Slap
(Chapter 48 of "Senses")
1995
Day 113
Paul Cynic was not surprised to suddenly find a Post-it note attached to his forehead. In fact, this same strange event had happened often enough over the previous four months that he was getting used to it, although it was forming a bruise on his forehead.
The note read "See Janis". Paul sighed and placed a phone call. Within minutes Larry Christopher and Rand Weiss had joined him, and they made the trek through Paul's oversized backyard to the spaceship hidden behind the trees there. The ship scanned the party quickly and determined them to be on the list of the ones that could be sent for and opened the hatch so that the trio could enter the ship. Upon entering the ship, a voice called out from amongst the wind that circulated about the room, "Do not sit on the sofa along the starboard wall. That is where they will be primarily."
Paul nodded. "Understood, Janis," he said. "What's up?"
"Just a general update of the situation," Janis replied. "'drink needs to know how much longer until you are ready to try the test."
Rand shook his head. "Fair enough," he said. "I'd like some input from him as well. It might help us solve a small problem we've encountered."
The group had reached the common room of the ship. Inside was a table with five chairs, but two of them moved at unnatural speed away from the table and were put into storage. At the sofa were four people, but their shapes seemed to blur. They were two men in their late forties, one with a beard apparently not shaved in over 10 years and the other also bearded yet well-groomed, a middle-aged but youthful looking woman, and a young teenage girl. Her outline blurred more than those of the others.
"Say hello for us," Larry said. The three men sat at the table.
"They all say hello," Janis said. "'drink says that he moved the chairs by telekinesis."
"He's getting better at it," Larry said.
"He says thank you. What progress has been made with A.J. and Jim breaking into the time snap?"
"Considerable," Rand said. "We know the actual physics of the snap now. What we don't know is how to cause all of the necessary equations yet however."
"Has any progress been made in interpreting A.J.'s eyesight?"
Paul shook his head. "Some," he replied. "We're getting there. Angie has been pouring over the charts virtually non-stop."
"Mats says this is as he thought," the ship said. "The others agree. 'drink asks you to consider whether there are any physical connections between the occipital lobe and the direct thought processes of A.J.'s brain that are out of the ordinary."
"We've checked that," Larry said, "with no tangible results thus far. We no longer believe that such a connection is the right thing to look for."
"'drink asks if there is anything special going on," Janis said. "We have noticed an unusual number of computer signals from the satellite dish at the lab."
"Scott has been raiding medical databases," Paul said. "Anything that might help Angie figure out the eyesight problem."
"Which brings us to our dilemma," Rand added. "There is a database in Switzerland that we need to have access to. The problem is that there is no satellite access available, and we don't understand why. Can you investigate for us?"
"Not a problem," Janis answered. "Deborah says that the original question has not been answered. When will the test be ready?"
Paul sighed. "Best guess says not for another three of our days," he said. "About 120 of theirs."
"The group has decided to go into space until the correct time. We will investigate the Switzerland situation. Have Scott upload the pertinent information to my files."
Paul pulled out a cellular phone from his pocket and dialed the lab.
"Shall we meet back here then?" Rand asked.
"Yes," Janis said. "Mats and I will coordinate so that we meet at noon your time in three days."
"Thank you," Larry said.
"The group says the same. I would advise you to leave now, so that we may all continue our work. We will be heading into space in a few minutes your time."
Paul, who had completed the phone call to Scott, agreed. "Have you the information?"
"I do," Janis replied.
Without another word, the three men left the ship.
Day 6
It took five days for the entire group to get together. Larry had to turn over control of his store to another employee (he had been able to hire more due to the publicity his shop received during the incidents of 1992), and then get Morgana, Rand, and Constance to agree to come with him to Los Angeles, while Angie had to return from a convention in Atlanta. When they all met at Paul's Malibu home, the first order of business was for everyone to meet and explain themselves to the group. Paul, being the host, started by playing the tape recording of the evidence for the trial, and the aftermath.
"So you see people," he finalized, "this is for me a mission of rescuing my sister, her family, and one of her friends. I have no paranormal abilities of my own, but I do have the spaceship and access to the group, which will be available to everyone. Who's next?"
First Jim, then through the rest of the group; Karen, Angie, A.J., Carrie, Scott, Larry, Rand, Morgana, and Constance, they each stood and introduced themselves, their connections to the rest of the group, and what they could do. There were some surprises for other members of the group, as such a meeting had not taken place before this time, and some clarification was needed on the specific natures of both Morgana's and Rand's focuses of their abilities.
After the formal introductions were made, Larry stood and began to pace. "So we have six paranormals," he said, "and five unusually intelligent normals in the group - against fairly staggering odds. We have an additional two paranormals and supposedly a third in the infant on the other side of the time snap, with another normal. We also have one extremely flimsy story as to why they are there."
"We noticed that," A.J. said.
"So I think we had better try to determine what the real story is here, and see if that will give us any clues as to how to help them."
"The story mentioned schematics for a time machine," Rand said. "Where are those?"
"I have them," Scott said. "They make no sense. Who ever it was that put them into the snap, he lied about the nature of the schematics. They aren't even interconnected to one another."
"They were a ruse then," Karen said.
"That they were."
"Have you noticed that The Foundationers have a tendency to underestimate the intelligence of human beings?" Larry asked. "I can think of examples all throughout the story, and even one here. The fake schematics were probably meant for Scott here, to throw him off the scent. But Scott figured the ruse out fairly quickly." He sighed and returned to his seat. "It just doesn't make any sense."
"Agreed," Jim said.
"Why the hell weren't the six of us picked up?" Angie asked. "I can see Mats, after all. He is apparently empathic with machines to some degree. But they missed 'drink on the first pass, and he's more powerful than the rest of us combined."
"And we're all somewhere in between," Morgana added. "It's a valid question."
"Why can't 'drink bring them all out of it?" Carrie asked. "By most people's standards he's a God of some kind. Why can't he get them all out?"
"That's the biggest hole in the story of all," Larry noted. "Is 'drink correct in stating that he can do anything?"
"Apparently not," A.J. replied. "Perhaps he's just uneducated about what he can do."
"Meaning?" Paul asked.
"Meaning that he can't do things he's never tried."
"Then what does 'drink really do?" Constance asked.
"Fuck me!" Jim shouted, standing. "There's a common denominator in all of this!"
"There is?" Paul asked.
"Look at 'drink's abilities. He can produce objects out of thin air, he can communicate with ships, he's a telepath. It's relativity, my friends."
Almost everyone stared uncomprehendingly at Jim. "You lost me," Angie said. A number of the others agreed, while Larry had begun to smile.
"I see it brother," he said. "Your lab experiments have all been to do with physics, and you established a long time ago that the abilities you send are wave functions."
"And?" Angie asked.
"Those are all functions of energy, my dear. Our magical friend can manipulate energy."
"I don't understand relativity that far," Scott piped in. "What has this to do with the objects he pulls out of thin air?"
"One of the things that relativity shows," Jim said, pacing excitedly now, "is that it is possible for mass to be demonstrated as a function of energy. Remember E=mc squared? That can also be written as m=E over c squared. That's the simplified version. I can't say that 'drink manipulates the physics like we do, but he does manipulate that equation on perhaps a sub-conscious level."
"An interesting theory," A.J. said, "but it doesn't answer Carrie's question. Relativity and special relativity have a lot to do with time as well."
"True, it does," Jim admitted. "Damn! I thought I might have had something there. I guess I was getting too simple."
"Maybe you do," Larry commented. "Maybe A.J.'s correct in saying that 'drink doesn't know how he does the things he does."
"I'd best ask him," Paul said. "Damn! We raise more questions with every breath."
"We haven't even started. How are you communicating?"
"I go to the ship and leave a message with Janis, the ship's computer. She relays it on. If they want to contact me one of them leaves a Post-It note where I can find it quickly. Usually they will leave it attached to my forehead. It's a bit unsettling."
Jim chuckled and smiled his ironic smile. "Whatever works man," he said.
"I have a theory," Morgana said, "as to why we weren't picked up. I think they were only after Mats at first."
"Why?" Larry asked.
"Look at it for a moment. They almost missed 'drink altogether, and when they did pick him up Paul's sister got picked up like so much excess baggage. Then they hemmed and hawed over 'drink's happiness, while they were very obviously interested in Mats' happiness."
"So they were really interested in Mats," Larry said, "and even 'drink was excess baggage. Any reason you have for why just Mats?"
"I do not know. I notice in the story that other humans were supposedly picked up, but where are they? Wouldn't they have been training with Mats or 'drink, or perhaps cohabitating with them?"
"So the question becomes what is so special about Mats," Constance commented.
"We don't have enough information," Paul said. "I'll add that to the list of questions I'll ask them."
Jim returned to his seat. "Fuck me, man," he said. "It's already been damn near a full year for them inside the snap. Talk about time pressure."
Now Paul stood to take center stage among the group. "We don't have any time to waste here gang. What steps can we take?"
"You folks have a lab here, correct?" Rand asked. "It seems to me that I am the closest of any of us to having had a similar experience. Members of my religion can perform a spell that causes a time pocket."
"You can?" Paul asked. "Why didn't you say something before?"
"Because I can't do it. A time spell is a curse, and I don't do those."
"Can you do it, or won't you do it?" Jim asked.
"Won't," Rand replied, "and it's a constant struggle. Larry knows what the consequences are. A minor witch can really fuck with you, and I'm not a minor witch. If I start down the wrong road, I'll become the worst thing you've ever run across. Especially because I know about your own abilities."
"Sounds fucking lame," Jim said.
Larry looked sternly at his younger brother. "Jim," he said, "I respect your religious beliefs, or lack thereof, so you in turn respect his. Besides, I've seen some proof of what the black Wiccans can do. We don't want Rand on that side."
"Fuck this man, what we have here is a possible solution! I don't want to hear any of this dark side bullshit!"
"Right," Larry shot back sarcastically. "And men can't fly and aliens haven't abducted Paul's sister. Grow up Jim, this shit is too serious. If Rand wanted to, he could kill everyone in this room with three or four words. He doesn't follow that path, but anything that sends him there could force him to. We all know his secrets now."
Jim nodded with a sigh, sobered up a bit by his older brother's words. "By now you'd think I'd listen. I can be pig-headed sometimes. My apologies if I insulted," he said to Rand. "This is already becoming frustrating."
"Little offense taken," Rand replied. "My point in bringing it up was that perhaps we can use A.J.'s unusual eyesight to figure out how my brain makes the spells work, and take it from there."
A.J. shook his head. "We would need to see the spell in action to make a cognitive judgment of what part of physics would work."
"But all of his spells are tied to his religion," Angie said. "Perhaps there's a common denominator there. If we can figure out that much, perhaps we can take further steps. Maybe even bring them out of the time snap by using the same method I gave you two flight with, by changing a small part of your overall equations."
"So we need to discover which equations send us through time at the rate of one second per second," Karen said. "Then that would become something either Jim or A.J. could alter. Then we would need a method of teaching it to someone else, probably by using Angie's skills."
"Sounds like we have some goals," Angie said.
"Let's move to the lab and start doing scans," Jim said. "And let's have the Davis' and Mats join us. It will be tedious for them, close to three hours per scan, but let's try to scan them as well."
"We can scan them asleep," Karen pointed out. "They'll still be moving at their own pace. Let's see what we can find."
Paul agreed. "I'll go to the ship and make contact and have them meet us there. That fencing above the roof of the lab should be enough to hide the ship."
The group broke up and headed for the lab. The meeting had taken six hours, or the equivalent of 15 days.
The first three years were excruciatingly dull for the four in the time snap. It took a while to adjust to a number of things, including the shift into red of their vision, or rather the fact that they had sped up while light wavelength, along with everything else, had not.
They discovered quickly that being still for extended periods of time was problematic, as they could use up all of the air in their immediate vicinity. They realized the problem quickly enough to return to their living quarters on board the ship, and they had Janis set up an air circulation system that would accommodate their needs. It was Janis who pointed out that she could be accessed at multiple speeds, so she could translate communications between the groups.
For 'drink and Debbie, they spent much of the time raising their daughter. There were a number of amusing incidents as they figured out ways to supply diapers for their little girl and food for themselves, as well as clothing and other goods. Nicki had colic and there were no doctors for the group to take their child to, even though they could get advice from Angie. They managed as best they could.
Mats had a much more difficult time of it. For a while he pulled pranks that his sped up condition allowed him to pull, such as a stunt on a beach that he had once read in a book by a writer named MacDonald. He quickly became bored with such activities, however, and decided to make the best of the situation by learning what he could by interfacing with Janis.
After a while, the group began to travel. Up into the solar system, to various places around the world that they had always wanted to see, always ready to travel back to Paul's home. They discovered that in order guarantee not being seen by earth radar, they had to approach from a substantial distance away from the planet, which would make the journey the equivalent of ten day's travel for them, but it had to be accepted.
What buoyed them all was Nicki. As the young girl grew, they discovered an enthusiastic want to know about everything. Sometime into the middle of their second year, they discovered that she could read their thoughts to some degree. It was difficult to fully measure with only three people accessible and a young girl who was only just learning how to speak, but her enthusiasm was contagious. What small child whose parents doted on her every whim wouldn't be happy?
Nicki, after all, knew of no other world, so the others decided it would be for the best to adopt her world view. It helped, although an unfortunate side-effect developed. Slowly the adults began to lose their sense of personal time - often they stayed awake for a personal length of over 30 hours without ill effects, and would often sleep as long.
It soon became normal.