xx48.10.28 / 13:11 / Thursday

My 'word of the day' this morning was 'compromise', which turned out to be pretty appropriate. After yesterday's shouting match I pretty much avoided Mum and Dad for the rest of the day, but they got Botler to ambush me outside my room this morning and he 'escorted' me to the lounge. Mum and Dad and Daniel were all there, so I knew it was serious. Dad gave a big speech about the 'old ways' and the 'new ways', it was really long and he repeated himself a bunch so I'm not going to bother writing it down here. Towards the end it kind of got interesting, though:

"You're right, Lotte," he said (as you might expect, this got my attention). "It's not good for a bright, charming fifteen year-old to be locked away with just her family. Keeping you cooped up here is unfair both to you and to the world."

"So I CAN go adventuring?" I said. Of course, the answer was 'no'. But for a moment I let myself get excited. Anyway, then Mum said:

"The world isn't ready for Charlotte Powers the superhero. But it might be ready for Charlotte Powers the girl."

Daniel kind of snorted at that, but I ignored him.

"Could you be a bit more specific?" I asked. "I'm not sure how excited I should be getting."

"Do you remember Uncle?" Dad asked me. "He used to visit when you were smaller—"

"Of course I remember," I said, "he's your mentor! Oh! Is he going to be MY mentor too? To teach and guide the next generation of heroes—"

"He lives in a town called Green Grove," Dad said. "There's a school there called Green Grove Academy, by all accounts a nice, normal school filled with nice, normal students. The town's in the mountains, isolated, quiet, not too big and not too small—"

"Don't quite understand what you're getting at here," I said.

"The world is a complicated place," Mum said. "Very different to the one we adventured in. Things were simpler back then, even in the rather convoluted Plastic Age. It's not enough these days to just have a Secret Identity. You're going to need a Public Identity as well."

"Aha," I said. "So I go to this school, establish a Public Identity, and then when evil appears I'll don my Secret Identity and rise up to fight it!"

"Something like that," said Dad. "In any case it'll be a good opportunity for you to meet people your own age, make friends—to be ordinary for a while."

Ordinary. It doesn't sound SO great, but to be honest I'll take anything. Besides, even a friendly-sounding town like Green Grove is BOUND to have a seamy underbelly full of shady characters. I'm sure that even with just a little investigation I'll find PLENTY to occupy myself with!

Anyway, then it was Daniel's turn to speak:

"You know I've been working on phase-shift technology," he began, but after that I was pretty much lost while he went on about 'unfamiliar quantities' and 'dark matter' and 'protean markers'. From experience I've learnt to just let him talk when he gets into one of these states of technobabble, it's impossible to stop him or even interrupt and eventually he gets to the point—which in this case was pretty cool.

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"You built a teleporter?" I asked, still not quite sure. It turned out that I was right, though, he DID build a teleporter.

"That's how you'll get to Green Grove," Dad said.

"Couldn't I just fly there in Mum's invisible jet?" I asked. They all laughed. "What?"

"That was a joke, stupid," Daniel said. "Mum doesn't have an invisible jet."

I am always the last to find out these things. It's not like I'm even allowed in the hangar, it's in the Outer Base which is Very Forbidden. The security is insane, I bet even Daniel couldn't crack it.

"Then how do you guys go visit people?" I asked. "What DO you have, if not an invisible jet?"

"Green Grove is quite a distance away," Dad said, avoiding my question (except I just now noticed this so it's kind of too late to go back and ask him again now). "Teleportation would be the easiest way to get you there."

"It's not really 'easy', Dad," Daniel said. "It's taken me months to get it even to this stage."

"You know what I mean," said Dad. "In terms of practicality—"

"What do you mean 'this stage'?" I asked. Hey, if I'm going to be teleported I want ALL the information!

"Right now it only works on living things if they're phase-shifted," Daniel said. "I've heard that the military has teleporters that work on anyone, but I think their research is progressing according to different principles than mine—"

And another couple of minutes of incomprehensible babbling followed, thankfully interrupted by Mum saying:

"Anyway, why don't we have a look at it?"

So we all went to Daniel's messy cluttered kind of scary workshop and he showed us all the teleporter. It wasn't that impressive, actually, just like a glass tube with all these bundles of wires going to a big computer nearby.

"I can only half phase-shift," I pointed out. "What if it just half teleports me? I don't want half my body in Green Grove and the other half left here!"

"That couldn't happen," said Daniel. "It'd actually bisect you in a much more interesting way, your out-of-phase energy would be sent to the destination and your in-phase energy would remain here, to put it poetically your 'phase shadow' would be ripped from your body—"

"Ahem," said Mum, pointedly.

"But that won't happen," Daniel said, smoothly. "Actually, it CAN'T happen, not with all the safety protocols I've put in place—"

And here he went off for about ten minutes about physics and stuff, I spent most of the time playing with his little robot mouse thing, Arthur MBE. It's getting pretty smart now, you can trace a path with your finger and it'll follow it. Maybe that doesn't sound very impressive considering all the AIs and SIs and ALs running around the place these days, but Daniel says Arthur is a NEW kind of artificial life, a true 'learner'. When he first invented the little guy all Arthur did was sit there watching you, seeing his intelligence 'grow' has been pretty interesting.

"We can do a test run right now, if you want," Daniel said, once I could understand him again. "It's all warmed up and ready to go."

I admit I was a little hesitant, but Daniel teleported himself first—you have to go out-of-phase to do it, so for him it was like he disappeared and then opened the door and walked back into the workshop, pretty cool actually.

Then it was my turn.

I shouldn't have eaten before doing it, but then Daniel should have WARNED me not to eat before doing it. Aside from throwing up all over his death ray (it never worked anyway, apparently they never do) being teleported was kind of fun, I went out-of-phase then I got kind of all warm and fuzzy and tingly, then I was standing on the other side of the workshop. I actually reappeared halfway through the floor, but because I was still out-of-phase that wasn't such a big problem, I just pulled myself out. That was after I threw up, of course. Fortunately being out-of-phase meant that I didn't get any on myself, phase-shifting works as a kind of field around your body so anything close (like clothes) shifts with you (up to five layers if they're not too thick, Daniel and I did an experiment once, that sixth coat falls right off), but if you spit or throw up or something then that leaves the phase-field and becomes in-phase again.

Anyway, enough about me throwing up, Daniel's teleporter works and that's the important thing. We're having a going-away party tonight and then tomorrow morning I'm off! Off to adventure! Well, ordinariness actually, but I'm SURE I'll find SOME kind of adventure out there in the big wide world. Even if I have to hide my powers and pretend to be normal it's going to be SO much fun.

I can't wait!