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.