Chapter 10
Mark: Practical Practice
I concentrated on the golf ball. It washarder than I thought, since from the moment that the club madecontact and sped it away, I had to mentally ‘follow’ it andreacquire the feel before I could gain control. There it was.Wrapping my mind around it, I waited until it was near the top ofits arc and then gave it an extra little boost.
“Woot!” cried Carl, as his shot landed ataround three hundred yards. “I sure got ahold of that one.”
“Well, WE got ahold of that one” Icorrected.
“Whatever. Bring it back for another shot,this is fun.”
Complying with his request, I silently agreedthat it was fun. Happy Gilmore, eat your heart out. After thirtyminutes or so, Linda stood up and said for us to have fun; theywere going to take off. The words were barely out of her mouth whenshe started flying up toward her stream trail, Sara flying besideher. I watched them go until they rounded the first bend of thetrail and then turned my attention back to our tests.
“You seem to have Carl’s golf idea down, butwhat else can you do with it?” Sid queried.
“What did you have in mind?”
“Can you turn it, stop it, or deflect it?Think defensive.” He urged.
“Well,” I started, organizing my thoughts.“Turning and deflecting is part of what I’ve been doing in additionto the distance boost. Carl sucks too much to have had thatmany straight drives here.”
“Hey!” Carl exclaimed, offended.
Laughing, I continued. “Stopping or blockingshouldn’t be too different. Let’s give it a try. Tee it up,duffer.”
Throwing me a dirty look and a rude gesture,Carl complied. Once I acquired contact with his shot, it wasn’treally any different to stop it or turn it down to the ground thanit was to boost it. Only the vectors changed. Blocking would be abit different though.
“Ok, think,” I said to myself. “If you canlift something, then you’re exerting force on it. Theoretically,that same force could be applied without the object there. Ifthat’s the case, then anything that hit the ‘force pocket’ wouldthen come under effect of the field and thereby be affected. Thatmight work.”
Motioning for Carl to hold his next shot, Istarted to set up my field. I picked a spot about twenty yardsahead of us and pretended that there was an object that I was aboutto move. With that spot firmly in mind, I started another mentalmove, this time in the opposite direction. I felt a bit of pressureat the spot where the two forces met and thought that this justmight work after all.
A bit move confident now, I expanded thediameter of the two fields until I had a good sized ‘shield’ inplace. Keeping my focus on it, I gave Carl the thumbs up and wavedfor him to take his shot. The familiar ping announced thelaunch of the golf ball, and we watched it sail off into thedistance.
“You sliced it and missed my shield, noob.Try again.”
Carl grumbled, but teed up another ball. Heaimed and slowly brought the club back. He held the pose for a fewseconds and then let loose. He then ducked as his shot, this timeflying straight, hit my shield and bounced right back toward him. Iwas too surprised at the success of this experiment to grab it onthe rebound.
“That seemed to work,” I said in triumph,“any other requests?”
“Try that a few more times and see if you canset up your force field on the fly. If you were in combat, youwould rarely get the opportunity to set it up in advance.” Sidreplied.
Nodding, I had Carl whack a few more balls atmy existing shield so I could get a better feel for the neededcontrol. Once that was set firmly in mind, I modified it. First, Irotated it so that the deflections would go off on a tangent.Successful with that, I made it a bit smaller and practiced withmoving it into the path of the shot. That was a bit trickier, butnot too bad. I could move it around easy enough, but often the ballmoved faster than my reactions could compensate for.
Wanting to see what would happen, I moved mytwo force focal points a bit farther apart. That only took a fewseconds, and as the next shot hit the field, it bounced and fellrather than ricocheting off with most of the original speed.
“That’s a cool one,” Carl said. “It lookedlike I drove the ball into a pile of pillows, whereas the otherones were closer to hitting a brick wall.”
“I think I have this figured out enough fornow, so let’s see if I can set it up in real time like Sidsuggested.”
Carl nodded and said “Sure but grab me a beerfirst, will ya? This is thirsty work.”
Sid chimed in that he wanted one as well so Igrabbed those from the fridge, as well as a Coke for myself. Ididn’t want to blur my focus and reactions. While waiting, Sid teedup a dozen golf balls in a row for the real time test.
Refreshed, I turned to Carl and said,“Engage!” doing my best Jean Luc Picard imitation.
“Dork,” he replied, but proceeded to step upto the first ball.
The first few attempts were bad. I could getthe shield built, but not in time to stop the speeding ball.Deciding to move my focus out farther, I had some better success,but still missed some. I brought the balls back for Sid to set upagain and thought about it. The hard part was building the dualfoci shield that would result in a deflection. If I prepped theshield in advance, maybe I could assemble it faster in the flightpath.
Having the prep work done ahead of time madeit much easier, and I
