Looking back, the time on the farm was good for me in a bunch of ways. For one, my endurance is up. Tom is some sort of energizer bunny. Never stops moving. And on the few occasions when I wasn’t doing rhythm for roots, I tried to keep up. Endurance Coach P approved.

And then I started practicing jogging. Turns out that at a jog, I manage a bit under a mile a minute. And I can now jog for an hour. By practicing laps around the radish field, I managed sixty miles in sixty minutes, but I peter out around the hundred mile mark. Just can’t keep the energy going. Also, I’m gonna have to improve my perception in order to run at the speed I can run, especially for the sprints. Sprints are stupidly fast. A hundred yards straight in one and a half seconds, and four hundred yards in eight. A mile at top speed is about forty seconds, but that's because I’m not much of a sprinter; I’m a long legs skinny guy. Coach B always used to say I was built for distance.

It seems like I’m getting faster too. Seems like this whole new dimension thing hasn’t changed what makes people good at stuff: practice. Putting in the hard fun is still what it takes. I’m a drummer because I like to drum, and because I like to drum, I practice a lot. Wait. That’s not right. I’m a good drummer because I like drumming so much I fix the things that I do wrong. Bad drumming sucks, so I fix it when I screw things up. I practice to get better; it's a whole different thing than just playing for fun

I think that’s how folks get better at everything. They like it enough that they start doing it, and work to fix the things that are wrong. If they’re lucky, they get a coach to help find what they’re doing wrong, but if they can hear well enough, they can catch their own mistakes mostly. Hmm. Is that how folks get better at other things too? Like directions. If I liked directions could I get better? Pfft. Whatever. I can follow the sun.

More unfriendly encouragement from Phuc and I’ve changed up my walk-and-drum pattern. Now it’s run an hour, drum-walk an hour. I never knew that most running was only about twice as fast as walking. I’m doing sixty running, and about twenty-five walking.

The thing I’m working on now while I’m drumming is capturing sound. As of now, I’ve been able to capture a couple seconds of sound, and then I can release it later. Overall, it doesn’t seem very useful. But Sgt. Pepper is insisting that it’s important, so I keep practicing. And I’m plucking at the guitar a bit. And singing a bit. More on the singing, since I can do it while I drum. On the guitar, I’ve gotten better than Tom by now, but that’s not saying much. He’s a hobbyist, not a musician.

As I zip over another hill, my echo-ping catches a person in the distance. Turns out that you can just keep getting better at echolocation. I open my eyes, to get better color, and slow down to make sure I’m rested. Don’t want to meet someone new, and then spend 10 seconds wheezing to catch my breath.

I walk over the hill near where I saw the person, somewhat more composed than before, and then trip over myself falling backwards as a fireball heads through where my head used to be. An honest to god fireball shoots through the air. Echo says there’s a girl on the other side of the hill, who threw it. She’s got her hands in some sort of Street Fighter 20 Ryu position. And, there was a fireball just went over my head.

“Leave me alone,” She yells over the hill, “or I’ll burn your head off.”

“Dude. You almost already did. Was that fire magic.”

“No, it was flowers, you moron.”

Between sound walls and echolocation, I’ve got like 100 yards of vision in all directions now. I set up a reflective sound wall or three on the other side of the hill, and ping it, to get a precise positioning of the situation. She doesn’t know where I am … which is good. So I bounce sound off a wall so it sounds like I’m sideways around the hill from where I am.

“What’s got you crazy, man? I’ve only seen two people since the world changed, and the first one didn’t try to barbecue me.”

“Where are you from?” she yells back, now looking in the direction I want her to be looking.

“Wisconsin?”

“Where since the world ended?” She’s not joking. She’s facing the direction my voice is coming from still, ready to kamehameha at me.

“I started maybe fifteen hundred miles away, towards the sunset. I’ve only met one person besides you. How about you?”

“I’m running from bandits. They’re killing people for their thaums.” She’s still edging around the hill towards where I sound like I am. I’m more than a bit suspicious.

The hill is about fifty yards across at our elevation, a bit rocky, and the top is maybe thirty feet above me grassy.

“What? You can kill people for thaums?”

She moves. She’s pretty fast. She shoots another fireball as she comes around the corner and hits the place where my soundwall was. This fireball was bigger. Size of a beach ball maybe. It clips a rock and melts part of it off. Also, the heat screws up my sound wall and it collapses.

Next time my voice comes from behind her. As if I’m 20 yards away and invisible. “Hey Melisandre, I’d appreciate it if you’d stop trying to kill me.”

“Then stop stalking me.” Another fireball destroys that sound wall. I was expecting that, so I slide the second one I’d prepared into place, and keep talking.

“I can go my way peacefully if you can.”

“Where are you, you sneaky little bastard.”

I’ve been watching her fireballs when they get in eye range. They’re pro fastball speed: almost 100 mph. And they melt rock. She’s really dangerous. On the other hand, I throw fastballs at four or five hundred mph, and can sprint at almost 120mph. I can outrun her fireball. And she’s pissing me off.

So I circle around a bit, I throw three fastballs from my supply of softballs over the hill at clumps of grass behind her, I bounce some sound words to the same spot, “Look alive.”

And I head the other direction around the hill, fast.

I make a lot of mistakes when I'm angry.