Lets do the Math!

A week into my "boot camp" I managed to gain sufficient control over my abilities. In order to keep track of my growth I decided to make mental notes about the things I could accomplish. Thus far I could do the following:

0. My sense/control/influence sphere had a radius of about 4 meters. 42 days ago, which was when I had first discovered my abilities, the radius was 2 meters. In other words, this sphere was doubling every 42 days. (Wait a minute! Isn't 42 the answer to the ultimate question in the universe?).
1. Produce gravitational fields which were powerful enough to negate the effect of gravity on an object having a total mass of 10 kg within my zone of influence. Originally I could lift only 5 kg of matter. Technically, by manipulating gravitational fields, I was producing and exerting forces on the objects I locked onto and a simple calculation told me that I could exert about 98 Newtons. Which means, I could exert a total of 98 N of force on objects within my influence sphere. That also made me realize as to why I was unable to levitate myself. I would have to wait for a couple more months for that.
2. Sense individual objects up to 0.1mm in size. In other words if the object could be contained in a sphere of radius 0.05mm then I could detect and manipulate it. Since I had discovered my sensing abilities after getting discharged from the hospital, I safely assumed that I could initially lock onto objects 0.2mm in size.
3. ???
4. ???
5. ???

Why the question marks next to 3, 4 and 5 you ask? Simple: The moment I passed the 42 day mark, I felt 6 jolts in my stomach after which I detected that the extent of my abilities had doubled. Which means that there were 3 other abilities I possessed but had not yet become aware of. Woah! I am not going to spill the beans so soon! It would ruin all the fun.

Just try to imagine what it would mean if I multiplied (or divided as required) all the above mentioned numbers by 2 to the power 100. I was super excited as I began to plan out the things I would be able to accomplish in 10 years. The only thing that bummed me out was that in order to manipulate the properties of matter, for which I would have to detect and manipulate atoms (more specifically the protons and neutrons), I would have to wait for about five and a half years. Hell! I could still do plenty of shit by that time! One cannot obtain one's PhD before their Masters degree! And I was just starting off with my Bachelors! I decided at that moment that I would wait patiently and learn how to have precise control over the abilities I had then. I also needed to figure out the 3 unknown abilities which I knew I had. By the end of my boot camp I would uncover one of them which led to some of the most awesome moments!

(Re)Boot Camp

The main objective behind my stay in the mountains was me being able to practice my abilities and find out what exactly were the properties and limits of my powers. I had a hunch back then that I was holding myself back but I had no idea just how much I could accomplish had I cut myself loose. Since my ability to control gravity needed me to focus quite a bit, I decided to try meditation since it would help me cool off and channel my mental energies towards the task at hand. I should have tried meditation earlier because what I discovered after my first session was quite fantastic.

I learned two things about my sphere of control- One: The radius of that sphere kept growing as time passed and if I focused quite hard I could double it as long as I could maintain my concentration. Two: My eyes were useless. Apparently, not only could I just control everything within my control sphere but also "sense" everything inside it. Simply put, I was aware of everything within the sphere and I could lock on to objects both large and small.

For my first experiment, I locked on to a pen and I was completely aware of its physical characteristics, both on the outside and the inside. I was somehow able to visualize details I had never visualized before. The design was exquisite. Usually, when we see with our eyes, we focus on just one point at a time, but with this ability, I was able to see everything simultaneously. The moment I became aware of this, I had a terrible headache because I was unable to handle the massive load of cognitive details of the objects within my control/sense sphere.

It took me the better part of an hour to relearn how to focus on the things I wanted to focus on like before, however, now that I had unlocked this ability I was able to control the amount of stuff I wanted to focus on. This allowed me to go from minute details to complete holistic views which abstracted everything I focused on. The smallest detail I could focus on was about 0.001 cubic millimeters (assuming a spherical shape) in size at time time; which was the size of a very tiny water droplet. With my eyes, I could barely see such an object but using my sensing ability I could visualize it clearly.

What I had done was learned how to see once again; only this time I could see more... a lot more.

Later, I found out that my ability to sense was merely a byproduct of my ability to create and manipulate gravitational fields. Matter always exerts gravitational forces on matter, via gravitational fields (I know I am oversimplifying so I request the physicists to forgive me) and since I could manipulate these fields, I could also sense them. Sensing them also gave me an idea of the things that created these fields and thus I could "sense" these things.

It seemed, at that moment, that I was opening Pandora's Box. Except, Pandora let everything out in one go which led to shit hitting the fan. In my case, I was taking it slow and steady, because I wanted to win the game. The next day, I decided to see what kind of gravity manipulations I could do so as to get things moving.

Fields in Fields

I was discharged from the hospital a month later with a cast around my shoulder and a clear warning to not engage in any kind of physical activity. The doctor infact recommended that I visit a remote village area where the peace and quiet would assist in the healing process since it would keep me calm. Luckily, I managed to find a good lodge about a 100 miles from the city deep in the woods which was just 10 minutes away from a small village where I could get supplies. I was not planning on cooking and coincidentally the guy who was leasing the lodge said that he could arrange for a person in the nearby village to deliver my breakfast, lunch and dinner; for an additional fee ofcourse. Since the offer was pretty tempting I decided to go with it. The main reason behind choosing the lodge in the woods was because I was very eager to gain mastery over my powers which allowed me to create and manipulate gravitational fields.

I know what you must be thinking: Woah Woah Woah! Time out! Fields what now?

Calm down..... let me rewind a little bit and clarify.

During my month in the hospital, I decided to do a bit of reading and asked Diana to get me a couple of books on physics. Coincidentally, Diana's late husband was a theoretical physicist and had a pile of books lying around, straight from 10th grade physics to unholy advanced quantum mechanics. I was a computer science major and thus requested the easy ones first. That was when I noticed something strange about myself. For some reason I was able to understand everything I read without even having to think. I mean, I had always been good at Math but never good enough to be able to understand equations just at first glance. Also, every time I understood a concept I was also able to hypothesize certain concepts related to it. My brain was able to acquire, organize and store information at an unbelievable rate. Why and how these things happened, I did not think about it too much since the only thing in my mind at that moment was: Can we do any better?

After the first 3 days during which I managed to finish 2 fairly simple books I figured out that, just by momentarily looking at a page, its content was automatically extracted, registered and stored in my brain. Since I could move pages faster with my powers, which I had then dubbed as the "FORCE", I would simply have the book hover above me and move the pages sufficiently fast enough so that I could acquire information at a very high rate. The 3rd book I read, which had about 200 pages of content, took me 1 hour to go through. Although I had a substantial amount of knowledge about friction, newtonian motion and kinematics I did end up having an intense headache which lasted for 10 minutes. I attributed that to the fact that my brain had to overdo it. Abilities are simply muscles and 2 days later I was able to read the same book in less than a minute but barely feel any headache.

Diana, was happy to get me all her husband's books and never questioned me when I asked for more and more books every week. After all, no one can read a 1000 page book in a week right? Right? Wrong! I was somehow an exception. Long story short, I was an expert on theoretical physics a month later and figured out what exactly it was that I could do with my "powers".

I had control over gravity! I could create and manipulate gravitational fields! Knowledge facilitates creativity and with the knowledge I had acquired over that month I spent recuperating I knew what it was that I could accomplish; theoretically ofcourse. And thats why I chose the lodge which had a nice field next to it. A field in which I could practice my fields. Let the games begin!

Piecing it all together

Thank god for morphine! Broken bones is one of the most painful things you can experience!The official diagnosis was: left shoulder bone cracked, 3 broken ribs and my wrist took quite a bit of damage as well. The doctor advised me 3 months of bed rest which my company sanctioned which was quite welcome. I needed the time, to think about the recent change in my life and what it meant for me. You see, the feelings of fate, hope and destiny that I had suppressed long ago were beginning to surface once again and I wanted to make a decision about what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

I know you have watched plenty of movies where the person suddenly discovers that he has some strange powers and then goes about trying to be a super hero or a thief or whatever. But seriously, I was just beginning to learn what my powers truly were and I had plenty of difficulty trying to figure out what exactly was going on. But I digress. So back to the story.

The little girl, Cathy (short for Catherine), came to visit me with her mom, a couple of days later when my mind was relatively less addled by the medicines. She gave me a small teddy bear as a sign of thanks which was something I had not received in a long long time. You must be wondering right now: "What kind of a sad loser was this guy? He did not even get thanked once in a while?". Her mom had tears in her eyes while thanking me saying that she would have been broken had I not saved her daughter. Her mom, Diana, reminded me of my late elder sister who was one of the most important people in my life. "We will visit you once in a while. Cathy seems to be quite fond of you. When you get all fixed up we would love for you to visit our place for lunch or dinner once in a while.", she said. They stayed for an hour and then went back but not before Cathy gave be a peck on my cheek and wished me good health. The medicines were beginning to take effect again as I fell into a deep sleep.

I woke up with a start in the dead of the night following which I felt the pain of the broken bones once again. "Fucking hell! This is more painful than I thought!", I cursed softly. I sat upright and began recalling the events of the past few days, especially the one where I saved Cathy. "I can't believe that I actually saved someone's life. How exactly did I move so fast?", I wondered, when suddenly the complete memory flashed before my eyes and I suddenly knew what I had been missing all the while. I remembered myself imagining an energy field around myself and directed it towards Cathy with a very high velocity and the moment I reached her, just a second before the car hit her, I panicked and lost control but not before my instinct to protect her created a field around her saving her from any kind of harm. And that is when it hit me: The reason why I was able to move other objects around me but not myself was because I knew what was required to move other physical objects; Force. I, however, had no idea of what makes the self move. When I imagined the energy field I technically treated my body as an external object and manipulated it. Which meant only one thing: I had a crude mechanism of manipulating my own body. An exciting thought crossed my mind: "What if I figure out what makes my self move? Can I obtain true control?".

With a smile on my face, I began my journey towards understanding myself, my powers and the whole universe.

Zone Of Influence

I brushed my teeth, took a nice, warm shower and got ready for work. Yea, I still had to go work, for I still had no idea of limits of the powers I possessed.

"Can I fly?", I wondered and imagined myself floating. Nothing happened.
"Okay! Something simpler", I decided and pictured my hand rising upwards without moving it using my physical force. Nothing happened. "How disappointing!", I thought, realizing that I could not use my powers on my body. So I set my mind away from my body towards my clothes which were lying on my bed about 15 feet away and imagined them flying towards me. Surprisingly, they refused to move. I moved closer and tried again. This time they flew towards me.

"Huh?? A distance limitation! This blows! How the bloody hell am I even supposed to do anything with this?", I said, angrily wondering what kind of stupid powers there were. Little did I know that I was simply lacking creativity at the time. Had I opened my mind, I would have been able to do "more"!

After a bit of trial and error, which took about an hour, I figured out that I had what I call a "Zone of Influence", which took the shape of a sphere that extended about 7 feet in all directions away from my centre of gravity. Within this zone I could influence any object and have it move towards and away from me. The clearer the image, the more effective the influence. But my disappointment at the distance limitation simply prevented me from thinking ahead. I resigned myself to the fact that I had some basic powers and although I could do simple stuff with it, I would never be able to have fun with them, I would never be able to enact my fantasies.

Life, however, is well known for fucking with people and later that day I was to discover how much of creativity and knowledge I lacked inspite of having had a very active imagination in the past.

I went to my workplace, finished my 9-5 stint, said bye to my colleagues and began my walk back home, which for the first time in a long long time did not feel that very monotonous given that I possessed some strange powers. Halfway through the journey I noticed a little girl, no more than 5 years old, playing with her dolls on the sidewalk, a relatively harmless place. I loved children and smiled noticing her having fun, wondering what kind of world she was cooking up. That's when a car zoomed past me, swerving like crazy; clearly the driver had lost control. What I saw was that the way the car was moving, the little girl was in clear danger.

I barely had 5 seconds before the child would be run over by the car; my desire to save her kicked in and my mind went into overdrive. The next thing I remembered was that I was on the ground, my left hand and shoulder were hurting terribly, the girl was lying unconscious, but still breathing, on my chest. For a moment I was filled with elation that I had somehow managed to save a life before I passed out due to the pain.

A few hours later, I woke up in the hospital heavily sedated with a cast around my left arm and shoulder. Although I was unable to think straight, I realized that I had just managed to do something good and heroic and that my powers were not a stupid as I thought them to be. Later, as the drugs wore off, I was to recall the entire incident and know just how much I still had to learn.

Does This Thing Have A Manual?

"No Fucking Way!", was an expression of my surprise which was replaced by a throbbing pain since the mobile phone hit my forehead with quite some force. I took a couple of deep breaths in order to collect myself. I extended my hand outwards and willed the water bottle towards me. Nothing happened. "Strange! Am I still in a dream?", I wondered and slapped myself pretty hard. "Arghh! That hurt!! Why am I hurting myself today?", I pondered while rubbing my cheek. I tried the same thing over and over again for about 10 minutes, muttering incantations I heard as a child. Nothing worked! So I decided to step back and reevaluate my situation.

"Does this have anything to do with the dream I had or am I finally going bonkers?", I asked myself and tried to recall the contents of my dream. I remembered the darkness, the orb and then the inscription on the orb flashed before my eyes once again.

A deity cannot be made in a single day,
Perhaps this will help you find your way,
All that is needed is a convenient mod,
I wonder what you will do as a Demi-God!

"What a vague poem! Where is the God-damned manual? If I really do have powers now, why can I not use them", I exclaimed, quite irritated. I decided to not think too much about it and decided to get ready for the day; I did have a job. I went into the shower and studied my reflection in the mirror; I used to be a cute kid but now the person looking back at me was just an ordinary looking man with no striking facial features. "Good luck getting hit on, loser!", I said to myself, as I did everyday. "Imagine what kind of a girl would actually like someone like you!", I continued. And that's when it hit me.
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IMAGINE
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I froze for a moment and thought back to when the mobile phone hit me in the head. Because I was too sleepy and did not want to get out of the bed, I imagined it flying towards me. The other times, I tried to reproduce the same effect I just willed it without visualizing it in my head.

"Could it be?", I wondered with a sense of curiosity, extended my arm towards the toothbrush, imagined it flying into my hand and that's what happened. Shivers of excitement ran though my body and I tried it again on the tube of tooth paste. Same thing!

I was able to make things move by imagining them moving! And then I started laughing, gently at first, gradually louder and wilder till I was laughing like a crazed maniac! I laughed for quite some time, expressing my glee at having discovered what I could do.

"A one word manual. Not half bad!", I said to myself continuing to smile and smirk.

"All bets are off! This gonna be fun!", as I began my journey, to discover myself, my powers and the world. The feeling of being a pathetic loser was replaced with a sense of destiny as I started wondering one single thing: "What do I do next?"

The Darkness

"Fiction and reality are different, don't mix them up." This is what I believed in all my life. And why should I even believe otherwise? I have watched plenty of movies, played plenty of video games and read plenty of books which resulted in me having a very active imagination. However, nothing I experienced throughout my life even came close to the fantastical things I always used to imagine. I always wanted to fly without any gadgets; I was barely able to jump 4 feet in the air. I wanted to be able to run faster than the fastest vehicle in the world; I could barely run straight for more than 10 minutes. I wanted to be able to see the stars and planets up close; the best view I got was through a telescope I had purchased years ago.

Simply put.... I was simply unable to enact the things that ran amok in my mind. I kept believing that through some stroke of luck I would unlock my latent abilities and I would have a lot of fun with the resulting powers I would obtain. Nothing happened. I lost my will to keep imagining and resigned myself to a life of mediocrity where nothing out of the ordinary would happen.

Did I mention that I did not believe in a God?

Yea.... that was simply because my lifestyle did not need the existence of God. Not that I ever missed an opportunity of diss at the powers that be when things did not go my way. Especially when I was unable to act out my imaginations.

Sounds boring and pitiful right? You are probably thinking: "What a loser!" Well, I was a loser. WAS!

I used to work at a software company that made mobile applications and I had a well paying 9 to 5 job. I hated it. On my way back to my room I decided to buy some stuff from a local burger restaurant and eat in room, alone, as usual. I was about to unlock the door when I got a strange feeling, a powerful feeling of foreboding, as if something was waiting for me. It had been a long time since my imagination had perked up but I beat it down since I had long up it.

I entered my room and saw nothing. It was not that it was dark, I literally could not see anything before me. I turned around and saw nothing; the doorway had disappeared. I looked up, I saw nothing, down nothing, I could see nothing, only my own body as if it were illuminated. I was somehow standing on a surface but could not see it. "Ahh.... I must be dreaming", I thought and felt a bit relaxed. I resolved to take a holiday for a couple of days since the monotony was clearly sapping me of my strength.

I decided to explore this darkness and after looking around I saw a faint source of light in the distance. "To the light", I thought and pursued it. After what seemed like an hour the light got brighter and brighter till I was a few feet away from it. To me it looked like an orb floating in the air. I had had dreams before then but that dream was a bit to surreal. It felt too real. I felt no time lapses. I waited before the floating, glowing orb; for what, I do not remember. I just waited.

I got bored and decided to inspect the orb which I found was floating in mid-air. The orb resembled a glass sphere with a source of light at its centre when I first looked at it but after studying it carefully there were inscriptions on its surface. I held it in my hands, squinted my eyes and managed to read the following:

A deity cannot be made in a single day,
Perhaps this will help you find your way,
All that is needed is a convenient mod,
I wonder what you will do as a Demi-God!

"Interesting poem!", I thought and the orb slipped out of my hand, fell down and broke into millions of tiny pieces. It was dark once again. I decided to wait again to see if my dream would create another source of light. I waited for what seemed like an hour and started feeling my heart racing. My heart rate rose till I was out of breath and suddenly the universe exploded before my eyes. In an instant I saw everything, literally everything. I saw the stars, galaxies, planets, atoms, photons, cells.... everything. I felt as if everything about everything was being squeezed into my tiny brain and the pain was unbelievable. I felt as if my mind and body were being ripped into shreds. Imagine the worst pain possible and multiply it by a million. That was just a trillionth of the pain I felt. I always thought that the human mind and body had a limit to how much pain it could take. Apparently the restrictions were taken off for me. It went on for hours, days, months, years and suddenly it all stopped.
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And I woke up with a start. Looking around I saw that I was in my bed. "It was a dream after all. Whew!", I said to myself and began to reach for my mobile phone which lay on the ground, a few feet away from me. "Get over here!", I thought and it flew towards me and landed on my face with quite some force. The only words that came out of my mouth a few seconds later were: "No Fucking Way!"