Unwanted Power

Gee, Dad

The couple got a moderately early start to head back home. Two cars to drive. Ten hours of road time. Bill and Heather had a leisurely and affectionate breakfast as a bookend to their night. They then packed their vehicles. Turned off the water pumps and heater. Drained the water lines. Closing up their little cabin is more involved than merely locking a door. Chores complete, they headed out.

Heather gave the mountain she had been stuck on by the unconcerned celestial parent one last daytime look before pulling away. Her usual sense of loss at leaving her little fortress of mountain solitude was reduced by her brand new knowledge she could be back here in an hour. Even all the way from Houston.

Their little place always felt so far away and remote. Now Heather knew she could get out here in a tenth of the time it is going to take them to drive home. Perhaps less. She knew she could go faster than Mach one. The problem is that Sonic booms get noticed.

Cell phone service in the vast land is spotty at best. Many out here have satellite phones. One may not electronically see the next cell tower, but there is always the vast sky. Heather and Bill have traveled this route before. They knew where they could talk, where their favorite fuel and food stops are, and where they could call each other to choose one when they needed a break or a bathroom.

At one point while talking on the phone about an upcoming pit stop. Heather mentioned her frustration with the mode of travel. "We are doing 85 miles per hour. It feels like we are crawling. I cannot believe I already adapted to other speeds that available! I'm already thinking: 'why do I have to stay down here when there is no one up there!'. Weird, right?"

"Not during the daylight! Not unless you are WAY up there. Also, your bubble would need to extend to the entire CAR if you were going to carry it. Can you even make one that big?"

"Hmmm. Wouldn't need another potty break up there though..." Heather observed, considering that option.

"Earth to Heather. No. Just listen to your book. We got up early. We have all sorts of time." Bill warned. "A 300SD in the sky would be a little obvious, don't you think? YOU might not have a radar profile, but I bet that big tank of a car does. You do not want to be racing fighter jets in an ancient car. The Feds would task a definite interest in how it came to be up there. This part of the country is weird about illegal aliens. Not a fan of black guys like me either, but at least they know I'm not illegal. My badge helps with that too. You do not need to give them fuel for their paranoid fire. The sky looks wide open. I bet this close to the border of Mexico, it's got all kinds of radar scanning sweeping around. Someone from Mexico might be looking for a job or something. Maybe not. Most come into the County on foot or in the back of a truck, I guess. Still, I would not take a chance. Roswell is not that far West either. That would be more on actual point."

"I should figure out how to see radar. That's just microwaves. If I can see or feel Wi-Fi signals, I should be able to find that. Yeah. OK. I'll stay on the ground. I have a good book. A Quantum Mechanics book but it is talking about the many-worlds theory. Not so much a theory to me, but I am not sure they are thinking about it in the way space-dad does. Except maybe the bubble universe thing they mentioned. They don't really get into how other Universes might not have the same laws of physics this one does. Just sort of an allusion to it when they talk about the fine-grained constants that had to be just right for us to exist. The weak force. The strong force. The strength of Gravity. The speed of light. All that kind of thing. Like the Higgs field and mass. Things with mass get heavier as they go faster, so things that go the speed of light don't have any mass, but then what? Oh, and photons have no mass, but they can exert force. Not sure I get that part either. Light pressure is a thing. Oh. Then there is that mass and energy are the same things, so how does light, which has no mass, have energy? I read and listen to these books all the time now. I kind of get the edges of it, but there is so much more I do not understand, even though I can do things with it."