Chapter 26: Drive (1)
Jack had just finished testing Linked templates with his laptop when Madison came out into the living room. She was wearing her trademark baggy jeans and dress sized hoody. She had already finished eating when he came out of the bathroom, and he had expected her to take a long time to get ready, but when he checked the time, he saw that it only took her about half an hour.
"I'm ready whenever you are," she said as she stopped in front of him.
He closed the lid on his laptop and set it aside before getting up from the couch. Then he turned and headed towards the kitchen and the entrance to the garage, expecting Madison to follow. As he was climbing into the driver's seat, he felt a spike of annoyance from Madison. As he sat, he turned to look at her. She opened her mouth, then closed it, then opened and closed it several more times, annoyance growing. He realized she was trying to ask him a question, but the soul bond was preventing it.
He had not expected that it would prevent her from speaking about the Genesis Heart even in private. But on reflection realized that this was a reasonable safety measure. Just because they thought they were alone, did not mean that they were unobserved. The only place they could have truly private conversations was in his soul space.
He searched his interface and found a section that contained information about her Genesis Heart access and permissions. He found that the default was for her to have no access and no permissions. So, he made adjustments so that she could enter and leave as she wished and could enable parallel self on her own. He didn't grant her access to Linked Self yet because he didn't know what costs were associated.
As soon as he granted her access to parallel self, she said, "Oh!" then appeared in the soul space next to his own parallel self. Immediately after that she said, "Oof, that is trippy and kinda disconcerting."
"Yep, like looking at yourself in parallel mirrors, right?"
"Yeah, it's kinda distracting."
"It's fine as long as you're not looking at yourself," he suggested.