Author Part 8
(Chapter 61 of "Senses")
LOS ANGELES
A great deal of what happens next happened roughly simultaneously, with different groups of us in different places, so I'm going to be changing narrative styles a few times during this next part, in Los Angeles. I'll use Angie and Larry first for narrative purposes, but I'll let you know that we landed and after only a ten-minute layover for instructions and the workings of Larry's plans, Scott and Mats took off again. I had been right in thinking that Larry would have a million more reasons for them to find the machine that scrambled Mats' brain.
By the way, I discovered that I love cajun food. Especially Blackened Catfish.
Anyway, Angie and Larry were in one corner of the lab, working with a lap-top computer and going over the charts produced by Janis of the fissure in Greenland. The only thing they had decided was that Scott was wrong. This was no explosion.
"It's as if someone had inserted a serrated saw and twisted," Angie said.
"Except that it isn't possible," Larry replied. "According to this chart there's no residue in the fissure at all, just ice. There should be traces of something. Fingerprints. Anything."
Angie looked up. "Larry, you just told a joke," she said.
Larry smiled. "Don't think I'll be getting into the habit of doing it. You should know by now how much I'm not like my brothers."
"Right professor. Just don't lecture me on the subject."
"Deal." Larry looked at the photographs on the table. "It looks like a saw wave."
Angie nodded. "It does. A horizontal lightening bolt, as if they really formed like comic book drawings." She stood up and paced around the table. "Shazam! Let the earth open up and swallow thine enemies whole!"
Larry shook his head. "I forget sometimes that you were raised Catholic."
"That wasn't Catholicism, just clean fun paranoia." Angie shook her head. "I feel we're in over our heads here."
Larry stood up straight. "We are. Don't kid yourself. You're the only real scientist among us, although we're pretty good as amateurs."
"And my specialty won't help us here."
"And we can't go for outside help. Who would believe it?"
"I'd say that fissure is pretty damned good evidence."
"Evidence of what? A scientific oddity, certainly, but until Mats and Scott find that machine, it's all we have. No one will make the leap we have about a possible cataclysm in the works."
Angie sighed. "I guess not." She slammed her fist onto the table. "Shit! This is frustrating! We have no clues at all here!"
"Maybe one of the other groups is having more luck than we are."
One of the other groups was A.J., Deborah, and 'drink. They were in another corner of the lab, working with Scott's database of quakes, trying to find any others that were unexplained at first. Scott usually had those marked, but there were many of them before the maps were finished. This group had to logically weed out the possibilities using the maps that now existed, but did not exist when the quakes occurred. Not an easy task considering that fault lines could be created by earthquakes.
"Not much so far," A.J. said, going through the files. "What year are we on?"
"1994," Debbie replied. "There's a lot of seismic activity here. I knew that the planet was under some severe stress, but I had no idea there were so many quakes."
"Most people don't. Visit Japan sometime. They get enough to make California look as stable as the Midwest."
"Which gets them too," 'drink added, "according to Scott's statistics. I haven't seen anything that stands out though. We've been looking at all quakes. Maybe we should be concentrating on just the big ones."
"Maybe we should," A.J. acknowledged. "Scott didn't have a lot on undersea quakes before last year, so we could be missing some."
"It's worth a look into."
Debbie was looking at the computer screen. "I've been backtracking and looking for quakes above 6 on the Richter," she said. "Do either of you remember this?"
The data on the screen was dated September 29, 1993. An earthquake in India, a region prone to quakes.
A.J. whistled. "I do remember," he said, "although only vaguely."
'drink read through the information and shook his head. "Twenty thousand dead," he stated. "Sad state to think that something that big would slip our collective consciousness."
"Way too much television."
"Agreed. I feel fortunate that my own daughter wasn't exposed to T.V. for her growing up."
"Does she share that opinion?"
'drink chuckled. "Probably not," he replied. "What about this one?"
"The India quake?" Debbie replied. "Unlikely. The region has had quakes before. According to the documentation here, there was one even worse this century. Unless you know something we don't."
A.J. looked at 'drink carefully. "Do you?"
'drink shook his head. "Nothing certain," he said. "Just a feeling that we should check this one out. What does Scott say about this one?"
Debbie scrolled through the information. "Let's see...well I'll be damned. It's on the questionable list all right, although there are fault lines all over the place. According to Scott's notes, there wasn't the accompanying pressure build up in the crust for a quake to be centered where this one was. It's not unheard of, but it was enough to raise a flag."
A.J. stood up and stretched. "Well then," he said. "I guess that's one. What else do we have?"
"Think, people, think. What are we really looking for?"
Another team was Jim, Karen and Paul. Their job was to look for news events that could be related to the phenomenon of an unexplained quake. The theory was that if one of these machines had caused a quakes too far below the surface to manifest as a quake, perhaps it would manifest as something else.
They had a lap top computer tied into the mainframe, looking at newspaper clippings. They were in the dining room, having eaten some spaghetti while pondering the news for possibilities. While they had found a number of strange things over the previous few years, nothing obviously fit.
"What are you getting at Paul?" Jim asked.
"We've been looking at random events for hours now and getting nowhere," Paul said. "Let's think for a moment. What sorts of manifestations are even possible given what we know?"
"It's a tough call," Karen said. "That's part of the problem. When you consider that there are few active volcanoes out there, we'd have to look for something else. I can't even define what that something else would be."
"I suppose not," Paul acknowledged. "That's why I want you to think about it for a moment."
Jim smiled his ironic smile. "Done," he said. He walked away from the table to the kitchen and opened a cabinet marked "Jim's medicinal supplies". He pulled out a bottle of Bushmill's and opened it, drinking about five shots' worth of booze. He belched loudly, then said, "I feel better already."
Paul laughed, and Karen smiled. "You're a rude bastard," Karen said.
"Dear, if you're only noticing it now, you've been deluding yourself for a record amount of time."
Karen just stuck out her tongue.
"Later, dear," Jim said.
"They're not one-track," Paul said, "but your minds are, in a word, unique."
"You're just jealous," Karen said.
"Yeah, right."
Jim took another long drink from his bottle, then very slowly set the bottle down. "What about the ocean?" he asked.
"Excuse me?"
"What if the ocean floor had one of these fissures?"
"What are you getting at?" Karen asked.
"Suppose that one of these fissures opened up at a weak point in the Earth's crust? Suppose that was in the ocean? After all, most of the planet is covered by water, why not assume that one of these events, if there is one, is in the ocean?"
"Let me think," Karen continued. "You said in a weak spot, that would mean magma close to the surface. The water would have to be shallow."
Paul's eyes lit up. "A storm!" he exclaimed. "A sudden, unexplained storm. A sudden release of steam into the air, which would be interpreted by the weather satellites as a sudden storm." He took a deep breath, then let it out. "That's thin."
"Very fucking thin," Jim acknowledged, taking another long pull from the bottle. Jim grinned. "I say we go with it."
"Let's do," Karen said. She went to the keyboard and typed in the search parameters for ocean based storms. After a ten minute search by the computer system, thirteen possibilities had come up over the last decade. They spent the next hour looking closely at the storms, only to find that one after another could be explained by pressure changes or hot or cold fronts monitored only after the formation of the storm. It was a real education in how unprepared for sudden shifts in weather the world really was.
Storm number eleven had no explanation. It wasn't there in one photo, and in the next, only thirty minutes later, it was. It wasn't much as storms go, but there it was, high into the North Atlantic.
Jim finished the bottle. "I'd say that's worth a look into," he said.
Carrie went back to the market to get enough supplies for a long siege at the lab, in case the work stretched on for many days. Nicki came along, mostly to keep Carrie from complaining about how often she was sent to the market for supplies, but also because she wanted someone neutral to talk with.
Nicki had to admit that the conversation she had had with her mother had not helped her understand her own complex emotions towards Jace, so she thought she'd try to raise the subject again with someone else. Although she had little in common with Carrie, she was determined to try anyway.
The first stop in the market was in the alcohol section, where they picked up almost 400 dollars worth of Bushmill's alone. They filled up the shopping cart with booze, paid for it and stored the booze in the range rover Carrie drove, then went back for the rest of the groceries.
They had gone through over half of the store before either of them spoke. Carrie broke the ice. "What's bothering you?" she asked.
Nicki blushed. "It shows?" she asked.
Carrie nodded. "I've never known you to be this quiet before. You also never volunteer for grocery duty. What's up?"
"Some day I'll understand how all of you read me so easily."
Carrie smiled. "We're older. It comes with the territory."
Nicki nodded, but said nothing for a moment. When she spoke again, it was to change the subject. "What do you think about Jace?" she asked.
"The kid?"
"Everyone calls him that!"
Carrie laughed. "It's because he is a kid. No one is a grown-up at nineteen. I like him. A bit inexperienced but then again, to beat upon a dead phrase, he's a kid."
Nicki rolled her eyes. "That's not what I meant. What do you think about him?"
Carrie thought about it for a moment, then answered after her eyes lit up. "Oh, you mean that way," she said. "I refuse to answer. For one thing, he's too young for me. For another, this is your problem."
"But I need advice."
"Advice is cheap." They made their way through the frozen foods. "Get some spinach, will you? Jim loves the shit."
Nicki was gone for a moment then returned with an arm-load of vegetables. Mostly spinach, as it was the only vegetable Jim would eat. Jim didn't eat as much as he drank, but he did eat more than any one person in the group save Nicki.
When Nicki returned with an armload of frozen vegetables, Carrie was looking at her concerned. "You slept with him, didn't you?" she asked.
Nicki nodded, but did not speak.
"Sex complicates things," Carrie continued. "It always does, especially at your age. Whether you want to admit it or not, you're too young to understand all of the implications. And I know you don't believe me. I wouldn't in your shoes, but I've been there."
"Fine," Nicki grumbled. "Have you any wisdom for me, oh sage one?"
Carrie pushed the basket forward. "Earned that one, didn't I?"
Nicki cracked a smile.
"Wisdom, I don't got," Carrie continued. "Experience, I do got. I think you need to cool things down a bit and not try so hard. You overwhelm people on a regular basis. Most people aren't as forthcoming as you are, and the kid...sorry, Jace... isn't used to it. I mean, it's only been a couple of days since this all started. A week ago you hadn't even gone up to Yosemite yet."
"It has gone so fast," Nicki agreed.
"Which is my point. Sex often does happen fast. It happened that way with almost everyone you know. But a relationship needs time. Right now we may not have a great deal of that precious commodity."
Nicki sighed. "This isn't easy," she said.
"If it were easy everyone would do it."
"Everyone does do it."
"So the media would have you believe. Everyone fucks. Sex is the easy part. Relationships are hard. Right now more than half the people who get married get divorced within five years. Give it time. You'll find that if Jace really does want you and you want him, it'll happen."
Nicki smiled. "You know what the hardest part is?"
"What?"
"That of all the people I've asked, they've each given me a different answer."
Carrie laughed. "That's the way things are," she answered, "even in this group. Get some crackers, would you? I'll get some cheese. We'll snack together later while the others are playing scientist."
"Deal."
And me? I was interviewing Rand, Constance, and Morgana about the story that became Wicca. I wasn't altogether there, however, so we cut things short and they left to go check on the status of things in the lab below and then get some sleep.
Actually, Constance stayed behind and sat on the bed I was laying on. "You okay there?" she asked.
"Yes," I answered. "Sure." I rubbed my eyes and looked at her closely, memory playing tricks with me. "No, not really," I finally acknowledged. "I feel pretty fucked up in the head right now."
"Understandable," Constance answered. "The course of humanity resting on the shoulders of this bunch."
"That's only part of it. Remember back in San Francisco, when we had our little fling?"
Constance blushed, but nodded.
"My head wasn't altogether on straight then either," I continued. "I was hanging around with the Creative Anarchists at that point, and by the time it was over I was pretty wrung out."
The Creative Anarchists (name changed to protect the guilty - me) are a group of cultists who believe they are following druidic traditions, but are really just a bunch of weed-heads looking for the next big high. I belonged to them for a nerve-wracking four months, which ended by me lying to them and saying I was moving to Seattle. Sure, I'd get in touch with the local chapter. Sure I would.
"I remember," Constance said. "You got out just after we..."
There was an uncomfortable pause until I answered, "You're not too comfortable with the idea either. It's okay. You're obviously involved now and I'm not the same kid I was then.
"What bothers me is that I seem to react to this kind of mental stress by having sex with someone. You, now Nicki. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the trend."
"Sleeping with women you ordinarily wouldn't?"
I smiled and shook my head. "True. I mean, you were my teacher for crying out loud. That kind of thing could have had bad repercussions for us both."
"I know. We were both lucky. But that's over now and written off as bad judgment and history. Why does Nicki bother you?"
I frowned for a moment, almost afraid to actually say it. Then I summoned up a bit more courage and did it. "She's fat," I said.
"So?"
"So as much as I hate to admit it, what other people think of me seems to matter a bit. I try to picture myself going to my parents in San Francisco and saying 'this is Nicki' and I find I can't do it."
"Again, so?"
"So why the fuck did I sleep with her? Unprotected at that? That was just plain stupid!"
Constance shook her head. "Why did I sleep with you for that matter?" she countered. "Sex is a form of release. Sometimes it can be that and nothing more."
Ouch. "I'd like to think that our encounter was a bit more than that," I said.
"It was, and don't you ever forget it. Don't look for parallels here. Maybe Nicki was a transition looking for a place to happen."
"Question is, should I start stocking up on condoms for whenever the next one hits?"
Constance laughed. A unique, sweet laugh. "Don't worry about it so much," she finally said. "Let things happen. Get some sleep and try not to worry about it in the morning."
I sighed. "I'll try."
"Good. All this talk about sex makes me want to go find my man. So, if you'll excuse me?"
I laughed this time. "Go," I said, with a wave of my hand. She did.
I laid in bed for a few moments, wondering just what the hell was going on. My life had taken some incredible twists in the past few days; far more surreal than usual, which was especially trying to my psyche. I kept thinking to myself that David Lynch had to be just around the corner, but he wasn't.
Too bad really. I like to think that he'd have enjoyed this stuff. (By the way David - do you mind if I call you David(?) - the movie rights still haven't been bought as of the time I sent this to the publisher's. Seems only fair that you should be the one to get first crack at it; after all, Jim's Roman Holiday from his second solo album is mostly about you, even including a mention of that comic strip you did called Angriest Dog In The World. Have your agent call mine and we'll see if we can't keep this story from getting sodomized. Jim will want to do the music though, but he's a fan of Angelo Badalamenti so maybe they could work together. Ah, I'm dreaming. Signed, your fan - end digression).
I finally got up again and hit the paper, trying to write. I came up with one of the steamiest sex scenes I had ever composed at that point. You want proof? Turn back to page five to see the ultimate result. Then I thought about plugging people in and decided upon Jim and Karen. I then decided that I would take Jim at his word and created a scene just like he described to me when we had first met over doughnuts. Fucked our way here, as it were.
It was unsatisfying, so I sat back and thought about it for a while. I asked myself so, how did they really meet? I've got a lot of innuendo, and some hints, but no one has really told me the full story. I knew the bar they had met in had to be the one on Montana Avenue, but what else? Was the bar crowded? What was so special about Jim that drew Karen to him?
Then I remembered the scene about how 'drink and Debbie had met, and how I had wanted to do it one better. Something about that primal Instinct that I needed to tap to get them from point A to a bedroom. I spent the next four hours working up the first five pages of the novel you have read. Sure, it flows now, but it took me forever to get it to that point.
You may never really know how hard a job writing can sometimes be. It has to always look easy by the time it's finished, and sometimes it is. I was perspiring for my inspiration this time.
Finally, I slept.
When I awoke the following morning, there was a package of condoms in front of my door with a note that said, "Think! Love, Angie."
I muttered, "Yes, Doctor," under my breath, put the condoms in my pocket and hurried down to breakfast to catch up on what had transpired during the night. It turned out to be rather a lot.
Jim, A.J., Carrie, Angie, 'drink and Debbie were sitting around the dining table, munching on various things. "Where's everyone else?" I asked.
"Karen is at her practice," Jim said with a belch. Tacos for breakfast? "Wrapping things up for the long siege so that her patients are covered."
"The San Francisco group headed North about five hours ago," A.J. added.
"Who's the San Francisco group? And don't I belong to it? It's where I'm from."
"I guess you do," said Angie.
"Thanks for the package by the way," I said to the doctor.
"You're welcome. Want a doughnut?"
I realized that I was starving and looked at the offered box in front of me. I took four.
"In answer to your question," 'drink said, "The S.F. group consists of Larry, Morgana, Rand and Constance. I guess you should be a part of that group, but it seemed that you needed some sleep."
I coughed but said nothing. The doughnuts were good.
"Are Mats and Scott still in the air?" I asked.
"Yes we are," came a disembodied voice. It was Mats coming through a speaker at the table everyone sat around. I hadn't noticed it until that moment.
"Fair enough then," I said, sitting at the table. "Bring me up to speed."
"The speed is, we've hit the jackpot first time out," Jim said. "It's a good thing you're here or we'd probably be searching forever."
"I still have trouble buying the 'coincidental man' routine," I said.
"I'm a believer now. So is Larry. That's good enough."
"We've found another of these fault lines," A.J. said.
"Maybe two," added Scott's voice. "An earthquake in India may be one of these, but it's from five years ago. The Indians rebuild so quickly that it may be impossible to prove it one way or another."
"The big news," A.J. went on, "is the undersea quake. We found a fault line close to the surface at a 'hot spot', where the magma is close to the top. In this case, an undersea volcano was created. According to Janis, another machine that Mats could communicate with is there, but damaged. We're trying to decide what to do now."
I finished off my third doughnut and smiled. "So the history node actually began some time ago," I said, "and we're just now catching up to it. There have been at least two other incidents like Greenland. What about the Northridge quake from 1994? Or Loma Prieta?"
"We never even looked. According to Scott those quakes were legit from the get go. We just think about them because we were there."
"Exactly," Carrie added. "We've also been able to rule out the quote unquote Star Wars satellite idea and fly-over aircraft Scott experienced in the 80's. According to him the kind of scorched earth necessary just isn't there."
"What about communications?" I asked. "Has anyone been talking about our Greenland incident?"
"There's been nothing too out of the ordinary," Scott's voice said. "There have been some satellite communications regarding the quake, between Greenland and the States, but I've seen this kind of scientific data exchange before. Nothing out of the ordinary. Greenland's government won't be sending someone out to the 'epicenter' for at least two weeks yet because of it's remote location. We haven't found the bad guy using this method though."
"What about the machine?"
"Non-functional. Mats and Janis believe that what hit Mats was a sort of death knoll let out by the device."
"Too bad," I said. "It could have saved a lot of trouble."
"True. Larry had us check dozens of things for connections to this event. Nothing's panned out."
"So we were trying to decide what to do next," Angie said. "Want into the discussion?"
I nodded. "What discussion?" I asked. "We need to pick up the other machine."
"Told you he'd see it my way," A.J. said to the rest of the group.
"Hold on," came Mats' voice. "We know this thing can communicate with my head, and we know it will cause me some pretty serious pain. I'd rather not repeat that experience."
"I can give you some painkillers and tranquilizers to help you through the experience," Angie said, smiling. "Trust me, I'm a Doctor."
Mats laughed. "Can you prescribe some weed?"
"You have Glaucoma?"
'drink laughed a boisterous laugh. "She's got your number, slim," he said to the speaker.
"Janis, I'd like an opinion," Jim stated between bites of taco.
"Yes Jim," came the ship's voice. God's teeth, what a voice.
"The damaged one in the North Atlantic. Could that one be as damaging to Mats?"
"Unknown. Because it is damaged, it may be more painful to Mats. I wouldn't allow that."
"That's a vote for the other side," Mats chimed in.
"Janis," I said, "are you watertight?" I realized the answer even as I asked, but Janis answered anyway.
"Watertight and airtight, just as I should be," she said. "We've already been close to the water-bound machine."
Aha! "Mats, were you affected then?"
"No." His response came a bit slowly.
"I think we've answered the question," Debbie said, speaking for the first time since I entered the room. "Pick up that one. Mats, why don't you try contacting the machine before it tries to contact you? Maybe that will be enough to keep a cursor command from bouncing around the inside of your head."
"It's a thought," came the voice. I later found out that it was Scott who had answered, not Mats. At the time none of us noticed.
"All right," Mats' voice came. "We'll go get the machine, then bring it to the lab. Angie, I expect you'll have the medical facilities ready should I need them?"
"I will," Angie replied. "Janis, be sure you bring him straight here should anything happen."
"I will," said the ship. "Jace should be along."
"Why?" I asked.
"To take advantage of your luck." We all laughed, and I agreed to go.
"Stand by," Mats said. "We'll pick you up shortly."
With the issue settled, I headed for the refrigerator to pour a glass of milk. Then it hit me that one person was unaccounted for. I turned to face the group that was also getting up from the table.
"Where's Nicki?" I asked.
The answer to that question was that Nicki was in her own room. She didn't want to be in the same space as Jace. Not yet. She wanted time to think.
Think about her feelings towards Jace. Think about how to start up a conversation with him without trying to win his affections. Think about the interview she would have with him shortly to get her perspective on the events of the group's story. Homework, she mused between other thoughts.
Just to think.
Nicki's biggest problem was simply a lack of experience and she knew it. Her childhood was very unusual, and it took her a long time to understand that most people weren't like her parents or Mats. Or any of the others she was currently around so often. Perhaps she still hadn't learned enough.
Perhaps? Nicki thought. Certainly! After all of the input I've received, I'm more confused than ever!
Nicki sighed. I'm going to have to figure this out for myself. "How will I do that?" she asked aloud, though there was no one to answer. "He doesn't love me. What do I do to resolve this?"
She had already ruled out using any of her abilities on Jace. After the stern lecture A.J. had given her about abusing her abilities she made an oath to herself that she would not do anything like that again for personal gain, and Nicki took her oaths seriously.
When she and her family were still in the time snap, she had made a promise to try not only to get along with people she met, but to also like herself. And because she did like herself, she hadn't understood why she felt so flustered about Jace's comments about her size. And because of that, she had made a concentrated effort to go after the boy. From that point things had spiraled out of control.
And she felt guilty about it. She realized that simply due to Jace's nature, she probably had to do the things she had done, because he needed to be with the group, but she wondered why the specific events of their relationship had gone the way they had. No answer would come and no one she had yet spoken with had given her any real insight.
As Nicki saw it, all of the problems she currently faced came back to the issue none of the other women in the group would confront directly; her weight. Jace wasn't interested in her that way because of her weight. She had no real friends because of her weight. She couldn't socialize well because of her weight. The fact that she had not noticed these issues to be a problem before she met him was something she didn't even consider.
Nicki's self-esteem regarding relationships was at an historic low, and as a result, she would become despondent every time she thought about it. Which was often.
After some thought, she decided to try to put her personal feelings and the issue of Jace on the back burner for now. She realized that Jace didn't want to deal with this issue himself yet, so perhaps it could wait until the crisis was over. Besides, she did have her homework assignment to do before her first interview with Jace for the histories.
What Nicki was to prepare was a history of herself for the last three years, since she had rejoined the normal time stream with her family. Later her insights would be used to fill out the history of her family during the time snap but as Jace had much of that story from the others he was more interested in her adjustment to the rest of the world.
A large amount of the credit would be given to A.J. After Nicki's initial introduction to the normal time stream it was obvious that she would need some time to adjust to everyone else. The noise she heard in her head was the most confusing thing she had ever experienced and made communication with the others close to impossible, except for 'drink, who could send thoughts to her directly. The fact that she had no discipline over her mind to screen out other people's thoughts would become a problem quickly in a group that included several alcoholics and sex fiends, so A.J. took it upon himself to discover how to help her screen out thoughts. The process had been fascinating.
During the first few days A.J. had insisted that Nicki be sequestered at the lab and that multiple scans be run on Nicki under as many different conditions that either he or Larry could think of, plus one unusual one involving sleep that Carrie came up with and another involving Nicki's menstrual cycle that Angie came up with. One more suggested by Jim was thrown out as simply rude.
A.J. had insisted on the scans so that he could better see what was going on with Nicki. As he would later need with 'drink, he needed a translation process into a format he understood, as Nicki and her father looked so odd to him through his own strange eyesight.
What was quickly discovered was that Nicki could also see equations; something she hadn't even known was possible before the scans. It was Carrie who had noticed a similarity between A.J. and Nicki that led to this discovery; something even A.J. had missed. This realization was stunning enough, but upon further experimentation they quickly discovered a true shock. She could turn the ability off.
This fact allowed A.J. to teach Nicki how to turn off individual equations, once she could recognize them. It was very difficult, as Nicki didn't understand the mathematical concepts necessary. Even now she didn't have a grasp on math past basic algebra, let alone calculus and fractals as Jim and A.J. used them, and was only using the equations she had been able to memorize.
The hardest part was that no one had been able to figure out how Nicki shut the equations off. All she knew was that she thought about it and they were gone, or back as the case may be. She rarely used the equations because they would confuse her vision. However, A.J. used his translation process and over time was able to tell Nicki which equation to disassociate herself from so that a voice would leave her head.
The first silent moment Nicki had after rejoining the normal time stream was over two years after the multitude in her head had begun.
After that success, she had finally gone into public places. After a few abortive tries she was able to screen out other people's thoughts even when she had never met them. The noise could be controlled by a simple force of will.
Only then were some of Nicki's other abilities explored.
She could make objects materialize from nothing just as her father did, and like A.J. she was beginning to understand how to interpret equations she could see. She could not, however, change the equations like Jim and A.J. could. She could communicate with Janis, which her father could only do on a limited basis.
I feel like the child of Superman and Lois Lane, Nicki thought to herself after having written down the notes of her last three years. Almost like a genetic splice between a god and a mortal. A Freak.
But wasn't everyone in this group a freak? Flying people and empaths and mind controllers and hackers and spaceships? Why am I the one who is fat?
Nicki began to sob. Why am I the only one who is pitying herself?
Nicki let herself cry for several minutes. Then she took another few moments to regain some of her composure and made a decision.
She called Karen.