Of course, I need to rest up and update my buffs for my new limits. And with the new native level of spells comes a reason to rest up for eight hours. Of course, I can browse the news while I do…

I use a quick Planar Bubble spell on one of my paintings I wear as a ring to get quick time from my crafting plane, and settle in with my phone to check out the news.

Ugh. Yeah, I am getting roasted. "What kind of sick mind evicts millions of people naked?" "Escalated to destroying an entire city…" "He's to blame for all those poor innocent women getting raped…" "The Civil War in Iran is all his fault, along with all the deaths from it.…" Again, ugh. Apparently self defense is wrong now. At least the ones about the expected environmental impact of all that snow when it melts are interesting. I mean, they're all wrong - that snow isn't going to melt until it builds up enough to form a glacier and flow downhill - but the articles are at least interesting. Hmm. How long will it take to glaciate? Let's see… one hour for two feet, but snow is like 90% air… so when it gets thick and compresses it gets thinner. If it's 2.4 inches of ice every hour, that's 57.6 per day, how thick is a glacier… thinnest ones are "tens of meters" thick, apparently. So if it takes sixty feet for it to flow like that, it will take twelve and a half days. And that's a fairly lowball estimate, so it's more likely to end up being three weeks or more…. Unless the snow doesn't compress all the air out… eh. Doesn't matter.

Oh, here's a fun article: "From Whence the Water?" Looks like someone's trying to track down the source of the snow - or more specifically, the water that makes it. "Cannot be accounted for from normal sources" … "Insufficient water vapor in the air" … "Insufficient artificial water supply in the area" … Ooh, "wrong atomic weight"? Aha. OK, so, the problem is that the water isn't isotropic. All the oxygen in there is O(16), none of it is the fraction of a percent that would normally be O(17) or O(18), and all the hydrogen is H(1), none of it seems to be H(2). Which means the snow is a tiny fraction of a percent lighter than it should be. OK, that's interesting, but… ah, "Can only conclude that this water has no naturally occurring source." Well… that's right, at least.

Hmm. Makes me wonder about the gold. And could I focus on making deuterium? If I can't, then I can't build hydrogen bombs… not that I need to, really. Plenty of other ways to wreck face. Interesting question, though. I'll need to try Fabricating one at some point.  Not now, though. Now I need to rest. And hopefully my time clones will handle the media OK.

Oh, and apparently lots of ships have been going missing in the Pacific ocean recently.  Yeah… that’s probably my bad.  Milk run-off, nasty stuff.  Still… I suppose that means in a pinch I could arrange to empower the entire world in relatively short order.  Scary thought.

I eventually tire of the news, and settle in to watch some nature documentaries on my streaming service. Nice and boring… hmm… wonder what a shark would turn into with my milk?  Or a squid?  Even a jellyfish could get interesting.  Hmm… of course, the sea is HUGE.  So many places for things to hide.  Hmm… maybe just build a way for shipping to bypass the Pacific entirely?  More reliable than finding a way to clean out the ocean. And I'm pretty sure people would pay for it… of course, that'd put all the sailors out of work… probably better than getting them killed, though… wonder what’s infesting the oceans now?

I idly muse as I watch the nature documentaries, and eight hours of subjective time later, I prepare spells, update my buff list - also Minnie’s - milk myself - which feels nice, as always - and distribute copies of Minnie with samples of milk.  I also dismiss the Planar Bubble spell.  It’s handy to be able to do the quick time thing, but Lesser Time Stop is better at it if I don’t need to hurt anyone, and the rest of the time being out of sync is just annoying.  But it’s a fun trick to have if I need to really lay the hurt down or get something done on the prime material quickly.

I check my email, and lo and behold: I’ve got one from John Fredrickson, director of foreign affairs, with an attachment.

“Hi Chris, just thought I’d let you know: We got the results back from that coin of yours.  Lab boys couldn’t figure out a thing about how you did it, but apparently that gold is the purest gold on Earth.  They tell me all known gold contains trace elements from the mine it came from, which can be used to trace it, at least within certain limits, and yours simply doesn’t have those trace elements.  Anyway, full report attached, as agreed.”

I go through the report and… yeah, that’s about what it says.  The report goes into detail about how they came to the conclusion, where they got the x-ray fluorescence spectroscope they used, has some examples of what they expected to find from certain reference samples, and other details… which largely boil down to what John said.  It also has some scanning electron microscope pictures, sonar soundings, core sample analysis, acid response, weight, volume, density, compression tests… why would you put a gold coin through both an MRI and a CAT scan? … they ran a lot of tests, all of which showed basically nothing. The only thing abnormal about the coin is the extra high purity. Beyond that, the tests all basically said: "Yes, it's a gold coin."

Which doesn't really give me any insights into what I'm actually doing or where this energy is ultimately coming from. But that’s OK. Come to that, didn't Jessica take a rock I put a Continual Flame spell on and give it to a scientist a while back? Man, that feels like so long ago. I should follow up on that.  Hmm. No reason not too… and I could take Jessica out to dinner… maybe a play… what’s showing … I rent a booth for a theater on Broadway in New York, and make reservations for a restaurant in Louisiana that has some good reviews.  Grilled alligator sounds interesting.

… maybe I'm getting used to having money and not worrying about travel times…

I "call" Jessica via our link, 《Hey beautiful, up for a night out? I made reservations for dinner and a show.》

《Yeah, I don't have any plans I can't easily put on hold. Where are we going?》

《Theater and a Cajun place, nothing too fancy.》

《Sounds good, what time?》

We make our plans, and "hang up," which is really more just mutually recognizing that we're not actively paying attention to the telepathic channel.

I still have a few hours… I check in telepathically with the time clones I set to getting PR handled. Given that money is a complete non-issue, I figure the firms will be working pretty quickly… we also have that evidence locked away, and the captured boat guys… I still don't know what I should do with them. They don't exactly have a country to be repatriated TO at this point, much less anyone who wants to negotiate for their return. Hmm.  Oh, I have a dozen live interviews scheduled already? About half of which are at the same time… that's going to raise eyebrows, I'm sure. Time clones are great… but I should probably get full memories of these…  which mostly means doing them myself. Which, you know, means a different sort of time clone… I update the ones who were planning on doing the TV spots that I'll handle them, and get the relevant details. Most want me there a couple hours early for a coaching session with the PR company that booked it, makeup, a pre-interview with the actual television company, and then the interview itself.  Followed by a post-interview coaching session with the PR firm. Fortunately, I have all the time in the world… although it does look like I'll be starring in my own Groundhog's Day movie to get these all done.  Well, OK, he was only ever in one place at a time. Still… long day. and I can, and if I think about it too much, that's scary.  

Oh, a few of the live spots overlap with my date with Jessica. Doesn't really pose a problem, of course, I'll be bending linear time out of all recognition anyway in pulling this off.  What's one more bend?  The only real question is if I should do the date before or after the interviews?

…

OK, I'll want to relax after the long day, I think. And… I should probably get a burner phone and a different SIM card for each interview. I doubt my planar phone will work correctly when I'm in six places at once.