July 14th

Professor Weston was a tenured professor at Midwest Central and taught a lot of the higher level math courses. I had just started getting to the three and four thousand level courses he commonly taught that were required in my degree program before everything cultivation had happened. Ash, being a year ahead of me and mainlining a mathematics degree, had had several classes with the older man and apparently had been able to get a meeting with him, then another to drag me into it.

As I entered his office with Ash, I was a little surprised to find I didn't sense any energy from him, not even a lit dantian. Still, I sat at one of the chairs across from his desk and smiled as Ash took the other. "Thanks for seeing me, sir."

"It wasn't nearly as much trouble as you might think." He smiled. "My office hours have been taken up much less than usual with students due to so many withdrawals, but that's neither here nor there. Mr. Carson gave me a general overview of what you were looking to discuss, and I admit it sounds fascinating. Can you go further in depth on it, Ms. Firen?"

"Call me Nicole please," I started. "But yes."

I pulled out my tablet and switched to the generic body image we used to show off the breakthrough points. Setting it down I switched the image into projection mode.

"For some background since you don't have a dantian, when one is created it ends up here or here, depending on if it's a personal internal energy used or the energy around us." I pointed with my pen to the point at the stomach, then just below the heart. "Then as you go through the breakthroughs we know of, the energy flows stronger through you to each point."

I traced the pathways from the dantian through each breakthrough, my pen causing the model to light up in response.

"Ignoring the fact that we don't actually know the source of the energy, each time it hits a breakthrough, the energy goes one of three ways. It can slightly overflow into the body. Through a pathway to the next breakthrough if you have it. Or backflow back into the dantian."

"I believe I've seen this model before," Weston said. "The higher breakthrough spots are new to me though."

"What I'm here for today is what happened when I managed this eighth breakthrough here. To go through a breakthrough, you basically have to push enough energy into it to clear it out and add it to the flow coming from your dantian. I pulled energy from both six and seven, and the flows wrapped into each other before going into the eighth breakthrough. Instead of only clearing it out, they were basically pushing into each other with increasing force. Trust me that wasn't fun." I winced and laughed just slightly. "I fixed it by basically feeling out where the backflow back to my dantian was supposed to be in that breakthrough and shoved the energy there, hoping both of them would flow in the same direction."

"And?" Weston prompted.

"When I shoved the energy towards what should be the backflow back to my dantian, I felt for a moment it move in a way I literally can't describe, but it was basically an impossible direction. The energy flows between breakthroughs and back to the dantian don't follow a completely traceable path, I already knew that. We've even had a fluoroscopic procedure done and the dyes flow from one area to the next without going through all the same space. I'm don't think it's teleportation, but this is the first time I've noticed that directional movement like that and I honestly don't know what it is."

Professor Weston nodded, taking notes. "You said like that. Have you felt it any other time?"

I paused, thinking. "During the third planet breakthrough, actually."

"Not useful as a test point then, that's not something I think we'll see repeated." Weston noted, tapping his pen against the paper. "Honestly, based on what you're describing I have an idea on what you're not seeing."

"Really? That easily?" I blinked.

"It does have to do with your frame of reference, as Mr. Carson was trying to explain to me a couple of days ago. Would you like an example?"

Weston was already reaching into his desk even as I answered. "Yes please!"

He pulled out a sheet of graph paper and quickly sketched an x-y axis on it and drew a single line. He then ripped a small strip of paper and laid it perpendicular across the line, creating an X. "Consider the paper a second line on the graph. Now, we can describe both lines by their starting and endpoint points on the graph, by the fact that the cross each other, and several other ways." He then put his finger on the strip of paper and slid it across the graph. "I can even translate one of the lines across the graph by moving it. With me so far?"

Ash and I nodded.

"Now, here's your example." He picked up the strip of paper and then laid it back down on the graph in a different spot. "From the perspective of the x-y axis graph, my line vanished and reappeared somewhere else. Without using the z-axis, describe what I just did."

"You picked-" I stopped myself. "No, picking it up is the z-axis. So the line moved along known x and y axes and additionally along an unknown axis." I paused and looked at the paper, getting it. "Are you saying you think the energy is moving through the fourth dimension? Isn't that supposed to be time?"

Weston nodded. "From Mr. Carson's original descriptions and your more in depth ones, yes. It's generally described as the w axis, and movement in it is ana and kata. As for time being the fourth dimension, take our example here again." He picked up the scrap of paper. "The graph only knows from where the line was removed, and eventually when it is returned to. It doesn't know the path the line takes. In our tiny example here," Weston lightly folded the graph, "it doesn't even recognize that I can shorten the distance between two points on the graph by manipulation of its world. Faster and slower time." He set the graph back down, then put the scrap 'line' on it.

"It obviously becomes a lot more involved when you begin looking at three dimensions into fourth, but the basis stays the same. If your energy is moving in an impossible direction and then ending up back where you understand it, I would believe it moves ana or kata through the fourth dimension, then returns kata or ana back to you."

Stolen novel; please report.

I sat back, mulling that thought over.

"So what can we actually do with that knowledge, professor?" Ash asked.

He shrugged. "I honestly don't know. What can you do with it? Other than being able to put a name to that direction, the fact that you personally, Ms. Firen, can sense anything about it puts you ahead of all but the most powerful supercomputers that are specifically designed to detect blackhole wave energy according to Einstein's theories."

"Being able to put a name to it helps though." I spoke up. "Thank you."

"You're welcome. Honestly, this conversation has been the most fascinating thing I've heard about this energy so far. Possible personal usage of a fourth dimension? It'd make for an amazing study."

"You want a job?" I asked dryly. "We're stumbling through the practicals of using this energy. I'd love if someone could actually build a real theory on it."

Weston looked nonplussed. "I've read both DARPA papers your group has released, and they were reasonably well documented for a barely known phenomenon. Do you need personnel that badly? Running a study such as this should be something well within your means currently I would hope."

I shook my head. "We're building documentation and theories around this after we've already managed to get results. God only knows what we're missing because of that, and we're expanding now for additional people to at least teach what we do know. I also want more people to poke at the edges, because Ash can do things I can't, and I can do things he can't."

Weston nodded thoughtfully. "You've discovered fire, but don't know all the ways to start fire, or ways to use it. I'm willing to help you at least provisionally, though it will have to be around my schedule here. If these abilities are as personal as they seem to appear, you're going to need a lot of testers and results."

"We work with what we've got." I answered. "We can always make whoever we hire for teaching test as well, and I do have access to a large amount of data from the military people."

"When did this become a job interview?" Ash complained.

~~~

Breakthrough to breakthrough. Breakthrough overflow into body. Breakthrough back into dantian. Stare at where it disappeared from my mental sight, likely shifting ana or kata to travel back, only to return again.

Shift the mental picture to try to stare at where it was coming from. Try to study the energy, see where it was coming from instead of when it shifted.

Just like I could overflow specific parts of my energy to use, it wasn't hard to specifically send that energy into the backflow either. That was the underlying bit about cycling to build up for a breakthrough, after all.

I could watch the energy vanish, and watch it reappear and know it was the same bit of energy I'd started with. But I couldn't track it at all when it slipped into that other phase.

"Nicole, what the heck is all this about personal Seeker documentation? And some specific hires you're looking for?" Danny asked, coming into my office.

I opened my eyes, looking up at him from the yoga mat where I'd been staring down my own energy. "I tentatively hired Professor James Weston from the college, as he's done studies for his doctorate before and now wants to do a study on cultivation based on the stuff Ash and I talked to him about. But we need more specific research type people and a lot of data points. So, specific hires and wanting to open documentation up for anyone even remotely attached to the Seekers to explicitly provide data to us, similar to what we've gotten from DARPA about the military guys."

I stood up, stretching. "I'm still going to try to push ahead as far and honestly as fast as I can. But there's hundreds of people here in Rolla alone who have something they can share that can help everyone. I'm not going to and don't want to make providing that information required for anyone we're not paying a salary to, but I am thinking about making it a requirement for anyone joining more than whatever we end up making our basic classes."

"Your decision to make." Danny nodded. "But I thought we were all about sharing everything we could with everyone?"

"I am, and everything not stupidly dangerous will be available." Primarily eating other people's energy. "Just not always from a class. Look it up in our free library instead of getting instructor led training." I shook my head and then looked over Danny's shoulder out onto the floor. "I'm not leaving anyone on Team Humanity behind, Danny."

"Never said you were, I just wanted to know what was going on." Danny nodded.

"Speaking of Team Humanity, did you see the video someone posted to the forums yesterday? The bulldozer thing?" I shifted over to my desk.

"No?" Danny sat down as well and I turned the monitor so he could see.

"Yeah, outside Norfolk apparently someone in the Corps of Engineers got tired of how slow their digging was going with the equipment and decided to do something about it, probably not originally approved." I pulled up the video in question. From a drone vantage point, it showed a dozen men with as many bulldozer blades in front of them, the blades dug into the ground as the people ran. Dirt was flying off to one side as the blades were angled all to fling the dirt in the same direction.

"What the-?" Danny laughed as he watched.

"They've got to be all four or five breakthroughs, but it was posted saying they were using a combination of Feathersteps and Ivers' to do thirty mile an hour runs digging down nearly two feet a run, seventy or so feet across." I winced as I saw something fly up in the video, even though I'd watched it before. "Ivers' is obviously being used to not care when they hit coral or stone, I'm pretty certain that would ruin the blade eventually."

"Go Corps of Engineers." Danny stated, whistling.

"Go Team Humanity." I corrected. "Two different shared techniques being used. Otherwise we'd still have guys slowly digging trenches."