A.J. brightened instantly. “Shit yes!” he shouted. “God! Staring me right in the face and I didn’t even see it. Your projection ability, does it come from your emotive center?”

“No. I can keep myself intact while doing it.”

“Fantastic! Jim, you want to be the lab rat?”

“Oh, I suppose,” Jim responded, walking to the far wall. “You have to see everything, and Karen knows my mind better than yours. You know I don’t like doing two thoughts, let alone having someone supplying a third.” Jim rose into the air, along the wall.

“This is for science!” A.J. exclaimed.

“Fuck science! I’m worried about being alive and fully sane when the experiment is over.”

“Have I ever let you down?”

Jim looked at his brother sternly, but said nothing.

“How should we do this?” Karen asked from the floor.

“I’ll give you gravity,” Jim responded, “as that’s the easiest.”

“Okay,” Karen said, rubbing her hands together. “What do I do?”

“First you need the formula. There are several that work, but the best is F equals G times m times m prime over d squared. Just think of that formula with F equal to 2.91 times 10 to the 17th power, and think up.”

“Not 6.003 times 10 to the sixteenth?” A.J. asked.

“We think in metrics, but Karen probably doesn’t. Now when Karen does this, you,” Jim pointed to his brother, “will have to hold on to me, in case I start falling up.”

“Won’t the gravity formula revert to the emotive center entirely?” Karen asked.

“We don’t know,” A.J. said. “This is new ground, remember?”

“Fair enough. You ready up there?”

A.J. floated to his brother, who hovered six inches from the wall, and grabbed his arms. “I’m set,” he said.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Jim added.

Karen thought of the formula as Jim had told her. It took her slightly more than thirty seconds to get it firmly enough into her mind so that she was willing to send it. When she finally did send, she said, “Here it comes.”

Jim tensed, waiting for it to happen. When it did, he quickly slipped from A.J.’s grip and hit the wall behind him, falling ten feet to the ground. Karen released and ran to him, while A.J. let himself down.

“He was out of my grasp before I had time to think,” A.J. said.

Karen didn’t show any sign of having heard. She sat Jim up, and he shook himself in an effort to regain his senses.

“Are you all right?” Karen asked.

Jim shook his head and smiled at her. “The key,” he said, “is to think up, not sideways.”

“He’s all right,” A.J. said.

Karen smiled. “Up,” she said. “Easier said than done.”

“Jim, did you lose gravity before or after hitting the wall?”

Jim stood up and faced his brother, looking only slightly shaken. “Before.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Look at your wall. There are probably skid marks. I slid down the wall.”

“Fair enough. You can still only use a formula once during a single action. Want to try again?”

Jim looked at his brother tiredly. “Sure.”

The next attempt ended with Jim falling towards the far wall. Karen let go, and Jim took over, stopping velocity once he had gravity established. He missed hitting the far wall with the equivalent force of a fall from 70 feet by only six inches.

“Better,” A.J. noted. “There had to be some upward gravity for you to fall that level.”

It was on the third try that Jim remained stationary by his spot on the wall. He smiled, but found no words coming.

“Keep going,” A.J. said. “We’ve gone this far, so go for curved flight.”

Jim nodded. He brought up his grid, and counted his units off to himself. He then thought of x=y squared, and found a parabolic curve on his graph curving sharply to his right. He then added velocity and pushed off.

Jim went out from the wall and started turning immediately to his right. He was so amazed by this fact alone that he forgot about moving the focus of his grid. After progressing about eight feet, he began to spin in place. He became confused and dizzy quickly, and forgot all about velocity, trying to get his graph going again.

After nearly fifteen seconds, his graph moved again, but Jim had lost all physical orientation. He quickly crashed into a wall.

Karen released her hold on him, startled by the crash. Jim regained control of gravity only an inch from the floor. He let himself fall the rest of the way.

A.J. also let himself down. “That was great!” he shouted. “We have to do tests and experiments with both of you. Isolate the empathic element and we could really take this places! Fanfuckingtastic!”

Karen helped Jim sit up, as he was clearly shaken by the experiment. He looked up at A.J., who was taken aback by the exhausted look on his brother’s face.

“You okay?” he asked.

Jim let the words come one at a time. “I need a fucking drink.”

“Second the fucking motion,” Karen added.

A.J. nodded “Fair fucking enough. I’ll drive.”

A.J. drove them to a bar he frequented in Malibu. Although it was the same type of dark room that Jim frequented, he decided immediately it had one feature that brought the bar well below his standards. A customer named Jeff Soszynski.

Jeff had spotted the party of three and accosted them as soon as they had walked in through the front door. That he was drunk was obvious; this bar served no food, and no beer or wine. It was designed for a drinking binge.

Jeff staggered up to the party and pointed at Karen. “When are you coming home?” he asked.

“Your home,” Karen responded, “never. My home doesn’t concern you.”

“You are my wife.”

“Former wife. Never forget that our last names aren’t even the same anymore.”

“You can not claim you feel nothing for me.”

“If you were to stab yourself right now, I would applaud the drama, but I’d let you bleed.”

A.J. looked at Jim. “That was a subtle ‘go fuck yourself’, wasn’t it,” he said.

Jeff stood back and turned to A.J. He had to crane his neck to see A.J.’s face. “Shit,” he muttered, “you’re tall.”

“And you must be short,” A.J. responded.

Jeff turned to Jim, ignoring the comment. “You and I,” he said, “have unfinished business. Put ‘em up.” Jeff raised his fists, in a fighter’s stance.

“Jeff, stop this nonsense,” Karen hissed.

“Nonsense? Woman be still.”

“Mr. Soszynski,” Jim said, straining to be civil, “we are in a public place. Violence is not called for.”

“C’mon, wimp.”

“I’m a public figure, and the press has a habit of following me. I don’t even notice them anymore.”

Karen looked at Jim. He’s trying to bluff him, she thought.

“If I beat the crap out of you,” Jim continued, “I get bad press for a few weeks. In my business bad press is just as good as favorable press.”

Jeff backed up a step.

“Conversely,” Jim went on, “if you wail on me you go to jail.”

“You’re lying,” Jeff said.

“I’m merely thinking of the best interests of all involved.”

“Then let me take my wife home.”

“You don’t have a wife.”

Jim would later reflect to himself that this was not the smartest thing to say. Jeff threw a solid right punch, which Jim barely evaded. Jim didn’t wait for Jeff to recover; he kicked him in the groin. Jeff hardly crouched.

“Jesus!” Jim exclaimed. “Does this man have balls of steel?” He was about to throw a punch when A.J. grabbed him from behind.

“That’s enough,” A.J. said.

Jim looked up to see that a bartender had pinned Jeff, just as A.J. had pinned him.

“No fights,” the bartender said. “A.J., you know better.”

A.J. looked at Jim and Karen. “We’re being asked to leave,” he said. “Want to go to Malibu Park?”

Jim raised an eyebrow. “Sure,” he responded.

A.J. went to the bar and picked up two bottles of Bushmill’s and a bottle of Vodka, placing a one-hundred dollar bill on the bar. He said his thanks to the bartender as they walked out the door.

Once outside, Jim turned to his brother and asked, “Where are we going really?”

“Palisades Park,” A.J. said. “I don’t want that asshole to know where we went.”

Karen looked at them both and shook her head with a smile. “Drive on,” she said.

The three of them were sitting in the park long after midnight. In fact, it was well after two a.m. and after two-thirds of each bottle was gone before the experiments of the day were brought up again.

“God, it was exciting!” A.J. bellowed, mostly at Jim. “I don’t understand why you weren’t shouting or saying something or at least screaming for help.”

“Not for want of trying,” Jim responded. “I simply couldn’t speak. I tried, but the words wouldn’t form.”

“Are you saying you lost the ability to speak?”

“I told you something like this could happen,” Karen responded. “Notice you said the words wouldn’t form. Part of the reasoning process was blocked off.”

“But it came back, right?” A.J. went on. “And all this is just the tip of the ice! We can Fly! Truly fly! By God’s blue hairy balls this is great!”

A.J. danced around the others, drinking his vodka. Both Karen and Jim had finished their bottles, and were paying more attention to each other than to A.J.’s animated movements. Jim had unbuttoned the top button of Karen’s shirt when A.J. interjected himself.

“Hey you two,” he said, “it can wait a few.” He grinned. “Hey! I’m a poet!”

“Go be a poet elsewhere,” Jim said.

“Hey, science comes first. We can fucking fly! Soon we’ll be on to temperature control, heat rays from our eyes, even control over other objects!” A.J. did a back flip; controlled enough for Jim to spot, although Karen thought it normal.

Jim returned his gaze to Karen, who seemed lost in thought. He crawled over to her and began kissing her neck, but Karen asked him to stop.

“Not you too,” he said, pretending to be hurt. Karen silenced him.

“Do you remember the first time we had sex?” she asked.

“Silly question. I get a hard-on every time I think about it.”

“How did you set me down?”

“You’re light. I floated us down to where you were barely an inch up and then I dropped you.”

“But I landed soft. How did you do that?”

A.J. stopped dancing and stared at Karen. “Excuse me?” he asked.

Karen continued to look directly at Jim. “If you can’t externalize your ability, how did you set me down?”

“You mean you soft landed?” Jim answered, bewildered.

A.J. turned to his brother. “You’ve been holding out on me,” he said.

Jim looked up, holding up his palms. “I didn’t realize,” he responded.

“Holy shit! This is amazing! Did it only happen that one time?”

“I think so,” Karen responded. “I haven’t really paid it much attention after that first time.”

“Fucking wild! This I gotta see!”

“Whoa,” Jim said. “Slow down. What are you suggesting?”

“Seeing you two fuck. That’s when it happens, so that’s what I need to see.”

“I’m not sure I could do that, let alone ask it of Karen.”

“I’m not a voyeur for Christ’s sake! This is for science!”

“The answer is no,” Karen said.

A.J. looked to Karen, then to Jim, then back to Karen. He sighed. “My brother I can argue with. You, on the other hand...” He stopped, and resigned himself to losing this one.

Karen thought to look at her watch, then looked up. “I have to be at work at eight,” she said.

A.J. helped them both up. “I’ll drive you back to Jim’s. Crash there.”

“What about you?” Jim asked.

“I’ll go home and contemplate the day. Maybe go rent Citizen Kane. Jim, we have a mastering session in Hollywood at ten.”

As they walked to A.J.’s car, Jim whispered to Karen, “Just sleep tonight?”

Karen grinned Jim’s grin. “Pass up a fuck with a lover like you?” she asked. “Never.”