I recall the Lucid Dream I had, the one that directly resulted in getting my sight working beyond all expectations.

I dreamed I was effortlessly flying among and along the gravitational fields.

This is literally a dream come true!

However, I'm still restricted to being a normal, somewhat sedentary person living across town from my Mom.

Speaking of Mom: It's probably time for me to visit her. And try to freak her out.

Hmm... If she slaps me, I'll be hurled across the room.

Well worth it.

But 30,000g also means I will quickly reach relativistic speeds.

I don't have a personal Deflector Dish, nor do I (yet) have Personal Shields.

So, in my present configuration I'll be limited to speeds for which personal armor can provide adequate protection.

But that's still Jupiter in about a day, assuming I go out of the plane of the ecliptic to avoid as much junk as possible.

But with the ID nulling my rest mass, I won't regain my effective mass until somewhere around 1500g.

You read that right. And that's only regaining my "normal" effective mass, yielding my "normal" weight in a 1g field.

It scales much higher if my body can take higher "weight". I should be easily able to tolerate a continuous 5g in my present state, and 20g with some minor structural enhancements.

Which gets me into the range of 30,000g of acceleration.

And that's with keeping my acceleration to just 1g.

Which is a totally false limit.

Remember, I have my own ID. My effective mass can be ZERO.

Unfortunately, that's only in the rest frame. As I accelerate I regain my effective mass in direct proportion to my acceleration.

Mathematically, the effect is much like relativistic mass, only occurring at much lower speeds, and being dependent on acceleration instead of velocity.

Or so I've been told. I really have no clue about the actual math.

My mind has been going crazy with the possibilities.

I can push myself away from any mass. I can also pull myself toward any mass. And I can do both at the same time.

My acceleration would be limited only by my available power and my body's ability to tolerate the stress.

If we limit my acceleration to 1g, I could get from Earth to its moon in 3.5 hours. That includes reversing my acceleration at the half-way point so I reach the moon with zero velocity.

Jupiter in under a week.

I don't mean like a bird. I mean like Superman.

I haven't tried it yet! That would totally violate my "parole" agreement with my team.

We won't do any flight experiments until I'm back in a lab, under very controlled conditions.

But, wait! There's more!

We think I'll even be capable of interplanetary flight. At high (non-relativistic) speeds.

Not as fast as a personal impulse engine, but close. And for a fraction of the power.

We probably should also improve my vacuum tolerance.

If I increased the horizontal AG field component, I could cause myself to drift in the horizontal plane.

I had to increase it quite a bit for this effect to occur.

This meant I was pulling/pushing with/against the gravitation fields of the walls and buildings around me!

But floating/drifting, while totally awesome, is not the Big News.

Can you guess what the Really Big News is?

Can you?

OK, enough teasing:

I can fly!

We were using only about 0.1% of its full capability.

There is a fourth difference as well, which we already knew about: The Ardanan design is far more efficient that standard Federation AG units.

We quickly implemented and tested fine controls over all my AG unit features, and I was soon able to float in any orientation, and also carefully move myself up and down within the room.

Then things got a little weird.

The Ardanan design has three unique additional capabilities the exceed standard AG units:

First, the field strength may have negative values, essentially increasing my gravitational attraction, something that could prove useful in low-G environments, such as on a small asteroid.

Second, the field direction may be varied as well, to any desired relative vector.

Third, the field strength can go much, much higher than what we were using to reduce my body weight.

The AG unit that was built by a Federation AG specialist had the same interface as every other standard AG unit.

We mistakenly assumed that meant it had the same capabilities as a standard AG unit, just in a tiny package.

Standard AG units have a single axis of effect, for which the AG strength can be increased from zero to whatever maximum the unit can provide, which is normally a fairly limited value.