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Post by rvm45 on Oct 2, 2022 11:08:59 GMT -6
Quern Reboots
1962
Quern had regressed to the year 1962, when he was just five-years-old.
Well, he wasn’t actually a regressor, since he was occupying the body of five-year-old Quern in a parallel universe. He wasn’t exactly a transmigrator either, since 87-year-old Quern had been alive, even if nowhere near well, when Quern had agreed to this trip.
In Quern’s lifetime, a rare misstep during what was supposed to be a routine tonsillectomy and adenoid removal had almost killed young Quern. His short, but intense crisis had been the stuff of family legend when he was growing up.
Quern’s father often opined that he thought that Quern had suffered some subtle brain damage, when the oxygen was momentarily cut off. That’s how he explained why Quern didn’t grow up to be an ass-kissing, effeminate, petty bourgeoisie with a dough-belly and an ROTC haircut, the way his father had intended.
Well, in this timeline, five-year-old Quern did kick the bucket. That might be tragic for his family, but it hardly constituted a major crisis for the onward march of Western Civilization.
According to Voice, the multiverse had 17-Dimensions of space and 5-Dimensions of time. Quern’s eyes had crossed when he tried to imagine 5-Dimensions of time.
It was very hard to explain the geometry of the multiverse to a human, who lived in 3-Dimensions of Space and one-Dimension of Time.
Imagine ordinary universes as vast 4 (or perhaps 5) Dimensional strands of spaghetti—far longer in the temporal Dimension than in any of the spatial Dimensions.
In electricity or magnetism, like repelled like, and like attracted unlike. Parallel timelines were the opposite. The more similar timelines were, the more closely they tended to clump together.
Huge numbers of similar parallel universes existed in cables or bundles.
What happened if two alternate universes were in contact and they were identical for all practical purposes? They could merge into a single timeline.
That was heap bad juju for both of the merging timelines and all of the surrounding timelines. There just happened to be seventeen parallel universes touching each other and they were progressively growing more alike.
It was very hard to speak about evolution and progression in a multiverse with five Dimensions of time, all at right angles to each other.
At any rate, these universes were perilously close to merging. If two timelines merging was comparable to a massive cosmic tsunami, seventeen timelines merging simultaneously would create the equivalent of a cosmic mega super-nova.
Each and every one of these seventeen parallel universes featured Little Quern dying on the operating table.
Little Quern was nothing but a grain of sand in this timeline—but Chaos Theory has shown that you cannot find a grain of sand so insignificant, that moving it 1/1000th of an inch won’t bring huge changes as the timeline unfolds—and much sooner than you’d expect.
Voice’s backers couldn’t move so much as a single grain of sand on their own. However, with a volunteer transmigrator, a brief window would be opened—a window large enough to allow quite a bit of finagling.
Quern was selected, because, for reasons that no one understood, only a few folks could undergo such a transfer—and Quern was one of the very few.
Voice’s backers had altered Little Quern’s body enough to make it viable—but they couldn’t touch the body until Little Quern’s original spirit and soul had vacated the body.
Quern’s spirit and his soul, his 87-years’ worth of memories—enhanced and expanded—along with some new talents and abilities he hadn’t had, his first time around—were transplanted and shoe-horned into the recently vacated shell of Little Quern.
Yeah, although the backers were rather limited as to how they could affect the inner workings of a timeline, while the crack was open to let Quern through, they could do a number of small things for Quern—like establishing several trust-funds of various sizes, under the time-worn guise of money left by a “Long-Lost Relative.”
All they really needed to do, was let Quern through. Just by living instead of dying, he would drastically change this timeline.
Throwing a small pebble into a pond will create ripples. Throwing a bird in to bathe will make more and bigger ripples and keep the ripples coming far longer. Quern, with his multiple tweaks, upgrades and faux trust funds was a large, very long-bathing bird. The backers had sent Quern to the most “central” of the seventeen clumped alternate universes and the more Hell that he raised, altering the timeline, the further he would scatter the other sixteen universes—from his new timeline and from each other.
Second, Quern was owed a certain amount of compensation for agreeing to be transplanted—and at least to beings on Quern’s level—the backers never reneged on their promises.
It would have been quite tedious to have to put up with being treated like a child again, after 87-years of life—but Quern’s new “parents” had been tweaked to largely let Quern do as he pleased.
************* ****************** ******************
There were a few things that had seriously marred Quern’s original childhood though. He wanted to iron out these giant mental ripples largely on his own.
************* **************** ************************
“Rub my head,” Father requested.
“I don’t want to,” Quern said.
‘Yes! Time to eliminate this mental demon!’ Quern thought.
Quern wasn’t sure how his father did it, but he could cry real crocodile tears when he wanted to.
In Quern’s first life, Father had said over and over and over again to Quern’s mother:
“Mom, He don’t love me!” While crying real tears.
Quern wasn’t sure if that was the genesis of his loathing for the practice some married men had, of addressing their wives as “Mom.” Nonetheless, any time he heard a man address his wife as “Mom,” Quern would grind his teeth in rage.
Hell, Quern had never particularly liked his mother, but he had more respect for her, than to call her by the pop, 50-ish diminutive “Mom.”
Anyway, Quern hated his father calling his mother “Mom.” When he was older and less intimidated by the possibility of a sudden unanticipated slap to the face, he would always act astonished and say:
“Is she your mother!?! All this time, I thought that she was your wife!”
Father would say: “Mom, he don’t love me!”
And Quern would whine:
“I love you, but I don’t want to rub your head.”
He didn’t really think that his father thought he didn’t love him. He knew it was a ploy, but after hearing:
“Mom, he don’t love me,” forty or fifty times, it became like Chinese water torture. He couldn’t bear to hear it again, so he had broken down and rubbed his father’s head.
That was a watershed moment in young Quern’s life. He never again refused to work on his father. His will was completely shattered on that particular topic.
Later, he often wondered why he hadn’t simply left the room or went outside to play that fateful day. The best that he could figure, five-year-old Quern thought that he needed the last word to achieve resolution and his father continually denied him the last word.
Father had been in the US Army with a couple of chiropractors. They must have been bored shitless, because they shared much of their skills with Father.
Father also claimed to have picked up some techniques at the YMCA and the Turners, back when they still offered after-workout rubdowns.
Quern was a bit puzzled as to when his lazy father would have ever worked out—but…
His father had groomed Quern to be his personal Masseuse. Quern spent an hour or two every day, massaging Father’s head, back, legs and feet.
He had to carefully guard his facial expression too. If he displayed the slightest reluctance, his father would say:
“Never mind!” with infinite contempt.
That would have gotten Quern out of doing it, but he was satisfied that when his vindictive father let the other shoe drop, he’d wish that he had simply given him a backrub.
Then he’d have to kiss-ass and assure Father that he didn’t mind spending two hours rubbing his back every day.
‘Ain’t bad enough that I gotta do it, I gotta be a cheesing little hypocrite as well!’ he used to think with infinite bitterness.
This from the same man who raked Quern over the coals, because every time he got a scolding, he accepted it with a poker face, with no visible change of expression.
Quern simply said:
“I don’t want to.”
After the fifth:
“Mom, he don’t love me,”
Quern had replied:
“No, I do not and cannot love someone who would use such a despicable psychological ploy on a small child, to try to bend him to your will. I won’t rub your head, or anything else, now or ever. I wasn’t put on this Earth to be your personal masseuse—O, and by the way—that is your wife, not your ‘Mom’,” Quern said triumphantly.
*************** ***************** ************************
Sissy-shorty-pants were another bane of Quern’s existence as a child.
Quern felt that unless a man was swimming, doing competition deadlifts or posing in a physique contest, that it was gay in the extreme, to expose one’s bare thighs to God and everyone. Bare thighs are for girls!
He hated that “airy-faerie” feeling around his thighs—and truth be told, an errant breeze sometimes touched his nads when he wore shorts.
Quern would have felt less emasculated, if he’d been forced to wear dresses all Summer—so long as the dresses decently cover his thighs.
“Would you like for me to have your mother cut the legs off your pants, so that you can be kuhl?” Father asked.
The first time Quern remembered this farce playing out, was when he was five-years-old. It would play out exactly the same way every year, until the year that he finished sixth grade. That year, his father finally let him keep his dignity.
It was like his father thought that Quern was a little water head without a clue whether he was hot or cold—and without sense enough to come in out of a hailstorm.
He asked Quern the same question three days in a row.
‘Like, what part of “No!” don’t you understand, Old Man!?!’ Quern thought to himself.
The third day, Father held Quern down, while his mother cut the legs off the britches that he was wearing, while he was wearing them. Then she would cut off the legs of all of his other britches—except his good clothes. At least they didn’t make him go to church—when they went—looking like pedophile bait.
‘If you know this is the only possible ending, why do you try to create the illusion of choice!?!’ Quern always wondered.
The day that they first cut off Original Quern’s britches, he had laid in bed for a couple of hours, covering his shame with the bedspread—but it was asking too much of a five-year-old to voluntarily lay in bed all day.
Quern had first encountered the term in an article about male haircuts—but it fit having the legs cut off his britches—while he was still wearing them! —all too well:
“Psychological Castration.”
A couple of Quern’s very minor tweaks was a complete understanding of both Tai Chi and Hatha Yoga—at least the physical aspects and movements.
When Quern was a boy, much of the furniture was filled with horsehair and the carpets, that ended a foot or so short of each wall, also had an underlayment of the dense dark-brown fiber as well.
His early boyhood memories were filled with the dusty smell of old horsehair from the furniture, from when he played on the carpet or from when his mother vacuumed—though the vacuum exhaust also smelled kinda burnt.
That crap wasn’t really horsehair—only top-quality furniture had been stuffed with true horsehair, and that practice had gone out of vogue a century or so earlier. Nonetheless, they called it “Horsehair.”
The modest sized front room was quite large enough for five-year-old Quern to do his Tai Chi exercises. Then he went through a Yoga routine. His Yoga completed, Quern sat in a lotus position on the horsehair backed carpet and meditated.
He had no intention of emulating Bodhidharma, who got gangrene in some of the legends, from sitting motionless for so long.
Quern got up every couple of hours—there was a clock that dinged on the hour. He would drink a glass of water, visit the shitter and spend a minute in Mabu—the strong horse stance—touch his toes a half-a-dozen times and sit back down to meditate some more.
He refused to eat dinner and then he refused to eat supper.
“Leave him alone. He’ll eat when he’s hungry enough,” his father said.
A simple tweak to his mother and his father would have brought the sissy-shorty-pants ordeal to a grinding halt—but Quern wanted the satisfaction of winning that long-ago clash of wills and eliminating the lingering bitterness from his soul.
The next morning at dawn, Quern was back to meditating. He refused to eat breakfast. At dinner time, his father brought a plate of food and set it beside him, but Quern refused to eat. “Eat that, or I will give you a whipping!” Father said.
“Whale away. Be aware, if you spank me for not eating, you will have to force-feed me for the rest of my life,” Quern said without passion.
Father drew back his hand to slap Quern, but he caught himself. He was red-faced with rage. He turned around and went into the other room. He came back in about 5-minutes, when he had controlled himself.
“Will you starve yourself to death?” Father asked.
“If necessary,” Quern replied.
“You win. Eat your dinner and I’ll take you to buy some more britches,” Father said while shaking his head in frustration.
“Let’s go buy the britches first and then I’ll eat,” Quern insisted.
“Quern! I believe that you are the most hard-headed child that I have ever seen, in all my born days!” Father expostulated.
‘HMMMmmnnn…? And it is not hard-headed for you to force me to wear sissy-shorty-pants, year after year, against my will and better judgement, Old Man?’ Quern thought in amazement.
************ ************** ************************
Well, Quern had one-upped Father twice now. It was time for Father to attempt to reassert his authority to make Quern’s life miserable.
“Your hair is starting to grow back. It’s time for a trip to the barbershop,” Father said happily.
Quern’s original hair had been reddish brown. All his hair had fallen out after his near brush with death. That hadn’t happened to the original Quern, but he had to prepare the way for his new hair.
The new hair would never turn gray and he would never go bald!
His new hair was the color of ginger hair that had been washed with henna—only he didn’t need dye. It was long and silky and 50% stronger than normal human hair. It grew in as straight as a geometer’s dream and it couldn’t be curled, even deliberately.
Not that Quern would ever get a permanent or use hair curlers, but some of the others, infected with his retrovirus, might.
Quern had wanted hair that grew three-inches per month—6x the rate that normal hair grew. Voice said that two-and-a-half-inches per month—5x—was the best that they could do.
Quern had loathed the crewcuts he’d been forced to wear as a small child. In his mind, crewcuts were only suitable for very young children and retards, who weren’t capable of caring for their own hair; military trainees in boot camp and men who were sexually attracted to other men.
As a boy, Quern had often said that he wanted “Long Hair.” He meant long hair like the Indian braves in the Westerns, Tarzan and Prince Valiant wore.
Eventually, he was allowed to grow a pitiful cockscomb of hair—like people wore in the constipated 50’s—and his father insisted on greasing it with lots of hair oil and combing it every morning before he went to school.
When Quern had protested the greaser look, he’d been told:
“You said that you wanted long hair.”
Uh…Yeah, about that…Hair that would pass muster on any military base, for anyone out of boot-camp, can hardly be called “Long”!
Quern had shut up, lest he be busted back to crewcuts.
Quern had read an article—a long time ago—that theorized that male haircuts were a form of psychological castration that society used to make men a bit more docile—just a bit more of a herd animal.
He knew that he had always felt that he’d left a small part of his self—maybe a small part of his manhood—behind whenever he exited the barber’s chair.
Quern wasn’t about to start that tedious bullshit in this life.
“I’m going to be like Samson and never cut my hair. I don’t ever want to hear about a haircut again,” Quern said.
Then he had tweaked—hard.
It might cause a bit of trouble in school at first, but after the first few grades, long hair would become more accepted.
Quern knew very well what his new IQ was—or what it could be extrapolated to—but men, at that point in time, had no adequate means to measure his IQ. It would simply be “Off-the-Scale” on any test that they might give him.
It wouldn’t be hard to tweak a few teachers and principals—even a school board member or two, if it came to that, to let the eccentric little asshole genius wear his hair down to his belt in back.
************* **************** *********************
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Post by rvm45 on Oct 3, 2022 8:18:31 GMT -6
Chapter Two
2964
Quern didn’t go to kindergarten, since it wasn’t mandatory in that time and place. He stayed home and worked on his art.
When Quern’s family moved into the home that he would grow up in, his father was temporarily incapacitated and unable to work. The house cost $7500 and the house payment was $75 per month.
Coincidentally, his mother was making $75 per week and she had thought to herself, she later explained, that she could make the house payments, even if Father was never again able to work.
Before his father had even injured himself, the trust fund bought the house outright and made a few modifications—then they gave the house to his family under the condition that they live there until their children all graduated from high school.
The fictional “Long-Lost Relative” that established the trust fund had been as fusty and as specific as all Hell. The fund paid off the shotgun house that the family had been living in and fixed it up as a rental property. It also gave the family a cash supplement of $111.11 every week—in unrecorded cash.
There was a separate fund that paid Quern and his sister a quite generous allowance—and there were some severe financial penalties, if it was to be discovered that the family was eating the children’s allowance.
Querns father didn’t do drugs. He didn’t gamble. He was a teetotaler and he didn’t chase women. He came straight home from work almost every day. He had no hobbies to speak of.
He did have a rare gift for staying broke though. Quern was never quite sure how the man managed to piss so much money away.
With no house payment, rental property and an extra $111.11 cash, coming into the family weekly, Quern had every confidence that his father would still manage to maneuver the family to where they were just one step ahead of the bill-collectors within a few years—but when he did, he’d better not try to appropriate his children’s allowance—unless he wanted the weekly supplement to be withheld a week, or a month, or even longer, in penalty.
Not that Quern had to worry very much about that, with his ability to tweak people.
At the age of five, in 1962, Quern had an allowance of $17.77 every week and the amount would rise every year. At the moment, Quern used some of his allowance to buy art supplies.
There were other funds available to Quern, but it would be hard to go to the bank and make a withdrawal as a five-year-old with no transportation—and the funds were supposed to be a secret from his money-eating father. When the time came to make withdrawals, a little tweaking could take the place of beaucoup credentials.
************ *************** *******************
There was now an outbuilding 28-foot by 16-foot in the generous back yard. The building was divided into two equal 14’ x 16’ rooms. One room had the entire North-Facing wall covered in tall, floor to ceiling windows—that was the art studio. The other half of the building was Quern’s workshop.
Quern showed everyone his keys.
“This is my workshop. Never set foot in my workshop. Don’t bother me when I’m in my workshop. There is a phone inside and I will give you the number. If it is something important, call me. Don’t—do not—come and knock on the door unless it is something very, very important—and never, ever try to peer in the windows,” Quern said as he gave everyone a fierce tweak.
Quern mostly did art until he was in the third grade. Then he started making knives as well.
************ *************** *********************
1965
Jo-Jo was a half-wit. In point of fact, his IQ was only 87—borderline mentally retarded.
Jo-Jo had a battered 1940 Ford Pick-up truck and he made pocket money doing yard work and hauling shit to the dump.
He wasn’t really an alcoholic, but he had low expectations in life. Whenever he got money, he’d buy some rolling papers, loose tobacco and several bottles of cheap wine and he would lay around the house that he shared with his aging, long-suffering mother, until he was out of smoke.
Jo-Jo was 32, but he could pass for 62. He was 6-foot 1-inches tall and weighed a slack 159-pounds. About half of his teeth were gone. His remaining teeth were buck-toothed and very yellow. His hair was both pure white and very thin.
Quern accosted Jo-Jo. He casually laid his hand on Jo-Jo’s shoulder. It wasn’t absolutely essential, but it was far easier to do a reading or a tweak, if he had actually touched the client at some point in time.
Jo-Jo stiffened. Personal hygiene wasn’t his long suit. He almost always had a bit of a sour odor and even people who hired him tried to stay upwind from him.
“Drive me to the store,” Quern commanded.
“What about your mother?” Jo-Jo asked.
Jo-Jo meant that no mother would approve of their young son running around with him.
Whatever Jo-Jo’s faults, being attracted to young boys—or girls—was not amongst them. Even if it had been, he would have been powerless in the face of Quern’s mental power. Of course, Jo-Jo had no way of knowing any of that.
“I’m not asking my mother to drive me to the store. I’m asking you,” Quern replied.
Jo-Jo’s simple mind was easy to get off-track and he obediently drove Quern to the supermarket.
“Come inside with me,” Quern commanded.
They took a basket to the tobacco center.
“Buy five cartons of Salem 100’s, five of the butane lighters and five of those glass ashtrays. Get yourself a couple of cartons as well—something like Marlboro 100’s or Winston 100’s. Those ‘roll-you-own’ cigarettes are killing you,” Quern said.
In Quern’s opinion, the shorter “King-Size” cigarettes were an eye-sore. Women who smoked the short cigarettes looked like bull-dykes and the men who smoked them looked like ostentatious macho tops.
“How old are you?” Jo-Jo asked.
“I’m 8-years-old.”
“And you already smoke?” Jo-Jo said in amazement.
“I’m going to start, just as soon as you buy my cigarettes for me,” Quern said patiently.
It was common, in that time and place, for parents to send their children to the store to buy a pack or two of cigarettes for them, but Quern wanted to stock up. Buying several cartons might arouse comment.
There were very few people in the world who were as openly pro-smoking as Quern had been.
He used to say:
“Life is full of uncertainties. You will probably live longer if you don’t smoke. It IS a dead certainty that you won’t enjoy life as much.’’
When Quern was 61-years old, he lost a kidney to cancer. The doctor told him that particular kind of kidney cancer was much more common in smokers and former smokers.
Quern quit smoking at the age of 66. He’d developed an almost continual hacking cough that took all the joy out of smoking.
His last few years, Quern had used oxygen. Fortunately, he was borderline and he could free himself occasionally, when he felt that he needed a break from the nasal cannula and the long cord.
With the memory of the fiery feeling of menthol touching his lungs having faded significantly, he’d asked himself if he would still smoke, if he had it to do over again.
However, his new body had been tweaked by the backers. He would never get cancer, emphysema, COPD, arteriosclerosis, receding gums or any other bad effect from smoking. There was literally no reason for him not to smoke.
His new body was even capable of deriving significantly more satisfaction from both nicotine and menthol than his original body.
He didn’t intend to wait until he was 26 to start smoking in this lifetime.
Having stocked up on cigarettes, Quern had Jo-jo stock up on some staples—as well as a few luxuries.
“You’re going to be sick soon and you won’t feel like going out and shopping,” Quern told Jo-Jo.
“No, I feel fine,” Jo-Jo objected.
“Trust me,” Quern replied.
************ **************** ***********************
“Let’s drive to your house first,” Quern told Jo-Jo.
There were five bags of groceries and some loose stuff like string bags of potatoes and onions as well as dishwashing and laundry soap.
“I know that Jo-Jo pisses most of his money away, so I bought some groceries as partial payment, on his behalf,” Quern explained.
The feeble old woman gave Quern an odd look. His vocabulary and diction were out of place for an 8-year-old.
“It is time for you to be healed. I know that you’re skeptical, but prayer is always in order,” Quern said.
The old woman had multiple tumors in her breasts—and the cancer had metastasized. She was in quite a bit of pain and she would have surgery in a few weeks.
It was too little and too late and she would be dead in less than 6-months.
The surgery and its after-effects had caused the old woman a great deal of suffering. Quern remembered the neighborhood gossips questioning whether it made sense for an old woman in her late 70’s to have a double radical mastectomy. It seemed to have accomplished naught and it increased her suffering dramatically.
Six of one; half-a-dozen of the other…
Those lumps had already become very painful, all on their own.
Quern put a hand on either shoulder of the old woman.
She’d had a hard life. She’d had ten children. None of them were quite right.
She had sons in the graveyard and sons in prison. A couple of her sons were at least bright enough to shack up with one or another welfare queen and sire dozens of untermenschen.
Of course, Jo-Jo was the dimmest bulb on the family Christmas tree and the old woman worried about what would happen to Jo-Jo when she was gone.
Quern could sense the tumors—while most of the inner workings of the old woman’s body showed up as florescent lime green in Quern’s inner world, the tumors were a swirl of magenta, crimson and blood colors.
Quern focused his ability and destroyed the tumors, one-by-one. The mental exertion required was epic. Eventually, a small trickle of blood came out of one of Quern’s nostrils.
Most of the few thousand, or so, people who would contract the Golden-Eye Retrovirus would be youngsters Quern’s age. They were very carefully selected—by the backers, not by Quern—and the mortality would be 0%.
Jo-Jo would be an outlier, contracting the “disease” in his early 30’s.
The phenomena would be mostly confined to the Southern Third of Indiana and the Western Third of Kentucky.
For a number of reasons, it would be more convenient for Quern to be one of a few-thousand, than to be absolutely unique.
Medicine, genetics and science in general were all comparatively crude in the 60’s. It would be decades before it could be proven conclusively that the Golden-Eyes were the result of a retrovirus. Some die-hards had argued for two or three decades, that the phenomenon was environmental rather than genetic.
At any rate, Elmira was too old to survive the Golden-Eye Retrovirus. The mortality would not remain 0% if Quern pointed the retrovirus at inappropriate targets like Elmira.
Instead, Quern had to heal her by exhausting his vital energy—in the short-term. It would be fully recharged in a few days, but still…
All the cancer taken care of, as well as a biological seal in place against any sort of future cancer, it was time to cast around to find a few other improvements to be made. It was unworkmanlike to do less than his best.
Eyes—Elmira had always been a bit near-sighted, with a bit of astigmatism. Now she had age-related degeneration of her eyesight as well as cataracts.
Quern gave her perfect 20/20 vision. Then a minor tweak got that to 20/15…Nah, 20/13. From 20 feet away, Elmira could read print that most people had to be within 13-feet to read. He added tetrachromacy. Tetrachromacy was always a good thing.
Hearing—Everyone’s hearing worsened with age—though some more than others.
Quern restored Elmira’s hearing to the level of a 2-year-old. The ability to hear the very highest pitches was almost non-existent except in young children.
Elmira could hear the highest pitches in the human range now, and Quern raised her upper limit about 12% —and added about 25% amplification.
Elmira’s taste and smell only needed a small buff.
The old woman had hardened arteries in both her brain and her heart. Now all the veins and arteries in her body were as clean as a whistle.
The last thing that Quern had the energy to address, was her arthritis. The degenerated joints proved rather resistant to repair. Quern managed to reduce the age-related deterioration by about 69% and he dulled her ability to feel pain in those joints by 21%.
Quern has hit his limit—hard.
Quern sat on the couch and breathed deeply while Jo-Jo looked on blankly.
“I am healed! He healed me!” Elmira shouted.
“Elmira, my healing is more or less innate, but ultimately, all healing comes from God. Give God the praise—and don’t tell anyone about my role as an intermediary,” Quern said in a weak voice.
Raising the IQ and downloading information or skills and abilities into someone’s brain worked on a different dynamic, so it wouldn’t further exhaust Quern to proceed with his upgrades.
Elmira was 76-years-old, Quern had no idea how many years that he’d added to her life-expectancy. He’d be surprised though, if it exceeded 20—at least not by much...
The old woman wasn’t going to apply to MIT. Still, a bit extra IQ might give her a clearer window on her world.
Elmira’s IQ was 93 + 49-points = 142
Quern’s IQ tweaks started at 19 IQ points and went up by tens. Raising someone’s IQ by 69 points was hard and raising the IQ 79 points was like shitting a watermelon—and so far as Quern could tell, 79 was his limit.
The old woman liked to go to church and she loved Sunday School and Bible Study night.
Quern upgraded her reading ability from 3rd grade level to 7th grade level. He downloaded the names of the books of the Bible, in order. Then he downloaded the number of chapters in each book of the Bible, as well as a summary of each chapter. She also had the first verse of each chapter of the Bible memorized now, too.
Quern downloaded a gross—144—of memorized Bible verses. Some were selected for their doctrinal significance while others just sounded good, to drop into casual conversation.
EE…while he was at it—he downloaded the whole Gospel of John. Then he added in Genesis, Ecclesiastes and Proverbs for good measure.
Elmira should be able to get a whole new appreciation for her Sunday School lessons and Bible Study night now.
HMMMmmnnn…?
Elmira was part Cherokee. She cherished the few Cherokee words that her grandma had taught her and she even had a Bible written in Cherokee—though reading it was quite beyond her ken.
Quern downloaded the ability to speak, read and write fluently in Cherokee. While we’re adding languages, lets add Spanish—she has a few Hispanic friends at church, and American Sign Language.
Quern handed Elmira a $20 bill.
“Jo-Jo will be feeling ill soon. Make sure that he gets plenty of fluids and wears those shades—the sunglasses—that I bought for him, while his eyes are light-sensitive,” Quern said.
Jo-Jo only had an IQ of 87—but Quern intended to make Jo-Jo his main henchman for the historical future.
Quern shit the proverbial watermelon and Jo-Jo’s IQ became:
87 + 79 = 166
Quern was pretty much pooped-out by then. Any downloading of skills would have to await Quern’s recovery.
“Jo-Jo, when you get over your bout with the flu, I want you to clean up that shed. I want it clean enough that you wouldn’t mind living there,” Quern said.
“Can’t live there. There is no heat there,” Jo-Jo objected.
“Quite right. Just clean it up. Here is $20 for taking me to the store. Don’t—do not—go to the liquor store with that money until after you get over being sick,” Quern said.
Ordinarily, telling a wino like Jo-Jo not to go buy wine would be like shouting down a well. Fortunately, Quern could reinforce his commands with a tweak.
“Drive me to my house,” Quern said.
Once home, Quern had Jo-Jo carry his purchases into his workshop and then he sat on one of the comfortable chairs in his studio.
‘Damned nation! Damn! Damn!! DAMN!!!’ Quern thought weakly.
His body was all tweaked and primed to enjoy nicotine and menthol more than any human had ever enjoyed them before. He’d been anticipating it for a long while.
Now he had plenty of cigarettes and absolute privacy to smoke them—and he had a booming headache and he felt like that he might puke.
One of Quern’s pet peeves in life, were people who would say to someone desperately trying to hold it in:
“Go ahead and throw up. You’ll feel better.”
Obviously, vomiting was such a transcendental horror, that it wasn’t worth vomiting in order to feel better. Given a choice between puking and death, Quern would have unhesitantly chosen death.
However, nothing would be gained by throwing up at the moment. His malaise was caused by the exhaustion of his vital energy—not by anything that he had ingested.
At any rate, it was no time to be trying his first cigarette in his new body.
There was a cot in the studio and Quern sometimes spent the night there, when he had been working late. Quern spent the night meditating to speed the recovery of his spirit power.
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Post by rvm45 on Oct 3, 2022 12:08:43 GMT -6
Chapter Three
5904
In his first lifetime, Quern hadn’t started attending Grove Elementary School until the 3rd grade. He attended from the first grade onward this time, due to moving into their long-term home a couple of years sooner.
That meant that he met a few of his peers a couple of years earlier than the first time around.
That mattered very little to Quern. He hadn’t been close to any of them, in his first life. Looking back, with the clarity of someone who remembered the past with unusual fidelity and who constantly mentally rehashed events—they were a bunch of credulous, covetous and duplicitous little water heads.
There were a couple of exceptions though.
Debra was one exception.
Original Quern’s IQ wasn’t “off-the-scale,” but it was impressive enough at 163.
Every time young Quern would answer a question in class, Debra would say:
“He is so smart!”
She didn’t say it to anyone in particular. She had the intonation of an actress breaking the 4th wall. Surprisingly, Debra never got taken to task for speaking out of turn.
Debra was still breaking the 4th wall in high school, but now she had the presence of mind to simply mumble. He hadn’t shared many classes with Debra in high school.
In 3rd grade, Debra was a mousy little black girl. Debra, like many of the poor girls, went with the “junior bag lady” look—many layers of frumpy clothing.
If it was a Winter phenomenon, Quern would have supposed that they had Esquimaux blood and got cold easily—but the junior bag ladies dressed like junior bag ladies Winter and Summer.
Wouldn’t that trip his father’s fetish for staying “kuhl”?
Incidentally, something that would make Quern mad enough to give someone a vicious beat-down—though unfortunately, one had to restrain oneself in “civilization”—was to be told:
“You make me hot.”
{The context making it plain, this means physical heat, not sexual arousal.}
‘How does what I wear, increase your thermal coefficient, you incestuous cretin!?!’ Quern would think, in a cold rage.
And yes, Quern had replied with those very same words, on any number of occasions, even in situations where blatant hostility was not considered socially acceptable.
“You make me hot,” made him flash back on Summertime sissy-shorty-pants and staying “Kuhl.”
Terry was Debra’s constant companion. Terry was a head taller than the tallest of the 3rd grade boys. Her skin was so black that it had turned the corner and become indigo.
Many of the elementary school children were afraid of Terry, though she was a very quiet girl who seldom spoke.
Quern had never feared anyone or anything. He hadn’t even really feared his father. He just didn’t enjoy being slapped, switched or castigated and he didn’t feel that it was appropriate to get into personalities with his own father…
If he had decided to get into personalities, he would have faced the man with the same confidence that David faced Goliath.
He sure as Hell wasn’t intimidated in the least by the jumbo Terry.
Once, they had gotten into some childish scuffle—for reasons long since forgotten—while the teacher was out of the classroom momentarily. More by accident than design, Quern had landed a hard body-shot on Terry—perhaps an accidental liver-shot.
Quern hadn’t meant to cause anywhere near that much pain and trauma. The giant Terry looked so pitiful curled up crying on the floor.
He had apologized repeatedly while he and Debra managed to get the limp Terry back to her desk before the teacher came back into the room.
When the teacher came back onto the room, Terry had sat holding onto her lower abdomen like someone with severe appendicitis. After a few moments, Terry asked to go see the nurse—but she never snitched on Quern.
In that time and place, little 3rd grade white boys had very little interaction with little 3rd grade black girls. Quern was far too socially inept to thank Terry for not grassing him, but he kept it in his heart.
Quern ran into Debra again when he was in the hospital to have his kidney removed.
The mousy little black girl was now 6-foot 2-inches tall and weighed maybe 215-pounds. She was built like Queen Latifa—but somewhat more muscular and less fat than the famous actress. She still had the trademark huge bazongas like Queen Latifa though.
Debra was the head nurse on Quern’s floor.
Quern was a broken-down old loser by then. He had failed at everything that he had ever attempted to do.
Debra had sternly told him that he was quite a disappointment to her. He had failed spectacularly to live up to his great potential. She was cutting and cruel…
But when he was released from the hospital—and was just a few days away from being evicted from his cheap room and becoming homeless—Debra had met him at the hospital entrance and she had taken him to her home.
She had nursed Quern back to health and when he remarked conversationally, that if he had his life to live over again, that he would have been an artist—Debra insisted on sending him to study art at the local college—and footing the entire bill.
He had been 65-years old when he graduated with a degree in art—just in time to retire.
They were married and after they had spent 13-years together, Debra had gotten ill and passed away.
She left her house and a modest trust fund to Quern. Quern had never become a great artist. He had started too late in life. However, he had sold several of his paintings and sculptures through the local galleries and his art kept him company after Debra’s departure.
Quern had an agenda this lifetime and he had no desire to get entangled with relationships—but he owed Debra—the other Debra—Debra’s doppelganger.
He meant to gently sever their karma with a generous gift.
************ ************** ***********************
Quern and Debra ended up in the same 3rd grade classroom that they had been in the first time around.
Quern was in no particular hurry to pay his karmic debt, but when Debra asked to be excused to go to the shitter, the opportunity was too good to pass up.
The old-fashioned classroom had two doors to the hallway, for some obscure reason—none of the other classrooms did.
There was a door at the front of the classroom and another door at the back of the classroom.
Quern waited until Debra was well out of the front door. He waited until she had time to go past the back door and then he sneaked out the rear door.
He didn’t try to catch up. Presumably, Debra had to wee-wee-wee, or perhaps woo-woo-woo. At any rate, she wouldn’t be in any mood to stand and palaver with Quern.
He followed her to the girl’s shitter, but he didn’t follow her into the shitter. He didn’t want Debra to think that he was a pervert. Besides, if he got caught sneaking into the girl’s shitter, there was no end to the shit-storm that he’d have to endure.
Some things could spread faster than tweaking could cover.
Now there was a telephone booth-sized alcove to one side of the narrow, 4-foot long passage to the girl’s shitter. Quern couldn’t imagine what it was for. Since there were steam pipes and plumbing in the corners of the alcove, he presumed that it was some sort of serendipitous consequence of remodeling.
Once Quern stepped into the alcove, he couldn’t be seen by someone walking the hallway, unless they were within 3 or 4-feet of him and were at the proper angle to glance into the alcove.
“Did you wash your hands?” Quern asked Debra as she exited the shitter.
He was rewarded by seeing her take a soul-satisfying, startled leap.
“I wanted to speak to you,” Quern said.
“You’re always say how smart that I am, but you’re very smart yourself. I had a vision of you. You were the head nurse at a large hospital, in my vision—but I think that you can do better than just being a nurse. You could be a doctor!” Quern said.
While he was speaking, he casually laid a hand on Debra’s shoulder, to read her better.
‘HMMMmmnnn…? IQ 122. That’s not too shabby, but there are few things in life that can’t be tweaked.’ Quern thought to himself.
122 + 79 = 201
Meanwhile, Debra’s eyes got big and round. She had wanted to be a nurse ever since she’d gotten a nurse doll for Christmas, a couple of years earlier—but she had never told anyone, afraid of ridicule.
“Listen to me: you do just exactly what you want to—but this is my advice. Things will have changed greatly by the time that you’re old enough to go to college. Right now though, many folks will not approve of a little black girl who wants to grow up to be a doctor. They may go out of their way to create stumbling blocks for you,” Quern said.
He had a momentary pause. Back when most folks said “negro,” the term “black” was considered mildly offensive by many. He wasn’t sure if “black” was the currently accepted term. Quern, who had very little interest in current events, wasn’t sure if he had misspoken or not.
Debra didn’t seem to be offended, so he continued.
“Hide your light under a bushel a bit in grade school—just be sure that you understand their nonsense. Aim for straight “A’s” in high school, but don’t tell anyone that you want to be a doctor until it is time to apply to the university,” Quern said.
Just then, Quern’s left arm was seized in a fierce pincer grip, just above his elbow. The idea was to drive the thumb and middle-finger as deeply as possible into the child’s arm and cause as much pain as possible.
The grip was abusive, but Quern had seen primary school teachers use it—but only the cruel ones.
Miss Anderson had noticed that Quern was missing from class and she had tracked him here.
“What are you doing out of class!?!” she hissed venomously.
The full-grown Miss Anderson was a giant compared to 3rd grade Quern, but Quern feared no one. He “thumbed out” of the grip, at the cost of considerable bruising to his arm.
“Never touch me. Watch how you address your betters. I have achieved my purpose and I will head back toward class now. Let it go!” Quern said.
It was surprising to hear such menace coming from the mouth of an 8-year-old.
“I don’t like you Quern! You refuse to practice cursive writing. You ignore most of your lessons and draw instead. You refuse to cut your hair. You will practice cursive writing in my class. You will master your lessons and you will get a haircut!” Miss Anderson proclaimed.
“Dream on, Cool Breeze,” Quern said.
‘Is this bitch channeling Niedermeyer from the “Twisted Sister” video?’ Quern asked himself.
Quern hated cursive writing almost as much as he loathed the Metric System. He hated having to learn it, but he really resented not being allowed to print his other lessons, in classes that were not Writing Class.
Quern had very neat printing. He could print almost as fast as the fastest cursive writer—with either hand, this lifetime. He had made up his mind not to cumber his karma with any cursive writing this time around. It was just garbage in the mental hard drive—and it damaged his spirit, when he was forced to practice it.
“Now, I will ask you again, why did you sneak out of class!?”
She drew back her hand as if to backhand Quern. Even in that time and place, teachers couldn’t slap the children with impunity.
“If you strike me, you will be trying to pick your teeth up off the floor, with broken fingers. If you must know, I followed Debra to catch her alone, so I could confess to her,” Quern said.
“Confess what!?!” Miss Anderson demanded.
‘Uh yeah…about that…that is an expression from the Light Novels. Even if Miss Dingleberry reads Light Novels, she won’t encounter that expression until the 1990’s or maybe the 2000’s,’ Quern thought.
“I wanted to tell her that I like her and ask her to be my girlfriend,” Quern lied.
“That is so appropriate. Your family is the lowest sort of white trash, so you decide to cross the color line and hook up with the lowest of the negro trash…”
Ach Ja! It was exaggerating to call Quern’s family “white trash”—especially since they had moved out of the shotgun shack. They were more upper working class, though they lived in a relatively poor neighborhood.
When the shrill-voiced harridan badmouthed Debra though, Quern reached a breaking point.
Quern’ eyes reverted to their true form. It was easier to tweak in his true form. His irises were gold—almost metallic—and they appeared almost backlit. Quern’s pupils were generous vertical slits like a cat’s pupil and his sclera were a mellow lemon yellow.
“I warned you to watch how you addressed your betters,” Quern grated between clenched teeth.
Miss Anderson’s bowels and bladder emptied with great force. She started salivating copiously and she lost her balance and fell to the floor. She kept making odd mewling noises.
Quern took Debra’s hand.
“Come on. You don’t want to see what comes next,” Quern said.
“What comes next?”
“When she manages to get her skirt hiked up and her panties down, she’s going to start masturbating frantically,” Quern explained.
“What?”
“She’s hornier than a three-peckered billy-goat. She’s gonna play with herself. She’s going to be quite enamored of her right hand for the next few weeks, until the tweak wears off…or maybe her left hand,” Quern shrugged.
“What did you do to her?” Debra asked.
“Not much. She was already teetering on the precipice of a severe psychotic break. I just pushed her a bit,” Quern said.
“Come on. Please pretend that we didn’t see any of that. It is potentially troublesome, if we did. I can’t tweak the whole damned world,” Quern said.
Debra stopped him just outside the classroom.
“Yes,” Debra said.
“Yes what?” Quern asked in puzzlement.
“Yes, I’ll be your girlfriend,” Debra said.
She threw her arms around Quern and gave him a brief kiss. The Original Quern had no idea at the age of 8, that kissing was ever more than a pressing together of the lips.
7-year old Debra had heard some talk somewhere. Her tongue flitted in and out of Quern’s mouth very briefly, like a snake’s tongue, flitting out and back.
While Quern stood momentarily bemused—wondering what kind of complications that he had just created for himself, Debra walked in the classroom’s back door. After a moment’s hesitation, Quern walked a few more steps and entered through the front door.
Miss Anderson was still going strong on the hallway floor in 20-minutes, when the bell for recess rang. That would be a Grove Elementary School legend for generations—the teacher who lost it and who was found naked and stroking herself diligently in the hallway.
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Post by 223shootersc on Oct 3, 2022 12:40:07 GMT -6
Talk about LOL, almost lost it at the thought of the school marm in the hall!
Good stuff - RVM45 Thanks
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Post by rvm45 on Oct 3, 2022 18:30:01 GMT -6
Chapter Four
8430
Quern went by to see Jo-Jo after school. The man should just about have recovered from the retrovirus.
“Wear those shades as much as possible for awhile. If anyone sees your eyes and asks about them, insist that they’ve always been that way,” Quern ordered.
Jo-Jo was a bit ahead of the curve with his virus and no good would come of him coming to public attention.
Quern inspected the shed. Jo-Jo had done a workmanlike job of cleaning it up.
First, Quern had Jo-Jo buy some gray sealer paint, like they used on basement floors. He had Jo-Jo give the floor inside the shed and the floor of the shed’s porch with several thick coats of gray sealer paint.
A couple of days later, Quern had Jo-Jo take him to the lumber store, the hardware store and Sears.
Jo-Jo built two worktables under Quern’s directions. The tops were made of 2’’x 4’’s, turned vertically so that the table’s tops were almost 4-inches thick.
Quern really, really didn’t like to use nails in his constructions. He’d bought a dowelling jig and many, many dowels along with plenty of wood glue. He also bought wholesale lots of wood clamps.
Jo-Jo wound up with a main work table 10-foot by 3-foot and a smaller work table about 4-foot square—and a bit lower than the main table.
The tables used 4’’x 4’’s for legs and 2’’x 6’’s for support and bracing. Either table could hold a prancing Clydesdale without tipping.
There was a big-ass machinist’s vise on one end of the big work table and a woodworking vise on the other end.
There was a bench grinder and a 6’’ belt grinder on the big bench. There was a big floor-mounted drill press and the smaller table had a more modest machinist’s vise and a jig saw and a scroll saw.
Quern had bought Jo-Jo a fair-sized air compressor and a number of air-powered tools—especially angle-grinder, die grinder and hand drill.
They covered the wall behind the big work table with peg board and they hung many hand tools there.
There was a medium-sized. lockable Craftsman rolling toolbox. Quern put the more expensive tools in the toolbox and locked it—handing Jo-Jo one of the keys.
“You have all sorts of nice tools now. Take care of them, or I will kick your ass,” Quern said.
“Seriously, my 8th grade shop teacher used to say that more people will be denied entrance to paradise, because they used a file and put it away without carding and cleaning it, than for any other single reason,” Quern lectured.
‘Shit! Anachronism! I’m only in the 3rd grade. Ah well, Jo-Jo won’t notice,’ Quern though—while resolving to be more careful in the future.
Next, they installed a cast iron pot-bellied stove, bars on the windows and a high security door—along with a good medium quality security storm door.
Later, Quern tweaked a local electrician to wire the shed for more amps, 220-volts and quite a bit more overhead lighting. He did it for a fair price and he would never speak about Jo-Jo’s workshop or the upgrades that he had done to anyone.
Quern always felt bad, whenever he used a gag-order on anyone, so he gave the electrician 59 extra IQ points and downloaded everything that the man would need to be a top-rate Television and Radio repairman and/or a master gunsmith.
Now, it was time to download abilities and knowledge into Jo-Jo. Jo-Jo might have an IQ of 166 now, but he was lining up at the starting line, very late in life.
Number one—Jo-Jo couldn’t read much better than Quern’s father. Of course, Quern’s father had a much higher IQ than Jo-Jo, but he was extremely dyslexic—back when there were few coping strategies for dealing with dyslexia.
Quern scoffed at the great lengths that his father went to, to hide his illiteracy, Quern would have announced to the world:
“I cannot read and if you don’t like it, you can kiss my ass!!!”
Anyway, Quern raised Jo-Jo’s reading comprehension and retention equal to an average college freshman—in the still literate mid-60’s before reading levels fell through the floor.
HMMMmmnnn…? Might as well give him the Cherokee written and spoken language as well—give his mother someone to chat with in Cherokee.
There were always a few Spanish speakers and Koreans around—just a few, back then. There was a big influx of Vietnamese after the fall of Vietnam. A generation later, they all seemed to have vanished from Southern Indiana.
Quern wondered if they had become so assimilated that they no longer came across as Vietnamese? Had they all migrated to the big cities? Were they all eaten by mutant, vampiric wombats?
Anyway, Quern made Jo-Jo fluent in Spanish, Korean and Vietnamese—including the written word for each language.
Then Quern got into a playful mood and gave Jo-Jo Classical and Clerical Latin; Ancient and Modern Greek; Hebrew and Aramaic and both Old Norse and Modern Icelandic for good measure.
EE…Let’s give Jo-Jo a good reading knowledge of Egyptian hieroglyphics as well. Maybe someday, he can thoroughly flummox some scholar…
Mathematics—Four semesters of high school Algebra; two semesters of high school Geometry and first year college Calculus.
Electricity—Four Semesters of high school Electricity; two semesters of high school Electronics.
Power Mechanics—six Semesters of High School Power Mechanics—taught on a lawn mower motor.
Four semesters of Mechanical Drawing
Trade school:
Four semesters of Oxy-Fuel Welding; two semester Heating and Air Conditioning; two semesters of Refrigeration; two semesters of Hydraulics and Pneumatics and four semesters of Machining.
No, Jo-Jo wouldn’t have faux memories of having attended those classes. He just had the knowledge and ability of someone with good aptitude, who took the classes and studied diligently and then used the knowledge often thereafter.
Quern added a mnemonic system and an excellent grasp of Marcus Abraham’s 600-page compendium on vacuum tubes and the principles of radio reception.
Then he downloaded quite a few troubleshooting guides and circuit and other diagrams of beaucoup lawn mowers, wash machines, dryers, stoves, electric fans, televisions, radios, hair dryers, toasters and such.
“That stuff will take a little while to assimilate. I’ll be back the day after tomorrow to buy you a new truck—and lay in some other supplies,” Quern said.
“I can’t afford a new truck,” Jo-Jo objected.
“Could you afford any of this? Who paid for it? I’ll pay for your new truck,” Quern said.
As Quern got ready to leave, Elmira called to him.
“Quern, could you come here a moment?” she shouted.
When Quern went inside, Elmira had a batch of brownies all made up.
“These are for you. Try one,” Elmira said.
Quern took one without any misgivings. The inside of Elmira’s house was clean and her kitchen was spotless.
“This is good!” Quern said.
While he ate the brownie, he watched Elmira fill and light a pipe.
‘I didn’t know that the old woman smoked a pipe. Well, more power to her,’ Quern thought…
Until he smelled it.
“Are you smoking grass in that pipe!?!” Quern asked in astonishment.
“It is good for you. It helps my arthritis. It helped me get over the nausea when I had cancer. It is a natural herb,” Elmira said.
“And is there grass in this brownie?” Quern asked dryly.
“Of course. You cured my cancer. I wouldn’t withhold anything good from you,” Elmira enthused.
Quern soon found that Elmira had some pretensions to be an herb doctor—though her repertoire of natural remedies was limited to slightly over a dozen plants.
Quern shrugged internally. He ate the last bite of his brownie with a rueful smile…
And then he downloaded everything that he had on natural, herbal medicine into Elmira’s hard drive. He downloaded first year college Chemistry and then second year Chemistry—including two semesters of Organic Chemistry Lab and Qualitative Analysis. He threw in a couple courses on Pharmacology.
He also downloaded everything that he had on Chiropractic Medicine—including medical critiques of the quack aspects; the techniques of hypnosis and acupuncture.
Then he downloaded the entirety of “Gray’s Anatomy” into Elmira.
His flurry of downloads finished, Quern leaned back on the couch.
“Let me take a hit off that pipe,” he said.
He’d never gotten into grass in his first life, but he’d already eaten a brownie today. He might as well go for the full monte.
“Jo-Jo, if your mother wants to smoke grass—that is on her. You’re a grown man, smoke it if you want to. Never leave this house with even one tiny leaf on you. Never put so much as a single seed in your workshop or in your truck.”
“If you have been smoking, blow yourself off with compressed air and then use a cologne. If the laws smell grass, that can be probable cause to search your vehicle—and maybe plant evidence on you. You’re an excellent candidate to take a big fall, since you are mentally impaired,” Quern ordered.
Of course, Jo-Jo was no longer mentally impaired, but Jo-Jo had yet to fully realize and grow into his new role. The world—at last those who had known him before—would never accept his new status. He would always be a half-wit to them.
************ *************** *********************
When Quern got back to his house, he saw Debra leaving.
“I wanted to talk to you, but your mother said that you weren’t home,” Debra explained.
She sounded defensive.
“Come on in,” Quern said.
Quern had once owned a very muscular; short-coupled and top-heavy Boston Terrier. He was already old when Quern had got him and he had a bad case of hemorrhoids.
When he took a dump, he’d put all of his weight on his front feet, until his back feet no longer touched the ground. Then he’d go walking, presumably trying to walk away from the pain in his ass that shitting entailed.
He’d walk and shit in a small circle—all while balancing on his front legs.
Now Quern’s untweaked parents would have walked on their hands like the little Boston Terrier, shitting big; gold-plated; razor-edged bricks at the idea of Quern marrying a black woman.
Neither of them was alive when Original Quern married Original Debra. Anyway, it was too early to introduce Debra as his fiancé. He was only 8-years-old after all.
“This is Debra. Never be rude to her. Never fail to treat her with the utmost courtesy and respect,” Quern said.
He tweaked his mother and father hard. He only tweaked his sister very lightly. First of all, she had comparatively little power to discomfit Debra. Secondly, she really didn’t give a shit what Quern did or who his friends were.
“Come out to my workshop,” Quern told Debra.
“Why are you here?” he asked her.
“You said that you wanted me to be your girlfriend. If I’m your girlfriend, shouldn’t we spend time together?” Debra asked.
Quern lit a cigarette and sighed.
“Smoking is bad for you,” Debra said.
Quern let his eyes turn natural.
“Do you see my eyes? Smoking isn’t bad for people with golden irises like mine. On the contrary, it is quite good for them. You are going to get the Golden-Eye Retro-Virus soon and you’ll have golden irises like mine—at which point in time, you will find the odor of tobacco and menthol very enticing,” Quern said.
“Feel free to try it now, but if you do, be careful not to make yourself sick. That can happen the first few times that you try smoking,” Quern said.
After a short while, Debra sat very cautiously smoking the cigarette that Quern had lit for her—mostly just holding it.
“Brownies! Can I have one?” Debra said.
“Those are pot brownies. If you must try one, I’d advise just eating a half of one,” Quern said.
Debra took a small bite of a brownie.
“You got these from Grandma Good Bitch, didn’t you?” Debra asked.
“What!?!”
“The old woman who lives about a half-block that way, in the only two-story house on this street. You know the commercial on TV with Grandma Good Witch? The folks below the hill, all call her ‘Grandma Good Bitch.’ Her brownies are legendary,” Debra said.
“Well…Her name is ‘Elmira.’ It might be okay for the shabnasticators below the hill to call her Grandma Good Bitch, but I doubt that she’d enjoy being called a bitch. If you hang with me, you’ll probably see her from time-to-time. Be nice,” Quern said.
“Debra, do you really want to hang with me? Tengo mucho secretos,” Quern said.
“Yes. I like you, I don’t care how many secretos you tengo—and what makes you think that I understand Spanish?” Debra said.
“Okay. You will see and hear things that I can’t afford to have you reveal—not even by accident—if you hang with me. I wouldn’t erase a single memory from my worst enemy—not to save his life; not to save my life and not even to save the whole human race. Some things are so despicable, that they are not on the table,” Quern said.
“I don’t like the idea, but I’m gonna have to put a muzzle on you—a prohibition against saying or revealing certain things,” Quern said.
“Cool,” Debra shrugged as she reached for the uneaten half of her brownie.
‘Pond and honor!’ Quern thought.
Well, he had warned her. If she chose to eat the whole damned brownie…she might only be 7-years-old, but Quern respected her decisions.
“This is a key to my workshop. I have one. Jo-Jo has one and now you have one. No one else is authorized to come into my workshop. Feel free to come by any time. If I’m not here, you can still come in to soak up the ambience or smoke my cigarettes,” Quern said.
“I’m serious. Once you get the Golden Eye, you’re gonna seriously crave them—and they aren’t the easiest thing for a 7-year-old to acquire. Now, will your mother mind if you eat supper with us? I want to make sure that brownie hasn’t knocked you completely on your ass, before I walk you home,” Quern said.
When they sat down to eat, Quern’s father sniffed suspiciously.
“Y’all smell like cigarettes. Were you two smoking out there?” Father demanded.
“As a matter of fact, we were—not that it is any of your damned business, Mister ‘Mom, he don’t love me’,” Quern said.
“Will you ever forget that?” Father asked.
“No, never!” Quern grated between clenched teeth.
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Post by feralferret on Oct 3, 2022 22:34:47 GMT -6
Very entertaining. I appreciate the additional writing.
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Post by rvm45 on Oct 4, 2022 6:43:31 GMT -6
Chapter Five
10 872
Quern took Debra to Jo-Jo’s house. He was surprised to find Jo-Jo sobbing.
“I don’t want to get rid of my old truck!” Jo-Jo sobbed.
“Fine. I didn’t know that he meant that much to you. A 1940 is already a classic. You can restore him,” Quern said.
He downloaded a two-year course of auto-body repair into Jo-Jo’s hard drive—several extra courses on sheet metal work and pipe, rod and conduit bending, as well as a two-year auto-mechanics course…
Along with several books on restoring antique autos—some of which had yet to be written in 1965—and a shop manual for Ford trucks of that vintage.
“The fact remains, that you need a newer truck to conduct business—including my business. Drive us to the used car lot and we’ll buy a newer truck, without a trade-in,” Quern said.
Quern had to repeat himself, because he insisted on pronouncing the word “used” as “Uh-Zed” and the, until quite recently, mentally challenged Jo-Jo had no idea what Quern was talking about.
Quern tweaked the used car salesman into giving him an excellent—but not exploitive—price on a nice clean 1962 Ford F-250 with 4-wheel drive.
Their Errands were complicated a bit, because Quern had to persuade the dealer to send someone to drive the new truck to Jo-Jo’s house—which was a service that they didn’t ordinarily offer—but Quern was persuasive.
Before they swapped vehicles, Quern handed Jo-Jo $2oo.
“What is that for?” Jo-Jo asked in astonishment.
“That is the money that you saved by not having a trade-in and for paying cash,” Quern said.
“But I didn’t…” Jo-Jo started to say.
“Put it away somewhere safe. You won’t need any money today,” Quern said.
First, they went to the welding supply store.
Home MIG and TIG would be in their infancy—if that—in 1965 and expensive. Quern didn’t like SMAW AKA “Stick Welding.” Anyway, the best custom gun makers said to TIG, if you can afford a good TIG machine, and OFW if you cannot.
Quern paid the demurrage on several tanks of acetylene and oxygen, then he rented a couple of tanks of hydrogen, one of CO2 and one of helium.
“Why the hydrogen?” the teenaged clerk asked.
“Well, some folks say that when using Oxy-Fuel Welding for aluminum, that hydrogen works slightly better than acetylene. Burns a bit cooler, don’t you know? My man Jo-Jo wants to like try it,” Quern explained.
‘I didn’t even know that you could weld with hydrogen!’ Jo-Jo was thinking.
“You can weld aluminum with a torch!?!” the know-it-all clerk asked.
“With the proper fluxes. Where do you think that ice cream comes from?” Quern resorted to mystification.
“What is the CO2 for?”
“There has been some research into including a bit of CO2 into a carbonizing flame—and before you ask—the helium is to fill party balloons. Look, do you want to sell me this shit, or not? Cause I’m perfectly content to buy it somewhere else,” Quern said.
Quern bought quite a bit of stuff—safety glasses; welding goggles; welding pliers; clamps; leather welding shirts for all three of them; welding gloves; welding rods; torches; etcetera. “That is an extremely odd bunch. The shit-kicker shitepoke is almost mute. The little boy with long hair does most of the talking and he seems to carry all the money. He seems quite loaded too,” the bemused clerk griped to his manager.
“Is their money green?” the manager asked.
“Well, yeah.”
“Then what is the problem?”
*********** ************* *********************
Next, the trio went to an industrial supply store.
Quern had an order all written out—since they would probably need a few days to order some of the stuff.
Quern ordered some stock in 1018. Even the humble “cold-rolled steel” had some uses. He also bought modest quantities of 1070; 1090; 3130; 3140; 4130 and 4140, He bought several alloys of aluminum, brass and bronze. He even ordered some 416-F stainless—though he had very little use for stainless steel.
His favorite steel, by far, was 4340. There was an SAE number for 4350 steel, but even in the days of online shopping, Quern had never been able to find any 4350 steel.
He put a standing order: anything that the supplier could find in 4350—rod, flat stock, tubing, bearings—just whatever.
He bought a 250-pound anvil and two 35-pound anvils—one for Jo-Jo’s workshop.
He bought several ACME threaded rods of .5-inch; .75-inch and 1-inch diameter threaded rods.
The rods were a bit steep, but large ACME threaded nuts cost more than their weight in silver.
He bought three Vernier calipers graduated to 128th of an inch as well as several feeler gauges. He only needed one at a time, but having a few on hand, beat running around doing a bee-dance, trying to find the one and lonely.
He also ordered fire bricks, refractory mortar and a squirrel-cage blower.
“You are going to get sick in a couple of days. It won’t be nearly as stressful for you as it was for Jo-Jo. He’s rather old to contract the virus,” Quern said.
“Anyway, you will probably miss a week or two of school and afterwards, you will want to wear shades like Jo-Jo for a few weeks. I’ll wait until you’re able to come back, to start my major projects, so you can be part and parcel of the process,” Quern said.
“Damned Nation! If I remember correctly, I lost my last baby tooth early in the 3rd grade. Just when you are just about finished with the loose-tooth business, you have to lose all of your teeth and start over again! Never mind. Your new teeth will be absolutely perfect,” Quern said.
“Quern. You sometimes talk about the present and the future in the past tense,” Debra protested.
“Yeah, I have a tendency to do that sometimes,” Quern said.
“You are far too clever to do that this often by mistake. It has to be deliberate,” Debra said accusingly.
“Yeah, but you don’t have to react as if I’m doing something reprehensible. I’m going to show you my world—but it needs to be a gradual unveiling,” Quern said.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. The moment is structured that way,” Quern said with an indifferent shrug.
*********** ************** ************************
Quern was attempting to explain the implications of Chaos Theory to Debra.
“Let’s say that you’re walking, and you cough up a little ball of phlegm the size of a small grape. You pause momentarily…”
“Should you spit it out? Not very lady-like, but then again, you’re outside and no one else is around. Should you simply swallow it...”
“The timeline will split depending on your choice. In 5000-years, empires will have risen and fallen in one timeline, that were unheard of—even undreamed of—in the other timeline.”
“There won’t be a single common person who exists in both timelines,” Quern said.
“Why will all the people be different? I don’t get that,” Debra said.
“Well, you know that the slightest puff of wind will eventually change the weather. Sooner or later, within a couple of weeks after introducing an extraneous puff of wind—a fart from a pissant as it were—you will have a storm in one timeline, where it was a sunny day in the other,” Quern said.
“Now think of conception. It is a desperate lottery—or a no-holds-barred race—between hundreds of millions of sperm—none of whom have precisely the same genetics,” Quern said.
“In timeline ‘A,’ Alpha Sperm won the genetic lottery. However, if either Mama or Papa should change their position even an eighth-of-an-inch at the moment of ejaculation…”
“An eighth-of-an-inch is a huge distance for a sperm. It is almost a dead certainty that another sperm—Sperm Beta—will win the race in the new timeline,” Quern said.
“It isn’t absolutely impossible that Sperm Alpha might not be the lucky winner in both timelines—but if that happens ONCE, in millions of conceptions, it will still be remarkable,” Quern said.
“Maybe Baby Alpha might become a concert violinist. Baby Beta might grow up to be a chef. Baby Beta might even be a girl instead of a boy—the odds are 50-50,” Quern said.
“Driving—or even just living—through that rainstorm will get everyone well over an eighth-of-an-inch off their original trajectory—with no way to ever get back onto it. Every baby born, once there is even a minor shift in weather, will be a different baby,” Quern said.
“Each new baby is a random number generator. He won’t cry; swallow; shit; piss or spit-up precisely the same as his timeline sibling would have. Every heartbeat creates more events to push the timelines ever farther part,” Quern said.
“Of course, some people argue that time has some sort of gyroscopic stability. Push it away from the mainline and it will automatically try to correct and get back to the mainline script,” Quern said.
“That is certainly conceivable, but take it on faith, that in a 17 + 5 multiverse, the idea of temporal gyroscopic stability is meaningless,” Quern said.
“And your point is?” Debra asked.
“Every man, woman and child face at least a dozen similar choices to your ‘Spit or Swallow’ dilemma, every minute of their lives. Only God in his infinite wisdom, could possibly trace the consequences of every burp, scratch and tear. Only God, in his infinite wisdom, could say definitely: ‘This timeline is preferable to this one.’ I don’t believe that God would say such a thing. Some people will live, knowing joy and triumph, while others will live miserable lives filled with nothing but futility, despair and misery in every conceivable timeline,” Quern said.
“There is no way to trace the consequences of each and every action that one might take; yet choosing to be as inactive as possible, is no less of an action than jumping in and being proactive,” Quern said.
“I’m about ready to go help some friends. Some folks might call what I’m about to do ‘playing God.’ Is it ‘playing God’ to pull a puppy out of quicksand? Why is that more presumptuous than letting the puppy die?” Quern said.
“Are you trying to convince yourself?” Debra asked.
“Nah. There is a Zen catechism—I guess that you’d call it—that had a seminal effect on my thinking:
“Concerns with:
“Right or Wrong; “Good or Evil; “Success or Failure; “Victory or Defeat; “Gain or Loss; “Or, “Life and Death; “Are all the Delusions of a Disordered Mind. “The Sage acts Purely for the Sake of Action— “Without Regard for Consequences.”
“I don’t need to convince myself—but when you see how I’m about to alter my friends’ destiny, you will come to see much more clearly how I’ve altered your destiny. Whether or not you come to hate me for altering your fate is something that you will need to decide,” Quern said.
It was time to go alter the fate of his neighbors Ronnie and Anya. It was too early to call them “friends” yet. Quern was a child and both of them were adults. However, in the years that followed, the two had had a continuing and supporting role in Young Quern’s life.
************ **************** *********************
Ronnie was a good ole boy who weighed over 300-pounds. Put him in a pair of overalls and he would have looked right at home on the set of “Hee-Haw.”
Ronnie had sleep apnea—undiagnosed, at the moment. He was a neighborhood legend due to his ability to fall asleep at a moment’s notice. By the time the doctors diagnosed the illness in 20-someodd years, much of the damage would have already been done.
The consequences of a weak heart; years of apnea and being overweight…and maybe Ronnie’s geas…had caused him to die at the comparatively young age of 63—after being on disability and unable to work for several years.
Ronnie was mowing his grass and sweating like a pig when Debra and Quern walked up.
“Let me finish up for you. You look done in,” Quern said, while laying a hand on Ronnie’s shoulder.
Quern was a bit young to mow grass, but he was big for his age. He was persuasive and Ronnie was dead tired. He surrendered the mower to Quern without needing to be tweaked.
“Well, that should be the last time that the grass needs to be cut this year,” Ronnie said when Quern was finished.
“Invite me and Debra into your home. I’m about to change your life,” Quern said.
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Post by rvm45 on Oct 4, 2022 16:42:24 GMT -6
Chapter Six
13 038
The paper mill where Ronnie worked, had just announced a big lay-off. The paper mill was one of the larger employers in the vicinity and working for the paper mill was one of the higher-paying production jobs in the area.
Ronnie had 19-years seniority at the mill. He would just barely escape being laid-off this time around. The mill would recall everyone after a few, weeks—but there would be a series of lay-offs and call-backs over the next few years.
Each lay-off, the lay-off list would go higher up the seniority ladder. After the first big call-back, there would always be a few workers, at the very bottom of the seniority list, who would never be called back. The list of permanently laid-off would grow after each lay-off.
The paper mill would close its doors completely, in a little over five-years.
Ronnie had worked his way up to a rather easy job at the mill. After 24-years at the mill, he wouldn’t be as capable of enduring hard manual labor as he had once been.
Losing his home, and doing hardcore manual labor would speed Ronnie’s decline.
Only, this lifetime, he had Quern to alter his geas for him.
“Ronnie, I know that you don’t want to hear it, but it is just a matter of time, until the mill closes. What is yoh gonna do?” Quern said.
Ronnie had once been an avid hunter and fisherman. To hear everyone tell it, Quern’s father had also been an enthusiastic outdoorsman in his younger days.
Quern’s father had always told young Quern what a sublime, transcendental experience that hunting and fishing were. He was always promising to take Quern hunting and fishing, but it was just talk.
Quern’s father had taken Quern fishing three times and he had taken him hunting precisely once.
He was always promising:
“Now, not next weekend, but weekend after next, we’ll go fishing.”
Something always, inevitably, came up to prevent them from going. In retrospect, that is why Father always planned two-weeks ahead—to give whatever would prevent them from going plenty of time to manifest.
Quern didn’t think that his father was deliberately cheating him. In retrospect, it was plain that his father had depression. Working 40-hours a week and any compulsory overtime, took every bit of mental energy and moral fiber that the man had. There was none left over to take Quern on weekend outings…
Though the man had possessed quite enough mental energy to force Quern to wear sissy-shorty-pants every Summer…
Father had desperately grasped at any pretext, no matter how flimsy, to bail out of his rashly made promises to Quern.
Looking back, Quern didn’t blame his father because he never took him hunting or fishing. He did blame him for setting poor little Quern up for endless disappointment.
Of course, as a verbal literalist, little Quern put complete faith in his father’s word when he promised something, and made no mental reference to the man’s long string of broken promises.
Most of the middle-aged men that Quern knew of, fit Ronnie and Father’s description. They’d sit around the kitchen table or a front room, reminiscing about the halcyon, good ole days when they had been hunters and fishermen.
Young Quern had once believed that women had some sort of foul anti-hunting mojo, that they cast over their husbands to hex and emasculate them. He wasn’t sure why women wanted to emasculate men, but as a pre-teen, he’d read quite enough Hemingway to believe that women were dedicated; maniacal castrators.
Nah. Age had taught Quern wisdom. It wasn’t so much women. It was that whole imaginary pagan deity “Society.” “Society” was a great machine, designed to swallow whole men and spit out eunuchs. How else could you explain the near universality of male haircuts?
Be all that as it lay. Ronnie’s interest in the outdoors and hunting had turned him into an avid reader of Westerns. The man owned over fifty Louis L’ Amour books and many other Western novels as well.
“You need a source of income that isn’t hinged upon your ability to sell your toil as a manual laborer. Have you ever considered being a writer?” Quern asked.
Quern went into tweaking mode. Ronnie’s IQ was 109.
109 + 59 = 168
That was more than high enough for a writer of category fiction. Most famous writers had done quite well, with a good deal less IQ to work with.
Quern downloaded every book ever written by Louis L’ Amour—including ones that had yet to be written. It was okay. Ronnie wouldn’t plagiarize them.
Each book came with a brilliantly written analysis as to why the book worked; its weak points and possible ways that it could have been improved. Only, all of the books and commentary had been thoroughly digested and assimilated by Ronnie’s unconscious.
Quern added everything by Jack London; Zane Grey; Edgar Rice Burroughs: Robert E Howard; Earnest Hemingway; Henry David Thoreau and H Rider Haggard—though only a few of their books got analyzed.
He added books by Andre Norton; Alan E Nourse; Robert Heinlein and a few other noted science fiction authors.
He also gave Ronnie the same Bible knowledge that he’d given Elmira. The rhythm and language of the King James Bible was well worth studying—and emulating, to a degree.
If queried in detail, Ronnie would be astonished how many books that he remembered, word-for-word.
Then Quern downloaded a few Western movies: “The Outlaw Josie Wales”; “Young Guns”; “Long Riders”; and “The Wild Bunch.” He also loaded the excellent, but brief and obscure television series “Lonesome Dove: The Outlaw Years.”
Quern was after the bloody and high-volume firefights and the sense of grimy nihilism. He didn’t want Ronnie to take that noir atmosphere and run with it, but he wanted Ronnie’s works to have an element of it.
Finally, Quern downloaded his main theme—the movie “Cowboys and Aliens.”
There were two things about the movie, that Quern wanted to change. A.} Only having a blaster symbiote on one arm was lame, and B.} The fact that the protagonist lost the precious blaster at the end was also lame—and cliché—in Quern’s opinion.
The somewhat altered plot of “Cowboys and Aliens” would be the first in a new hybrid genre SF/Westerns.
Ronnie’s hard-bitten gunfighter would wander a Psychedelic version of the Old West—perhaps other parts of the nineteenth century world as well—wearing a pair of six-shooters and hiding his wrist blaster/symbiotes under leather vambraces and trying hard not to be identified as “That” mysterious gunfighter.
Of course, he’d encounter new haints; aliens; ancient races; overpowered shamans and brujos and other “bum-of-the-month” adversaries in each new book.
HMMMmmnnn…?
Let’s also download Stephan King’s “Gunfighter” series; two-score “X-Files” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” episodes and all of Carlos Castaneda’s books—just for inspiration.
Quern gave Ronnie the ability to type 50 words-per-minute, with very few typos. He gave him a reading/speaking knowledge of German; Russian; Spanish; Croatian; Gaeilge; Gaelic and Icelandic…
The Icelandic was a lead-in to Old Norse, and Ronnie now had a whole collection of everything available, written in Old Norse. He could also read and speak Middle-English well enough to read Chaucer in the original.
Good cheap replica cap-and-ball revolvers were still a bit in the future, but Quern supplied Ronnie with an extensive collection of replicas.
Ronnie was also the proud owner now, of over two-score EMF Single Actions—copies of the Colt Single Action revolvers—10 or 15-years before EMF started to manufacture them—he had them in .45 Colt; .44 Special; .38-40; .357 Magnum and .30 M1 Carbine calibers.
Ronnie would have little or no tendency to show off his treasures.
HMMMmmnnn…?
Let’s add several old H&R Breaktops and some old S&W Topbreaks—yeah, and a Remington, or two—though Quern wasn’t fond of the olde tyme Remington revolvers.
Ronnie could reduce each of his new revolvers to possession and then reassemble them—blindfolded, if necessary.
Quern condensed all the shooting skills, and knowledge that Ronnie would have acquired, with his new IQ of 168, if he had attended all of Jeff Cooper’s combat pistol courses at Gunsite; had practiced diligently for 20-years and attended two-dozen big Cowboy Action Shooting matches—including the costumery and social interactions…
No, he had no faux memories of having gone, but he had all the skills—thoroughly internalized.
Ronnie also had the virtual experience of attending a Western style riding academy for a month and then riding in the wide-open spaces for a whole summer.
Add in a total-recall knowledge of everything ever written by Jeff Cooper; Elmer Keith; Skeeter Skelton and Mel Tappan.
‘Let’s add some basic—and not so basic—knowledge of Indians and their customs. Ronnie could now speak all of the Apache dialects; Hopi; Navajo; Zuni; Yaqui; Lakota; Comanche and Cheyenne—and of course, he could read and write Cherokee—one more person for Elmira and Jo-Jo to speak Cherokee to…’ Quern thought to himself.
Ronnie gasped. That was a lot of downloads and upgrades to take in, all at once.
Quern was a bit exhausted and Debra lit a cigarette and passed it to him as he sat on the couch and recuperated.
Ronnie was dead to this world, his head awhirl with all the new worlds that Quern had just opened for him. Anya wasn’t going to say Jack Shit to Quern about smoking, not while Quern had a virtual index finger in her frontal cortex.
While he was at it, Quern added a minor tweak. Ronnie and Anya would always display the utmost indifference to Quern or Debra smoking. It would barely register on their consciousness.
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Post by feralferret on Oct 4, 2022 19:38:44 GMT -6
If only it were that easy to learn all of these things!
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Post by rvm45 on Oct 4, 2022 20:39:19 GMT -6
Friends,
Seriously, this is the closest thing to a "Realistic" novel that I have ever done.
No SERIOUSLY, I'm like 8-chapters in and all I have is character development.
Given Quern's IQ; his trust funds and his ability to enhance—and control, IF he chose to control—a small elite cadre, he COULD aim for World Domination...
But Quern has no desire to rule.
Dictators have to get up too early in the morning.
He agreed to re-live his life, because he had an agenda.
There are hints, but Quern hasn't even revealed his agenda to Debra—his closest confidant.
Quern is odd, Everyone around him either started out odd enough to be in a "Dick Tracy" comic strip—OR if they started out relatively normal, contact with Quern makes them odd.
It is NECESSARY to do things this way, in order to tell the story. Well, Stephan King or Robert Heinlein—or even crabby old Ayn Rand could maybe write the story better—but I ain't them.
I'm kinda flapping in the breeze wondering how well I'm keeping everyone's interest.
I SEEM to have lost a couple readers that I picked up with"River Bottoms," I THINK that "Romana and the Orc Princess" disgusted them and made then quit reading me…
O well…
I SHOULD gave started "Quern Reboots" first, cause I could really use more feedback on this one…
…..RVM45
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Post by rvm45 on Oct 4, 2022 20:50:01 GMT -6
Chapter Seven
14 660
Originally, Quern hadn’t intended to make Anya an author—but why not? The unanticipated addition of Debra to his entourage had already caused him to deviate from his original script a bit. Anya weighed well over 400-pounds. She didn’t constantly stretch her belly with binge gorging. She ate like a bird—steadily—all day long.
She mainly sat on her fat ass, or laid on the couch or bed, reading romance novels and munching on chocolate-covered cherries.
Fine! She likes romance novels, let her write romance novels.
Anya’s IQ was 103.
103 + 59 = 162
“Anya, did you notice that my fiancé is black?” Quern asked her.
Well, Number One: Anya could scarcely have failed to notice; and Number Two: No one would take an 8-year-old proclaiming that someone was his fiancé seriously—only, Anya had no choice but to take Quern seriously, at the moment.
“Did you know that many young black girls—in the same age demographic that avidly reads romance novels—dream of meeting a handsome young white boy, who will take them away from the ghetto and give them a better life? Not all of the young black girls who entertain this phantasy are ghetto-dwellers either,” Quern said.
“There is a whole untapped sub-genre for you—specializing in young black girls—teens and early 20’s, not primary-schoolers like Debra—meeting, falling in love and eventually hooking up with the white boy of her dreams,” Quern said.
Of course, eventually when Politikal Korrectness came on the scene, novels in the genre that Anya would create and popularize, would be soundly denounced as viciously racist.
Quern, who had always had a strong preference for black women, staunchly believed: “Everyone is racist! Get over it!”
He started to download. He downloaded everything by Barbara Cartland. He downloaded Jane Austin; D H Lawrence; Somerset Maugham and Jacqueline Susann—much of Susann’s work hadn’t been written yet. Never mind. Anya wouldn’t plagiarize.
All of Cartland’s work was thoroughly analyzed—as well as 120 more prosaic and formulaic examples of the genre—but stereotyped novels that had sold much better than the average cliched romance novel.
He also gave Anya a firm Biblical background and a half-dozen languages—including Cherokee. Maybe the Cherokee-speakers in the neighborhood should organize a Cherokee Language club.
Quern gave Anya the capability to type 66-word-per-minute—no idea how that would be expressed in Metric Units—with 13% fewer typos per 100-words than Ronnie.
Although romance novels tended to have lower word-counts than most other category novels, they also paid a good deal less per book—making it necessary to be prolific, if one wanted to support oneself.
“Anya, you and Ronnie need to go to Smith and Butterfield and buy each of you a top-of-the-line manual typewriter. You’ll need reams of good-quality typing paper; liquid paper; typewriter erasers; typewriter ribbons, etcetera. A couple good typing tables and desk lamps are also in order,” Quern said.
“It is almost October. Y’all need to write diligently until this July. Each time that you finish a book, bring it to me and I will help you edit it and I will illustrate it for you as well,” Quern said.
“We will all go to New York City this Summer and I will find a publisher for each of you,” Quern said.
Now it was time for the part that Quern hated. Well, he grooved on doing his friends a solid, but healing sick bodies and making physical alterations was very demanding—much more painful and draining than merely downloading shit into their hard drives.
Anya needed to lose 50-ounces of fat every week. She would add 2-ounces of muscle every week, until she had enough muscle to be considered quite athletic, then the addition of muscle tissue would stop and her fat loss would go down to 48-ounces per week—3-pounds.
It was hard on the body to lose that much fat, that quickly—but it was a case of competing harms. Once Anya’s weight got down to 300-pounds, her weight loss would slow to just 2-pounds per week.
Quern cleaned up all the clogged arteries and other sequela from being fat for so many years, at about the rate of 8.3% per month. At that rate, in about one-years’ time, Anya would have no sequela from being fat.
He tweaked Anya’s health and physical well-being a number of ways, and then it was time to start on Ronnie.
Ronnie had never been as obese as Anya, but he was 8-years older and he had rather severe apnea.
Quern set Ronnie’s metabolism to lose 35-ounces of fat per week, while gaining 3-ounces of muscle. Ronnie would be quite muscular and fit looking, before the muscle growth stopped.
Time to address Ronnie’s apnea. If Quern had the power to use psychic surgery to cut out Ronnie’s Uvula and the excess overhang of his soft palate, Ronnie might drown in the blood flowing down the back of his throat. At any rate, he would be rushed to the emergency room and inquiring minds would want to know WTF mate!?!
Instead, Quern set the uvula and the excess soft palate to slowly reabsorb over the next few months. What’s this? Ronnie still had his tonsils and adenoids!
So far as Quern was concerned, if God had meant for people to keep their tonsils and adenoids into adulthood, he wouldn’t have made it so easy to surgically remove them.
When Quern was a boy, he was sickly. Once his tonsils and adenoids were removed, he was never again sick enough to miss school or work, until he was in his 50’s.
Quern’s sister had come along, when the dumbass idea of “Let’s hang on to the worthless, health-sabotaging tonsils, if at all possible,” philosophy had taken hold. Consequently, his sister was sickly all of her life.
Well, this time around, Quern had tweaked a few doctors, so his sister could rid herself of the abominations. He had never been close to his sister in either lifetime, but there was no need for her to suffer gratuitously.
At any rate, he set Ronnie’s tonsils and adenoids to dissolve over the next few months as well.
************* *************** **********************
“We will be going to New York this Summer,” Quern told Debra, once he was back in his studio.
“Never mind. I can tweak your mother so that she thinks that it is eminently reasonable to let you go to New York with us. See if your brother might be interested in going. It might broaden his horizons,” Quern said.
“You gave Jo-Jo; Elmira; Ronnie and Anya Cherokee. I want to be able to speak Cherokee too!” Debra complained.
“I had no idea that you wanted to be able to speak Cherokee. My head is splitting right now. In a couple of days, I’ll be happy to fix you up,” Quern said.
“Another thing, can you tweak my brother, Tosh? I think that he is a bit slow,” Debra said.
Quern knew for a fact that Tosh was slow—but he’d been a good friend as well as a brother-in-law, when Quern had married Debra in his own timeline.
“Been meaning to take care of him. Just hadn’t gotten around to it yet. Anyway, he’s a year younger than you, isn’t he? He won’t be too far behind,” Quern said.
“He’s only 10-months younger than me,” Debra said.
“Bring him by the workshop in a few days, by then I will have fully recovered,” Quern said.
************** ***************** ************************
“Steel is,” Quern told Debra.
He meant that steel existed and partook of reality.
“If you read most encyclopedia references, they say that steel is the happy result of adding some carbon to iron—but that is disingenuous. Wrought iron and cast iron have a lot of carbon. Getting good quality steel is largely a matter of refining most of the carbon out of the metal, not adding it in.”
“Though if you eliminated all of the carbon, pure elemental iron isn’t of much use either,” he added.
“Steel has less than 2% carbon—well technically, 2.1% carbon. In general, the more carbon that it has, the harder the steel and the more abrasion resistant—but the harder it is, the more brittle it becomes.”
“It largely depends on your intended use. A file needs to have very good abrasion resistance and it isn’t a serious flaw that it is easy to shatter with a sharp blow. A hammer, on the other hand, doesn’t need to shatter like a crystal goblet every time that you tolchock something with it.”
“Most knives are made from 1060; 1070 or 1090 steel. The last two numbers tell you how much carbon is in the steel,” Quern said.
“Those are simple steels. 4100 steels have chrome and molybdenum added to give greater strength and hardness. 4300 steels have chrome; molybdenum and nickel.”
“I think that the highest carbon 4100 steel generally available is 4140. There is also 4340. As I say, there is an SAE number for 4350 steel, but I’ve never been able to find any.”
“I have asked several people if chrome-moly steels could be used to make good quality knives. All I get is:
“Duh! The carbon content is too low…”
“I know that the carbon content of 4340 is less than half of the carbon content of 1090—but WHY do they add chrome; molybdenum and nickel? Isn’t it conceivable that the presence of those alloying elements would more than make up for the relative lack of carbon?”
“I mean, maybe you cannot make good knives from 4340 steel, but that isn’t readily in evidence by the number of carbon points. Anyway, when I get my forge built, I’m going to experiment with knives made from 4340 steel,” Quern said.
“Why do you want to make knives?” Debra asked.
“They are beautiful and functional for their own sake, but they are also a good lead-in to what I really want to do eventually,” Quern said.
Debra watched Quern make a brick forge stoked with air from the squirrel cage blower that he’d bought at the industrial supply store.
Then she watched Quern make several Kunai from rebar.
“I thought that you wanted to use 4340 steel,” she said.
“Well, until I develop a modicum of skill, there is no need to waste perfectly good chrome-moly,” Quern said.
“Rebar is a crap-shoot. Some of it is reasonably good. Some of it is trash. They only test the rebar for overall weight-bearing ability and often rebar is cast from recycled materials. It can have good quality steel on one end and piss-poor steel on the other end of the same rod,” Quern said.
“That is why I am making Kunai. Rebar is good enough for Kunai,” he said.
Quern told Debra about Kunai. They were generally thick; double-edged blades—often made from crude wrought iron. They were used as masonry trowels; garden spades and cheap; crude knives.
The ninja were reputed to have used them—but mainly because they were robust enough to excavate old mortar from a wall, for footholds, or what have you.
The ninja seldom, if ever, threw the Kunai, but then Anime came along. Quern wasn’t sure that “Naruto” was the first ninja Anime to feature people throwing Kunai in wholesale lots—but it certainly hyped the idea of Kunai throwing knives.
Quern often wondered. Changing the timeline even a little could have the most far-reaching unintended consequences.
Maybe in this timeline, “Naruto” would never be created. Maybe Anime would never come to be—or maybe Anime would never become popular outside of Japan.
Anyway, if you looked at any of the Manga or Anime Kunai—they all had pommel rings shaped like a torus—a donut—round.
He had nothing but contempt for knifemakers who created Kunai with ugly washer-profiled flat pommel rings.
Kunai weren’t good for much, unless you simply liked to throw knives as a pastime, but if you gonna make them, make them the way God and John Browning intended for them to be made. Don’t make them with washer-shaped pommel-rings!
“Can I learn to make knives too?” Debra asked.
“If you are sure that you want to. You aren’t in any danger of running out of memory, but downloading metallurgy; heat treatment and forging techniques will give you a bit of a headache. Its not worth the pain unless you’re sure,” Quern said.
“Download the stuff. I’m starting to feel ill like you told me that I would. It will give me something to think about while I’m ill. I’ll come back and see you after I get well,” Debra said.
“Take care,” Quern replied.
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Post by NCWEBNUT on Oct 5, 2022 5:19:57 GMT -6
There are those of us that will read anything that you write rvm45. I only speak for myself but I look forward to each story.
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dannab1
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Post by dannab1 on Oct 5, 2022 15:09:19 GMT -6
Weird but interesting😂. You keep writing, I'll keep reading!
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Post by feralferret on Oct 5, 2022 15:54:03 GMT -6
rvm45,
"I SEEM to have lost a couple readers that I picked up with"River Bottoms," I THINK that "Romana and the Orc Princess" disgusted them and made then quit reading me…"
I will admit that those two were not exactly my cup of tea, but were still enjoyable. I'm not big on the fantasy genre. I'm more sci-fi in tastes.
I am liking this one well. Please keep it going.
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Post by rvm45 on Oct 5, 2022 16:53:05 GMT -6
Chapter Eight
16 807
It was early December when Debra made it back to the workshop—wearing the custom mirrorshades that Quern had given her. This time, she brought her brother Tosh with her.
Tosh had also contacted the golden-eye retrovirus. Unlike his sister, he had standard green-lensed shades on.
Quern sized Tosh up. He knew that he was a wee-bit slow from his first lifetime, but he’d never seen Tosh’s IQ test or taken a reading of Tosh.
Tosh’s IQ was 95—not quite as bad as Quern had feared. This was Debra’s brother and someone who had been a good friend in Quern’s last lifetime. Quern buckled down to shit the watermelon and give Tosh a full 79 IQ points.
95 + 79 = 174
Tosh had made a good living as a construction laborer his first lifetime. He was very strong; all-but-tireless and he worked hard with excellent attendance.
Tosh was 7-years-old at the moment. Quern had no idea if Tosh would still want to be a construction worker. Anyway, just in case something should happen to Quern, he wanted Tosh to have a full treatment.
The boy’s hard drive now had everything that he’d need to be a finish carpenter; an electrician; a welder or a machinist.
He gave Tosh everything that he’d given Jo-Jo and a bit more. He also downloaded a dozen languages.
“Tosh, you won’t be able to tell anyone about what I’ve done for you. I mean, literally. Even if you decide to narc me out, something will prevent the words from coming out of your mouth,” Quern said.
“Okay, you can go now,” Quern said as Tosh continued to stand and stare at him.
“You told me that people with the golden eyes will crave tobacco and menthol. Tosh has it worse than most. He’s been running around truing to bum smokes off the older boys—and getting beaten up in the process,” Debra told Quern.
“Beaten up? That’s not good. Here,” Quern said.
Tosh’s body was not yet capable of performing many of the advanced movements, but he now had a master’s knowledge of Capoeira; Taekwondo and Brazilian Jujitsu. Quern also loaded a set of flexibility and conditioning exercises for Tosh to start following daily—with increasing difficulty as Tosh grew stronger.
“Here Tosh, have a carton of Salem 100’s. Hang around a moment, won’t you?”
Quern called Jo-Jo on the telephone. A few moments later, when Jo-Jo showed up, Quern introduced them.
“Jo-Jo, this is Tosh. He’s Debra’s brother. He’s very clever and strong for his age. He loves to tinker with stuff,” Quern told him.
That last wasn’t completely true—yet—but downloading all sorts of abilities did create an urge to utilize those abilities.
“He’ll be a good helper for you. Keep him in cigarettes since he’s too young to buy his own. Here is $100. That ought to keep him suppled for awhile,” Quern said.
He shooed Jo-Jo and Tosh out of the workshop. The shop would become far too crowded if it became a hang-out for every Tom; Dick and Harry in the neighborhood.
The workshop had originally been a rectangular building 28-foot by 16-foot. Now there was a small “L-shaped” extension on the workshop side—a 12-foot by 12-foot addition.
Inside, there was a forge and a 55-pound anvil as well as a couple worktables and a few well-selected tools.
“That is your forge—though I’m using some of your shelf space for storage. This way, you won’t have to wait until I’m through with my forge to make something,” Quern said.
There was a pile of auto leaf-springs; a 200-pound keg of Railroad spikes and a couple of drive-shafts in one corner of the smaller forge.
“I had Jo-Jo pull you some material,” Quern said.
“Don’t you want me to use your good steel?’ Debra asked.
“Nah. What is mine, is yours. I am handicapping myself by using a non-standard steel. There is no reason to make it harder on yourself,” Quern said.
“Anyway, you should know from your download that there isn’t much better material for knife-making than leaf-springs.”
Quern alternated between forging blades of 4340 and welding something from flat stock and his ACME threads and nuts.
“What are you making?” Debra asked.
“This will be a treadle-driven metal lathe. In another time and place, there were numerous how-to tutorials on creating a treadle-driven wood lathe—but nothing on how to make something like the excellent old Goodell-Pratt Metal Lathe,” Quern said.
“My lathe will have auto-feed and auto-facing and it can be set to a compound feed to turn tapers. I could create a half-nut, but it is a pain in the ass. I’ll use taps and dies for what little threading that I need to do,” Quern said.
“This machine will be a lever-operated metal-shaper,” Quern added.
“It isn’t like that I couldn’t afford a good reconditioned LeBlond Lathe and a Bridgeport Mill—but that wouldn’t prove my point,” Quern said.
************* *************** *******************
Quern persevered until he had 24 well-formed 5-inch double-edged blades, then he started creating handles.
In Quern’s mind, a number of “Balisong” makers on “U” Tube, would mill or grind/file a channel through two pieces of steel; brass or aluminum, and then proudly proclaim,” Yup! Yup! Me has handle fur me Balisong!”
Well, to be fair, Quern had once had a brass-handled Manila Folder that he had spent many happy hours opening and closing. The old Pacific Cutlery Balisongs had also been made that way and they were of much higher quality and much more expensive than Quern’s Manila Folder, that had long since gone down the river of time.
However, the original Philippine Balisong handles started with an envelope of sheet metal that was reinforced with metal inserts at each end and then covered with stag; horn; bone; wood; Mother of Pearl or something.
The Philippine Balisongs tended to have wider blades and were wider and thicker than the Pacific Cutlery Balisongs and the hosts of imitations of the Pacific Cutlery Balisongs.
With his first satisfactory Balisong created, Quern spent a few moments happily flipping it. Just as with his Tai Chi and his Hatha Yoga, Quern now had Balisong skills far beyond any that he had possessed in his first lifetime.
A little fancy flipping is fine—just for fun. When it is time to get into personalities while using a blade, the itinerary is: get it open with little fanfare and possibility of bobbling—and if it can be opened surreptitiously, without the client being aware that you had a sharp & pointy—that is protein for the home team.
“That is so pretty! Can I try?” Debra asked.
“Here. Be a little modest. You’re a beginner and that is a double-edged blade,” Quern said.
But Debra had cut herself before he had even finished his warning.
“Thankfully, that shouldn’t require stiches. You’ll have to keep your hand bandaged for a few days though,” Quern sighed.
“Can I try it with my other hand?” Debra asked.
“What? You aren’t bunged-up enough already?” Quern asked in exasperation.
“Listen. That is a double-edged blade. Many experts hesitate to do tricks with a double-edged blade. I’m really good, plus I’m a bit of an asshole. That’s why I was flipping that blade. I thought that you would simply look at it,” Quern said.
“If you must take up fancy Balisong handling, I’ll make you a pair of dull practice blades. Then I’ll throw in a pair of single-edged blades. You need to leave the pair of double-edged blades that I’ll make you, for serious social intercourse and don’t flip them—at least until you get really, really good,” Quern said.
Then he downloaded everything that he knew about Balisong handling, along with all the Escrima strikes with a Karambit and with the twin staves.
“These staves are steel. Once you master them, ordinary wood staves will fly in your hands. The exercise of swinging those heavy bars will cause your bazongas to grow,” Quern told her.
That was nonsense about the bazongas. No amount of exercise would cause them to grow. Even any reasonable amount of extra musculature in the pectorals would only make a very minor difference.
Never mind. Quern had seen what Debra would look like when grown. One thing that she definitely did not need was bigger bazongas.
It was just that Quern was sometimes given to exaggeration and hyperbole.
************* **************** **********************
Soon, Quern had an inventory of almost 100 Balisongs. Meanwhile, Debra seemed enamored of Britvas or old fashioned Straight-Razors for reasons that eluded Quern. At any rate, Debra had managed to create a dozen Britvas.
Today was the first day of Christmas vacation and Debra brought Terry by the workshop. Quern noted that Terry, who had gotten the Golden Eye somewhat later than Debra, was wearing the custom shades that Quern had given Debra.
“Quern, can you tweak Terry? She’s my best friend—and there is a distance between us, since you made me smarter,” Debra said.
“Debra, Ecclesiastes says, ‘For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.’ Are you sure that you want me to make Terry wiser?”
“Ecclesiastes also says, ‘Then I saw that wisdom excelleth folly, as far as light excelleth darkness.’ Yes, I want her to be wiser,” Debra said.
Yeah, it would be very hard for Quern to win an argument with anyone who had his Bible download, by quoting scriptures—not that Quern seriously wished to talk Debra out of tweaking Terry.
“Have her step in,” Quern said.
“Terry, I made Debra smarter. That is why she seems to be a little distant and she will speak above you sometimes—without meaning to. I can make you smarter too, but you won’t be able to tell anyone that it was me. Lay it all on the Golden Eye—or something,” Quern said.
“I want to be smart; like Debra,” Terry said.
Terry’s IQ was 111. She was Debra’s best friend, so Quern shit a watermelon for her.
111 + 79 = 190
She had been 11 IQ points lower than Debra before he tweaked Debra. Now she was still 11 IQ points lower. Never mind. 11 is a noticeably smaller percent of 201 than it is of 122.
Quern gave her a quick download of mathematics; languages and the King James Bible. Then he started to talk to her.
“Terry. It ain’t that I don’t like you, but my workshop is a special place where I get important stuff done. I can do important work here, because I have the reasonable expectation that no one will interupt me,” he said.
“My own parents and my sister aren’t allowed to come here casually and bother me. Debra and Jo-Jo are the only ones with carte blanche to show up at any time,” Quern explained.
“You are one of my people now, so I will take care of you—but if you need to talk to me, catch me at school or have Debra relay a message for you. You can even come here---but only if it is a dire necessity,” Quern said.
Just as he finished, Jo-Jo showed up with Tosh in tow.
“We want to get into HAM Radio,” Jo-Jo announced.
“Only, mastering Morse Code is a bit fierce and the test is rather intimidating…” Jo-Jo whined.
“Dudes, it is like: both of you have IQ’s well above genius. You both have a sound grounding in electricity and Vacuum Tube theory. Abraham’s classic book on radio fundamentals…” Quern said.
“Uh well…we wanted you involved because top-rate equipment is very expensive and you seem to have funds…” Jo-Jo said.
“I have a cousin from Georgia who makes all of his own HAM gear from barstock—no, that’s hyperbole—but he does scratch-make himself HAM outfits that are noticeably better than anything that you can buy commercially. I’ll set you guys up for now, but when my cousin comes in August, I expect y’all to have some long heart-to-heart consultations with him,” Quern said.
Meanwhile, Debra was explaining to Terry what Amateur Radio was about.
“Alright, I can download Morse Code; the Radio Amateur regulations and the theory of radio broadcasting (Abraham’s book was solely concerned with radio reception)—it’s kind cheatin’, but O well…”
“Can I learn about Amateur Radio too?” Terry spoke up.
“Sure, why not. Be leery of any brownies that Jo-Jo’s mother offers you though; unless you want to trip,” Quern said.
So off Jo-Jo and Tosh went, now with a third member of their cortège.
“I wanted to do some forging today, but now I have a headache. That is a fair bit of downloading to do, all at one time,” Quern said.
“I’m sorry,” Debra said.
“Don’t be. If I didn’t want to do it, I wouldn’t. Let’s go check on Ronnie and Anya. We’ll see how their writing is coming along,” Quern said.
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Post by feralferret on Oct 5, 2022 23:37:29 GMT -6
Thanks for the new chapter!
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Post by rvm45 on Oct 6, 2022 7:37:20 GMT -6
Chapter Nine
18 981
1966
It was July, and as Quern had promised, he took Ronnie and Anya to New York City to find them publishers. He brought Debra; Tosh; Terry and Jo-Jo along for the ride and the experience.
Once in the city, they went to the headquarters of “Analog Science Fiction Magazine.”
Sometimes, “Analog” would serialize a story. It was almost like found money, since the serialization wouldn’t hurt the subsequent book sales. On the contrary, the publicity probably made the subsequent book sales larger.
Now ordinarily, an aspiring author showing up unannounced wouldn’t have much of a shot at seeing an editor—but Quern could be quite persuasive, even though he had to tweak through several layers to get to the top.
Quern “negotiated” a deal for Ronnie. His first “Cowboys and Aliens” book would be serialized. “Analog” would play up the “New sub-genre—SF-Western” angle.
The cover of the magazine, that had the first installation of Ronnie’s story, would feature an airbrush drawing by Quern. Each subsequent installment would feature internal illustrations by Quern.
The editor had enough clout to invite a book publisher to his offices. Well, Quern couldn’t do a full-on tweak over the phone, but he could strongly influence someone—enough to get them to come in person at a college’s urgent request.
Now in general, back then at least, hardback books paid more to the author per unit sold, than paperbacks. On the other hand, generally the more expensive hardbacks would sell less copies.
The advances and profits would be roughly the same for hardback or paperback.
There were some advantages to hardback. The books might be bought by libraries, where the longer-lasting books might be recruiting young fans for a generation or two.
Also, it was more prestigious, particularly when bragging to friends and family, to show off hardback copies.
A book that had been published in hardback might also be published later in paperback—but barring an unexpected runaway best seller, the converse seldom happened.
A subsidiary paperback contract for a book that had already been printed in hardback would be discounted somewhat. It wasn’t as advantageous to have a double deal as one might think—but it was—or could be—advantageous. Quern made sure that Ronnie got a sweet double-deal, signed at one time.
Anyway, Ronnie’s first book would be serialized in “Analog.” Shortly after the last serial installment, the hardback would come out. Ronnie made a package deal, to sell his first three books as a lot, though each book would be published a few months apart. He got the first publishing advance—a generous advance—immediately, but advances on the next two books would be delayed until shortly before they were published.
Quern did the cover art for both the hardback and the paperback editions—a different cover for hardback and paperback.
Inside, each book had eight of Quern’s black & white pen drawings.
The art in the first book was completely different from the “Analog” illustrations in the serialized version.
Quern mainly valued the exposure and he wasn’t short of money—but very few folks would piss and moan because they had too much money.
The magazine and the book publisher would promote Ronnie’s books to the best of their ability.
Foreign language sales seldom amounted to much, except in the case of huge best-sellers. Also, translator fees ate some of the profits.
After Quern’s tweak though, Ronnie could speak German; Spanish; Icelandic; Gaeilge; Japanese; Hindi and Korean as well as any native speaker. He had a few other languages as well, but those were already enough to raise eyebrows.
Quern negotiated nice little “found-money” deals in all of those foreign tongues, for all of Ronnie’s books, using Ronnie’s own translations.
The book publisher escorted the group over to meet an editor at “Harlequin Romances.”
“Harlequin” was reluctant to handle the hot-potato of Anya’s controversial books—but they were convinced that there was a profit to be made. They decided to spin off a shell-company to publish Anya’s books and take any negative criticism.
Also, while they scented blood in the water, they weren’t 100% sure that the new sub-genre would succeed and they were always in the market for good authors.
They contracted for Anya to write ten of her inter-racial romances per year, for one year—as well as eight standard, formula romances, under a pen name. The contract would be renewed if Anya’s new genre did well.
Quern would do the covers for the sub-genre works and he would supply six internal illustrations for each of the novels—of sub-genre and traditional Romance. This was at a time when most novels were getting away from illustrations, but O well…
Much of Anya’s work was rooted in the mores of America—and Canada to a smaller degree. People in Japan or Korea would have been confused by the American social scene.
However, Anya did supply a Spanish language version for a modest bonus—not counting the extra revenue due to the sales to Hispanic readers in the US; Mexico and perhaps even a few Central and South American sales.
Next, there was a one-page bio in the back of each book. Ronnie got in a brief plug for Anya’s work and Anya plugged Ronnie’s books. Both of them praised the “Brilliant Young Artist” who illustrated their works—and Quern had a half-page bio as well.
Finally, Quern called on several influential critics and left them post-tweak assignments, to give Ronnie’s books and his art work glowing reviews when it came out in book form—including critics from places like “The New York Times” who seldom reviewed SF.
Since there was no such thing as bad publicity, and since 100% praise might seem rather fishy, he arranged for a few mainline critics to shit on Ronnie’s work and then rub it in.
People would be tempted to buy and read one of Ronnie’s works, just to see what all the hoo-haw was about—especially since a couple of influential critics would rant and rave about Ronnie’s “proletariat trash” often and in a state of high moral outrage.
Anya’s work would be considered on an even lower level than SF. It would be boilerplate odd, if her little sub-genre romances were reviewed by the NY Times.
She was mentioned, in passing, as referenced by “Ronnie’s wife is also a novelist” in several critical reviews. She was mainly praised or castigated by a less exalted circle of critics.
Next, it was time for Quern to be bored shitless. He had zero interest in seeing the Statue of Liberty; the Empire State Building; Times Square or Central Park. He barely managed to get half-assed interested in a couple of the art museums.
It would be churlish to deny the others the opportunity to see these things, seeing that they were already there. Quern grimly endured and looked forward to getting back to his beloved workshop.
1967
Quern’s Southern cousin hadn’t come up to visit in August after all. Something had come up, so Quern had shrugged and postponed his plans for his cousin temporarily.
He hadn’t wanted to go public with his knives until he was 10-years old. It didn’t seem quite so abnormal to have a prodigy master knife-maker whose age was in double-digits.
Quern took out ads for his knives in “Guns & Ammo”; “The American Rifleman”; “Fur, Fish and Game” and “Boy’s Life.”
At most, Quern could only create a couple or three knives per week—especially if he wished to leave time for other projects. He didn’t need to cast quite so wide a net.
The main thing that Quern wanted to advertise was his book. He’d written a book on how to set up a small forge and to manufacture knives and small axes.
Quern had illustrated the book himself and it was full of beautiful airbrush illustrations; clever ink diagrams worthy of Dürer—but far less dense visually—and happy photos of Quern and Debra at their respective forges.
There were two chapters on Quern’s experiences forging with 4340 and creating Wootz patterned steel using 4340 and 4140 steel in many fine layers.
The books were hardback; in full color and they were of archival quality. Quern had paid a top-rate vanity publisher to print 10 000 of the books and he lost money on every copy he sold.
Pecuniary profit was not the object of the exercise. Quern wanted a small cadre of home manufacturers to spring up and he wanted name recognition.
When he sold 5000 copies of his deluxe edition, he’d get a commercial publisher to make a small run of much less expensive copies—though he would insist on full-color.
There was also a 10” by 12’’ trade paperback that accompanied each of Quern’s knives. It had beautiful airbrush illustrations and beaucoup line drawings showing fancy Balisong handling; Karambit strikes and a style of Bowie Knife fighting influenced by Styers’ classic “Cold Steel,” but having some attention given to defense as well as including a half-dozen simple drills.
For instance, suspending a tiny butterfly of Kleenex from the ceiling, using a thread and a piece of Scotch tape. The object was to hit the dime-sized piece of Kleenex with a thrust. It was surprising how wide of the target the first few thrust would be. Surprisingly, accuracy was hard to attain, even with a 12’’ Bowie blade.
Kleenex? Well, a ball, or whatever, would pendulum for some time after being struck. The very light and air-resistant Kleenex would revert to hanging motionless almost instantly.
Quern had first seen that trick used by a Kung Fu practitioner working on his kicks in his dorm room, when he was going to Purdue.
“Joe Aaron is coming out to interview us tomorrow. Be sure to be here,” Quern told Debra.
Quern told Debra what he knew about Aaron. The man was from New Mexico. He came to work on the local Evansville newspaper in 1957. He wrote a human-interest column until he died in 1986.
Quern’s mother was boilerplate odd. Whenever Joe Aaron’s name was mentioned, she would invariably declare defiantly, “He isn’t as good as Ernie Pyle!”
It was debatable if Ernie Pyle was a better writer. Such things were highly subjective. Quern had read some of Pyle’s work and he found him rather dry. He supposed that back when WWII was an ongoing thing, that it might have added a bit of poignancy to Pyle’s work.
That was not the main point. The point was, Quern’s mother reacted to any one of a number of verbal stimuli with exactly the same response—word for word—even in instances separated by years—just like a Stepford Wife.
There was also the rather bizarre assumption, that having said that Aaron wasn’t as good as Pyle, that EVERYTHING that could possibly be said about Aaron had just been said.
Was Aaron a good; bad or indifferent writer? Was he worth reading? How did his little vignettes make you feel?
“Dumbass! You weren’t listening! Joe Aaron isn’t as good as Ernie Pyle. Ask me anything else about him, and I will repeat—if you’re that stupid, to need a repeat!”
Not that Quern’s mother ever came out and said this. She would just clam up and refuse to say anything if you continued to pursue the topic.
At any rate, Aaron had long wanted his column to be nationally syndicated. Scripps-Howard had bought the Evansville paper in 1986 and Aaron’s column was going to be nationally syndicated…
Like Moses looking at the promised land across the River Jordan, but unable to cross over, Aaron had died that same year.
Quern couldn’t remember if Aaron got to see a few of his column’s nationally syndicated or not.
Anyway, Quern got the local paper to send Aaron out to interview the 10-year old knife maker who was already a master smith.
Aaron ended up getting three articles out of one visit—on his own initiative. Quern just wanted his knife-making skills showcased. Aaron was also fascinated to find out that Quern was a gifted artist whose work had already been published on the cover of “Analog” and on several book covers.
Aaron did a feature about Quern the knife-maker; a second article on Quern the precocious artist and a third about a 9-year old little girl diligently turning out Britvas.
Quern ladened Aaron with an example of all of his knives. He included an extra dozen of his Balisong Knives and Balisong manuals. Debra gave Aaron one of the old Britva sets that included a different Britva for each day of the week, as well as a good quality razor strap to strop them. She also included a dozen single Britva and razor straps.
The idea was that Aaron would pass out the knives; manuals and Britvas to his co-workers and spread Quern and Debra’s reputation.
As long as Aaron was there, Quern gave him a good tweak. He gave Aaron 49-extra IQ points. Never mind any more. People that were Aaron’s age were set in their ways and more IQ wouldn’t necessarily be put to use…
But also, he was afraid that too much IQ might cause the man to lose touch with his “Common-Man” readers.
Quern fixed a number of health issues that the man had. Life was uncertain, but Quern should have added at least 30-years to the man’s life expectancy.
He increased his typing speed by 50% and increased his accuracy by 25%. That should make his job somewhat less tedious.
He gave him a few languages. Given the man’s Western roots, he gave him Spanish; Tex-Mex—a dialect that both speakers of American and Spanish speakers are sometimes befuddled by; several Indian languages and German.
Aaron had worn glasses, but now he had 20/13 tetrachromatic vision—just like Elmira.
Quern also made Aaron a master of fancy Balisong and Karambit handling. Some judicious showing off in the newsroom would speed up the sales of Quern’s Knife-handling manuals and help popularize the Balisong.
Aaron didn’t die of a heart attack in 1986 in this timeline. He died in a car crash in 1992.
When Quern heard about Aaron’s demise, he was saddened. It underlined that tomorrow was promised to no one and that there are many slips between the cup and the lip.
Quern had no promise of tomorrow either. He had no fear of death, but he had something that he wanted to accomplish on this Earth before he left. He resolved to be even more cautious in the future—whenever caution wasn’t cowardice.
‘At least Aaron had 6 more years. I’m sure that those 6-years meant a lot to his family.’ Quern had thought sadly.
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Post by rvm45 on Oct 7, 2022 11:24:52 GMT -6
Chapter Ten
21 434
1968
Quern’s cousin visited in August of 1968 instead of 1967.
Bertram was older than Quern’s father. He come from an olde tyme plantation family. His mother had raised him like a wealthy Southern Planter and gave him the best schooling, but by the time Bertram got his Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering, the family’s residual fortune was pretty much spent.
Nonetheless, he had far more high-level social connections than any rank-and-file working-class dude.
How he had ever met and married Quern’s blood cousin—who was not at all wealthy, or upper-class—was a mystery to Quern.
Bertram was a bit of an eccentric inventor and entrepreneur and he didn’t limit himself to electronic inventions. He never made any money off of his inventions though.
Quern had often seen Bertram’s innovations make good money for people who either copied Bertram’s design, or more probably, came up with the same idea independently—a decade or even a generation after the idea had flopped for Bertram.
Quern wasn’t positive, but he had the impression that Bertram was a wee-mite lazy. Whether or not that was a deciding factor as to why his money-making schemes didn’t succeed, Quern couldn’t say. He did think that it was fair to say that Bertram had no great talent as an entrepreneur.
Bertram had an IQ of 191 and he often bragged about it. His son Beauregard—who was a year older than Quern—had a very high IQ himself—173—but he always felt inferior to his father.
Beau later majored in business. He had once told Quern that he would have preferred being a scientist, but if his father couldn’t become a famous scientist, with his higher IQ, then what chance did Beau have?
Ach Ja! Bertram never got a PhD and he wasn’t a scientist or even a cutting-edge engineering researcher. It really was not a valid comparison—but there you had it.
Anyway, the father and son left Quern’s workshop with 79 extra IQ points each; a bunch of language and business law courses and…
Quern downloaded a bunch of patents; computer programs; mathematical formulas and manufacturing processes. When Apple introduced the Apple 1 in 1976, Mason Industries would come out with a computer from the 1990’s, stealing a huge march on Steve Jobs.
“Quern, I can file a flurry of patents. Very few people will see what I’m setting the stage to create. That ain’t too hard. What is hard is raising investment capital and still keeping quiet about what we’re doing,” Bertram had told Quern.
“Did you know that your mother left a secret; special trust fund for you, that you couldn’t access until you were 45-years old? She was afraid that you might piss your inheritance away, if you hadn’t tasted poverty a bit before you came into your fortune. There is a big ass; old-style plantation house; about 750-acres—including 800 pecan trees and a huge peach orchard—and what should come to well over $16-million, after taxes,” Quern said.
“Really!?! Is that true?” Bertram asked.
“Well, the part about your mother is bullshit. The plantation and the money are real enough. It should be quite enough capital to get you started. If not, there is more where that came from,” Quern said.
“Send anyone who is pivotal to your organizational phase, to come see me. I can give them 49 or 59 extra IQ points; some useful skills and I can guarantee that they will never betray any trade secrets. When you get to the manufacturing stage…” Quern said.
“Well I can vet about 16-to-20 people per day, for loyalty. It will take me about a month to get you a workforce of 500 people—not counting folk from the Darkside,” Quern said.
Seeing Bertram’s puzzled face, Quern added:
“The Darkside—supervision—non-unionized workers. By the way, your company will be union—I can’t abide SCAB companies,” Quern said.’
“Georgia is a ‘Right-to-Work’ state,” Bertram interjected.
“My plant won’t be! At any rate, it will be three or four years, but let me know a couple of months ahead of time, when you get ready to open a factory. I’ll come down and ‘organize’ your workforce for you,” Quern said.
“Be aware, I ain’t into slavery. Your workers may malinger. They may quit without notice. They may tell you to kiss their ass. The one thing that they won’t do, is reveal a damned thing about your product or your manufacturing processes,” Quern said.
The four of them went to see a liar…er, a lawyer. He drew up a contract and notarized it. Quern and Debra each received an 11% share in the newly formed corporation— “for valuable services rendered.”
That left 78% —51% went to Bertram. A corporation needed an unassailable head. As long as Quern could tweak, he didn’t have to fear Bertram going off-script, regardless of how many shares that he owned and controlled.
That left 27% of the company for Beauregard. Upon Bertram’s death—assuming that the other three were all still alive. Quern and Debra would both inherit another 11% each—for a total of 22% each. Beauregard would have the other 56% of the company.
************ *************** ***********************
“What was that all about—a contract and everything?” Debra asked when the two of them were alone.
“You won’t believe how computers are going to remake the world over the next 30-years. If Bertram manages to get his factory up and running in a timely fashion, I’ve speeded up the process by about 15-years,” Quern said.
“In 20-years, those shares that you have, will make you a multi-billionaire,” Quern said.
There was a steady stream of people heading to Quern’s workshop to get tweaked over the next three years. Bertram simply paid the engineers a hefty bonus to go have a “Technical Consultation” with an expert that he knew.
When they walked in, they assumed that Quern was just someone the mysterious expert had hanging around—son; nephew; janitor; protégé—just whatever.
They walked out with improved intelligence; a burning vision for the future of computers and computing and an absolute inability to share any inconvenient secrets.
1972
“Finally!” Quern exclaimed.
He sat looking at the Revolver that he had just made. It looked very much like the olde tyme H&R Autoejector Topbreak. Only Quern had given it an ambidextrous Webley-style latch and internally, he had replaced some of the less reliable leaf-springs with coil springs.
Coil springs were fairly new when the old H&R’s were designed and no one thought to utilize them. He did not replace the mainspring with a coil spring, however. It is far easier to get a sweet trigger-pull with a flat mainspring.
Quern’s revolver was upsized to be a .45 ACP Six-Shooter though. The Revolver had horn grips—from a cow, collected from the local abattoir. It had a bobbed hammer—Quern had no desire to ever shoot a Double-Action Revolver by thumb-cocking it.
In his past life, Quern had often poked fun at GLOBS—Gun-Like OBjects—things that could be handguns, if they only had a shiny finish.
Blue—Bright Blue—was okay. It was just that it wore off so quickly. Frosted and bead-blasted finishes—not to mention parkerized finishes—made Quern want to spit.
He’d made a few .32 ACP Revolvers previously, as prototypes. They wasted less material, when he wasn’t successful in his builds—and he had made a couple of clunky .45 ACP Revolvers—but this was the first one that was completely satisfactory in all ways.
“Why are you so excited?” Debra asked.
“The Samurai said that ‘The Katana is the soul of the Samurai.’ The Samurai had a system to turn men into warriors—though they weren’t without a few flat sides to their wheel.”
“Since sabers went out of fashion in the late 1800’s, Western man hasn’t had a good way to train to be a warrior,” Quern said.
“Aren’t soldiers warriors?” Debra asked.
“A man can be a Semi-Truck Driver and a Certified SCUBA Diver—but one doesn’t imply the other. Unless someone is in one of the elite forces, I imagine that trying to diligently follow the Way of the Warrior at all times, would be a detriment to his military career,” Quern said.
“Anyway, right now Jeff Cooper is busy formulating ‘The Modern Technique.’ 'The Modern Technique’ is half of the path of Modern Day Bushido,” Quern said.
Quern stopped to think for a moment.
“We tend to think of swords as mystical things—partly because it is “The Way of the Sword’ that separates warriors from mere commoners.”
“There is Excalibur; Gram; Ame-no-Habakiri and Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi. Maybe magic; mystical swords are indestructible—but the sad truth is that swords are meant to be carried a lot, but used seldom.”
“When a sword sees actual combat use, it becomes a consumable item. After two or three battles—if that—your sword—your qualification as an elite—will look like a saw blade. It will be ready to break at a mere touch,” Quern said.
“That’s fine if you’re a noble with access to an armory of spare swords—but what if you’re out in the boonies? A swordsman without a sword, is no longer a swordsman,” Quern said,
“Semiautomatic pistols are somewhat more durable, but if you use a Revolver enough to really master it, you will have worn it out—or at least it will be inaccurate and unreliable.”
“In the Cultivation novels that I used to like to read, they had something called ‘Sword Intent’—kinda like a psychic mental attack in the shape of a sword. They could point their first two fingers to create a virtual sword blade—sometimes 10 or 20 feet long, or turn a raindrop; a leaf or a blade of grass into a dangerous cutting weapon,” Quern said.
“What need for a sword in the hand, when there is a sword in the heart?” was their motto.
“I made my Revolver with very few tools. Anyone with the book that I’m going to write, and the determination, can make a Revolver like this one. If you shoot it until it wears out—so what? You made the first one, you can make a second—third—fourth,” Quern said.
“The laws took your Revolver away? Even when you don’t have a Revolver here,” Quern gestured with his hand.
“You can have a Revolver here,” Quern pointed to his head.
“Once you’ve made two or three, you will always know how, even if they confiscate your manual,” Quern said.
“I use an OFW torch, but you could forge the parts. Ammunition is the hardest thing to make. Bullets can be cast. Brass cases can be formed in a home workshop, if you know how. Gunpowder—nitrocellulose—can be safely manufactured,” Quern said.
“The metal primer cups and primer anvils can be formed as well. I have never found a home recipe for priming compound that I trust. You shouldn’t trust them either, if you have a fixation on having all ten fingers and both of your eyes, when they lay you in the casket,” Quern said.
“There are ways to put a battery and a tiny ignition coil in the Revolver’s butt and a tiny spark plug in each cartridge case—but that is very labor intensive…”
“Or you could scavenge primers from law and military Pistol and Rifle ammunition. Firearms may be very tightly controlled, but some ammunition should work its way onto the black market, if the demand gets high enough,” Quern said.
“I want to combine Cooper’s Modern Technique and my fabrication techniques to create a Do (Long O)’ a Tao or a Way. There are supposed to be 3300 different Taos—but that is just a poetic way to say that there are innumerable Taos.”
“I have created Riborubā no michi—The Way of The Revolver,” Quern said proudly.
************* **************** **********************
“Debra, we are both sophomores in high school. Your IQ is 201 and mine is off-the-scale…” Quern started.
“What is your actual IQ Quern?” Debra interrupted.
“They have never actually tested anyone with an IQ of 300, but there are a couple of people that they sincerely believe—based on evidence beside test results—that there have been at least a couple of people with an IQ of 300. Compared to those people, my IQ should be about 420—but there are no tests to accurately measure my mental powers. Even the backers could only give me an approximation,” Quern said.
“Anyway, we are both spinning our wheels here. Let’s apply to Purdue for early admittance. I have no doubt that they will approve our application, if I have to tweak every damned one of the faculty. EE…I met a couple of geniuses who started college at Purdue when they were 17,” Quern said.
“I’ll be 16 by Fall and old enough to drive. You’ll be 15. There ain’t like that big a difference,” Quern said.
“Why Purdue?” Debra asked.
“I failed out of Purdue three times in my last life, but I think that I have enough IQ now to handle whatever comes up—especially since I’ll be majoring in art,” Quern said.
“Look Debra, Doogie Howser notwithstanding…”
“Who is Doogie Howser?” Debra interrupted.
“It was a television show, in my original timeline, about a 14-year old Medical Doctor. I never watched the show. I’ve explained to you about Chaos Theory. They may not make the show in this timeline—just cause all kinda things done been altered,” Quern explained.
“Anyway, Doogie Howser was fiction. They turned Isaac Asimov down when he applied to Medical School—lack of maturity, or some such bullshit,” Quern said.
“Why bullshit?”
‘“Immaturity’ is whatever you’re pointing at when you say the word. Give me any issue and I can make a Devil’s Advocate argument that either side is the ‘Immature’ side,” Quern said.
“Now please let me finish what I’m trying to say. I’m going to Purdue to try to get an MFA. I should be able to do that in 8-years without cheating. Give it 9-years at the outside If I can’t do it in 9-years, then I’ll cheat,” Quern said.
“You should definitely be able to get a Masters in biochemistry in 8 or 9-years. Then you can apply to Indiana University to go to medical school and I will accompany you,” Quern said.
“Why biochemistry?”
“I can download quite a few drugs for you. You can use the formulas to help people a great deal—and make some cutter as well. You can shout:
"‘Here is the cure for Lackabucks Disease!’
"But without the right qualifications, it may take a very long time to get a pharmaceutical company to test your shit. Also, you should try to take a few extra courses in chemical engineering, cause I’m gonna download some cheats for you to create some otherwise expensive and difficult to synthesize drugs,” Quern said.
“My point is: I have a nice house in West Lafayette—gym; library; workshop; art studio; indoor swimming pool; sauna—and a big-ass chemistry lab filling a whole 3.5 car garage…
“I own a Mansion; “I Forget the Price. “Ain’t Never Been There; “They Tell Me Its Nice,” Quern sang.
“We will both be old enough to get married in Kaintuck by August—though you’ll need parental permission. Marry me and then we can live in my as yet unseen mansion together—without any hint of scandal.” Quern said.
“Make me feel like I’m Jerry Lee Lewis,” Quern said.
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Post by feralferret on Oct 7, 2022 15:11:15 GMT -6
Very entertaining chapter. I love the Joe Walsh lyrics.
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Post by rvm45 on Oct 10, 2022 13:53:58 GMT -6
Chapter Eleven
24 026
1973
Debra and Quern were married and they moved into their new home in West Lafayette.
“Debra, I’m not at all sure that I want a child. In my last lifetime, most of my life, I really thought that I did. I never could find a woman that would have me though and then when I married you, you were past the child-bearing years.,” Quern said.
“In later years, I came to the conclusion that it was probably just as well, that I never sired a son,” Quern said.
“Why do you think that?” Debra asked.
“Take my father, for instance. I loved him dearly, when I was a little boy. I later concluded that there was no pleasing the man, short of 100% capitulation—98% wouldn’t cut it—it had to be 100%,” Quern said.
“Just for instance, he loathed manly hair and muttonchop sideburns. He never missed making a cutting and sarcastic remark about my hair and sideburns, at least once, every single day of his life, from the time that I was old enough to defy him and let my hair grow and raise facial hair, until the day that he died. He’d imperiously—and futilely— ‘order’ me to cut my hair and shave my sideburns, even after he no longer had the authority,” Quern said.
“I’m ashamed to say that I sometimes tried to compromise. I’d go to the castrator…er, the barbers…and have five or six inches of hair that I was loath to part with, cut off. I’d leave the barber’s chair with tears in my eyes,” Quern said.
“When I got home, he’d swear—I mean literally swear to God on a stack of Bibles—that he couldn’t see even a tiny bit of difference.” Quern said.
“Like he couldn’t see the difference between hair down on my shoulders and hair cropped even with the bottom of my ears! I often told him that he wanted me to wear an ROTC style haircut, and nothing else would satisfy—and then he’d be disingenuous and confound ROTC-approved hair styles with the buzzcuts the military gives folks in basic training—and tell me that I was going to extremes,” Quern said.
“In my old age, with plenty of time to ruminate, I realized that I was never anything but an avatar to my father, to hopefully garner him vicarious success and prestige and cause his peers to envy him. A sad part is, that even if I had been his perfect little boot-licker, his peers didn’t give a shit,” Quern said.
“But while my father was an extreme case, though not a rare one, aren’t all fathers that way?” Quern asked.
“I would question my existence, if after my careful indoctrination, my son wanted to wear his hair like a sissy-shave-tail to be like his peers, or because it was easier to take care of. I might have a stroke, if a son of mine asked me to cut the legs off of his jeans, so he could be kuhl,” Quern said.
“I wouldn’t nag till Hell froze over, the way that my father did, but I’d definitely be chalking up some big—some very big—life disappointments,” Quern said.
“I mean, if I think that I have a better way to live, why wouldn’t I try to raise my son that way? If I don’t think my way is any better than the nidderlings, why bother being a parent? The nidderlings procreate plenty of little nidderlings without my input. Then again, how fair is it, to want to raise a bunch of little Querns?” Quern said.
“What is your point?” Debra asked.
“Using contraception is presumptuous. It is saying to God, ‘I don’t know what you have planned, but my wants, needs and plans take priority over your will, God!’ Sure, God gives us free-will and we go against God’s perfect will much of the time, but using birth control is a particularly egregious usurping of God’s prerogatives,” Quern shrugged.
“So, you want to let nature take its course and take our chances?” Debra said.
“Yeah. I’m not sure if I want you to bear children or not. I do believe that it is something best left to God. If you have children, I will do my fallible best for them,” Quern replied.
************** **************** ********************
For most school’s that used semesters rather than quarters, 12-hours per semester was considered being a “full-time” student.
Quern didn’t know of a single major that required less than 120-credit hours to graduate. Some majors took almost 140-credit hours. If one only took the bare minimum, it would take at least 5-years to graduate.
While he never took a survey, Quern guessed that 17-to-18-credit hours per semester was about average. People did take heavier loads than that.
Now Quern had graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from ISUE at the age of 65 and he’d spent over 20-years doing art. The difference in the quality of art instruction between ISUE and Purdue was not as great as the relative size of the two universities would indicate.
Anyway, the greater part of artistic success lies in talent and diligence and not so much in the quality of instruction. Note: “Artistic Success” denotes fulfilling one’s artistic vision. It does not take into account how popular an artist is with the public.
Quern had also practiced drawing and painting for several hours daily, during the 11-years from 1962 to 1973.
Quern had set earning an MFA from Purdue as one of his life’s goals this time around—just because.
As the proverb says:
“A Wise Man can learn, even from the Greatest of Fools. A Fool cannot learn, even from the Wisest of Men.”
Quern was willing to acquire any new insights into his art that came his way, but he didn’t think that taking extra classes would help his cause.
There was no need to take languages—Quern could speak over a couple-hundred languages well enough to pass for a native. There was no need to take extra courses in Computers; Mathematics; Physics; Mechanical or Electrical Engineering—Quern had sufficient knowledge—though not the certifications—to teach any of the college’s classes in those subjects—even the graduate courses.
Quern settled in to take the comfortable minimum of classes to graduate in four-years. He had side projects to occupy his time.
It was important for Debra to take any number of extra courses, so that she could later rationalize her pharmaceutical accomplishments—but the first three or four semesters were a bottleneck.
All the higher Mathematics classes had freshman Calculus as a prerequisite. Until a prospective Chemist or Biochemist had taken freshman chemistry and sophomore organic chemistry, they lacked the prerequisites to take more advanced Chemistry Courses. One couldn’t take Computer Assembly Languages—such as they were in 1973, until he had taken Programming I & Programming II.
There was also no need for Debra to take any languages. Science students needed to learn French; Russian or German. Generally, one had to have mastered two of the three to get a PhD.
The university did have a testing program to establish competency in languages that one had already mastered. Debra tested out of German; Russian; Spanish; Latin and Hungarian. She also spoke; read and wrote Japanese; Cantonese; Korean; Hindi; Urdu; Yoruba; Igbo; Hebrew; Afrikaans; Swahili; Icelandic; Gaeilge; Gaelic; Croatian; Esperanto, toki pona and Mandarin, but the university didn’t test for those languages.
“What about French?” Debra had asked.
“If you want to learn the language of the inventors of the Metric System, you’ll have to do it on your own dime. I don’t deal with such perversions!” Quern had told her.
************* *************** ************************
Quern went to the first day of Judo Club. The university had a martial art room—maybe eighteen-feet by thirty; with a colorless gray wrestling mat covering the floor and thick padding going up to five-foot tall on the walls. There was a single martial art style heavy bag hanging from the ceiling.
Quern and Debra exercised regularly. It was less essential with the tweaks their bodies had, but it still helped maintain peak condition. Quern had been doing his Hatha Yoga and Tai Chi exercises every day since the age of five.
Debra was far less perfect physically than Quern and could use the exercise more.
Quern had a martial art simulator in his brain. Every night as he slept, an avatar of Quern battled against a number of virtual avatars, who used a variety of martial arts. Quern could tune into the virtual combat, should he desire to, but his conscious participation was not required.
It was much like, if someone had taken the very best Chess AI set from 2020 and given it to an aspiring Chess Master in 1975—one whose skills were languishing due to lack of opponents on a daily basis.
Let’s say that our Chess player spent three or more hours daily, playing the Chess AI.
His skills would definitely grow, but AI opponents were a bit wooden and different from an actual opponent. The better one got, the more that this mattered.
{Everyone who aspired to be a Chess Master used the AI’s in the 2000’s, so there would be no hidden advantage to our hypothetical student of the game, in playing against an AI in the 21st Century.}
Quern’s virtual martial art display was somewhat the same—though Quern could fight much more often, in realistic combat scenarios that would have been dangerous in real life.
But Quern’s simulations would soak up any real-world data like a sponge and use it to improve and upgrade its simulations in the future.
Quern didn’t so much join the Judo Club as he coopted it. Quern sponsored a Judo team. The team members were invited to stay in the apartment complex that Quern provided for them—at no charge—thus saving on dorm fees. There was a cafeteria on the first floor of the apartment that served free; nutritious and protein-rich meals.
Quern’s people were all provided a full scholarship and those part-way through had all of their college debt repaid. There were even some graduate students in the club as well.
He didn’t shun anyone. If too many people wanted to join, he’d simply build another apartment house—or two.
The schedule was a bit demanding though. The members all rolled out of bed at 4:30 am every weekday morning and they spent two-and-a-half hours on the mat, in the deep; windowless basement; practicing Judo hard. They practiced for four-hours on Saturday as well.
The Judo room was much larger and much more colorful than the one in the Co-Recreational Gymnasium.
Monday; Wednesday and Friday, the club trained with weights in the afternoon, for about an hour. Quern favored the simple 5x5x5x5 system—five sets of five repetitions with relatively heavy weights; doing the five most basic movements—and a couple or three assistance exercises thrown in—mostly for two-sets-of-eight.
The last “5” meant that while most would see results far faster, that anyone who persisted for five-years would build a very strong; muscular and impressive body.
There was a tunnel connecting the Judo Room to Quern’s basement, so that he didn’t even have to go outside to walk to the training room.
Quite a few folks decided that the training was too demanding, even for a free college education. Quern never stopped anyone from leaving, he just muzzled them from ever speaking about their experiences in the club.
Of course, some people’s grades might have fallen, due to all the time and energy invested in Judo—so Quern gave everyone on his team at least 59 extra IQ points and downloaded any crucial skills. Not only did Quern’s people seldom drop out, they all graduated with a high GPA.
************ **************** *********************
Quern walked into the cafeteria of the Judo Dorm the first day. All of his prospects were sitting at the cafeteria tables diligently examining the contracts in front of them.
“You had better lose the cigarette, before the owner gets here,” one of the girls said to Quern.
Quern laughed.
“I am the owner,” Quern said.
He moved to stand behind the little half-podium that turned a table into an impromptu pulpit.
“I was just told that I ought to lose my cigarette. You’ll note that there are ash trays at all the tables. I know that you, and you and you smoke. I’ve seen you walking around campus with a cigarette in your hand,” Quern said while pointing at three of the girls.
He took much less note of what men were doing.
“It is part of the ‘clean-cut’ image that some people want to promogulate—for some propaganda purpose—that athletes don’t smoke. While that is probably ideal, you’d be surprised how many well-known athletes do smoke, in secret. Some just are a little modest, but some are quite hypocritical about it,” Quern said.
“You don’t have to be hypocritical here. Smoke in your room. Smoke in the lounge. Smoke in the cafeteria or the shitters. Don’t smoke in the Judo Room. Those wrestling mats are expensive and I don’t want burn-holes in them,” Quern lectured.
“I am going to interview each of you separately and let you know what you’re getting into before you commit yourself. However, I ain’t gonna cull anyone. If you decide to join, you’re in,” Quern said.
“There are eighteen people here. There would be less than that, if I wasn’t quite persuasive. If you want to tell your friends that here is an easy way to get a free college education—it isn’t, it will entail a good deal of hard work…” Quern said.
“But I don’t care if your friends don’t give a shit abut Judo—as long as they’re willing to put in the hours on the mat and in the gym—good, hard-working hours,” Quern said.
“What is the point of your Judo Club?” Debra asked Quern.
“I don’t know. Maybe no point but to indulge myself,” Quern shrugged.
*************** ***************** *********************
1974
In Quern’s first lifetime, human cadavers were in relatively short supply and one had to be some sort of Medical Major—as a general rule—to qualify for one of the limited classroom slots, to dissect a human cadaver.
Quern thought that the hands-on anatomy experience would help strengthen his knowledge of human anatomy, for art.
When he was already an old man, he noted that University of Evansville offered a human cadaver dissection class during the Summer. They didn’t bother with qualifications.
They figured that if one had $3800 to spend to take the class (Or maybe it was $4800, Quern couldn’t clearly remember) then he was qualified to take the class.
As always, Quern missed out due to impecuniousness.
The summer of 1974, Quern tweaked the Hell out of a few faculty and made a large donation, to Indiana University to get he and Debra admitted to a cadaver dissection class over the Summer.
They had taken the course four times before Debra even applied to Medical School—the Summers of 1974; 1975; 1977 and 1978.
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Post by feralferret on Oct 11, 2022 0:29:16 GMT -6
Thanks!
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Post by rvm45 on Oct 12, 2022 13:41:39 GMT -6
Chapter Twelve
26 558
Quern had finished writing his book on how to make a Major Caliber Topbreak Revolver.
He used many high-quality black and white airbrush illustrations—the ones that you had to stare at, to be absolutely sure that they weren’t slightly fuzzy, black-and-white photos. There was sufficient machinist as well as exploded isometric drawings. He and Debra were featured in several of the nice color photos. The color photos were mainly for inspiration. While one could certainly steal a march and buy a suitably rifled barrel commercially—at present—Quern showed how to make a small hand rifling machine that could rifle pistol-length barrels in the home workshop. You could even create a polygonal rifled barrel—though it was a lot of extra work.
Quern showed in detail, how to make a treadle metal-working lathe and hand operated metal-shaper like his. He heartily recommended learning OFW welding and practicing enough to get good at it…
But for someone who absolutely could not get a welding set-up, he showed how to largely bolt the lathe and shaper together and how to forge the gun parts that must needs be joined.
Using Quern’s dimensions, one could make a Revolver in .22 LR; .25 ACP; .32 ACP; .380 ACP; 9mm Makarov; 9mm Parabellum; .38 Super; .45 ACP and .44 Special—or .44 Russian for a slightly more compact gun.
Quern sternly warned that while Topbreaks capable of handling high pressure loads were certainly possible, with his design, one should only load the .44 Special to factory levels.
Once again, Quern resorted to a vanity publisher and had archival quality books printed, that couldn’t possibly be sold for what it cost to print them.
He also donated several hundred of the books to libraries in the states that he had decided to concentrate his efforts on: Indiana; Kentucky; Tennessee; Georgia; Mississippi and Alabama.
This necessitated a number of brief sorties to tweak some librarians and make sure that they would accept; display and heartily recommend his books—not just sell them as surplus, at the next yearly book sale.
He quickly followed up his book with a second book on how to make a major caliber Semiautomatic Pistol.
Quern had always been turned off by the occasional Astra 400 that he’d come across—until he’d seen a cut-away; color animation of how the gun worked.
He’d mainly been turned-off by the almost 90-degree; saw-handle grip that made them look like forgotten relics of the Victorian Age.
However, the home gun maker could use any grip angle that he chose to use. The guns were straight blowback and they could handle 9mm; .38 Super and .45 ACP—though the last two would pound the action a bit.
He also gave downsized dimensions to make Pocket Pistols or .22 Target Pistols.
Making the Recoil Spring heavier would relieve the pounding—some. Beefing up the Slide a couple or three ounces helped a lot more.
The design could be simplified. Quern had no use for any sort of Grip Safety—omitting the Grip Safety lowered the part count by a useful amount.
The curious rear-mounted Sear offered some advantages for the home gun maker. Quern gave the Pistol a 1911A1 style “Stirrup” Trigger. It seemed a tad more durable and it made for a smoother Trigger pull.
The original Thumb Safety worked ass-backwards—up for “FIRE” and down for “SAFE.” Quern reversed the action of the Thumb Safety and made it a bit more prominent and ambidextrous.
He didn’t change the Heel-Clip Magazine Retention. Reloading speed was not that important in a self-defense Pistol and anyway, a skilled operator—using the proper technique—could reload the Heel-Clip System fairly quickly.
While Quern showed how to form and weld magazines in the home workshop, in some detail, his Model 400 was set up to use standard 1911A1 Magazines for .45 ACP and .38 Super and Browning Highpower Magazines for the 9mm Parabellum.
If Quern’s pistols were offered as commercial products, one might argue that they were a bit on the fragile side—though Quern had yet to commission any destruction testing of his Pistols. Maybe they weren’t quite as fragile as they appeared.
The thing was, for the man who had mastered making the Quern Revolver or the Quern 400, if his gun wore out, he could simply make another. In fact, it made good sense to have two or three on deck, just in case something went wrong.
Quern had mailed Balisongs; Push-Daggers and Karambits—along with copies of his forging and knife-fighting books to both Jeff Cooper and Elmer Keith.
As both of the men were very popular gun-writers, it wasn’t unprecedented for them to get unsolicited gifts. Elmer Keith had even praised Quern’s Balisong—giving it one small paragraph in the middle of one of his editorials.
“Paladin Press” and “Soldier of Fortune” magazine wouldn’t come out until 1976 or 1977—assuming that the chaos effect occasioned by Quern’s actions, didn’t somehow delay or prevent their appearance.
However, one very important thing would happen in 1976—again, assuming that the timeline hadn’t diverged too much. Jeff Cooper would host the first classes at “The American Pistol Institute”—later to be known as “Gunsite.”
Quern was willing to tweak and pull strings until his fingers bled, if necessary, to get him and Debra admitted to the very first year API classes.
1976
Their Junior year had ended. Quern and Debra would both be ready to graduate in May of 1977. Debra would have a BS while Quern would have a BA.
They were both approved for graduate school a year before graduation—which was no surprise. They both had 6.0 averages and Debra would graduate with honors—having taken over 20 credit hours per semester her last two years.
If that hadn’t been enough to convince someone, there was Quern’s ability to tweak. He didn’t leave anything to chance. He tweaked everyone who had even the slightest influence on who got to go to graduate school.
Quern was working towards his MFA while Debra had been admitted directly into the doctorate program.
It was time to head to Arizona to take Saint Cooper’s Pistol Shooting Class.
************** ************** **********************
If you had asked Quern, of all living men, who he admired most, it would have been a toss-up between Jeff Cooper and Bill Holmes.
Nonetheless, Quern was a free-wheeling iconoclast and he wasn’t willing to hide his light under a bushel to make a good impression on his hero.
When they first met, Quern was wearing black jeans and cowboy boots and an expensive gray Stetson in the Cherokee style—meaning that the brim was flat—Quern’s drooped slightly in front and back—rather than having turned-up brims on the side, like a cowboy hat. Quern also wore his habitual mirrorshades.
All that might have been well and good, but Quern also wore a bright violet-colored silk shirt with voluminous belled sleeves and about a dozen bead necklaces.
Quern didn’t go in for junk jewelry. His beads were semi-precious gems like turquoise; jade; ivory and amber and .30 and .40 caliber balls of brass; gold or silver. He also wore a few miniature ivory sculptures the size of peach pits, that he had carved from hippo tusks.
He must have looked like one of the hated hippies to Saint Cooper.
Then Debra was by Quern’s side. He had no idea what the Colonel thought about miscegenation, but it was one of Quern’s favorite indoor sports.
“My name is ‘Quern’—like the millstone. This is my wife, ‘Debra’,” Quern said.
They shook hands briefly. Cooper had said in “Principles of Personal Defense” that it was a poor practice to let a stranger have a firm grip on your right hand, on the street. Cooper apparently felt comfortable enough on his home territory, with a student that had been vetted, to shake hands.
Quern was relieved. He needed physical contact to do a good download, though he could tweak someone enough to let him touch them, if necessary.
“I wanted to show you my weapon. I made it myself and wrote a book telling others how to make their own,” Quern said, while handing the broken-open Topbreak to Cooper.
Then Quern did his download.
First of all, he gave the man another 79 points of IQ. Who couldn’t use a bit more intelligence?
Cooper had mentioned speaking Spanish with a German that he’d met, because he didn’t speak German and the German did not speak American.
He gave Cooper German—Russian too. That should let him keep up with what the Soviets were up to, a bit better.
HMMMmmnnn…?
Italian; Portuguese; Catalan and make sure that his Spanish is up to native-speaking standards. Icelandic; Croatian; Esperanto and Gaeilge—cause everyone should know Gaeilge. Hebrew, in case Cooper ever decided to visit the Holy Land and Afrikaans might come in handy on his next trip to Africa.
Quern knew that Cooper had a master’s degree in history. It was a shame that he never received a PhD. He was certainly worthy.
Anyone who was a historian could probably benefit from knowing Clerical and Classical Latin and Ancient Greek. Throw in Old Norse—that was why Quern had included Icelandic—it was so similar to Old Norse, that it would be a waste not to include it. Add Old English and Middle English.
Now, Quern had heard it suggested that Cooper had a lingering dislike of the Japanese and Japanese Culture dating back to his time in WWII.
Well, people had a right to their opinions. If Cooper wished to look down on Japan and Bushido, he was entitled to—but in the future, he could look down on these things from a far more informed position.
Quern gave Cooper Japanese; Korean; Cantonese and Mandarin—including the ancient forms of those languages. He also downloaded Myamoto Musashi’s classic “Book of Five Rings”; Yamamoto Tsunetomo’s “Hagakure”; “The Sword and The Mind” and a score of writings by various Samurai.
Finally, Quern downloaded the contents of his three books.
Cooper had died in 2006 at the age of 86 in Quern’s timeline. It was hard to improve on that…much. Quern improved the man’s eyesight to 20/13 with tetrachromacy—same as Elmira’s. He also tweaked his hearing a great deal—as an Olde Tyme shooter who’d been in two wars, the man had quite a bit of noise—induced hearing loss.
Then he presented Cooper with several of his Pistols—including a tiny 5-shot .32 ACP; A 5-shot .38 Super with 2-inch barrel; a 6-shot .38 Super with 3-inch barrel; a 5-shot .45 ACP with 2.5-inch barrel and a 6-shot .45 ACP with a 4.75-inch barrel like the Pistols Quern would use in IPSC matches. He threw in a Quern 400 Semiauto in .45 ACP.
It was legal, under Federal Law, to make firearms for one’s own personal use. It was specifically stated, that one could, on rare occasions, give away or sell a pistol of one’s making. The idea being, that one couldn’t be involved in a commercial operation without the expensive and restrictive licenses.
Presenting someone with a half-dozen pistols as Quern had just done, was stretching the limit of what was a worrisomely subjective criterion anyway.
However, Cooper would never say any more than that the Pistols had been made according to Querns methodology.
His silence about his download and some plugs for Quern’s books were the only compulsions that Quern put on him.
As all the new knowledge settled in Cooper’s brain and then he looked at Quern and said, “I don’t like you.”
“That pains me, because I greatly admire you. I gave you a gift. Use it; abuse it or ignore it—as it suits you,” Quern replied.
Quern hadn’t expected to pick up much at the shooting class. His and Debra’s ability with the Pistol had been tweaked to a level equal to the very best competitive shooters—with better eyesight and faster reflexes than any human who hadn’t contacted the Golden-Eye Retrovirus.
He had expected to enjoy being in the presence of his hero—but something about the tweaking—or perhaps something about Quern himself—had caused Cooper to dislike—yea, even despise Quern. He caught the man glaring at him a couple of times.
Quern had tweaked over a hundred folks by this time—though many of those were small tweaks. He’d never had anyone who’d come out of the process hating him before.
There was far more desire than there was satisfaction in the world and Quern had been disappointed before. As Meatloaf had sang:
“Nothing Really Rocks; “And, “Nothing Truly Rolls; “And, “Nothing’s Ever Worth the Cost.”
Well, Gunsite was down. Quern meant to call on a few other famous gun writers during his and Debra’s Summer Vacation.
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Post by rvm45 on Oct 12, 2022 15:16:37 GMT -6
Shit!!!I recounted. The two of them wouldn't have 4-years and be ready to graduate until 1977.
Don't know HOW IN HELL to fix that without re-writing the whole damned chapter….
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Post by sniper69 on Oct 12, 2022 15:43:19 GMT -6
rvm45 - it's your story - but in all honesty - I didn't even notice until you mentioned it.
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Post by rvm45 on Oct 12, 2022 16:32:25 GMT -6
Fixed with less than 100-words.
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