With the report finalized, it was time to see what else I could learn about my field. From my experience with the bedspread falling through the bed, I was curious to find out what happened to objects that re-entered reality from R1 in the exact same place as an object that was already there. Would the two objects fuse together, would one be forced to move aside, or would the object simply not re-enter reality? This was important to know, because I didn’t feel like losing and arm or a leg if I came back into reality inside of a wall or a car.

Luckily, it wasn’t hard to test out. I took two of my notebooks from last year that I was going to throw out and I moved one into R1. I placed the R1 notebook on top of the notebook that was in reality and it settled into the reality notebook. With the R1 notebook superimposed over the reality notebook, and I removed the field from the R1 notebook and it returned to reality. The two notebooks now shared the same space and had fused together. I picked them up and found that I couldn’t flip through them anymore. The molecules of the two notebooks were enmeshed together and I couldn’t pull them apart. I tried to create a field around just one of the books, to see if I could separate them, but my field now saw them as one object. This was terrifying. This is what could happen to me, if I didn’t watch out. I’d need to be extra careful whenever I came back to reality from R1.

Holding the fused notebooks, I realized that something bothered me about my test and the results. I couldn’t place what it was and so I just relaxed and mediated for awhile. I focused on my breathing and made each part of my body relax one part at a time. After a few minutes, I asked myself what it was about the experiment that bothered me. What had I missed?

My mind flashed back to the day I tested out the field on the front lawn. I’d gone back and forth between reality and R1 dozens of times. I wasn’t being careful, yet I’d never fused with anything. Shouldn’t my shoes have bonded with some blades of grass? I was near the bushes. Wouldn’t I have returned to reality into a small branch even once, by mistake?

I went to the front hall and looked at my shoes. Nothing. No embedded grass. Something else was going on. Something was stopping me from fusing with objects upon my return to reality. The only thing that made sense is that my field surrounds me all the time, even when it’s off. When I had done the test with the notebook, I removed the field from the book entirely. I hadn’t simply turned the field off.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

I leaned over and grabbed two other used notebooks and tried the experiment again, this time I only switched the field off, instead of removing it from the book. The result was very different this time. The notebook with the field on it floated up through the other notebook and came to rest on top of it. I tried it again, but this time I only overlapped the corner of the fielded notebook with the notebook in reality. This time it moved up and to the side to get away from the other notebook. It seemed that when two objects overlapped and the field on one was turned off, then the field repelled itself away from the other object by the shortest possible distance.

Maybe I wouldn’t have to be so careful after all. That was good, but I wasn’t going to trust to the field to save me without testing it out first. If my theorizing was wrong, I’d rather know now, when I could control what was going to get fused.

I started off small. I placed a pencil sticking out from the edge of the desk. Then, I entered R1 and placed the sleeve of my hoodie through the pencil. Making sure that the pencil wasn’t touching my skin, I shifted back to reality and felt the field nudge my hoodie over a bit. If I wasn’t thinking about it, I wouldn’t have even noticed the gentle push.

Time for stage two. Back to the pencil, this time placing the outer edge of my hand through the pencil tip. Closing my eyes and bracing for the pain of having a pencil tip jam in my hand, I shifted back to reality. Again, the soft nudge and my hand was safe. No pain. I tried a few other times with different objects and soon found myself plunging my arm through the desk and turning off my field.

I don’t know what I was thinking. I’d lose my arm if I was wrong, but I guess I got caught up in the excitement. Somehow, I just knew that I’d be fine.

I felt more than a simply push. This time my arm was ejected from the desk. Forcefully. I stumbled back and carefully examined my arm. I felt a rush of relief as I counted all of my fingers and noted the lack of wood anywhere in my arm.

After my heart rate slowed down, I stopped to think about my tests and wondered why the field moved my arm, which was pretty heavy, and not the pencil, which was pretty light. I supposed that it was because the field was around me and could affect me, but not things outside the field. That made sense, except that my feet hadn’t been moved over to avoid the grass when I’d shifted back to reality. I thought about this for awhile and the only theory I could come up with was that for the times where shoving me over wasn’t practical, the field would surround the other object and shift it to R1 until I moved away. That was something else that I’d have to test out.

But not today. I was done with testing for today. Maybe for the week. I also made a promise to myself that I’d never do anything so stupid again. That was a promise that I’d end up breaking.