by Agster, Joe
Friend’s instincts tell him he already has some basic hand to hand experience, but it has failed him more than once. He feels that he may have forgotten most of it when he entered this world and formed a new identity, thus his only skills carried through here are fragments of knowledge sustained by his intuition and reflexes. If what he believes is true, his skills will resurface quickly as they are reintroduced. He welcomes this and can’t wait to get started.
Mason insists on practicing hand to hand skills without powers first. For the whole day they practice punching, kicking, various thrusts, and throwing opponents. After that it’s defensive stances and techniques, blocks, deflections, and evasions. As he anticipated, all of this is coming back to Friend, the fast movement, the counterattacks. It’s as if he has gone from a novice to expert martial artist in under a day.
On the second day Mason introduces powers into the training. The first power emphasized is the ability to slow down time while in combat. “Slowing down time allows you to move at normal speed while your opponents move in slow motion. Doing so however saps your strength, so you need to do so sparingly and tactically. Since you are new to this, you will find it takes a tremendous amount of your power to harness this ability, and doing so amid battle is extremely difficult. So we will first focus on just slowing down time.”
They head to the meditation mat. For the next several hours Friend engages in visualization meditation, focusing on slowing down time in his mind, watching things in slow motion. First, he pictures existing situations, like being at the Vyxx. Eventually he works on projecting the FBI standoff in this mind, replaying it over and over, using the slowdown technique as he evades being shot.
Through the next several days they emphasize slowing down real events. Friend practices slowing down time while seated in tranquility, watching as the birds’ flights are slowed down, how even Mason’s movements and speech are all presented to him in slow motion. At first he can only sustain it for a second or two, but later in the iterations for several seconds. Mason commends him for being a fast learner.
On the final day, Mason is ready for Friend to practice this while keeping focus on an activity. He pulls out a trio of rubber balls to juggle. He explains how the intent isn’t to learn how to juggle, but to slow down time to coordinate hand movements. Friend watches as Mason effortlessly maintains the flow of the three balls in the air. From his vantage point, Mason is moving incredibly fast, superhuman fast, like watching a real life person on fast forward. In the frantic exercise, he keeps the balls suspending, eventually bringing them closer and closer to his hand, so that they are only in the air for fractions of a second in normal time.
It’s Friend’s turn. He throws the first ball in the air, then the second, then slows time. He struggles with the timing and the effects of gravity at first. Even the air resistance he encounters during slowed time is strange and requires adjusting. After a couple of series of having the balls in the air, he falters as the balls hit the ground.
“Keep working on it, Friend. If you can’t maintain the balls in the air in unison, you will struggle while fighting your most dangerous enemy.”
Friend spends the rest of the days trying to juggle the balls, determined to not quit. He gets used to the effects of slow time and overcomes it, maintaining the balls in the air for a few seconds, then thirty seconds, to finally several minutes, raising their height as he maintains them, then bringing them low just as Mason did. On the final night, he sits in enchantment as he feels he has become an expert juggler in the process, thinking of himself as circus performance worthy.
Iteration 14
Friend and Mason have spent the last two iterations practicing nothing but hand to hand skills along with slowing time. Friend has certainly mastered it. Mason explained how Friend is special, a natural, someone he predicted would excel through the training. Mason is ready to move on to new things.
“We have practiced bending time, and now it’s time to learn how to bend space and time together, collectively known as spacetime.”
Friend listens with patience and a clear comprehension. He is familiar with the concept of spacetime, the combination of space and time into a four dimensional universe, but not sure how it applies to their powers.
“We can emit a giant force and direct it at an adversary by bending the space in front of us. It works by focusing on a single point in space and pulling everything around you to that point, then releasing it at once.”
Mason demonstrates on a pile of rocks, he takes a deep breath and pulls his arms inward, focusing his breathing and mind to a simple point. Friend watches in bewilderment as air around the single point seems warped, like a funnel. He holds this in with his eyes closed for a few seconds, then releases the powerful explosive blast directed at the rocks, obliterating the pile and scattering the rocks everywhere. As awe inspiring as this is to Friend, he is confident in his ability to try it, since he’s already done it once.
“That was amazing… wow! That was more powerful and precise than when I did it.” Friend explains.
“It’s called a quantum burst of energy. What you are doing is creating a quantum-sized black hole anchored to a single point in spacetime. As we sustain it with our power, we are preventing its evaporation, allowing it to gather all the mass and energy around it. A black hole has a singularity that we can direct through space how we want. But once we let go, the black hole violently dissipates, releasing all that captured energy and subatomic particles until equilibrium is restored. The scientific thought leaders here gave that phenomenon a name, something called Hawking radiation.”
Friend spends this iteration honing this one particular ability. He practices on the pile of rocks, at first only a fraction as effective as Mason’s demonstration. Eventually he rivals Mason’s ability. It requires a great deal of patience and it further develops his skill in visualization.
Iteration 18
Friend’s powers have continued to develop in the past couple of iterations. He has grown more and more confident in his capabilities, along with his level of confidence that he can find a way to stop the asteroid. He hasn’t connected all the dots fully, but with his powers, he feels he can enter worlds that would normally be impossible to crack, even with lifetimes of iterations of trial and error.
On the night of day three, after countless days of training in hand to hand combat, bursts of energy, slowing down time, along with combining the all of these, Friend has gotten a bit weary. Mason senses this and decides to let them rest for the rest of the iteration.
They sit by the open pit by a large fire, bringing warmth to an unusually colder, dry night. They sit in silence, Friend thinking about Cassie. The thought of the Other getting to her has crossed his mind more than once, but he feels that he would possibly sense her in danger. Still, he feels obliged to bring up his feeling on this matter as they sit passively, distanced from the grueling exercises that have dominated their interactions.
“I am worried about a friend of mine. Could she be in danger from my double?” He calmly asks.
“It’s doubtful. Have you sensed her in danger during your meditations?” Mason asks back.
“No, nothing.” Friend replies.
“Your double doesn’t care about your relationships. The fact that you have retreated away from the center means he has as well. He may be furthering his training, which is more of a danger actually. Remember, Las Vegas is the center for all us timeloopers, so the further away we are, the safer we are.”
Friend is momentarily comforted, but cannot shake how much he misses her. By now she is trying to escape to Mexico, so she is already far away from this “center” as Mason calls it. Would it be so terrible to see her? Only if he could teleport, which he could possibly try, but they haven’t gotten to that point in the training.
“I miss her, deeply. During our final few iterations together, I somehow became a permanent fixture in her timeline. Her father could see into the future, and he told her of me. I worry
she is looking for me, but because I am here I never show up.”
Mason suddenly has a look of concern mixed with amusement. By his facial expression he knows exactly what Friend is explaining, and has probably experienced it himself. He is brimming with angst to explain to Friend what he is going through.
“It’s called linking. You have linked yourself to her across all her timelines, injecting your existence into her past and future. When you link with a person they experience a sense of déjà vu when you first make contact with them in an iteration. They are overcome with a strange feeling like they’ve always known you, even if they can’t explain it.”
Friend comments, “I’ve noticed too that her past changed. After a few iterations she identified be my name the moment we connected. And her father saw me in his dying visions.”
“When you link with someone you can influence their past. You will start to notice changes in their behavior, as if they had intrinsically been preparing their whole life for the moment they make contact with you. It’s one of the strangest yet most profound side effects of linking.”
“Will being away from her for a prolonged time cause me to unlink with her?”
“Yes, but the unlinking process takes a lot longer than the linking process. It’s clear you care for this person, this woman, for you to have linked with her so fast. But be mindful that by linking, you expose her to a danger from your Other. He may be able to sense her presence too.”
Friend feels reassured, but curious about Mason’s past with linking. The question seemed to have stirred a bit of a memory. There’s no doubt that he once met a woman as well, and longs to be with her again.
“I take it you have linked with someone?” He pokes the question to Mason.
“A long time ago,” he harrowingly answers, looking to change the subject. “Lifetimes ago actually. I can barely remember her, and it’s safer for her that way.”
Friend probes no further. He understood Mason’s pain the moment he answered the question. He has been unable to solve the mystery of why the weathered, zany old man conducts himself the way he does, hiding, unwilling to venture forth into the world, treating trips to Las Vegas like they are risky endeavors. He must have a double too. Maybe his double is so powerful he retreats far enough away to avoid any possible conflict with him.
Iteration 20
Friend and Mason spent the previous iteration honing his combat skills. Mason put Friend to the test, challenging him to use various powers at once, like a super speed combination of punches and kicks, bursts, and takedowns. Throughout the exercise he constantly emphasized tranquility of mind, calmness, tactically using your powers, never overcommitting to using them too much at once. They fought and fought, Friend losing, but being healed by Mason, allowing him to continue without interruption. Toward the final day Friend began to finally overpower Mason, using his advice in a precise and strategic manner, growing in intellect, skill, and soundness of mind.
At the start of this iteration, they return to the meditation patio where Mason expands on visualization mediation, emphasizing on the power of teleportation. Friend starts by practicing teleporting in mind only, jumping from place to place, picturing in his head as best as he can the feeling of it, the lapse during the spatial displacement. Mason stresses that teleporting requires an acute mental awareness of the place you want to travel. When you teleport, you have to want it with the entirety of your being, and perfectly visualize the place you want to go.
On the next day, Friend stands in the fields waiting for Mason, looking around for several minutes, until he realizes that Mason had been standing behind him, elusively teleporting as Friend would turn to look. Mason then laughs at his jestering, causing a frustrated Friend to grimace in embarrassment.
“Teleporting. It’s something you’ve meditated on up until this point, but it is time to learn the most basic exercise of bending spacetime to your will. With all of your powers, your mind and body must be in sync. The waters of your mind must be tranquil. Then with every ounce of your being, visualize where you want to go and go there.”
Mason sets up three zones in the fields, a red, blue, and yellow zone, made up of colored rocks in a circle about a meter in diameter. He then asks Friend to stand in each zone first. He explains that in order to teleport, you must have been to the point in space before. You cannot teleport to place you’ve never been. Friend ponders on this limitation, thinking how he could travel to different, predetermined points throughout the world so he can travel virtually anywhere at a moment’s notice. How he would choose these points in space are for another time to meditate on.
Friend stands in the red zone. Mason orders him to teleport to the blue zone. Friend closes his eyes, perfectly visualizing standing in the zone. He lets Mason’s advice echo in his mind, that in order to teleport he must intend it with all of his being. He breathes and breathes, then poof, he disappears, but a split second later lands just outside the circle. Disappointed at first, he smiles to himself as he feels a sense of congratulation for performing his first teleportation, regardless of where he wound up. Mason is less amused.
“You got the intention part down, but you didn’t focus hard enough on the location. Remember, visualize your location first, lock it into your mind… then will yourself there through intention.” Mason stresses.
Mason urges him to return to the red zone and try again. This time he focuses on the zone, and only the zone. He pictures it perfectly in his mind, strongly clinging onto the mental visual like his life is dependent on it. Once he firmly establishes it, he projects himself as being there, holding onto that visual, then at the moment that he declares his intention to go there, wills it in his mind with all of his being, he is whisked perfectly into that spot.
“Excellent! Much better,” Mason exclaims. Friend feels he has finally figured it out. “Along with teleporting, you can also hide in nonspace. However, keep in mind that while in nonspace, time outside ticks faster, about ten times faster by my calculation.”
“Ten times faster?” Friend questions. “Is this even possible? We would need to be traveling close to the speed of light.”
“In a sense we are. Since in nonspace you can travel to any point in space in the blink of an eye, it’s the potential of that travel that causes the time dilation.”
To demonstrate, Mason takes Friend’s watch, noting how most watches are synched to the World Clock. Friend finally understands that phenomenon as the time has shifted two hours ahead being in their new location. Up until now, he hadn’t given it much thought. Holding the watch, Mason disappears, reappearing ten minutes later at 15:15. Except the watch reads 15:06, and as Mason explains, had only spent one minute in nonspace. Immediately, the watch re-corrects itself back to 15:15.
“Teleporting and hiding in nonspace can also be useful in a hand to hand combat scenario. Done correctly, you will definitely startle and confuse even the most well trained combatant. But before you can perform rapid teleporting, you will need to learn the basics of it.”
They spend the rest of the iteration focused on teleporting, going further distances. Friend practices teleporting to the lake and back, up the mountains and back. As Mason said, it becomes simple to master, practically second nature, after one has done it hundreds of times. Despite the practice, Friend realizes he still has a ways to go before he masters it as Mason has.
Iteration 22
During the morning of the first day, Mason and Friend teleport to a small Mexican town called Cuajinicuilapa, about 200 kilometers south of Mason’s hideout ranch, near the ocean. It’s a town Mason loves to frequent as he has become familiar with the locals after countless iterations getting to know them. He comes here for food and supplies as he feels he needs it. On this morning the whole town is recovering from a grand Christmas celebration.
“When the town hosts a fiesta,” Mason explains, “the entire town participates in the festivities, making it one of the liveliest, happiest communities on Earth. They embody t
he essence of being human, enjoying life.”
Friend has been wondering for quite a while, asking, “Is this why you choose Mexico?”
“I’ve been here in this world for more days than I can remember, and one thing I can tell you is Mexico is the finest country on Earth. I like to think that Mexico chose me. The people here are lovely, spiritual, true to themselves. You won’t find that in Las Vegas. It’s no wonder that when the panic sets in over the asteroid, everyone tries to sneak across the border to get here.”
Mason and Friend walk along with main streets. The buildings are colorful, painted in beautiful pastels of yellow, orange and blue. They house grocery stores, postal offices, and other small businesses. They enter El Super, the mercado situated on the corner of a busy intersection where bicycles and small cars nestle through the narrow intersecting streets.
“¡Buenas, señor!” Mason calls out to the merchant. “¿Cómo le va a su hija con sus clases de guitarra?”
The merchant looks puzzled at first, before finally engaging with an expression of familiarity. The man then beams with exuberance as if he’s known Mason his whole life. Friend watches in a subtle curiosity realizing that Mason has linked with many of the townsfolk.
“Ahh Señor Mason. Bien, muy bien. ¿En qué puedo ofrecer hoy en día?” the merchant responds.