Unwanted Power

Magnitude of Power

Heather waiting until she thought Bill and Cristine were fully asleep and then slipped out of the room for a night fly.

Taking off from the roof of their hotel was easy. Heather told the alarm system to ignore her exit to the roof by simply overriding the limit switch on the door. It had not been locked, just had a fire alarm sensor to alert when opened. It was not about the limit switch. It was about telling the electronics to ignore the signal from it.

Heather also knew the building management system on a first-name basis. It neglected to record her walking down halls or in stairwells. It decided to frame-buffer the images from just before she appeared until after she was gone because she asked it nicely. It was hard to not anthropomorphize computers for Heather sometimes. It is not as if she gave the BMS a choice about frame buffering, or that it even knew it was doing it, or even that the computer at the heart of it is self-aware. Computers do what they are told to do, and they cannot ignore Heather.

In a password prompt, the computer asks for the password. When it sees the enter key, it checks the password. Then it asks itself if there is a match. If yes, then proceed. Heather jumps directly to 'proceed'. The computer has no idea code was bypassed.No matter what the check is, no matter how it is done, the answer for Heather is always 'yes'.

Heather wore the 'Goth' her daughter had accused her of. All black, including a generic over-large hoodie with no logos. Heather brought along the outfit for just this occasion. She also had on a black bandana and large ski goggles. She did not need those to protect her eyes from the wind anymore. The headgear was about making sure if she was spotted somehow, she could not be identified. The alternative was a ski mask, but for some reason, that felt too 'burglar-y' to Heather. The sweats are not form-fitting. From far away, Heather preferred an accidental observer to not even be able to determine her gender.

One useful side effect of being able to go Mach 10 without a single vibration is that once Heather was sure no one is looking she could zoom. Heather needed to be sure no planes were flying over from San Francisco International, which is far enough to the south that a plane could be high over the city. She did not want to zoom directly up into one. She checked the nearer sky to ensure no helicopters are hovering. Heather's sky checks complete, Heather flew silently so far up into the sky that even if someone was looking her way, it would be a blink and they missed it kind of moment.

Despite all of her caution, flying right now off the top of their hotel seemed like a risk. Heather took the risk because Heather wanted to fly here. See the nightscape of the city from the sky. The Golden Gate Bridge in all its nighttime glory.

Despite her and Bill's conversation about flying here for souvenirs, Heather has never flown over her favorite city before. She has been so preoccupied with flying over the Gulf, perfecting her various energy transfer techniques, that she has never flown someplace like this just for fun.

Once well away from the city, Heather relaxed about fear of detection and enjoyed herself. She watched various lights across the water, including all the boats. It was beautiful and relaxing. Her innate sense of the Earth let her know exactly where she was. Exactly where her family is. Which way is down even without using her eyes to see the shore lights. Somewhere down there in the Pacific water are the sharks and probably Orca's that the Sea Lions they watched were avoiding. In the calm of the night sky, it was easy to forget about the violence of the cycle of life.

Something started to bother Heather. It entered the edge of her new senses. It felt like a sinus headache, but not at all remotely like that. She paused to assess. Work through her perceptions that she still only barely understood.

She rotated around and treated her body like a compass. What bothered her was below her. In the water.

Heather had not spent a great deal of time exploring all her limits, as Bill suggested. Her anger about realizing she was not who she used to be had subsided, but she did not want to explore herself to the edge either. She can fly. Talk to computers. Despite her reluctance to push herself to the edges, Heather did add one new ability to her inventory on those Gulf flights. She can 'swim'. It is the same thing as flying more or less, only under the water rather than in the air.