Chapter 15: POWER PRACTICE

Sam was still a long way from getting used to the incomprehensible reality that was Francis's n-dimensional space. Well, too bad, he told himself, as he strained to focus on his power.

Three-dimensional objects seemed somehow 'flat' in this bizarre place. His force-fields weren't quite like spheres, they were like flat circular walls that could be easily side-stepped.

He tried to cast several bubbles in succession, at different angles, to wall off each other in a way that would be airtight. But no matter how he tried, there were gaps. It was like trying to make a box out of sheets of paper, without any tape to hold them together. Worse, he kept somehow ending up making them merely 'parallel' to each other, with the gaps running between the layers.

But he was starting to notice something. The space inside the bubbles, sometimes, seemed ever so slightly different from the space outside. In ways that he couldn't quite define.

Astrid would, of course, have an answer to that. And she'd phrase it in a way that would make it seem obvious, like he was stupid for not thinking of it himself.

Even after all these years, he still loved that about her.

He would ask her when he got back to the safehouse. In the meantime, he could see how much control he actually had, over this newly discovered aspect of his power. How different could he make the insides of his bubbles?

It occurred to him to wonder whether this aspect had always been there, or if it had developed more recently, as Armo's power had done. In Sam's case, however, there was no way to know. It would have been much easier for him simply not to notice this subtle difference, than it would have been for Armo not to notice he could freeze the very air in front of him.

In any event, he didn't really notice the time slipping by, until Francis came over to him and said, in the hazy speech of n-dimensional space, "I, uh, think we're making progress. It's probably time to grab something to eat and take a break, huh?"

She still held back ever so slightly, seeming a little nervous around him. The legendary Sam Temple. That was a rueful thought. He was used to that, to the effect of his fame on people, but he still just wished Francis would get over it.

"Yeah," he agreed. "How have you been doing?"

"I've been trying to go farther and farther," she said. "I haven't tried stabilizing an actual wormhole yet, but I went to India just now. I think it was India. There was foreign-looking writing everywhere, at least, so I know it wasn't America." She made a face. "I ended up in the ocean a bunch of times before I got there. I'm not much of a swimmer, but I just kept using my power over and over until I got to land again."

Sam was impressed. "India? That's a long way. How many jumps did that take?"

She blew the air out of her lungs as she considered. "A dozen or so? I think I can sort of stretch and shrink space, so I can kind of teleport that way. And I think there's no limit to how much I can stretch it, no limit to how far I could teleport if I really set my mind to it, but . . . " She blew out air again. "It just makes me nervous to push it too far too quickly. Like I might end up in outer space before you're ready to protect me from it." There was an unfinished feeling to that explanation, an unspoken "or . . . ," like there was more she wanted to say, but couldn't figure out how to say it. Instead, she tilted her head at him. "How about you?"

"Still can't make anything airtight," Sam admitted. "But, well, I noticed something that I should probably ask Astrid about. More weirdness, maybe, but maybe it's weirdness we can use."

"Weirdness?" she said with a slight laugh. "We don't have enough of that?"

Once Sam was back in the real world, he went almost immediately to Astrid's library/room. He was slightly hungry, but grabbing something to eat could wait. He explained to Astrid, to the best of his ability, what he had seen, the worlds inside his bubbles. How objects within had seemed sharper or duller, or had begun to disintegrate at the edges, or, at least once, everything had shrunk into itself and become so tiny and distorted that the space itself had seemed to warp the light within the bubble. That effect, thankfully, had ended as soon as he'd dispelled that force field.

"The FAYZ," Astrid said simply, like it was obvious. A book lay open in front of her, momentarily forgotten. "Your powers mimic the FAYZ. The thing is, the FAYZ was never just a force field. It altered the laws of physics inside. Things that were never possible in our universe, became possible within the FAYZ. It was more like its own little universe, than a simple force field around a part of this one." She looked closely at Sam, with that evaluating, appraising look she sometimes got. "It would seem that you may be able to manipulate the laws of physics, Sam."

He was silent for several moments, not quite knowing what to say.

Finally, he said, "I'm going to grab something to eat. You want anything?"

Astrid smiled at him, then kissed him on the cheek. "Unimaginable power just landed in your hands, Sam . . . but, of course, for you, that's just business as usual."