NewU Pt. 08

Alright, I admit it, he had a point, and I don't just mean with the more mature and altruistic benefit of hindsight looking back at that time from now. I'd known he'd had a point before I had even crossed the hallway.

The reasoning, I told myself, unconvincingly, was that none of the girls in my life had shown much of an interest in actually being in a relationship with me. Part of that was my fault. My commands into the internal editing station all those weeks ago had made them attracted to me, it had made them want to pounce on me and fuck me with wild abandon at the earliest opportunity, but even with my extremely limited experience, I knew that an actual relationship was considerably more than that. It was odd to think that despite my feelings for 'my girls', I didn't actually know a huge amount about most of them, at least nowhere near enough to start thinking about something deeper than what we had.

The strange part is that of all of them, it was actually Olivia who I knew the most about. I had spoken to her more than most of the others combined, albeit before my powers and newfound confidence, and, looking back, I could see that there was genuinely some interest in me from her. Becky was a little ways behind in that respect, no shortage of interest and the overwhelming majority of that coming from before I had awakened. For reasons I couldn't begin to fathom, she seemed to have developed genuine feelings for me, yet still didn't seem to want anything more. I'd given her a few nudges in the shower this morning to allow Philipa to join us but otherwise, I had done little more than looked into her mind. Of all of them, she was easily the one I would choose if made to and I couldn't really tell you why. There was something about her that just resonated with me, we clicked, I'm not sure how else to explain it. No, I didn't know everything about her, and although I could know everything with little more than a concentrated thought, I kind of wanted the thing between us to grow organically. Not the sex, that was already insanely hot, but the rest of it, the part that would turn a bit of fun into a relationship, I was happy to let develop on its own.

Philippa was too new to have much of a coherent opinion about. She was hot as all hell, she was dynamite in bed and had, in as many words, committed herself to me - or at least to her role within the relationship between Becky and me - but as for something more, I honestly had no idea. What had started out that morning as a cross between helping her get over Jimmy and - to be perfectly honest - getting myself a threesome, had grown into something I couldn't have even imagined a few hours earlier.

Evie was a bit more of a conundrum. I have always prided myself on being able to be completely honest when taking a long, hard look in the mirror and that was what was needed here. I had known Evie for just as long as Olivia, technically longer, but - before the other night in the pub before our tryst - she had rarely spoken to me outside of being polite. I couldn't be sure how much success I'd had in manipulating her feelings towards me when we had been downstairs in the bar, her mind had been infuriatingly hard to read, but given the now apparent difference in her interest toward me before that night and since, Id have to say 'a lot'. So the question then was, how strong can a relationship be with someone who has been made to feel something for you?

With that being said - and a little more self-scrutiny on my part - I had to admit that what attracted me to Evie was her mind, specifically, the differences between it and every other human mind I had ever seen. Every time I thought of her Avatar, sat on that log, and looking serenely into the fire, it... I don't know, it piqued something in me. A curiosity, an intrigue, a burning desire to understand. It was like that detail was extremely important, I just didn't know why yet. And if I was going to be honest with myself, I wasn't entirely ready to give up that investigation just yet.

Yes, yes... we have already established that I was an asshole.

I suppose this all has to be taken in context. To the rest of the world, it had only been a week since we had met in the bar. But I had spent almost all of that week in my bunker. It had taken me a while to work it out, but time passed in there at a rate of about forty-five minutes to every one minute outside. So that week for her had been months for me, even since seeing her on Wednesday in the lecture, that, to me, was weeks ago. I - at least in my own mind, literally - had experienced an extraordinarily long time between text messages and the odd call, let alone actually seeing her and that burning desire to talk to her that had plagued the first few days had... faded. Dont misunderstand; the same could easily and accurately be said for the others as well, even Jimmy, but I found myself wanting to spend time with the others to compensate. The simple harsh truth was that when it came to Evie... I didn't miss her. That wasn't to say I had any intention of letting her down gently, or breaking things off, she was still a puzzle that needed solving. If more than that developed between us - and let's be honest, I was still going to sleep with her, she was still hot, and I was still male - then all the better.

Charlotte was simple, whilst also being extraordinarily complicated. Our relationship was purely platonic, at least for now. Yet the depths of that friendship, the trust and the affection I held for her would make the strongest married couple green with envy. I absolutely, unquestionably loved her, with every fiber of me. I loved her in a way that, even to this day, I find impossible to articulately quantify. In terms of my perception of time - as opposed to the real life time I had spent with the others - I had spent more time with Charlotte than anyone else in my entire adult life, with the exception of Jimmy. I knew her in ways that most humans simply couldn't comprehend. Yet, I was still male, and utterly failed to understand the majority of it. I always got the impression that we would make a staggeringly good couple, but knew that it would probably never happen. So... Friends... right?

I was pacing again, I realized with a huff. I always paced when something was on my mind, it was like the physical act of moving my legs was needed to get my brain to work properly. I also paced when I was on the phone, it drove Jimmy nuts, which, incidentally, was another reason I did it, but I digress. I stopped pacing and dropped onto the sofa. Just in time for someone to knock on the apartment door.

With a loud groan, I pulled myself back to my feet, casting my mind out to see who was on the other side of the door as I approached it. This was still new to me, it would have been infinitely more efficient to do that before getting up to answer it, in case the person knocking could be safely ignored. But living above a pub did have the benefit of reducing the number of salesmen and Jahovah's witnesses who came knocking. The person on the other side of the door, however, was the absolute last person I would expect.

"Marco!" I said, not having to feign the legitimately felt surprise as I opened the door to him. "I... shouldn't be surprised that you know where I live, should I?"

"Hello, Pete," he answered with that warm and friendly smile I remembered from the night of my awakening. "And no, I keep an eye on all of my apprentices."

"An Apprentice, eh?" I questioned with an arched eyebrow, standing aside to let him in. "I'll be honest, I wasn't sure if I would see you again." It was one of those playful, friendly jibes that was absolutely and wholeheartedly sincere. Even without Charlotte telling me about his shortcomings, I would more than probably have been a little annoyed by the lack of contact after all this time.

"Yes, I'm sorry about that." He said, still holding that smile as he came in and sat himself down at the breakfast bar. I rounded it and leaned against the counter opposite him. "Something... important came up. A bit of an emergency."

His brain did a few mental acrobatics, trying to keep the 'emergency' out of reach from my probing mind. It was annoyingly effective, if a bit slow. I only got a flash of it before the memory was buried somewhere. It was an Evo, laying in a bed that looked a lot like the one I had been in when I was awakened, but also different somehow... It was like it was a hospital bed, but not in a hospital. The Evo on it was unconscious, not dead, but unlikely to ever recover. And the other two Evo's in the room with Marco as he had been looking down at the patient had absolutely no idea what had happened. Marco was extremely worried.

"Everything okay?" I asked, sort of already knowing the answer.

"Not really." he replied, matter of factly and unexpectedly "But there is nothing that can be done about it immediately. The plan was always to give you a week or two to come to terms with your new powers, explore your library a little..." I had almost forgotten that everyone's bunkers were different, and Marco's had manifested itself as a library. "...and then get back to you for the rest of your training. But, you know what they say about the best laid plans."

I nodded. "I thought you said that I didn't have anything more to learn."

"I say that to everyone." He was still smiling. "Be honest, if I had said I still had a lot to teach you, would you have settled down and started to explore your gift, or would you have wanted to know a lot more, right then?"

"Okay, Fair point." I conceded.

"You must remember, Pete, I have only ever done this with children, and the young mind needs time to process all of this. Not just in terms of having abilities, but emotionally coming to terms with them and being able to handle what is essentially a lot of power and responsibility in someone who has only just started puberty." There was a little pause. "I can see your age and maturity has helped you handle this a lot better than most, but for many, this is quite a traumatic time in their lives. It is my job, not only to awaken and teach them, but to lessen that trauma as much as possible. I can see now that we can accelerate your timeline quite considerably." He smiled and then gestured towards the main living area and the sofa. I followed him in and sat down.

"Ah shit. He's gonna realize that I have unlocked my city. It was Charlotte who taught me that, not him and she doesnt want him to know about her... how the fuck am I going to explain that? Think, dammit, think... Come on, I know you can do it, you've been doing it for years!"

"If I may make a suggestion, Sir" Jeeves chimed in.

"Yes, Jesus, what is it?"

"Lie."

In the fraction of a second that it took for Jeeves to enunciate the word "lie," my mind was filled with a barrage of information that Jeeves had somehow managed to piece together from the fact that Marco was able to hide the memory of the injured Evo from a mind significantly more powerful than his.

Jeeves, as he had explained to me before, had an innate understanding of the workings of both my bunker and my city, but there were aspects of it that, although he understood, had never occurred to either of us. This was one such moment. With my mind being far more powerful than Marco's, it was unlikely that he could get into my city and peruse my memories at will, nor could anyone else, for that matter, so I had never bothered to protect them. It had suddenly dawned on Jeeves that Marco would, as part of this training, end up being invited inside my city regardless, meaning he would have access to the memories in there, including Charlotte.

On the flip side, Marco would have known I would easily be able to get into his city, had I known how, which he in turn had no way of knowing I already did. Even if I didn't, I would almost certainly be invited in as part of the training he would offer, yet had preemptively and effectively hidden that information from me. Jeeves had concluded that there was a mechanism, either inside his library or his city, that allowed for the secure storage of information, and if his mind had one, mine would have one too. And so, I was introduced to my vault.

The Vault in my city was not, as logic would dictate, inside the monolithic banking complex. The information, no matter what it was, had nothing to do with my understanding of value, even if it was the most valuable information on earth. Instead, it was in the sub-basement of my library. I guess that made sense, since that was where all my knowledge was kept and the vault was just storing the more private variety of it.

The Vault was not a huge amount more secure than the rest of my library, the difference was that it was hidden, meaning an intruder would have to first find it, and it was reinforced, meaning that it would take a considerable amount of effort for them to break in. Far from impossible to do, but definitely impossible to do without being noticed. The idea of the Vault was not to protect the memories from attack - nothing could do that - but rather, it was designed to stop people from having a casual look at it while they were inside my city without my knowledge, as apparently unlikely as it was that they would get in in the first place.

Jeeves had taken the liberty of stuffing every single shred of memory about, or even vaguely relating to Charlotte, into the vault. As far as my library was concerned, Charlotte didn't exist.

"Okay, that is helpful" I acknowledged quickly, "But a lie he would believe?"

"Leave that to me, Sir."

*******

Well, that's it for Chapter 8... Finally!

There are no real words in the languages of mice or men to adequately explain how hard these 18 months have been. What started as an inconvenience of writing while being locked down with young children developed into close family deaths, moving house, and explaining all of it to minds too young to understand any of it. My life now would have been unrecognizable to the man I was when I started writing this series.

I know the decency of my readers would all say the same thing... "Real life must come before writing," and you would be absolutely right. But that real life is also the reason why it has been close to two years since my last chapter was published.

With that being said, the messages I have received from readers patiently and supportively waiting for this newest installment have been a constant source of reassurance. There were days when writing was the last thing on my mind, yet I did it anyway after reading messages, only to find my mind taken off the strife at home. I don't have words to thank you, not only for your support and dedication to this little story, but for your patience in waiting for it.

Anyway, the next chapter is going to be the last in what we can call the first "book" of this series. The one planned for after that is where the narrative takes off, and the world changes for our hapless hero. What will Marco have to teach him, and what will Charlotte think of his unannounced visit? How will Olivia react to a man vastly different to the one she once took so much pleasure in teasing? What new weird and wonderful things will our man and his trusty sidekick butler find out about themselves along the way?

Stay tuned to find out.

And... Thank you... You are all awesome.