Slap - Part 2

(Chapter 49 of "Senses")

Day 17

"Nothing! Fucking nothing!"

Only four of the group were at the lab. Rand, who was attached to the scanning equipment undergoing his fortieth scan while casting a construct, Angie, who was presently going over the computer simulation, A.J., who was sitting resigned in a lotus position three feet above Rand, and Jim, who was ranting.

At present, Paul was at home awaiting the return of the Davis' and Mats, while the others were in San Francisco setting up a computer link at Larry's home to tie into the satellite system that Scott had established at the lab.

At the far end of the room was a refrigerator that Jim presently stalked over to. He pulled out a bottle of Bushmill's and drained it, then said, "Sorry about that folks."

"It's frustrating for us as well," A.J. said. "Believe me, I understand."

"Is there anything we can use?" Rand asked.

"Nothing I can see."

Angie chuckled. "Sorry Rand," she added, "but you seem to be so breathtakingly normal. None of the things you do seem as clear cut as these two's mental processes are."

"You don't suppose there's some kind of camouflage going on here do you?" the witch asked.

"None we've been able to ascertain," Jim said, rejoining the others. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but if it weren't for the demonstrations we've seen of your powers we wouldn't even be able to tell you're one of us."

"Unfortunately," A.J. said, "he's not wrong."

Rand sat up, taking a number of wires with him. "Goddess!" he pleaded.

"We're chasing a dead end here," Jim said, shaking his head. "We need metaphysics not physics here, and we simply don't know enough about the field. You've never tried to do your thing without invoking your religion?"

"I have trouble even conceptualizing it," Rand replied. "May I remove these wires?"

Angie nodded absentmindedly. "You know, there is one thing," she said, "but it has nothing to do with your brain."

"And that is?"

"Your blood sugar. It goes down markedly when you spellcast."

"Have you seen that?" Jim asked his brother.

A.J. shook his head and set himself down on the ground. "I don't even know what to look for," he said.

"Take my word for it guys," Angie said. "I can't make any correlation between it and the spells though. It seems to be an after-effect, and given what you've told us of the druidic lifestyle that even seems to fit. The fewer unhealthy elements in the system the better."

"I thought that the body needed some sugars," Rand said.

"It does, but considerably less than most people ingest. You seem to hit that perfect plateau when you cast."

"Gang, this is all interesting," Jim said, "but were getting off the fucking point. Obviously this method isn't going to get us the results we need. We need another game plan. Any ideas?"

"Only more questions," Angie noted. "How the hell are 'drink and the others even staying alive? I mean, if they are all sped up sixty fold, what about their metabolisms? Why aren't their bodies overloading from the internal heat they must be generating?"

"I've thought about that," A.J. replied. "I figure it's like what Jim and I can do with constants. Even their constants would have to be sped up."

"That's one hell of a lot of physics to need to track."

"We're dealing with fucking extraterrestrials here," Jim pointed out, "who seem to have a civilization that's considerably older than ours, although nothing like any of us have ever conceived. I don't find it at all unusual that they might be able to do something that even scientifically seems like magic to us all."

"The unexpected generally is just that," Rand noted.

"You all miss my point," Angie said, standing up from her work console and stretching. "Are we overanalyzing this shit?"

Jim smiled. "Probably," he said.

"Then why don't we sit down for a few days and figure out what things we do not need to concern ourselves with?"

"Then we wind up under-analyzing," A.J. said. "Fuck! This is getting hard! I keep getting the feeling that these people are going to die of old age before we figure this out."

Jim was shaking his head. "Let me see if I've got this straight," he said. "Angie, you think we're trying too hard?"

"Correct," Angie replied.

"Then what we need here is a single formula that can bring them out of the snap."

"Or a series," Rand said.

"I don't think so. A.J., do you still have your notes on unified theory?"

"Yes," the tall man answered, "I gave them all to Larry for safe keeping. But we abandoned all of that ages ago for damned good reason."

"It's about time to reopen the file, I think. It's too fucking soon for my personal tastes, but I don't think that's an issue any more. We have a humanitarian agenda here, and even I will work against the safeguards we have set up. What if the ET's have found a basis for unified theory, and that's how they were able to do this so easily?"

"Wait a minute here," Rand said. "We have no clue that it was easy."

Jim faced the witch. "But you could do it, were your own ethics not an issue, and I concede that your ethical standards are a very important issue. Unless you have a better idea, we have to fucking try!"

Rand nodded and sighed.

"What are we waiting for?" Angie asked. "Let's get on the horn to Larry."

"It happened when I was 7 years old. I was sitting in the front yard at my folk's house in suburban Massachusetts on a lawn chair, drinking lemonade and listening to my beat-up cassette player. The music was a classical jazz piece by Chuck Mangione called 'El Gato Triste' that I rather enjoyed as a kid. I wasn't yet into rock and roll.

"When the song was over, I said aloud 'I'd like to hear that again'. Much to my surprise the tape stopped and rewound, something that the machine hadn't been able to do since I had accidentally broken the rewind button off of the damned thing. Then the song played again.

"That was my first hint that I was even the slightest bit unusual."

Morgana let out a breath and sighed, looking to Larry as he finished his narration, setting the page down on his coffee table. "Astounding," she finally said.

"Agreed," Constance added.

"But the narrative does demonstrate something," Larry said, placing the computer printout on his desk. "'drink hasn't the slightest clue what he does, and he never has. He goes on for pages like this. When he thinks of things he simply does them. There seems to be no rhyme or reason for them."

"Damn," Morgana replied.

"An understatement, to say the least."

Larry, Morgana and Constance were in Larry's apartment above his store. Scott David was also there, but he was downstairs working on the wiring to set up a communications link between the lab and this shop. The work was slow, as Scott had to somehow set up a shield over the network that would make it undetectable, yet constantly accessible, should the aliens return sooner than anticipated.

No one had any doubts that they would come back, given the final parting words from the alien who had put the Davis' and Mats into the snap in the first place. The Northern California Group (as they liked to refer to themselves) were trying to figure out what the real story behind the original abduction was before the aliens arrived, so as to come up with a countering move. So far all they had was speculation.

"All of 'drink's experiences seem to have nothing to do with each other, so I don't think we should be concentrating on him," Constance said.

"We need to concentrate on all aspects of this," Larry countered. "This is far too weird for us not to look into their lives for clues."

Morgana stood from the chair she was sitting in and walked into Larry's kitchen. The tea she had been drinking was now cold, so she went to start another pot. "And so far we don't have anything," she called out.

"But we do," Larry replied. "Obviously Mats was abducted for a reason that we have trouble fathoming although it probably has something to do with his ability to communicate with machines. The problem is that we don't have anything more than that."

Constance chuckled. "You are such a literal minded schmuck," she said. "You should learn to think like the rest of us."

Larry smiled. "This would be a lot easier if we had some idea about the others who were picked up in the first sweep."

"Mats never met them?"

"Not once."

"There are other problems," Morgana added, returning with a cup of hot liquid. "For starters, why would The Foundationers, Asimov be praised, be afraid of an infant? That part makes the least sense of all."

"We could follow the bad science fiction analogy until we're blue in the face," Constance replied. "It's like throwing in Frank Herbert with your esteemed Asimov, Spider Robinson, Robert Anton Wilson, plus a few others, with some cheap tabloid. If I were writing this shit I'd throw the manuscript away."

Larry had stopped listening. His mind had gone into fast thinking mode. Morgana and Constance both, having seen this before, just sat down and waited for Larry to come out of the trance. They didn't have to wait long.

"Terrestrial equivalents!" he finally said.

"Excuse me?" Morgana replied.

"I should have thought of this sooner," Larry answered. "We're looking in the wrong place. Mats was removed from Earth. He wasn't just abducted for a reason, he was abducted from Earth for a reason."

Both of the women brightened. "Got it," Constance said, while Morgana just nodded. "The real question here is not what can Mats do, but what Mats can do on Earth."

Larry clapped his hands together and let out a breath of relief. "That narrows our search quite a bit. Mats can communicate with machines, so we need to know what machines on Earth he could communicate with."

Morgana stood again and walked to the stairway. "Scott!" she called. "We need you up here." As she returned to her seat and her tea, she said, "He would be the one to ask."

Larry nodded. "Grant you that one," he said.

Scott bounded up the stairs, a bit winded. "What's wrong?" he asked as he reached the top.

"Not wrong, but right," Constance said. "What machines here on Earth could Mats communicate with?"

Scott frowned. "Hadn't thought about it," he finally said. "It would have to be machines with considerable A.I. capabilities. The problem is that we're nowhere up to the technology levels that The Foundationers are, with the possible exception of yours truly, and I cheated. Government laboratories, or perhaps the military could have the types of machines that Mats could talk to on some level, but it would be like speaking high physics to a toddler. There wouldn't be any real understanding."

"No private laboratories?" Larry asked.

"None without government funding," Scott relied. "It would take one hell of a lot of money to develop this technology without the help of a being like Janis to study. Especially as we're talking something like the number system involved. Most people wouldn't think of things like that."

"Let me see if I can add this up," Morgana said. "Are we saying that some government has developed a thinking machine?"

"If they have it's for military functions," Scott said. "that's where the creativity always goes first."

"You'd better do some digging using your sources," Larry said. "Try to confirm the existence of such machines, or such a research project. See if you can find them all."

"I can already tell you such projects exist. MIT, Lawrence Livermore, Cambridge, you get the idea."

"Then what we're looking for is one of these that has within the last year or two been transferred to government control."

"I'll go look, but I'll need my stuff in Los Angeles. I'll get a flight down tonight."

"Good." Larry turned to the others. "Now we need to figure out why it is so important that Mats not be around to talk with these machines."

The phone rang, and Larry picked it up. "Hello," he said.

"Hey brother," A.J. replied.

"A.J. Any progress?"

"Not much. Jim wants to open the old file on unified theory, and I agree. We currently believe that we're trying too hard, and that there would simply be too much to keep track of without some form of unifying factor. You follow?"

Larry sighed. "I do," he said. "If Jim wants to open the file again I'll allow it. Scott's flying down tonight and I'll send the file with him." Larry went on to explain what his group was thinking.

"Sounds like a good call," A.J. said once Larry's explanation was done. "I'll arrange to pick Scott up at the airport."

During subjective years four and five some discoveries were made. At about the same time that the Northern California group had made its analysis of the abduction Mats discovered that he could communicate with some Earth-bound machines. A piece of software at Harvard University called Gerald could communicate with Mats, although it was frustrating as it was designed with normal-speed humans in mind, but it was very limited, like speaking with a retarded child. He also discovered that certain missiles, when tested, could respond to his input, although Mats did not understand the codes involved. He shied away from such interaction quickly however, as the end result would be very limited in scope and would produce massive headaches.

'drink, in the meanwhile, discovered that his supposed God-like abilities were more limited than he had thought. To be certain, no one else could come close to the things he could do, but telekinesis was beyond him, as was empathy and time manipulation. As for his ability to pull objects out of thin air, he discovered that what he was really doing was creating objects from thin air, as if by a magic spell. Now that it was confirmed that there really was such a thing as spellcasting, everyone considered that 'drink was a latent sorcerer.

Now that he was sped up 'drink could also see the process as if it were in slow motion, a fact that Larry believed was caused by the object being brought into his own time continuum. At first this offered some hope in finding a way to break the time snap, but 'drink could only manipulate the process in one direction, towards himself. The group quickly ran into a dead end.

Debbie and 'drink also occupied their time by raising Nicki. Slowly they taught her how to stand, walk, and talk, as well as which objects (and people) to not touch because of their slower frame of reference. For this time, all they could do was offer a set of instructions and hope that Nicki would obey. Mostly she did, without comprehending why it was so important.

Nicki was also lonely. She could see other children, almost frozen in time, playing with others of their kind, so she would often wonder why she had no friends. To make up for this, Debbie spent much of her time caring and playing with her daughter. In private moments, she would joke with the others that she had become the one thing she had detested most as a child; a housewife.

Towards the end of year five, Mats began to become a recluse, often staying in his quarters on the ship for subjective days at a time. While the others in the group would let him be, they all were growing concerned with Mats' withdrawal from his friends. Mats would not comment on it, and soon was speaking to no one other than Janis.

Continued...