607. A strange world, 4
Not too long after Nok, it was my turn to get a sickness like rarely.
I was still able to stand, move, and work on the boat.
But I lost maybe one kilogram per day, and aged as much. I wasn’t looking young before, it got worse.
Even Blume was worried about me for a while.
I got better though before she really had to intervene. And even though my digestive system got painful and weaker, I kept a smile, for they were by my sides.
My life expectancy just lost five years, that’s all. Blume examined me as a doctor, but the way only she could, from within.
She still has ribbons hidden inside of her and me.
B - And many more tricks up my sleeves.
It seems my immune system had temporarily collapsed, because of an infection I never noticed before breaking down.
Just feeling old in a way, to sum it up.
Meanwhile Nok trains herself and teaches herself on the old computer about everything imaginable. She’s more autonomous than I’d thought possible not so long ago.
She also speaks almost as well as we do now.
I had her trim my hair a little, and I kept building the boat as the days passed.
The tools and chemicals Blume and Nok brought me all this time long went into growing that sculpture.
The hull’s ceramic skin was completed.
An engine from a heavy motorcycle was installed and bolt to a propeller blade. Blume synthesized an alcoholic fuel that worked.
And soon enough, before all my hair turned grey, the boat was ready.
Blume tried to create a colony of bacteria that could carry her ability to produce negative gravity pull, but she wasn’t successful. Easier requested than done she said, pouting.
Engineering is hard really.
Blume told me about these times when she was travelling with Myls.
Two memorable experiences for her.
The good one, managing to restart a big computer from the troglodyte city of sun I meant to reach back then.
She felt like she inherited an empire or resurrected something just as great, bringing such an old intelligence back to life for a while. A powerful computer answered her requests.
And Blume felt more human at that moment, and heir of the greatness of that past. It felt really impressive to her.
And then, the bad one, another facing of reality and its walls. When she found herself in the control room of a derelict oceanic nuclear reactor, unable to do nor even comprehend anything.
A god fell down that day.
Overwhelmed by the span of her scientific and technologic ignorance. She wasn’t able to do anything, let along restart these machines. She realised painfully how much knowledge she lacked, how little was her entire erudition in front of advanced technology.
She was like me when I faced computers for the first time.
She has always known so much, learning more and faster than a human ever could, with her innate abilities. But even that, even her entire knowledge, was nothing.
The city of sun’s success had been more luck than skill she realised.
Her pride fell, as she realised how little she actually knew in front of human history.
So now, being unable to create this magic biology, she’s more humble. Not that she’s ever been clouded with arrogance, but still.
She felt clearly more than before her own real limits back then on this island.
She grew on that painful knowledge. She’s still much smarter and knowledgeable than me. More than I could ever be.
Anyway. Time humbles us all. Unless pride makes us fall. And before you know it, the boat was carried by my giant daughter into the water.
We packed our equipment and stocks of food in.
While Blume loaded the last boxes, I was playing a new improbable game with Nokaranlık.
Something that challenged my understandings of physics, again.
It’s not like it’s the first time with her.
We did notice before that she could change her size, now at will, but also her weight to some extent.
As she grew to her giant size, her weight didn’t always reflect her... mass, directly.
She can’t fly or float weightless at neither size. But she can change her mass and volume faster than her logical weight. Thus her giant self if too light is unstable. But she breathes more easily and her heart has less pressure on itself that way. And with full weight on, her heart aches, she can’t breathe well and can barely stand. Her feet sink in the ground and her muscles can’t hold her for long.
She’s not perfect in all situations. Not as a giant. I now see her gigantic form as a resource to use for emergencies more than a hidden face. It works well that way.
But the funny and almost dubious game that rose from this understanding is an impressive trick I thought of.
Playing with physics when you can play tricks on it.
Nokarlık made herself go big but light first.
Then she made herself go heavier, at maximum weight, in a wave from feet to head as she pushed herself to jump up.
By making her centre of gravity shift rapidly upward, she gives herself an additional lift.
And then, she shrinks herself almost instantly while her centre of gravity rises.
Energy doesn’t change, but her weight diminishes manifold as if she was throwing it behind.
That makes the giant vanish in its jump over the shore’s waters, and Nok in human size being suddenly shot upward in the air from that multiplied momentum. She reaches varying heights above the ocean.
It’s as if she could jump more than a dozen metres above water.
And then it’s a thrilling fall and diving in the waters.
She loves it.
And she played that game, trying once a day, or twice if I wasn’t looking, to jump as high as possible with that tricky ability.
She once tried to repeat it in mid-air, to challenge gravity even further. But she can’t displace her weight instantly and her brain nor her vascular system liked sudden shifts in weight and size. She passed out that time up there and plummeted unconscious. Good thing I still can swim well for the two of us.
As we got ready to embark and sail away, she did her last very abnormal jump above the bay.
The giant jumped with everything she got from the shallow waters, and then shifted size.
Nokarlık looked back at the city from above as she continued gaining altitude, and at the boat not distant but far below. Waves from the water were filling the space her feet and legs had occupied moments before, splashing around.
I looked at her do that motion of a jump as a giant, then seemingly vanish in a splash. Then the normal self tiny up there was diving back into the water a few seconds later.
It’s a weird show the first time. But I can say she belongs here now, in her own way.
If she could learn to shift weight even faster, she could jump even higher.
~
