James and Eva were waiting for me when I got there, and we went inside to change. With a few minutes to spare, we found a space for all three of us at the back, James and I taking positions to either side of Eva. She was the fitness guru and had been doing Yoga for years. She looked relaxed and started doing a few stretching exercises. James, on the other hand, looked completely out of place. He was stiff and uncomfortable and looked like he’d rather be anywhere else. I had an advantage over James, in that I had been doing almost daily stretching exercises since I was four, and so I wasn’t dreading the class. I was very flexible, and I could hold a kick at face level. I just hoped that the muscles that I’d developed doing Kung Fu would be helpful in Yoga.

The results from the class were entirely predictable. Eva loved it, I liked it, and James hated it. I thought that it was ok, but all that stretching and bending without the payoff of hitting someone was a real negative for me. For his part, James rediscovered that he is not flexible. At all. There are trees with more give than James.

“It’s one thing to know intellectually that you’re not very flexible. It’s quite another thing to have it rammed down your throat.”, James complained as we made our way out after having showered and changed. “I’ve never even been able to touch my toes without bending my knees and the rest of you go past your toes by over a foot.” James continued to rail against the injustice of his inflexibility, and how it was physically impossible for him to bend his body in half at the waist. Eva and I largely ignored him, only make the appropriate sympathy noises every now and then.

“Did you speak to your parents about getting you a trading account?”, I asked Eva.

“Sure did. Mom set me up last night. I’m ready to trade some stocks and rake in the cash. All that’s stopping me is that I need to start my share of the research. I’m heading to the library with James now.”

I gave Eva my dad’s Lexis-Nexis username and passcode and we parted ways, after setting up a meeting for after class on Wednesday to go over all of our findings. James would not be joining us for Yoga on Wednesday, or ever, despite our urging him to keep at it and improve.

I got on a bus and headed for Uncle Magnum’s. With no urgent or pressing matters to occupy me, I though up new ways to use my reality shifting field.

Going over last night’s experiments and my idiotic ‘arm through the desk’ move, I realized that the fact that the field knew that there was something in its way was very interesting. The field had to be sensing anything than overlapped with it, even when that anything existed in a different reality, and it acted accordingly to protect me. But it only protected me from phasing back into something solid. It had no issues with me being hit, as was evidenced in my many bruises from my sparring sessions with Uncle Magnum. The one time it did protect me was with the bus, but in that situation, I had somehow, subconsciously, turned the field on.

Could I set up the field to automatically protect me from other dangers? Is there a way to set up the field so that it turns on automatically when something penetrates it, like a knife or a bullet? That would be incredible. I could use the field to fight crime! Oh wait. When the field goes on, I disappear. That would give away the secret. I’d need to consider this some more.

Could I reverse it and have the field immediately surround any object that passed through it with a field and then turn that secondary field on so that the object passed through me while I still stayed in reality? My head was starting to hurt with all the possibilities.

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Back to the field turning itself on automatically in certain situations. How could I go about that? The field was controlled to some extent by my mind. I pushed and pulled on it, and I absorbed and sent out sub-fields from it, all with my thoughts. So, I needed to train my mind to do certain things automatically and those things would be in response to information that my mind would get from the field.

The first step would be to see what information I could get from the field. After that, I’d see what it took to penetrate the field. Also, if the field was going to stop bullets from hitting me, it would be better if it did it farther away from me. Was there a way to expand outwards?

Planning out a series of experiments, I listed out the things I’d need; a steak knife, a book, and a batting cage. The knife and the book were readily available, the batting cage I’d have to look up and see if I could make it there next Saturday morning.

I arrived at Uncle Magnums early for my class and I went upstairs to my room. I had enough time to start a few of my experiments. Examining my shelves, I found a book that I’d read years ago for school and really didn’t like. I couldn’t identify with Holden and found him to be too whiny for words, but I could finally put his book to good use. Getting a steak knife from the kitchen, I took it to my room. I sat down, placed the book on the floor in front of me and enveloped it in a field. I made sure not to turn the field on. It was just there, in a passive state. Then, I stabbed the book.

I actually felt the stab as a strong pressure on the field. It wasn’t painful to me, but I was very aware of it. Surprisingly, the field itself hadn’t been penetrated. The pressure had caused the field to change shape along with the book. The book now had a hole in it and the field coated the interior of it. The field hadn’t stopped the knife at all. If I were stabbed, the passive field would do nothing to protect me. It would simply reshape itself to my punctured body. That wasn't good.

I tried cutting the book’s edge and the same thing happened, only without the strong feeling of pressure. The knife cut into the book, but the field wasn’t broken at any time. It seemed that the field, having no substance, was pushed back by the knife until it touched the book and then the field was pushed under the cover when the knife sliced into it.

This was unexpected and forced me to rethink my idea of how to use the field as a protection device. My initial idea had been to find a way to make the field automatically surround anything that penetrated it and send that object into R1, where it couldn’t hurt anyone. Without the penetration, I needed an new concept. Maybe I could use the amount of pressure as a trigger for the field, but that would only work on a stab or a hard blow and might not work with a slicing motion. I’d start with pressure for now though, since I had no other ideas.

I pressed the knife hard into the book again and felt the pressure on the field. Keeping that feeling, I sent out the field to surround the knife and shift it to R1. The knife disappeared and my now-empty clenched fist hit the book before I could stop applying pressure to the non-existent knife. Oops and Ow!

I shifted the knife back to reality and I stabbed the book repeatedly over the next 15 minutes. I got very good at putting a field on the knife and sending it into R1 as soon as I felt the pressure. The problem was that it wasn’t instantaneous. If I were stabbed in real life, then I’d only be getting rid of the knife once it was buried at least partially inside me. That was a bit too late for my tastes.

I needed to find a way to extend the field out from my body, so that I’d feel the pressure earlier and be able to send a knife or bullet into R1 before it hit my body. That would be my assignment for later, since I’d run out time. Right now, I needed to get downstairs in time to see if Margaret was dropping off Jeremy for class. I wasn’t teaching that age group today, but I wouldn’t mind have a quick chat with Margaret, if the chance presented itself.