“Dad, have you ever heard of Jeff Bartels? He’s a Canadian artist. I saw one of his paintings and I looked him up. He has some interesting paintings. I think you’ll like his alternate artifacts series.”
Dad pulled out his iPad and did a search. His eyebrows rose when he saw the artworks and I left him to his perusal as I prepared my breakfast. Halfway through finishing off my breakfast, dad finally returned his focus to me and to the remains of his now cold breakfast.
“Thank you, Abby. His work is very detailed and imaginative. I’m curious to see if I can recreate some of those painting in sculpture.”
“I thought you might. The motorcycle looks like a good candidate.”
“I agree. Have you given any thought to what we can make your mother for Christmas this year?”
“Yup. Although, I think we should switch it to Chanukah now that she’s back. This year it’s only three days earlier than Christmas.”
“I think she’ll appreciate that. What’s your idea?”
“A rocking chair. I was picturing her sitting outside by the fire-pit and rocking Ben to sleep.”
Dad considered it for a bit and gave his approval. He got out a sketchpad and we worked on our design for a half hour before we heard Ben stirring from sleep. I got him from his room and dad and I played with him until he started fussing for some food. Mom hated using the breast pump and she didn’t want to start Ben on formula yet, so I took Ben over to her and woke her up.
A groggy mom said, “Give me a few minutes in the bathroom and I’ll take him from you.”
“No problem. If he starts crying, I’ll shift him to L1 until you’re ready.”
Mom gave me the stink-eye and said, “No matter how much he cries, Abby, he. stays. in. reality.”
Morning mom was scary. Morning mom who gave up coffee while she was breast-feeding, was extra scary.
I returned to dad and we finished up our draft design for the rocking chair. Although we still had a few weeks to get the work done, it was a rare Saturday morning that we were both free and we started working on the chair right away in the forge out back. When I felt mom pass through the field I’d left surrounding the house, I told dad and we hid our project before she could ruin her surprise. We met her outside and went for a walk with her and Ben, before returning to the forge.
“Have you been practicing with your pulse-search technique, Abby?”
“A few times a day. I buried some diamubies out at different distances, and different realities, and I try to push myself to see how far out I can sense them. If I search in only one direction in reality, I can reach over fifteen miles. If I look in multiple layers, I can only go as far as eleven miles. Pulse searching in an expanding sphere around me only gets five miles. I’m getting better, but it’s very slow. I made most of my gains in the first few weeks. Since then, I’ve only increased by small increments.”
“How far out do you need to go?”
“That depends. If Ben is kidnapped and I find out within ten minutes, then I can track him with what I have now. If I only find out an hour later, then I’d need to be able to scan as far as a car can go in one hour. So, sixty or seventy miles. They could drive faster, but they wouldn’t want to risk getting stopped by the police. At the very least, I’ll need to double my distance now, and a bit more, just to cover the Charlotte airports from here.”
“You’ve set yourself quite a task, Abby. You mentioned that when you were practicing with your shield, you tried keeping it active around you all the time. Perhaps if you tried to pulse-scan constantly throughout the day, you would improve your strength. Even if you don’t scan as far, but simply do it more often, you’ll see improvement. You don’t need to beat the metal with your strongest blows to get results.”
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We lapsed into silence as I considered how to apply his advice. The first thing I’d have to change is what I was searching for. Diamubies were pretty scarce. I supposed that I could switch over to my standard award ceremony scan for guns and knives, except that with a pulse scan I’d either need to have those items nearby for a model or I’d have to create a similar shape to look for. For the guns, I could do that using the trigger shape. Triggers were reasonably generic across most models of guns. For knives, the shape of the top inch of blade should be sufficient.
Searching for two different objects would require two different pulses. I gave it a try as I helped dad at the forge. Wow! There were a lot of guns and knives within a five-mile sphere of us. I drew in the sphere to a one block radius by decreasing the power. The pulses were even faster and the number of weapons became more manageable. Once thing was certain. I wouldn’t want to try and rob any of my neighbors.
Now that I knew what to pulse for and how much strength to put in the pulse, I just needed to find a way to do it all the time. It would have been great to set my field to pulse every five minutes on its own, but my ability didn’t work that way. I had to fiddle around with my phone for awhile and download an app so that I could get it to vibrate twice every five minutes. As soon as I felt the vibration, I sent out my two pulses. The alarm was set to start going off at eight in the morning and stop at ten at night. I quickly saw that I would either get used to it or be driven completely bonkers by it. For the first few hours, it really seemed the like the second option would win out.
Between the two of us, dad and I got a lot done that first day and over the next week, we each managed to work enough on the chair to get it to the point where it was almost ready. All it needed were the cushions and those I had ordered custom made from a local supplier. Of course, that only took care of mom. Dad’s gift was going to be very different this year and I’d been working on it for over a month. I still wasn’t sure if it was going to be ready in time and I stressed out over it. Luckily, as the first night of Chanukah drew near, many of the elements finally came together and my tension eased. It wasn’t exactly at the level that I’d hoped it would be, but it was close enough.
On the first night of Chanukah, mom gathered us around three candelabras that she’d set up and she recited three blessings before we each lit one candle and placed the main candle in the center. Apparently, I done this before when I was little, but I didn’t remember it. In a way, Ben and I were both having our first Chanukah together. Mom sang some songs in Hebrew and I made a mental note to get that language downloaded via metallic ink after the holidays. When mom turned out the kitchen lights, we stayed for a few moments and admired the dancing lights of the menorahs.
Mom loved the rocking chair and had dad set it up next to the firepit right away. We moved the rest of the gifts outside and opened them by the light of the fire. I laughed at the plate of chocolate chip cookies dad had made for me and Ben seemed mesmerized by the tinkling metal rattle he’d made for Ben. My gift for Ben was a small plastic ball with spikes all around it that he could chew on once he started teething.
When only my gift to dad remained, I took out a VR rig from the bag beside me and helped him put it on. Like I’d done with Eva, I put on my own set and connected the two of us to the new program I’d had VR Health Services set up for me.
“Oh. This is my workshop at the university.” Dad looked all around with interest, looking to see if everything was as it should be.
“Hold on, let me just orient the room a bit, so you don’t walk in to the fire-pit. Ok, turn to your left, where your forge is and walk up to it. Do you see these setting here? You can use them to control the heat of the flame. You could also just say what you want. Let me show you. Turn forge to nineteen hundred degrees. Bring in an iron ingot.” When the ingot appeared, I placed it on the anvil to let it soften. “You can speed up the time or wait for it soften normally. Grab your hammer off the wall and you can start working with the metal.” I went on to explain all the features of the VR forge to dad and how this was the test version. I’d be adding more features over the next six months.
“Eventually, instead of using only a virtual hammer, you’ll be able to hold a physical hammer with sensors on it and use that to pound out a VR sword. The only thing I can’t seem to replicate is the heat. I’m hoping that you’ll be able to use this system to teach your students different techniques or even to test them.”
Dad removed his headset and squeezed me tightly. “You have outdone yourself, Abby. I can already see several possibilities for this system. Would it be ok for me to work with your programmers to get it ready?”
“Of course. I’ll introduce you to the two programmers for this application and they’ll make any changes or additions that you want. You don’t even have to go to the offices. You can set up a time with them, log on and show them what you want. Once I’ve set you up as a manager, you’ll be able to access other settings that will even let you record your ideas for the programmers to see at a later time and you’ll be able to voice over lectures as well.”