Archive for January, 2010

Sailor Jim; Storyteller

What’s the line?  ”Every time I pull myself out, they drag me back in!”

Man, as much as I respected Heinlein, you’d think I would have paid attention to what he said about writing.

I’ve quit trying to be a writer, jeez, how many times?  I get myself reined in.  I accept the fact that I’m a hell of a story teller, but that’s not the same as a writer and never will be.  I settle for writing my little stories here, letting the voices in my head pour out into my blog and being happy with that level of creativity.

Then I write something that makes me excited again.  I finally put something together that seems to have a commercial voice, seems to something that might actually be publishable, and I spend long hours at night polishing it.

And it always ends up the same way.  I always end up boxing up the rejection slips and letters with a copy of the story and stacking it in the closet with the rest of them.

Sometimes, I get on a binge and buy more and more “How to write fiction that will sell!” books, trying to figure out what it is that I’m doing wrong.  I’ve spent money on workshops and retreats, joined writer groups … hell, I’ve even paid professional editors to tell me what’s wrong with my writing.

The books never make much sense and often contradict each other; the people at the workshops, retreats, and groups all praise every piece of crap that I pen like I was the second coming of Heinlein; the editors tell me variations of “looks good,” “just keep writing and it’ll happen for you,” “remember to write about what you know,” and (once) “I wish I was still working as a editor; I’d buy this.”

By my estimation, I’ve spent so much money trying to learn what I’m doing wrong that the first sale I have will have to be novel, one that starts a bidding war between the major publishers, just so I can fucking break even!

I did it again, of course.  I thought I had something … apparently, I’m the only one who does, if these rejection letters are any indication.  Hell, my stuff isn’t even good enough to get a personalized rejection, something with an actual signature on the damn thing, much less any encouraging words or suggestions.

People keep pointing out to me that putting my writing on the internet is a mistake, that it’ll be unsellable if it’s been self-published this way.  What nobody seems to understand is that it’s unsellable, period.  The only thing I can do with my creativity is to give it away and be satisfied that there’s a couple dozen people who like reading it, because the simple truth is that I’m just not a writer.  I’m a storyteller who occasionally has bursts of literary masochism.

Damn, Apple!

Is it just me, or is that the biggest f*cking i-pod you’ve ever seen!!

Okay, granted I want one (and just might buy myself one for the pure shit and grins of it) simply because it’s damn near the sexiest damn gizmo I’ve ever seen, but – when all is said and done – it’s just an i-pod on steroids … which is still pretty damn cool, but … well, y’know …

The possible Apple Tablet

Okay, I’m an Apple fan from way back.  My first personal computer was an Apple and, were it not for the fact that the one that I’m currently using was handed to me for free, I’d still be flying Macintosh as a preference.

That said, I had to wonder if it’s really a good idea for a guy who’s name is “Jobs” to present a tablet, a form of computer which is – for all intents and purposes – a keyboard-less laptop.  Although all computers are dependent on one’s hands for input (and voice me no voice), tablets are especially bare hand gizmos …

So how are Apple Tables not going to be nicknamed the HandJobs?

Huh … seemed like a lot more

I just got done compiling The Never Ending Battle (and making copies onto my external hard drive and my story CD) and I ran a word count on it, wanting to see how much I could trim and still call it a novel.

Only 50 thousand words?!?  Are you kidding me?  That’s novel length, but only just.  I cut anything, anything at all, and I’m sitting on a Novella.  Tighten it until it’s a really quick and easy read … it’s a Novelette!   A freaking Novelette!  I don’t even like the name!  Novelette!  It’s like the only female Smurf!

Man, it sure seemed like a lot more!  I woulda sworn it was over a hundred thousand, at least!  I thought it was a full scale om and here’s it’s only an omelet, at best.  Depressing.

Whew … that’ll be a bitch to edit!

Feels good to finally be done with The Never Ending Battle.  It was one of those that I could have kept going for months and months, playing around with the society of the future and exploring the ins and outs of real life superheroes, but that gets old after a while and it’s well finished.  (I’m kinda pleased with myself for actually tacking on a RAH sort of ending onto the silly thing.  There’s the climax … and now we’ll talk about the days following the climax for a bit, ending with a little bow.)

Still, when I gather it all up into one Word document, I’m not sure if I’m going to expand it further, really explore some of the sub-plots, or hack at it with knifes until it’s only half it’s word count.  Either way, first I’m going to let the silly thing sit and age a bit … not long, just until I can’t remember some of the dialog.

I don’t think I’ll explore anymore superhero stuff, though.  I’ve taken a couple of swings at it and it still eludes me.  Part of the problem is that most of the classic superpowers are silly.  I mean, flight?  What the hell good is flight?  There was a character from the silver age of comics called The Black Condor and his thing was he could fly .. and that was about it.  Same thing with Hawkman, pick a version.  Oh, both of them were good fighters and strong, but neither were particularly fast or super strong or invulnerable.  They basically were strong guys who could fight really good and, oh yeah, they could fly.

Okay … that’s nice.

I still contend that speed is the ultimate power, myself.  Keep your able to leap tall buildings with a single bound, bend steel in your bare hands, and alter the course of mighty rivers.  Speed and invulnerability to friction is enough for me.

Say you only have a few seconds to save the day … what’s a few seconds to someone who exists between pico-seconds?  Time to think, time to plan, even time to rehearse moves.

Enemy stronger than you?  Okay, take a running start at him … nothing fancy, keep it under light speed.  Take a lap around the world for a wind up and then hit him with all that energy.  Hell, you’re superfast … hit him a couple thousand times with all that energy before he can blink.

Enemy smarter than you?  Shift into your top speed and head for a good library.  Read up on his strengths and weaknesses, see what The Art of War has to say about the matter, find out if there’s a gizmo that can take the wind out of his sails; educate yourself in the blink of an eye and return to the battle.

Enemy a more experienced fighter than you?  Cool; combine all the above.   Study his style and find it’s weaknesses, practice what you’re going to do, study his response carefully before reacting, then build up a little mass/energy and bitch slap him with it a couple of dozen times.

Move fast enough and you can catch bullets.  Move really fast and you can not only catch them, but – just to be a smart ass – you can reload your enemies gun for him … with blanks … that make farting noises when fired.  Hell, go all out and catch the bullets, reload his gun with farting blanks, hammer the rounds you caught flat and sculpt a nice goofy face mask for the guy, strip him naked and redress him in a tu-tu and leaderhosen, tie the mask to his face, and then move him – farting gun, tu-tu, leaderhosen, and mask – to the nearest maximum federal prison and dump him in the general population.  Move some of the prisoners around so he ends up in the center of a circle of bad asses – just for the shits and grins of it – pants them all before you leave.

Then go home and wait for the next criminal genius who wants to play.  Make some pop corn while you wait.

Speed … can’t beat it.

The Never Ending Battle (The Actual Conclusion … Really … Finally, Even)

“Wanda, Daniel; we’re needed at the White House.  Clark, keep the evacuation going, but this gizmo doesn’t show any radiation.  Have your men search the underground garage and basement, but I’m betting we didn’t rate any bomb.  Keep me advised and we’ll talk about all this later.”  I held out my hands to my roommates and we all flew out the ruined window.

I saw the Force criss-crossing the capitol in pairs, so there must have been at least four more radiation detectors in the box.  Tech said that live bombs would be easy to spot and with only – I glanced at my watch – five minutes to go before the deadline, chances are that everything would be live by now.

My detector started beeping like a metronome when we neared the White House.  We landed in a hail of small arms fire, which continued until I presented my identification to the lead Secret Security agent.  After confirming that the President, et al, were still safe, I started racing around the building, looking for the bomb.

Within a few seconds, the three of us were standing in front of a footlocker sized box and the detector was having hysterics.  I tossed it aside and, discovering that my comm unit had been destroyed by the friendly fire, borrowed Daniels to put an all call to the Force.

“Guys, this is Doctor Socks.  Wanda, Daniel, and I have found the White House bomb and – Tech? – it’s around four feet by two feet by two feet, so we’re talking about a city killer.  Papa must have meant that the White House would go first simply because it’s at ground zero.  Evacuate the city, starting at the White House and moving out.  Get as many people out of the danger zone as you can.”

Daniel opened the lid and located the timer.  ”Al!  The timer says 203 seconds.”

“Daniel says the timer reads less than two hundred seconds, gang, so get moving.  Friction burns are better than death, so take ‘em out at top speed.  We’ll handle the bomb the best we can and it’s been a honor knowing you people.  Doctor Socks, out.”  I tossed the comm unit into the corner and said, “Okay, two questions, lovers:  First, do either of you have any idea how to disarm one of these things and, second, what’s our chances of surviving ground zero?”

“Nope and I sure hope so!”

“Ditto … Al, you ever cover anything like this at MIT? 127 seconds, by the way.”

“Nope, not in any of the classes I took, but let’s take a peek under the hood.”

We three peered into the interior of the case.  The only parts I recognized were the timer and what must have been the radioactive material, which took up a goodly part of the case.  Wanda said she recognized the wires as wires, but that was it.  Daniel said eighty-three seconds.

I suggested just pulling wires at speed and hope for the best, since we could pull almost all the wires in an instant.  Daniel pointed out that, if any of the wires were booby trapped to detonate the bomb when pulled, it really didn’t matter how fast we pulled them.  Wanda calmly said, “Fifty-six and counting, boys.  We have less than a minute to come up with something.”

“Okay, let’s beat the crap out of the plutonium or whatever that stuff is!  I remember reading somewhere that it has to be like perfectly matched to get any reaction … or something,” Daniel suggested.

“Would that stop the explosion or just make it dirtier?” I asked, trying to find any red wire in the gazillion or so available.  I mean, it’s always the red wire in the damn movies, right?

“Twenty-eight seconds,” Wanda announced, slamming the lid on my search.

“What the hell?”

In answer, she threw herself on top of the bomb.  ”Washington is built on a swamp, so there’s no bedrock for quite a ways.  If we can smother the blast, maybe we can spare most of the city!”

Daniel threw himself onto part of the exposed lid.  ”Yeah!  Like laying down on a hand grenade!  Muffle the blast, limit the destruction.  Hell, we might even survive!”

I looked at my two best friends, sighed, and laid down on the remaining part of the box.  ”If we don’t survive this, people, I loved working with you every second.”

“Me, too, Al.”

“I love you two very much, you know that, right?”

“Well, you damn near crippled me proving it the other night, so I guess so.”

“Huh.”

What?  ”What?”

“Well,” Daniel drawled, in an odd tone, “it just dawned on me … couldn’t we have simply picked the fucking thing up and flown it … oh, I don’t know … maybe into space?”

‘WHAT!!”

The world disappeared in a silent blast of white light, as my optic nerves either disintegrated or overloaded, and I lost all sensation of weight or mass.  The box no longer existed … logical … and I couldn’t feel Daniel next to me … also logical, I suppose.  I saw … well, visions would be the best word, I suspect … I saw visions of my life, both before and what might have been; memory and possibilities, presented equally for maximum regret.

I waited for the moment of truth.  Would it be a gently smiling Jesus or a demonic Satan I saw next.  Was my final reward for my life Heaven or Hell.  For that matter, what would be hell to a chemist?  Fields of undergrads who keep blowing up the classroom?  Elements that never act properly?

I wondered if our sacrifice was enough, if it saved part of the city.  I wondered how many the Force had managed to evacuate and what condition the evacuated people were in.  I wondered how Papa had managed to smuggle such a huge bomb into the White House, for pity sake!

I wondered who’s hand was in mine and who was slapping me on the cheek.

I braced myself and opened my eyes.

Instead of Jesus or Satan, my blurry vision revealed Wanda looking down at me and saying something.  My ears were still not working, so I said, “What?” in flat tones.  She repeated herself slowly, shaping the words carefully with her full lips for me.  ”I … Want … To … Kill … Daniel?  You want to kill Daniel?  Is Daniel alive, too?  Are we all alive?”

The room slowly came into focus.  Perversely, it insisted on being the same normal White House sub-basement it was when we’d come in.  I struggled to my knees, looking around in shock.  Had we managed to smother … no, that would have been impossible!  There’s no way.  Then I noticed Daniel, sitting on the trunk and gently slapping himself on the side of his head, like he was trying to coax water out of an ear canal.

I fell over onto my ass … my bare ass.  I looked again.  Daniel and Wanda were also naked … and damn near hairless!  My hands flew of their own accord to my scalp, where only fuzz welcomed them.  ”DAMN!”

Wanda sat back and laughed at me.  Daniel stopped hitting the side of his head, peered at us, then grinned and ran his hand over his own bald head.  There wasn’t any hair longer than fuzz anywhere on their bodies, so it was a fair bet I was equally denuded.  I sat back, shaking my head, and thought about it.

We’d obviously survived, but only that which was invulnerable had, which meant that any dead hair was incinerated along with our clothes and shoes.  Naked and with a head to toe crew cut was still better than dead.

But why was the case still in one piece?  I asked that out loud and was astonished to head my voice, somewhat.  Daniel looked over at me and shrugged, replying, “I dunno; I just got here myself.”

Wanda told him to get his stupid ass off the case (“Why didn’t we just fly it up into space,” she added in a mutter and with a glare) and then opened the box.

Nothing.  No bomb.  Some stuff, wires and various electronic looking crap, were inside, but no bomb.  I said as much as Wanda held up a small gizmo, saying, “Look familiar?”

I took a good look at it.  It was the timer.

“What the hell’s happened?” I asked out loud, tossing the timer back into the box and struggling to my feet.  ”We just survived a ground zero nuclear blast and the bomb simply disassembled in shame, or what?”

Neither of them had any answers, so I went looking for the comm unit I’d tossed aside.  Yeah, stupid, but it made sense at the time.

Finally, I reminded my colleagues that the laundry room was only one story up and a couple doors down … we could make it at speed, invisibly, and borrow whatever they had available to cover up with.  Then we could check on the rest of the city.

I wasn’t really all that simple.  It took us a couple of false starts before our powers finally kicked in and we could race, unseen, through the hallways of the White House.  We stopped outside the laundry room door (can’t open doors at speed without destroying them) and slipped inside.  Nobody was there, so we started rummaging.  Daniel and I found some cooks whites, and Wanda looked fetching in some sort of maid’s outfit (although she grumbled, more or less good humorously, how come the black woman had to be the maid).

We walked out (bare footed, by necessity, since shoes were not laundered) and headed back up to the main Secret Security offices.  Nothing was damaged.  Windows weren’t even cracked.  Daniel kept whistling the theme from the Twilight Zone (a twentieth-century television show that had something to do about strange stories and events that befell vampires that glittered) and Wanda kept asking if the hallways had been the same color when we’d raced down them earlier.

An agent was speaking on his wrist comm ahead of us, so I asked him the status of the evacuation.

He stared at me blankly, said, “Evacuation?  What evacuation?”  Then he noticed my bare feet.

A few hours later, we were escorted into the office of the Vice President, my old college buddy, Charlie.

He was looking good … too good.  I peered at him closely and then asked, in as clear a voice as I could, “Charlie … what’s the date today?”

As he’d been in far too many matters of speculative science, Robert A. Heinlein called this one, too.  Kinda.  In Farnham’s Freehold, he suggested that a direct hit of an atomic bomb on a sufficiently well made bomb shelter would result in the shelter being tossed hundred of years into the future.

Maybe he was right.  However, if you lay three stupid superhero wannabe scientists across a very powerful nuclear device and then detonate it, they’ll get tossed a couple of years into the past.  Naked.  And with no hair to speak of.

Charlie made a few phone calls and, to his utter shock, confirmed that we three were still in the old labs.  As a matter of fact, all three of us were there right that moment, working on what would end up being the very process that permitted us to survive a nuclear blast.  The Secret Service confirmed that there was a largish case of possible bomb parts in the sub-basement we’d claimed to come from.

Charlie asked me if I expected him to believe, really and truly believe, that we’d somehow survived without injury … and that it somehow tossed us through time, too?

I asked Charlie if he remembered my old project, the one that he’d been nice enough to manage funding for?  Project Up, Up and Away?

He nodded and I rose to accept the cup of coffee from the agent, then kept rising for a few more feet, sipping on it while hovering halfway to the ceiling.  ”Well, Charlie, it worked.  The good news is that, in just a few years, you’ll have an American superhero team.  The bad news is that you’ll end up with a bomb in your basement a few months later.  Now,” I settled back down into my chair, ignoring the drawn pistols of the agents in the room, “let’s discuss a new budget.  With two of each of us working side by side, I suspect we’ll end up with even better results.”

We live in the Catskill Mountains, now; Daniel, Wanda, and me.  Our younger selves still work in the capitol, but – as you all know – the project took a much different turn in the beginning this time around.  No grand announcement, no flashy costumes, no college kids for the first subjects … although I do miss the sarcastic good nature of Chuck Nabori, Artist, and the relentless Boy Scout attitude of Tom Marshall.  No, this time we used professionals, recruiting from the military and NASA, and bypassed the difficulty Barbara presented, as well as the flashiness that public superheros caused.

They’re still there, of course, but only as a new security force, a new quasi-military branch of the government, answerable only to the White House, via my younger self, and only used whenever there is an emergency of Biblical proportions.  Most of the world isn’t even aware of their existence, yet, and the parts that are, are very tight lipped about it.  As far as the vast majority of the world’s population is concerned, the Force is simply a couple of dozen incredibly well trained and equipped men and women who have dedicated their lives to working for the greater good, who seem to be on the scene of any natural or man-made disaster within minutes, achieving almost super-human results.

Wanda, Daniel, and I, in the meantime, spend all day going over the process; improving this bit, changing that bit of subliminal conditioning, and trying to come up with some sort of off switch for the process, without which there still isn’t any way to retire from the Force.

Oh, they caught Papa in the act.  The Secret Security decided, since they had a deadline date already, to simply install a few video dots in the sub-basement and keep track of who came and went.  Remember how Clark was able to effortlessly pull up a diagram of the bomb on his terminal?

Yeah, he was involved.  He wasn’t the head, but he was responsible for getting clearance, via his old position, for those who put the bomb together.  The Lex Luthor of the affair was Clark Kent.  It took awhile, but he finally gave the names of all the members of PAPA, who turned out to be more interested in laundering their own finances than in cleansing the country.  (I broke cover for Clark, again, when he finally announced that he wasn’t going to say anything.  I simply flew him out the window and up to the lower levels of the atmosphere, where I tossed him up and down until he agreed to start speaking.  I wasn’t proud of myself, but – hey – with that name, he betrayed more than just his country.)

But all that’s old news.  The big news nowadays is that Wanda is pregnant!  There’s no telling if it’s a boy or a girl, but it’s certainly strong!  I felt it kicking the other day.  Wanda says that it kicks so hard that it would have already beaten it’s way out of any normal woman by now.

Will it be a meta?  I sure hope so, since only a meta baby has a chance of surviving a trip down the birth canal of a meta woman.  Daniel is working overtime to come up with something to use if this isn’t the case, but I’m betting that it is.  (Else how could we have all felt the kicks?)

That means we’ll be the parents of the first meta child on the planet … and then we’ll learn the true meaning of “The Never Ending Battle!”

End

The Never Ending Battle (Prelude to the Conclusion)

The lawyers set up a howl and it eventually took a judge’s order to shut them up.  Daniel showed the paperwork trail that proved the blood he supplied had been taken from Chuck and I testified that his DNA had been changed by the process, so any current blood sample – provided we could figure out a way to get blood from him now that bullets bounced off – would be useless for paternity identification.

The blood proved the kids couldn’t be his and, oddly enough, there were no appeals filed.  Chuck heaved a sigh of relief, but Clark revealed that the remaining members of “his family” had retained a lawyer and were demanding protection from the Bureau … in the form of 24/7 Force security over a private enclave situated in a remote area of Tahiti, with all maintenance and support provided until such time as all the members felt safe once more.

I asked him, “And the government’s reply was?”

“The Attorney Generals office met with their attorney this morning.  I attended the meeting as the resident expert on the Bureau and the Force.  After they screamed Latin at each other for half an hour, I pointed out that you’d solved the problem of the supposedly illegitimate kids with a pre-process blood sample … of which plenty remained … and suggested that the government accept the demands of all the family members who can prove, via blood testing, that they are indeed – ahem – blood relatives.”

Clark was still slapping Chuck on his invulnerable head for having kissed him when the alarm went off.  The lights … no, the electricity flickered on and off while a raucous ringing reminiscent of a high school fire drill rang through the building.  Chuck blurred to my side in an instant, demanding to know what was wrong!

I looked around and shrugged.  ”I haven’t the foggiest,” I admitted.  ”I’ve didn’t even know we had a fire alarm.”

“That’s not a fire alarm, damn it!” Clark screamed over the din, running across the room.  ”The White House is under attack!”

Turned out that the political powers that be installed a special alarm system without my knowledge, one that could only be triggered by a special panic button, one located in the main White House office of the Secret Service.  I’d met a few Secret Service agents in my time … I couldn’t imagine a situation that one of them would call for help.

“Chuck, secure the President, now!” He vanished without replying and I turned to Clark.  ”Details!  I need details!”  I grabbed him by the collar and dragged him down the hall after me, looking for a pocket of calm and quiet.  ”And I need that damn alarm turned off!”

Clark, still a little astonished to discover that I could literally drag a man his size down a hallway, slapped at my arm until I stopped … then produced a small device from a coat pocket and, aiming it at the ceiling, pushed a button on it.  The alarms ceised the instant he did so.

“Good … thanks,” I sighed, still hearing a buzzing in my ears.  ”Can that thing tell us what’s happening at the White House?”

He was explaining that it was just a remote for the alarm system when I realized that my comm unit was buzzing for my attention.  Great, the super secret alarm system drowned out the super secret communication system; my tax dollars in action!

I fumbled the unit out and barked, “Go!”  Chuck’s voice snapped out that he had the President, Vice President, and their families and staff safely secured at a remote location.  I told him to stay with them and hit the all call button, activating all the comm units for the Force.  Without waiting for anyone to pick-up, I quickly explained that the White House was under attack of some sort, to converg on-site soonest and ascertain the situation.  ”Report as soon as detail are available, Out.”

I dropped my unit back into a coat pocket and asked Clark if he had a secure hook up to the White House in his office.  Then we were running down the hallways, scattering confused civil service workers right and left, and leaving shouted commands of “return to work” and “everything is fine; relax; false alarm” in our wake.  Thankfully, most of the workers didn’t bother wondering why, if “everything is fine,” why are the Director and his security chief running through the hallways.

Clark’s second in command was yelling for his boss as we raced through the door.  At the same time, my comm unit went off.  Clark headed for his office and I stepped to the side.  ”Report!”

“Doc?  Cratos.  I’m on scene and, frankly, there’s nothing going on.  Nobody’s attacking, although the Secret Service is at high alert and jittery as all hell.  One bounced a bullet off of me before he realized who I was.  I tried talking to them, but you know how they can get …”

Clark was in his office doorway, yelling for my attention.  ”Yeah.  Stay calm, Cratos, and keep the Force in line until I get back to you.  Defensive parameter, half high and half on ground.  Out.”  I snapped the unit closed and headed toward the agitated security chief.

He started talking as soon as I took the comm unit away from my ear.  ”One, the radiation alarms at the White House all slammed into the red all at once.  Two, a group calling itself ‘PAPA’ …”

“Papa?”  I echoed.

“Yeah; ‘Pure American’s for a Pure America,’ ‘PAPA.’ ” He shrugged with his eyebrows.  ”Called a few seconds later and announced that Washington, DC, was forfeit, starting with the White House, if the President didn’t give them what they wanted.  The timing of the call, plus the fact that they knew the radiation alarms would be going nuts, gave them all the credence they needed for the Service to take them seriously.”

I cocked my head to the side in puzzlement.  ”Lemme get this straight … some group called Papa, as in ‘Papa knows best,’ is somehow blanketing the White House in radiation and making demands?  What will they do if we tell them to get lost?  Give everyone there cancer?”  I dug out my comm unit.  ”Hell, I’ll have Cratos simply take out whatever they have floating over the city and … ”

“No, Al!”  He grabbed my arm.  ”The radiation is from a very particular type of nuclear device, one that would have to be somewhere within the White House itself to set off the alarms.  We need to locate that device and, since they said that the destruction would only begin with the White House, there’s a good chance that the rest of the government buildings in the city might have their own bombs.”

“Is there a time limit?!”  I snapped my comm unit open.

“Yup … fifteen minutes.  If the President doesn’t publicly capitulate within fifteen minutes,” he glanced at his watch, “well, more like ten minutes, now, they’ll detonate … ”

I didn’t let him finish.  ”Daniel, Wanda!”  When they answered, I snapped out, “Rock Hudson time.  Nuclear emergency.  Get to Clark’s office, now.”  They were standing next to me before I finished the last word.  Clark’s eyes bugged out and conversations stopped all over the room.  I quickly explained the situation to my teammates, asked Wanda to start searching high and Daniel low, told Clark to start evacuating the building, and headed for the roof at speed.

Along the way, I made another all-call to the Force and had them start searching all federal buildings for … hold for a second.  I blurred back to Clark’s side and asked him to describe what the device might look like.  He brought up a diagram for the most common version on his terminal (in retrospect, I wish I’d asked him exactly how he had a diagram of “a very particular type of nuclear device” readily available on his computer) and I saw that the components were way over my head.

I lifted the comm unit again.  ”Tech.”  When she answered, I asked her to join me at Clark’s office.  She came through the window at speed, pausing to catch all the pieces and neatly deposit them in a nearby trashcan.

“Sir!” She all but snapped to attention.  She’d been an Air Force sergeant prior to joining and still tended to fall into her military habits.

“Look at this schematic and tell me what’s the smallest area it could fit into.”

She studied the screen for a moment, then gasped, “A 46 Victor unit!”  She turned horrified eyes to me and pleaded, “Is this … are we … ”

“Break it down for me, Tech,” I demanded.  ”What are we looking at and what should we be looking for?”

“Sir, the 46 Victor units are prohibited by joint treaty due to the fact that they’re so portable.  The smallest of them could fit in a shoe box and be used to take out a building, the largest I’ve seen pictures of was a steamer truck that could take out a city.”

“Great, and we have to find a bunch of them.  How about radiation?  Can they be located via radiation signature?”

“Yes Sir!  Easily, if they’ve been activated.”

“Range?”

“From up to a quarter-mile away, when activated, but they’re very had to detect when sleeping.”

“Clark!  Do we have any radiation monitors?”  The flustered security man produced several in a metal case.  I snatched one out for myself and handed the closed case to Tech, signaling a new all-call on my unit.  ”Force!  Converge on Washington Monument and meet with Tech; she’ll tell you what’s needed.”

I snapped the unit off just as Wanda and Daniel stepped into the office, as normally as you please.  ”Al?” Wanda asked, sweetly.  ”What the hell are we searching for, anyway?”

“Never mind, guys.”  I turned on the radiation detector in my hands and told Tech to distribute the rest to Force members she though could use them properly and fly a fast grid over the city, locate the bombs.  Then, as she shot back out of the window, glanced at the one in my hands.

Nothing.

“Wanda, Daniel; we’re needed at the White House.  Clark, keep the evacuation going, but this gizmo doesn’t show any radiation.  Have your men search the underground garage and basement, but I’m betting we didn’t rate any bomb.  Keep me advised and we’ll talk about all this later.”  I held out my hands to my roommates and we all flew out the ruined window.

The Never Ending Battle (Part Twenty-nine)

Then, wanting to know if I should wear a raincoat or jacket, I peeked out the front window and discovered the entire fourth estate camped out on our lawn.  To this day, I believe that I saved many of their lives by insisting that they exit out the back door and fly, at top speed (all but invisible) to the office via the tunnel and parking garage.  Seriously; I think Wanda would have killed the prissy Fox reporter for sure.

I waited a few minutes after they’d left, then called for an official ride to the office, snatched an overcoat from the hall closet, and walked outside with a distracted air.  They let me lock my front door and turn before starting with the questions and pictures, so I was able to jump backwards and slam into the door in “surprise” (I can do surprised) without falling through.  I stared, blankly, at the massed throng and then stepped slowly forward with a puzzled look on my face.  (I can do puzzled.)

I finally got them to stop screaming questions by waving my arms and cupping my ears and yelling back “What?  What?”  I looked directly at the senior reporter from a local affiliate of a major web news program and called, “Hi, Carol … what’s all this about?”

“Will you answer questions about your alleged sexual relationship with Doctors Jones and Allen of your staff?” She asked, stepping to the side to allow her video-man a clear shot.

I cocked my head and, with a wry smile, said, “Sure … provided you tell me what’s being alleged and who’s doing the alleging, first.”

She smiled back and informed me that CNBS, the Cable News Broadcast System, had made the claim that the three of us were cohabiting at this residence.  I glanced back over my shoulder, as if to assure myself that the house was properly identified, and nodded.

“CNBS states that they live here?  Well, yeah … part of the time, at any rate.  My house has lots and lots of rooms and, far more often than any of us would like, we tend to work very late on specific problems.  So each of them have their own room and keep some personal items, just in case they’re too tired to drive back to their own homes.”  I looked at the rest of the crowd, baffled (I can almost do baffled, but it often comes out as just very puzzled), and added, “Is it really such a slow news day that all of you came out here to confirm CNBS’s statement?”

“So you’re saying for the record that they only occasionally spend the night and, then, only platonicly?”

“Well, I realize that looking at me it might be hard to imagine either of them being able to resist my animal magnetism …”  I waited for the laugh to die before adding, “Seriously, for the record, I’d like to say that my sexual life is nobodies business but mine (and not even mine most of the time, mores the pity) and that my colleague’s sex lives are, needless to say, their own business as well.  As soon as I’ve seen what CNBS is alleging for myself, I’ll decide if I wish to take them to court or not.”  My car pulled up on the other side of the crowd.  ”Now, is there anything else I could answer for you this fine morning?”

One man yelled out “Are they in there right now?  Are they waiting until you’ve cleared us away before tip-toeing out?”

I frowned at him and fished out my comm unit, telling it, “Wanda and Daniel.”  After a few moments, they came on line.  I set it for hands free operation and asked them where they were.

“In the office, Bossman … where you decidedly aren’t.  What’s keeping you?”

“In the bathroom, actually, Al.  Nice timing.”

I thanked them and shut the unit off.  I stared at the man who’d yelled the question, my head cocked.  He didn’t reply, but someone else pointed out that hearing them say they were at the office didn’t actually put them at the office.

I asked Carol to take out her cell phone and, as she did so, asked if anyone happened to know the main number of the bureau?  Several people called out the number and Carol obligingly tapped it in.  I could see that several others were doing the same.  When the main switchboard answered, Carol asked for either Doctor Allen or Doctor Jones.  Wanda came on the line and they chatted for a moment, setting up an interview for later that day.

They she threw me a curve ball.  Carol hit redial and asked for Doctor Socks.  After a short wait, my answer machine picked up.  After she hung up, I smiled my best, “Satisfied?” at the lot of them and started for my car.

Halfway through the crowd, a small hand clamped onto my arm and a strident female voice demanded to know why I was lying about creating super powered humans.  I didn’t need to look to recognize the Fox “reporter.”  Frowning, I stopped and asked her what she was talking about?

“Everyone knows it’s impossible for anyone, even the famous Dr. Socks, to out-do God’s supreme creation!” she chanted into the lens of her accompanying video-man.  ”Even the so-called scientists of our great country admit that it’s impossible to defy God’s gravity, so why are you pretending?  What are you covering up, Doctor?!”

I stood there for a tick, torn between wanting to laugh and needing to slap her, and then fished my comm unit back out.  ”Uniman.”  When Chuck answered, I asked him to drop what he was doing and, using his own comm unit, come to my location.  I put the unit back in my inside coat pocket and asked the Fox representative if she was willing to believe her own eyes?

Before she could reply, a cry went up and Chuck, in his redesigned Uniman uniform, dropped down next to me.  ”Morning, Doc … you need a lift to work?”

I introduced him to the Fox woman and asked her, if it was impossible to fly, where did Uniman just come from?

She stammered that he could be wired to a helicopter.  I asked her to check him for attached wires and she did so, taking the opportunity to pat him down pretty throughly.  When she admitted there were no wires … now.  I asked Uniman to float a foot off of the ground and, after he was aloft, asked if she wanted to check for wires again?

She immediately replied that he must have some sort of device sewn into his costume.  Before I could ask, Chuck stripped off his uniform at speed, leaving himself only in a pair of briefs and his mask.  It was like his uniform simply vanished.

I sighed as the rest of the crowd whooped and laughed.  ”Please don’t say that you think he has some sort of anti-gravity device in his underwear, miss … most of these people represent family shows.”

Chuck, laughing, floated over to her video-man and, with his permission, lifted him off the ground and shot straight up.  When they disappeared from sight, I asked the woman if she still had audio?  She admitted that she did, so I asked her, for the record, how did she propose to explain her video-man’s trip to the upper-atmosphere?

After the rest of her fellow’s stop laughing, she replied, “I don’t and I don’t have to.  Since your so-called hero can’t possibly violate God’s physical laws, you must have come up with some sort of trick to make it look like he can.”  She fished out the largest cross I’d ever seen anyone wear and, holding it in a death grip, challenged me to have my false super-hero lift her into the sky.

“Now, I’m not a Biblical scholar, miss, but why would your wearing a cross keep him from flying with you?”

“I am an ordained minister within the Church of the True Americans, Doctor Socks.  My faith will keep me on the ground.”

Chuck descended a moment later and, after I explained the situation, shrugged, picked the smallish woman up by the elbows, and rose a foot.

“Well?” I asked, honestly curious how she intended to handle the moment.

“Well, what?” She replied, eyes squeezed shut.

“You’re flying.”

“No I am not!”

“Your own video-man is filming you floating in Uniman’s arms, miss.  Deny it as much as you want, but the fact is that it’s happening.”

She opened her eyes, looked around, then quickly swung her arms over Chuck’s head and patted down every inch of his bare shoulders and back.  He smiled into her eyes and waggled an eyebrow, commenting “If you really feel the need to check my underwear, something can be arranged, sweet stuff.”

Okay, to the bad side, that was the day that Fox labeled the Force sexual deviants, but, to the good side, they stopped harping on how we were fooling the American public.  Uniman went back to whatever he’d been doing and I drove to work with the comfortable feeling of having actually accomplished something that morning.

******

(Now they represent weeks.  Hey, it’s my damn journal and I’ll be as inconsistent as I want to!)

The Force now numbered eight, four men and four women, so the White House was happy.  Whether or not any of them formed couples was none of my business (but both Wanda and Daniel kept careful tract of who was doing what with whom, for scientific reasons).  The new member were still officially in training mode, but – as Wanda predicted – they were already outclassing the men.

I had a ward of flying or walking paraplegic veterans and none of us understood how the hell they were managing any of it.  It wasn’t that they could manage to float, as we’d thought, many of them were honestly flying up and down the wards at pretty good clips and, while most of them had difficulties with stamina at first, they were now managing to stay aloft for hours at a time.  (And don’t get me started on the group that was walking again.  Our best guess was that their telekinesis, diverted by their intense need to walk once more, somehow fixed their damage, instead of giving them flight.)

The Force interview was, as I already noted, a rosing success.  It not only showed the Force to be more human and introduced the new members (while the commercials introduced the new action figures to match), Chuck’s unmasking went off without a hitch and he became the official face of the Force.

Funny story, there:  We blew it.  We believed it was safe for Chuck to unmask, but we forgot the basic nature of celebrity.

Chuck explained that he was raised in an orphanage, unadopted, until he was of legal age to fend for himself.  Thus, he had no relatives.  He didn’t identify the orphanage, but reporters found the abandoned building where it had been within twenty-four hours and publicized it’s name.  They were never able to locate anyone who’d worked there when it was open … but they located Chuck’s entire family by the end of the week!  Three dozen woman claimed to be his mother, six men claimed fatherhood, and over a thousand people claimed some sort of further kinship, running from sibling to third great cousin thrice removed.  They even located at least a dozen women who claimed to be Chuck’s wife, girlfriend, or mistress, all of whom claimed children with Chuck.

The people who claimed to be Chuck’s relatives were, almost to a person, kidnapped before the first month passed.  Despite the fact that none of them were actually related to Chuck, those who wanted to control him still took the chance.  Thankfully, we assigned trackers to everyone who came forward and were able to rescue them all before they’d been held for a full day, but the shock of actually being snatched off the streets drove the vast majority of them to publicly renounce their claims.

The women trying for paternity, however, were not touched.  Neither were their children.  Clark thought that was very suspicious, so he assigned extra personnel to them, delving into their backgrounds and families.  After a few days, while the rest of Chuck’s quondam family members were busy trying to establish that they had lied, his agents reported their findings.

Each of the women were, in various shady ways, being paid by other countries to claim Chuck as the father to their children.

Clark laughed at our baffled expressions and asked, “How can Chuck prove he’s not the father of those brats?”

Yeah … blood tests.  If he could give blood to test, they’d have the secret of the Force’s powers.  DNA tests could be run on other matter, such as dead hair (and we’d already discovered that the invulnerability only extended to live tissue), but all of the women’s attorneys were insisting on blood samples.

So we gave them blood samples, but insisted on a neutral lab to determine paternity.  Daniel showed up at the decided on lab with a tube of blood … which had been taken from Chuck back when we were determining his physical qualifications to become a subject.  Daniel had kept it refrigerated as a baseline he could refer back to, one or two drops at a time, so there was plenty for the testing.

The lawyers set up a howl and it eventually took a judge’s order to shut them up.  Daniel showed the paperwork trail that proved the blood he supplied had been taken from Chuck and I testified that his DNA had been changed by the process, so any current blood sample – provided we could figure out a way to get blood from him now that bullets bounced off – would be useless for paternity identification.

The blood proved the kids couldn’t be his and, oddly enough, there were no appeals filed.

The Never Ending Battle (Part Twenty-eight)

Wanda silently sank into the nearest chair and picked up a discarded drink, draining it in one gulp.  ”So … whomever put the damn thing in here pretty much knows about us, then.”  She studied the empty glass and, setting it back down, picked up another one that was half full.  ”The only questions left are ‘who’ and ‘what will they do with the information?’ ”

Well, “they” turned out to be a cable news agency and their subsequent legal battles over the bugging of our house made for some lively legal debate around the country.

At one time in America, as I understand it, privacy was a simple legal matter.  Every man, woman, and child was entitled to privacy … period.  Nobody tried to violate the privacy of politicians or celebrities …  heck, there’s a famous story from back in the twentieth century about when the most famous sex symbol of their time was caught leaving the White House by the press corp, she giggled and said something to the effect that she’d made the President’s back feel better (indicating that she’d at least massaged it) … and it never made the papers!!

I know, astonishing, right?  The press respected the privacy of the President of the United States and a movie star!

That changed around fifty or so years later, when anyone in the public sector became fair game.  Photographers did the damnest things, including breaking the law, to get whatever exclusive photos they could of public figures.  There was, and I’m not making this up, an actual sub-specialty that specialized in those kind of photos, men and women who were willing to climb trees, hide on rooftops, rent helicopters to fly over and disrupt actual family affairs (such as marriages and, in at least one memorable instance, funerals) … pretty much do anything if it meant they got the picture they were after.

Okay, I know this means – now – that they’d be arrested the minute they tried to sell the photograph, but – back then – the public was practically rabid for those sort of pictures, so magazine and newspaper publishers hid behind “the people’s right to know” and “the Freedom of the Press” to justify publishing pictures of public figures in the nude … as if the people had a right to know what their favorite movie star looked like naked or that the famed Freedom of the Press somehow covered blatant violations of privacy.

The publishers argued, when sued, that they didn’t violate any laws.  Maybe the photographers did, but not the publishers.

The entire matter came to a head when some enterprising young dolt managed to bribe one of the White House cleaning staff to hide an early model of a video dot in the President’s bedroom, creating the first internet Presidential porno video.  Now, many people believed that the fact that the married President – who was the first ordained minister elected – was filmed engaging in relations with an aide (a male aide at that), somehow justified the act.  As you might remember, the photographer’s legal team – half paid for by the opposing party and half by the ACLU – made that the centerpiece of their defense.

As the case blazed across the screens of homes across the country, scores of copycat entrepreneurs descended on the homes of the famous with handfuls of the barely noticeable video dots.  Bribing servants whenever possible, pretending to be telephone or cable repair personnel when needed, or indulging in outright breaking and entering where nothing else worked.  Suddenly, the internet was flooded with video clips (all of which, of course, led to sites where one could buy the entire, unedited, videos) of everyone from the starting guard on your favorite basketball team to the highest paid actress to the head of The Christian Coalition!

When the director of the ACLU was informed in the middle of a press conference, one where he was defending the actions of his agency, that he (and a young woman reported to be an underage babysitter) had been filmed as well … then the chuckling network reporter was informed by the guy next to him that he’d made the net, as well!

By the end of the year, nobody was safe.  Governors, mayors, aldermen, county commissioners; every level of politics was represented by at least one dirty movie.  Movie stars, television stars, internet personalities, authors, writers, singers, painters … then, while the country was still laughing, it was the common man’s turn.  Policemen, firemen, principals, teachers; anyone and everyone who had at least one person who either wanted to see them naked or wanted to embarrass them was hit.

Within one year, “America” became synonymous with both “voyeur” and “victim.”

The spate of laws that were passed following the deluge were impressive and incomprehensible.  One state wanted to regulate cameras of all types much the same way they used to regulate the purchasing of firearms.  Another passed a law, if you can believe it, that made any website that displayed any videos or picture, of anyone or anything, illegal within their borders.  A third made the possession of any photography equipment a terrorist act.

Finally, the federal government stepped in and passed a few rare sensible laws.  The first, of course, reestablished the rights of every man, woman, and child to privacy … within their own home, any room or domicile they rented, and their personal vehicles.  Those rights extended to visitors and guests.  Once out in public, however, they were fair game once more.

Any reporter or photographer who violated their privacy would automatically be fined one million dollars, no exceptions, and would lose his or her copyright to any material that came from that violation.  Any publisher who used any material that resulted from such violation would also be fined one million dollars and be shut down until such time as he or she could prove that it was accidental.  If they were not able to prove so, their business would automatically be handed over to the injured party as recompense.

However, none of these rights extended fully to members of government.  It was decided, after the impeachment of the President, that the public had a right to know if the men and women they elected exercised moral turpitude.  (Which always struck me as somewhat unfair; the man who cheated on his wife of twenty years with sheep somehow had the right to know that the Senator he voted for was a decent man?)  So those who were elected to government were not covered by the new laws while working … however, they were not required to expose themselves to the world at large.  A new agency was established, one that routinely made spot checks on the morals of those elected and reported their findings.  Any elected government official who was caught making goo-goo eyes at an intern was quickly tossed out of office and fined his (or her) entire salary.

Moreover, the fact that elected officials were excluded from the privacy laws meant that photographers and their ilk could, if possible, bug their private areas.  Not any area that the official might use for work, mind you, since various security acts and laws prohibited that sort of thing, but bedrooms and bathrooms (provided they were for the exclusive use of the elected official and only when he or she was doing their job) were fair game.  Their private residences out-of-state, however, were off limits, as were the spouses and children of the elected official.

As a result, the average Washington politician’s D.C. home was better protected than most military bases and their staff the most loyal in the country.  It also meant that the elected were – while in Washington, at any rate – a boy (or girl) scout … at least sexually.  Oh, they could still engage in power politics and underhanded activities all they wanted, provided that their nocturnal acts were limited to their lawful spouses and fairly vanilla acts at that.

Which is what the cable news agency tried to use when it splashed the fact that Wanda, Daniel and I were indulging in cohabitation across the screens of Americans the next morning.  Their defense was that I, being the head of a massively powerful agency, was the moral and legal equal of an elected official and, therefor, fair game.  They also used the fact that they were a foreign-based and owned corporation to try and sidestep any possible prosecution.  Finally, they asserted that, since the story was based on a recorded statement and did not include any photographs or videos, it did not fall under the laws as passed at any rate.

The court case wasn’t finished by the time the nuclear bomb was detonated under the White House, so none of us ever did find out how it all ended up.  I’d like to think that we would have ended up in possession of one of the largest cable news agencies in the world, but – well – what can you do when the bomb goes off in your face, eh?

As it was, all we knew was that our private arrangement was no longer private when Daniel turned on the kitchen monitor the next morning.  Wanda cried a bit, while Daniel ranted, and I tried to comfort them both.  I finally pointed out that it wasn’t like we were anyone famous, elected, or even more newsworthy than a quick flash in the pan to cover a slow news morning, which made us all feel much better.  Then we called an old friend who happened to be a lawyer (who also happened to be waiting for the call) to start legal action against the cable network, which also made us feel much better.

Then, wanting to know if I should wear a raincoat or jacket, I peeked out the front window and discovered the entire fourth estate camped out on our lawn.  To this day, I believe that I saved many of their lives by insisting that we exit out the back door and fly, at top speed (all but invisible) to the office via the tunnel and parking garage.  Seriously; I think Wanda would have killed the prissy Fox reporter for sure.

IRS Oopsie

For the first time in decades, all our tax information got to us quickly enough that we could file as soon as the IRS declared open season, so I quickly tele-filed and was having a really nice chunk of circus money coming back … then the IRS rejected my return.

Having worked for the IRS, I dug out the phone number of someone I knew in the agency and called to ask “wtf.”  He checked and told me that I was just one of thousands that were rejected for this particular error and that there was no file or penalty involved.  Just correct the return and resubmit.

Here’s the error for those who might fall astray of it:  According to the on-line tax preparation program I used, I qualified an $800 Making Work Pay credit.  Here’s a link that explains what, exactly, this credit is about. The upside is that, if one qualifies, it’s a $400 credit ($800 for married, filing joint), which is always fun.  The downside … Well, remember how some people received a $250 “economic recovery payment” last year?

I sure didn’t.  It turns out that there was a single question on the program about that on the program and my checking “no” equaled our qualifying for the full $800 credit, when the proper “yes” response would have dropped us to $300, which was the correct credit amount for us.

So if you don’t remember if you received that $250 payment, there’s a number at the link you can call to find out and save yourself the hassle of having to resubmit.  Just another tax tip, courtesy of the Sailor Jim Financial Network.