Chapter 3: One With The Universe

Carl was sitting in the swing in his aunt and uncle's back yard, 'Peggy's Garden' as they called it. He was watching Peggy float in her favorite relaxing pose, a full lotus three feet off the ground. "How the heck are you doing that?"

Peggy opened her eyes and gently floated to the ground. "I simply make myself one with the universe and all things are possible."

"Ehn Yeah, I understand. You say to-may-toes and I say to-ma-toes that makes all kinds of sense." This was the major problem with Carl and Peggy sharing information on magic. She was a true believer. He was not. She saw it all through rose colored glasses. Carl looked for the clear signs of unknown science and technology, ready at any moment to jump in and measure it.

Peggy had been able to put Star Trek level shields around her home. She could make and throw fire balls and float like Buddha. And while nobody had seen them, Carl was sure that any real attempt to get through her "shields" would see her bringing out phasers and photon torpedoes.

Carl thought for a minute, "why not?" With a little thought, he could have had something similar. He had read at least three speculative articles on how to generate gravity fields and to use them for an anti-gravity effect. But all three were absolutely impossible with today's technology. "Darn I've got to get my laboratory fixed back up."

"Good luck with that." Peggy said as she stood up and walked into her house. Carl brought his legs up and stretched out in the swing seat. Propping his head up on the arms of the swing he began to contemplate his place in the universe.

First the shields he thought. There were potentially a dozen ways to do them. Use 'Maxwell demons' to make the molecules of air solidify along a razor edge so that no material substance could penetrate the barrier created. Simply removing all random motion on that edge would do that. But, that would not stop particles smaller than air molecules such as photons from a laser. How about a vibrating electromagnetic field at a frequency so high that it would rip atoms apart? Nah!

He closed his eyes and went to sleep. Alcubierre warp fields surrounded him as he cruised away from earth at multiple times the speeds of light. Faintly he thought nah, takes too much energy to hold those warp fields, but that was the same problem with all those anti-gravity theories. What it came down to was E=mc². Yeah that was it, energy ... energy ... energy ... was mass which will warp space. Carl came to his feet screaming, "ENERGY!", and there it was, a miniature sun floating above the garden.

The backdoor slammed open and Peggy ran outside to see what he was doing. Not far behind her came two men in suits. Aunt Clara was right on their heels.

"Carl what's wrong? Are you okay?"

The two men froze, looking up in the air at the miniature sun. Peggy cocked her head to the side and Carl saw her snap her fingers like she did when working a powerful spell. Nothing happened that he could see. She slowly turned to face Carl.

"One with the universe." She said calmly.

Carl looked up at his sun. This was not a ball of flame. It was obviously a solid ball of energy. One of the men was talking on a mike clipped to his collar. The other was trying to convince Aunt Clara that she needed to get back inside the house.

Carl had begun to dance around the yard, still screaming "ENERGY" every so often. He grabbed Peggy and threw her into the air, where she caught herself with a smile and just floated. Aunt Clara had never seen Peggy float. She stopped asking questions and just stood there with an open mouth. The man who had been trying to get her back inside the house now was standing staring at Peggy with his mouth open.

Carl thought if this did not stop soon they were going to have a several mouths full of bugs. He looked up at Peggy, "It's like Archimedes said, give him a lever long enough and he could move the world. He was right! But the lever is ENERGY!" He began to spin around like crazy and slowly drifted up into the air where he grinned at Peggy. He tried to get into a full lotus position but his legs were just not flexible enough to do so.

He waved at his sun and it blinked and went out. He continued to float next to Peggy. The backyard started to fill up with more and more suits showing up. "Carl, Carl we need you to come down here." He looked down at the yard and there was his mother with her arms about Aunt Clara.

"Okay mom! Hey Peggy your mother looks a little worried we better get down there to them." With that he began to slowly drift to the ground.

As his feet touched the ground, his mother grabbed him in a hug. Then she squeezed. "Mom egh I can't breathe!" She loosened her grip on him. He looked over to where Peggy was getting the same treatment from her mother.

Through the backdoor Special Agent Drake appeared. "What have they been up to now?"

At that half the men in the backyard all started talking at once. He held up his hands and they all stopped. Then he pointed at one of the two first men to first appear in the back yard.

That agent tried to calmly explain what he had seen and what he thought he had seen. By the time he finished he was talking so rapidly that his words were one long garbled sound.

Agent Drake again held up his hand, "Clear this area, men remember this is top secret DHS."

Then he walked over to Carl. "Okay, in understandable words, explains what got my people in such an uproar."

"Where to start, did you know that Peggy can float?"

"Float? No, I did not, but that's just levitation. A lot of witches can do that."

"Peggy show him, like this?" he asked as Peggy once more floated up off the ground and resumed her favorite position of a full lotus.

Agent Drake walked over to where she floated and then around her. He closed his eyes and just stood there. Then he opened them and gazed over at Carl. "Can you do it too?"