes.

I gave a soft gasp as I got my very first glimpse of her naked. Her beautiful and shapely legs and back meeting at a tight and athletic butt. And then she slipped on her panties. I caught a brief rear glimpse of pubic fur as she raised a leg to slip on her panties. The rest of the clothes soon followed.

Still facing away from me as she buttoned her blouse, she said, "I don't blame you Eric. I've matured so much in the last year. I don't know how I would have reacted, if you had shown me this right after Sterling... I might have really flipped out, gone hysterical..."

I smiled in gratitude. "Melanie, you're very kind... and so beautiful!" My voice caught in my throat. "Melanie..."

"Yes?"

"Maybe too kind... Melanie, last year... I abandoned you... Seriously, I don't deserve such quick forgiveness..."

Melanie finished with her blouse and skirt. She turned and came to me and gave me a quick kiss. "Hush Eric! I'm so happy! Last year, I could feel us drifting apart... I'm so happy now! I have all my old hopes back..." Another kiss, and she went to her bed and started putting on socks and shoes.

I stared at her in love, and I was thunderstruck with a thought. Melanie doesn't have a flirtatious bone in her body. She offers me her faithfulness so freely, so openly, that I had never appreciated what an incredibly precious gift it was. At that moment, I silently vowed I would never make that mistake again.

Shoes on, she looked up and smiled at me. "Hungry?"

I smiled back. "Yeah. Say! How about brunch at the Parker House?"

She blinked and then smiled and nodded. I felt like the luckiest man on Earth.

Chapter 13.

Time: Sunday, January 4, 2004 1:03 PM

We had a wonderful morning adjusting to being a couple again, walking the streets of Boston, catching the 10 AM sitting at the Parker house, wandering back to my dorm room afterwards. We both probably overate a bit at the sumptuous brunch, but all the miles of walking burned it off. It was wonderful just walking and holding hands with her again, even through the gloves.

We were alone as we walked across the Harvard bridge from Boston to Cambridge. Holding each other closely by our waists, I filled Melanie in on the details of my strike against the Russian Mafia. She was pretty quiet about it, non-judgmental... Her one comment was that she could see now why I was a "cash only" kind of guy.

Melanie looked around my dorm room and smiled as we got back. It was her first time here since the summer. "So," she said, as I closed the door, "This is where you stashed the loot, huh? Aren't you worried about a random theft?"

"What? Oh yeah, I didn't tell you. I moved to loot out of my footlocker two days after the heist. It's still in this room though... sort of..." I gave Melanie a playful smile.

Melanie grinned back, accepting my challenge. She walked and looked around the room, touching nothing. I could see her mind working. Then she looked up at me and smiled. "The walls?"

"Ah Melanie, you are good! Yeah, take a look at the radiator pipe by the window, where it enters the room."

She went and knelt and examined the floor connection under the vent. "Yeah, quite a bit of room around the pipe. I can't feel anything though... Oh, of course! Your force!"

"Right!" I tapped the center of the wall perpendicular to the windows. "I floated the stuff down here."

Melanie batted her eyes playfully. "Can I see it?"

"Sure! Let me float you up some samples." Melanie sat down at my desk. I floated three packages to her. Two were obviously money wrapped in cellophane, the third was one of the ingots. I had those individually wrapped in green velvet.

Melanie unwrapped the European money first and giggled. "This is the first time I've seen Euros... They look so strange! Like Monopoly money, so colorful! So many purples... wow... and all the pretty bridges... Do they all have bridges?"

"Yep."

Melanie smiled at me playfully. "Spend any yet?"

"The Euros? No, not one. I haven't touched it, not even to convert it."

Melanie nodded. "How much to you have?"

"1,680,500 euros... 2,080 of the purples, the 500-euro notes, 2,040 each of the 100 and 200 notes, those are the olive-green and yellow-brown ones, and about a 1000 notes of the smaller denominations..."

Melanie nodded and re-wrapped the euro package. She stared at the ingot for a while, running her fingers across it and hefting it, and then re-wrapped that too. She finally unwrapped the third package.

It was a stack of $100 bills, with a small pile of $50's and $20's at the end. "How much is this?" she asked.

"That? Around fifteen thousand, I think... The total from the heist was just over $1,500,000 U.S.; $1.3 million in $100's, and about $100-K each in $50's and $20's, just those three denominations..."

"And how much have you spent?"

"Uh... A little less than $20K..." I gave her a very sheepish shrug.

Melanie nodded, and then started re-wrapping the package.

"Melanie, wait! Couldn't you use some cash?"

Melanie looked uncertain, looking back and forth between me and the money. She finally let out a huge sigh. "It is tempting. I've just bought my textbooks for next semester. I have over $800 outstanding on my charge card."

"Please take it. The bank is used to seeing students pay off debt in cash. It'll be no problem..."

"I know... Maybe that's my problem, that it'll be no problem." Melanie sat and stared at the money. "Heck Eric. I feel like I'm crossing into new territory with my morals... Why is this decision so complex? The drug dealers don't deserve their money back..."

I just nodded. I knew the struggle and didn't want to pressure her.

Melanie finally separated out nine $100's and five $20's and looked at me. I smiled back in encouragement. She finally put the money in her purse and I lifted the remainder back into the wall.

Melanie sighed and seemed eager to change the subject. "How do you get passed the wall joists?"

"There were precut holes to pass wires through; fairly large holes in the thin steel. I did have to make them a bit larger."

"Oh..." She looked faintly troubled. "You melted holes?"

"No, just with force. It's very easy, just scan and double lock, with the boundary between the two locks along where I want to cut. Then I just push in opposite directions. I can set up a shear along a single plane of molecules, a precise tear in anything I want."

Melanie nodded thoughtfully. "And your maximum push?"

"All my forces have to be less than 3,597 Newtons, a raw lift of about 809 lb. But I can use a lever or a pulley if I need to lift something heavier."

Melanie nodded again, and then suddenly her face lit up in amazement. "Eric! You could hold me and take me flying, like Superman!"

I laughed. "I know! And you wouldn't believe how many times I've dreamed of doing just that! But I wouldn't have to hold you. As long as you were within my influence sphere..." I turned thoughtful for a moment. "Melanie, if we worked out some simple hand signals, I could give you a taste of what it's like to fly yourself. I could fly you anywhere you signaled... within the sphere of course."

"And how big is that?"

"A radius of 68.92 meters, ever since September 1, 2002."

Melanie sat on my bed, nodding and looking thoughtful. "I'm trying to memorize all this, so maybe I can make useful comments or suggestions later on, but..." There was a pause and then she grimaced. "Oh Eric, my mind is rebelling! How is this possible?!"

I sat down next to her, put my hand around her shoulder and hugged her. "I know. I've been shrugging my shoulders in frustration about this for two years."

Melanie nodded. "Two years ago... My gosh, so much has changed! I remember our phone conversation so well, Thanksgiving of 2001. I remember being caught talking to you... All this started right after our phone call, huh?"

"Well, that's when I first noticed it. I think maybe it started a lot earlier, maybe the week my mom died."

Melanie looked at me and waited for me to continue.

I described the strange flash my dad and I had both seen, and then went on. "Until September of 2002, my sense sphere was doubling in radius every 31 days, 19 hours, and 56 minutes. Over the same period, my maximum force would increase by a factor of 16, my maximum power output increase by a factor of 18, and my minimum mass for a lock would decrease by a factor of 9."

Melanie considered. "Any idea why those numbers?"

I sighed. "Nope. 2, 9, 16, and 18... Do you see a pattern? And then everything except the mass limit stopped on September 1, 2002, at 11:42 AM. I did a calculation. It was exactly nineteen doubling times of my sense-sphere, measuring from that flash in January of 2001. Exactly nineteen times, to the nearest minute, as close as I can measure."

"Ah... You're thinking it's not a coincidence?"

I shook my head. "I doubt it... But I don't know what to make of it either..." I kissed her. "Oh, Melanie, I should have told you, as soon as I discovered this."

Melanie laughed. "Over the phone?! Without a demo, I would never have believed you, and it was so difficult for us to talk back then. Eric, trust me, I don't blame you for not telling me."

She paused for a moment, and then I felt her tremble. Something was really bothering her, and I wondered if she were still worrying about taking the money, but it was nothing that simple.

She finally said, "I remember that Thanksgiving phone call so well... My mom sent Susan's parents a really nasty letter the following week, threatening them with legal action if I were ever found in their house again..." She rested her head against my shoulder and sighed.

I grunted. "Your parents..."

Melanie spoke in the softest whisper, "I got an envelope from them... recently..."

"Really?! My gosh... When?"

Melanie sighed and took off her shoes. "Right before Christmas... Uh, Eric? Is Ray back yet?"

I shook my head. "His plane gets in tonight."

Melanie nodded and lay down on one side of my dorm bed. I was overjoyed. I took off my shoes and followed. We were soon lightly holding and petting each other.

"So... What'd your parents say?"

Melanie sighed again. "Nothing at all."

"Well..."

"No, I take that back. The empty envelope was a message in itself. I think it was meant to disturb me. It succeeded..."

I was caressing the side of Melanie's head with my fingertips. And then I shivered as I realized what Melanie had said. "After all this time with no contact, they send you a completely empty envelope?!"

Melanie nodded. I could see tears in her eyes. "A warning shot, I think, a signal... They're letting me know the game is not over..."

"My gosh Melanie... Can you report this?"

"Report what to whom? My parents are very creative in staying within the law. Mailing someone an empty envelope is not a crime. And they could always claim they sent me an innocent Christmas card. How could I ever prove the envelope was empty when they mailed it?"

I frowned. "Are you sure it was empty? Any mysterious white powder?"

Melanie cracked a thin smile at my joke. "No... I don't think they'd mind if I did become ill, but breaking the law like that isn't their style... They're much more subtle... but no less dangerous. Eric! My parents have sick minds, but don't under-estimate them! The amount of time they can spend planning something is..." and then she broke down in tears.

I cuddled with her and tried to kiss away her tears. They tasted a bit salty. I discovered I liked them, and started lapping them with my tongue.

Melanie's mood abruptly shifted from crying to sexual arousal. Her tongue came out and joined mine. We French kissed for a while, our lips and tongues brushing and dancing against each other. And then Melanie accepted my tongue into her mouth. I licked the top of the roof of her mouth. She giggled from the sensations, but then softly suckled my tongue in a gentle invitation to continue my explorations.

I turned and she scooted close, lying on her back with me on my side partially pressing onto her.

We kissed and petted. Melanie kept smiling and nodding as I made my advances. I soon had one leg across her thighs, my groin pressing into the side of her hip. We were kissing and petting each other's arms and heads. Melanie opened her mouth wide. It was an intensely intimate and wildly arousing offer for me to enter her body. I held her down by her ribs as I explored her mouth with my tongue. Our lips and tongues were so playful, and I could feel the beat of her heart in the palm of my hand...