“I’m not sure I follow,” I said, admitting my confusion.
“Think of it this way,” Mouse directed. “Imagine the human body – your body – is powered by an internal battery. When you do your dual-Jim thing, the two copies of you don’t each have their own battery; there’s now a single battery powering two of them. So, if that battery could power you alone for, let’s say, an hour, it might only power two Jims for fifteen minutes.”
I nodded. “I think I get it now. The multiple Jims all draw from the same internal resources, but use them up exponentially faster.”
“Pretty much,” Mouse stated. “Explains why you were starving after your copies became unified. Operating in dual-mode drained any energy you got from food in record time.”
“Hmmm,” I wondered aloud. “Not sure how wild I am about an ability that runs a chance of sucking me dry.”
“Like a lot of other powers, practice makes perfect,” BT reminded me.
“I’ll take it under advisement,” I promised. “Anyway, are we about ready to get this souped-up swim cap off me?”
“It’s probably been long enough,” Mouse announced.
Without another word, I pulled the cap off and handed it to BT while Mouse retrieved his laptop from a nearby table. With BT looking over his shoulder, my mentor tapped the screen several times and then appeared to study whatever data had been pulled up.
After a minute or so, he looked at me and said, “Alright, ask your initial question again.”
“Why did Jack lose his powers but I didn’t?” I asked. “I mean, the neural blocker got on both of us, and you said it was effective even upon contact with the skin.”
“Okay, there’s a couple of reasons why you may not have lost your powers,” Mouse explained. “First and foremost, based on the info we just got from the electrode cap, it doesn’t look like your neural pathways match those tracked by the crown.”
I gave him a dumbfounded look. “What do you mean it doesn’t match? It has to. I lost my powers on Caeles because of what that crown was able to do. Are you trying to say it was all in my head?”
“No one’s saying that, Jim,” BT affirmed. “We’re just saying that the crown’s map of your neural patterns doesn’t sync with the way your brain’s actually wired.”
“And let’s not forget that the neural blocker based on the crown’s data actually worked,” Mouse added. “Assuming Jack’s synaptic patterns mimicked yours to some extent, it implies that the info from the crown was accurate.”
“So it’s not the crown that’s the real mystery,” I concluded. “It’s me.”
“Somewhat,” BT agreed. “Some time between when the crown did its work and now, your neural pathways changed.”
“But doesn’t that happen naturally?” I asked.
Mouse shook his head. “Not to this degree. What we’re talking about here is extensive.”
“Wow,” I muttered. “You make it sound like some interior decorators didn’t like the feng shui of my brain, so they went in and started moving stuff around and…”
My voice practically died in my throat as I had a sudden recollection of an event from the recent past.
“What is it?” asked BT.
“Back on Caeles,” I began, “I had a chance encounter with someone who seemed to be a future version of me. He went into my head and poked around some.”
“I remember you mentioning it,” Mouse said. “Do you think he could have reconfigured your neural pathways?”
I shrugged. “Not sure, but he was incredibly powerful. If pressed for an answer, I’d probably lean towards saying he could.”
“Interesting…” Mouse noted, rubbing his chin.
“Moving on,” I interjected, “you said there was another reason why the neural blocker may not have worked on me?”
“Yes,” Mouse replied, coming back to himself. “There’s a chance that you were inoculated against it.”
“Inoculated?” I echoed. “You mean like a flu shot?”
“Exactly,” BT agreed. “It’s possible that when you were first dosed with a neural blocker on Caeles, it actually immunized you.”
“Well, that’s surprising,” I admitted. “I didn’t think there could be a silver lining regarding my previous experience with neural blockers. I guess you never know.”
“Anyway,” Mouse said, “we can’t prove them one hundred percent, but those are our best guesses regarding why you still have your powers.”
“Okay,” I intoned, accepting their explanation on the neural blocker. “Any idea why my healing power works sporadically? For instance, I could heal Gramps, but not the photographer, Kroner.”
Mouse was silent for a moment, then spoke up. “I have a theory, but it’s pure conjecture.”
“Please share,” I implored. “I’ve got nothing else to go on at the moment.”
“Based on when you’ve told us it manifested, I’d say it’s an emotional response,” Mouse conjectured. “When Queen Dornoccia was dying, when your grandfather was dying… They were both occasions that solicited powerful emotional reactions from you. I think that’s what triggers your healing power.”
“Well, I felt bad about what happened to Kroner,” I countered. “Why couldn’t I heal him?”
“Because I don’t think it’s a voluntary response,” my mentor contended. “I think it’s like tears. Some people can cry on demand, but others can’t. For the latter, crying is strictly an involuntary reaction that they have no control over. I think your healing power is like that. It’s involuntary and doesn’t manifest unless there’s something going on with people you care about.”
My brow knitted in thought. “So you’re saying that deep down inside I don’t care about Kroner or what happened to him.”
“No,” Mouse insisted, shaking his head. “I’m saying you don’t care enough about him. But that’s not surprising seeing as how you basically just met him.”
“I guess that also means I couldn’t have saved Jack after he fell,” I concluded. “Even if I’d tried.”
“Excuse me?” Mouse uttered in disbelief.
“It’s something that’s flitted into my brain every now and then since yesterday,” I said, which was true. It was more of a random thought than anything else, but I had wondered once or twice if I could have gotten to Jack in time to do something for
