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http://xkcd.com/679/

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http://sailorjim.net/wordpress/?p=293

“No, no, Doc-tor Socks.  Please stay seat-ted.  If you get up, all these fine young peo-ples work will be un-done.”  He stuck out his right hand and added, “I’m Walt-er Hunt-ley, Doc-tor and it is a pleas-ure to meet you.”

Two of those fine young peo-ples helped Uncle Walter out of his wheelchair and into the chair next to mine.  Seeing him closeup was a little like looking on the face of Truth personified … Truth, wearing a gray suit, a peach cotton shirt, and a magenta tie.

Damn.  I sat back down and waited while an earnest young woman readjusted a microphone that I hadn’t noticed before.  With a jolt, I realized that my aborted conversation with Johnny, at least my half of it, might have been overheard by their sound people.  I glanced around while they wired Walter and, sure enough, there was a booth with several hard faced people wearing headphones glaring at me.

Okay, a small faux pas, but what of it?  So I pissed off the sound people … then I noticed the other floor technicians were also glaring at me.  All of them were either wearing headphones or earpieces of some sort and I belatedly remembered that all the studio personnel had to have a way to quietly communicate during broadcasts.

Including the reporters!  Crap!  I turned back just as Walter was inserting his earpiece and yelped,  “Mr. Huntley!”

He looked at me, slightly surprised, and answered, “Yes, Doc-tor Socks?”

“I have a small confession to make, sir.  I wasn’t aware of your disability prior to agreeing to this interview, a fact that I just berated the head of my public relations department over.”

He gave me a hard look.  “Am I to un-der-stand that you would pre-fer this in-ter-view be han-dled by a re-port-er with-out a dis-abil-ity, sir?”

“Not in the least!  However, given that we’re going to be discussing my latest project, that of increasing the mobility of the paraplegic by limited use of flight, I didn’t know how … well, how it might affect you, personally.  I’m sure that you’d maintain your professionalism regardless, but I’d hate to give any unintentional offense or hurt to you personally.”  There, now the only question was how would he take that.

He simply regarded me for a moment and then leaned forward and quietly asked if he’d be ineligible for possible inclusion into the program due to his age?  I explained that age had nothing to do with eligibility and that it all depended on the chemical and psychological make-up of the individual applying.  As a matter of fact, if the possibility of not qualifying didn’t bother him, and if he had the time, I’d be more than happy to drive over to the labs after the interview and test him for compatibility today.

Then Inspiration, more than clever enough to warrant the capital letter, struck!

“As a matter of fact, sir, if you wouldn’t mind the intrusion into your privacy, you could bring a camera crew along to show how we determine eligibility and, if you happen to be within the ninety percent who qualify, you could also film the unrestricted aspects of the process.  I’d appreciate a documentary of sorts on this, if only to show the public that we’re keeping everything on the up and up.”

He’d had paused, considering my original offer from a personal point of view, but my expansion on that idea also touched the professional within him.  “Nine-ty per-cent ac-cep-tability rate or suc-cess rate, Doc-tor Socks?”

“Acceptability, I’m afraid, and then only from a physical point of view.  I suspect that we’ll end up rejecting many due to psychological difficulties, in that the process requires the proper mind set as much as the proper chemistry.  As for the success rate … well, as this is virgin territory, sir; it’s impossible as of yet to determine how many of those otherwise perfect for the process will, for one reason or another, be unable to benefit from it.”

He nodded as he listened, considering every word, then asked, “Why only para-plegi-cs, Doc-tor?  Would-n’t quad-riple-gics or any-one con-fined to any sort of mo-bil-ity de-vice bene-fit from the pro-cess, if other-wise el-igi-ble?”

I spread my hands and shrugged.  “Honestly, sir?  I haven’t the slightest idea.  You see, one of the requirements for anyone to be able to benefit from the process is that they have to have the necessary physical strength, the stamina, to make it work for them.”  I went on to explain about the link between the physical health of the subject and how it effected their ability to fly.  “The members of the Justice Force can fly incredible distances at astonishing speeds simply because they all have enhanced strength.  Without that enhancement, all the process can do is make it easier for those confined in wheelchairs to move from bed to chair, from chair to car, and – possibly, in the best case scenarios – permit them to reach items on the top shelf of grocery stores or to be vertical when shaking hands.”

He asked me to pause for a moment while we went to commercial and I glanced, surprised, at the camera.  The director called cut and I blurted out, “We were on the air?!  When did that happen?”

Uncle Walter broke into laughter, cuing many of those in the studio to laugh along, and replied that we weren’t live and that they’d been filming ever since I started talking.  The finished piece would be edited together from our conversation and broadcast, for lack of a better term, that night.

I leaned back and shook my head, grinning.  “So why did you ask to pause for a commercial, then?”

He looked surprised at the question and chuckled, “We’ll have a cou-ple of com-mer-cial breaks dur-ing the in-ter-view, Doc-tor Socks, so I’ll have to have a cou-ple of re-cord-ed pauses for them to in-sert where nec-es-sary.”  He added that we could restart our conversation whenever I liked and reminded me where I’d left off.

I went on to explain why only those with permanent injuries and, then, only those who still had upper-body control, were going to be considered for the initial process.  He asked me if I ever foresaw a day where ordinary able-bodied folks would be considered for any powers and I shook my head, sadly.

“The full procedure is incredibly difficult and the qualification rate is incredibly low.  Even if it were possible to give these powers to every man, woman, and child in the world, the vast majority – close to eighty-five percent – wouldn’t pass the chemical qualifications and quite a few of those who did pass would be rejected due to being psychologically unfit to become a superhuman.  Only around a grand total of five percent of the world would end up undergoing the process.  Five percent out of the entire world and how fair would that be to the other ninety-five percent?”

“In that the world pop-ulat-ion is in ex-cess of twen-ty bill-ion, that would mean that there would be a sup-per-hu-man pop-pulat-ion of over one bill-ion peo-ple, Doc-tor Socks.  Quite a bit of peo-ple fly-ing a-bout.”

“Exactly, which is why – at the current time – I’m not releasing the secrets to my process to the rest of the world, including our own government.  I don’t mind that guns and bombs exist, per se, but I’m terrified that there are so many.  Weapons in the right hands can be a positive thing, but weapons in the wrong hands – or even simply misguided hands – can be highly destructive.”

“And are your hands the right hands, Doc-tor?”

“For weapons?  Gracious, no!  I haven’t the slightest idea how to handle a firearm and would be just as likely to shoot myself in the foot if handed one.  For my process, however, I have one unique qualification that others lack that make me the best to handle it.”

“What qual-i-fi-cation is that, Doc-tor?”

I grinned and spread my hands.  “The fact that I’m not only the man who invented the process, but the only person alive who knows how it works, of course!”

“Prag-ma-tic, but not ter-ri-bly eth-ical, would-n’t you ad-mit, sir?”

“Oh, I dunno, Walter.  I had a conversation about the ethics and morals of my program with the Pope just a few hours ago and came to a bit of a minor epiphany: I know I have a personal code of ethics, as well as a rather strict set of professional ethics, as well.  Anyone else I entrusted with the process would be an unknown to me … and this secret is at least as dangerous as how to build an atomic bomb.  I’d hate to guess wrong.”

“As would we all, Doc-tor Socks; as would we all.  Thank you for tak-ing the time for this in-ter-view.  I will con-sid-er your kind of-fer and an-nonce my dec-sion at a la-ter date.”

“Thank you, Walter.  It was a pleasure to meet you.”

While he recorded a rather neatly done segue back to whatever program the interview was going to be a part of, that nice young lady came over and deftly removed my microphone, taking the moment to whisper in my ear that she’d be more than willing to permit me to test her, in any way I preferred and for however long I’d like, if it would get her into the Force.  She left before I could muster a reply.  I still hadn’t gotten used to the bribes that routinely came; I wondered if I ever would.

I handed Uncle Walter my personal card, with my private number written on the back, and told him to call as soon as he decided, day or night, shook his hand, and left the building.  I called for a ride back to the agency while walking through the building and, for a moment, wasn’t paying attention to anything but speaking to the operator.

Which is why I didn’t notice Dugan Howser, whom I’d last seen pushing his rental wheelchair and arguing while being ejected from the agency, walking towards me with a friendly smile.  However, when he called my name and shot me several times in the chest, I noticed him just fine.

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http://sailorjim.net/wordpress/?p=295

I never knew how much I missed the sea until I moved here.

I can drive five minutes from this house and be able to see horizon in all directions, unbroken by hill or building.  It reminds me so much of the open water that I could just cry.

The horizon, by the way, is only twenty-five miles away … or so I’ve been told at various times.  Something about the curvature of the Earth and the average height of people make the horizon you can see, both out on the flat water and here on the flat land, about twenty-five miles away.  So when you stand and gaze around you at an unmarred expanse of land or water, you are at the center of a circle with a diameter of fifty miles, give or take.

If I remember correctly, the area of a circle is pi times the radius squared.  Pi is, for all practical purposes, 3.14, I believe, and the radius is 25 miles, so 25 squared would be 625.  3.14 X 625 is 1962.5, so one would be sitting in a circle that comprised 1962.5 miles worth of area.

Okay, so that’s the center of 1962 and a half miles and I was born about half way through 1957, so that means that I fell in love with this kind of view when I was five years old, which means it happened when I was living in California. Granada Hills, California, to be precise … which doesn’t make much sense, since the key aspect of Granada Hills is, of course, the hills, which means that I made a mistake in math somewhere.

Damn.

Oh, wait … I think I have it!  We moved to New Mexico, which is probably when I fell in love with horizons (being that we lived on a mesa), when I was a teenager, around about fourteen if memory serves.  Fourteen from 1962 is 1948, 1948 divided by 3.14 is 620 (give or take a few dozen decimals) and 620 is 25 miles squared minus a few miles.  I was shorter at 14, so my eyes were closer to the ground, so – naturally – the horizon was actually a little closer, so the math works out!

Whew.  Just goes to show you that anything can be explained with math!

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http://sailorjim.net/wordpress/?p=282

Twenty minutes later, I hung the phone up and sat back, grinning.  I then got on my com unit and said, “Cratos.”  When Bob answered, I asked him if he was involved with anything special at the moment.  He explained that he was just patrolling at the moment and all was quiet.

I asked him if happened to be Catholic.  He replied that he’d always respected and admired the Catholics, but was a Methodist, himself.

“Good … how’d you like to do me a favor and visit the Pope for a few minutes?”

“Excuse me?  Did you say …”

“The Pope?  Yes I did.  His Holiness would like an opportunity to actually meet a real live superhero in person.  Interested?”

He was and would have immediately flown to Rome except that I remembered my promise and called Johnny back.  When he heard the Pope’s request, he made a few phone calls of his own to ensure that there would be an official photograph or two of the meeting.  (According to Johnny, the pictures that were published of Cratos kneeling before the Pope was the reason our next years budget was approved without question.  Who knew that many Catholics were on the committee?)

With Cratos heading to Vatican City and a still slightly shell shocked Daniel heading back to his desk, Johnny and I firmed up my interview with Walter Huntley, the nations most revered and respected newsman.  According to Johnny, his network was going to have one of their more powerful up-and-coming talking heads handle the interview, but as soon as Uncle Walter heard about it (”Did I mention that my wife knows his wife, doc?”), he stepped in and announced that he’d be interviewing me, personally.

It’s one thing to toss off a few off-handed remarks to the bottom feeders who attended Bia’s little aborted kiss and tell, but this was Walter Huntley! A poll conducted of middle-class America showed conclusively that more people trusted and believed whatever he said than they did the President.  They man had ruled video news casting for over thirty years and now only stepped in front of the camera when something came along that interested him.

Such as talking to Dr. Albert Eugene Socks, apparently.  A fact that threatened to turn all solid matter within my intestinal tract to liquid, by the way.  I could, theoretically, dive to the bottom of the Marianna Trench, nude, and bring up any wreck I happened to locate, but the thought of being interviewed by Walter Huntley … to say I was terrified would be somewhat of an understatement.

And I was going to meet him at the local studio in less than two hours.  My best suit had been vaporized on my body yesterday, that I’d showered just a few hours earlier seemed woefully inadequate, and although my hair hadn’t grown since I’d become super powered, that meant I hadn’t had a haircut or shave in months!

As soon as I got off the phone with Johnny, I threw up in my trash can.

And now my breath smelled of vomit.

I called for a car to take me back to my house and told my secretary that I’d be unavailable until I returned, don’t put any calls through and don’t tell anyone where I was.  Then I called Daniel and Wanda to let them know what was going on as I took the elevator to ground level.  Daniel, still miffed over my simply putting him on the phone with the Pope, said it served me right.  Wanda, far more sensible, told me to wear my gray suit with a salmon shirt and dark red tie.

I paused, about to step out of the elevator, and asked why the gray suit, the salmon shirt, and the dark red tie?

“Because Uncle Walter always wears black suits, white shirts, and dark blue ties, of course!  Your new hair color is all wrong from those silly camel and tan suits you used to wear, and you can’t try to match him for dark elegance, so go for power.  You are one of the most powerful men in the country, at the moment, so dress like it.”

Hmmm … I thanked them both, although why I thanked Daniel I have no idea, and headed home.

An hour and a half later, I was delivered to the network studios in my best light weight gray suit, a rather dapper silk shirt in salmon, and a nappy raw silk tie in maroon.  I was clean, smelled good, and had brushed my teeth three times.  I walked in and told the receptionist that I was here to be interviewed.  A nice young man whisked me up to a dressing room, where a rather preoccupied young woman proceeded to put more makeup on me than my mother ever wore in her entire life.  I felt like a cross between a hooker and a clown.

A second nice man, this one in his forties, walked me to the studio proper, all the time assuring me that the makeup was fine.  They sat me down in an incredibly comfortable chair (I fished out my com and, after asking, recorded the brand for later) and provided me with a glass of sparkling lemon flavored water.  They left me there for awhile, while dozens of people whirled around me, adjusting lights and holding a sort of meter in front of my face from time to time, adjusting sound and occasionally asking me to repeat my name in a conversational voice, and adjusting cameras … which required the other folks to readjust everything else, including my makeup.

Finally, Walter Huntley came out … in a wheelchair.

I felt my stomach fall out of me.  I was about to talk to America’s most trusted newsman about how I was going to help paraplegics fly and he was in a frigging wheelchair, himself!  I pulled out my com unit so fast that I almost tossed it across the room.  “Johnny!” I yelped into it.  When my pr head answered the phone, I screamed under my breath, “Walter Huntley is in a wheelchair, damn it!  The man is in a fucking wheelchair, Johnny!”

“Yeah, I’d heard that.  He had a stoke or something, maybe some sort of vascular thing with his legs, about five years ago.  Never lets it be seen on the air, though … so?”

“SO!?!“  I quietly shrieked back.  “SO?!  I’m about to discuss what, Johnny!?”  What am I here to talk about, huh!?”

“You’re new project, of course; helping people stuck in chairs to move around better … listen, is there some sort of problem here?”

I stared at the com unit, astonished, then Uncle Walter was on me and I started to stand, shoving it back into my pocket.  He waved me down as dozens of technicians jumped forward.

“No, no, Doc-tor Socks.  Please stay seat-ted.  If you get up, all these fine young peo-ples work will be un-done.”  He stuck out his right hand and added, “I’m Walt-er Hunt-ley, Doc-tor and it is a pleas-ure to meet you.”

Two of those fine young peo-ples helped Uncle Walter out of his wheelchair and into the chair next to mine.  Seeing him closeup was a little like looking on the face of Truth personified … Truth, wearing a gray suit, a peach cotton shirt, and a magenta tie.

Damn.

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Current Location: with my beloved
Current Mood: pissed off
Current Music: Eye of the Tiger
Tags: character: tsubasa

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http://xkcd.com/678/

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Current Location: wrapped up
Current Mood: awake
Current Music: Anggun - 'Chrysalis'
Tags: character: hide, character: yoshiki, fic: chrysalis, gift: gackt_jihaku and aniffa, one-shot, warning: r, warning: yaoi/slash/bl, x japan

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http://sailorjim.net/wordpress/?p=276

“You know damn well what I’m talking about, Socks!  You intend to give the handicapped of this nation powers and we are here to join up!”

I looked at the three of them, puzzled.  “Okay, I see that Mr. Howser is sitting in a wheelchair (which is odd, since I watched him walk out of the building just a couple of days ago), but what handicaps are you and Mr. Peck claiming?”

The congressman pulled an envelope out of his pocket and all but threw it onto my desk.  Frowning, I opened it.  The letterhead showed it was from Walter Reed Hospital.  I read the letter and looked back at the older man.  “According to this, you are suffering from Early Onset Alzheimer’s, congressman.”

“That’s right!”

“Huh … and you, Mr. Peck?  What disability are you claiming?”

“Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, brought on from military service in the war,” he replied.

I simply looked at him for a moment before asking, “What war?  The last war we were involved in was back in 2015, when the Terror Wars finally ended.  You couldn’t possibly be old enough to have served in those.”

“I was enlisted in the People’s Army and fought in the Second Civil War, Socks.”

The Second Civil War was what a group of half-assed malcontents called their two week occupation of the Lincoln Memorial.  They were actually there for a bit longer, but nobody paid any attention to them for the first couple of weeks.  Then they decided to barricade the open side of the monument by stacking whatever they could find and were finally noticed.  The police sent a patrol car around to see what was going on and the officer, when he finally understood that this was a political matter, elected to toss it to his captain instead of simply taking action.  His captain, in poker terms, saw his patrolman’s common sense and raised him a good idea by contacting the State Department and asking for their assistance in defusing the situation.

By then, the various news organizations (either via tips or by overhearing radio transmissions) had twigged to what was going on and were out in force.  The State Department sent a negotiator, who was rebuffed, so they turned it over to the White House for consideration.  The White House, seeing that no damage was being done to the monument, let the “occupying forces” wait for a week and then sent the vice president out to speak to them.

Their leader presented their list of demands to the Veep, who – in turn – relayed them to the President.  The President reportedly had herself one hell of a good laugh over the list and then, after she’d dried her eyes, asked the Pentagon to have an armed battalion surround the Lincoln Memorial.  They weren’t to harm the mental defectives within, just keep the reporters and public back … including any and all food deliveries.

A week and a half later, the People’s Army decided to call it a moral victory and were allowed to leave, presumably to the nearest fast food restaurant.  Their members were later billed for the clean up of the memorial and, after served with legal papers stating that they’d receive no subsidies, tax rebates, or any other government money until such time as their bill was paid, eventually settled with the government.  (They were also sued successfully by the local motel they’d been staying at prior to the occupation, both for their unpaid bill and for the cost of the furniture they used to blockade the opening and never returned.)

Finding out that Peck was one of them was oddly not surprising.

All I did was nod and turned to my ex-employee, inquiring why he was now in the wheelchair.

“Paraplegic, Doctor Socks.”

I half stood in astonishment.  “What happened?  Was there an accident … no.  There’s no way you could have been in an accident that bad and been out by now.  What do you mean?”

“I have arranged to have a surgeon sever my spinal column later today,” he replied, smiling.  “I’m just trying out this particular chair at the moment … it’ll just be a rental, since I won’t need any chair once I’ve gone through your procedure.”

I sank back into my chair and stared at him, aghast.  I asked the two standing to have a seat and, when they were seated, explained that – yes – I was beginning a project in which I’d be attempting – just attempting, mind – to give paraplegics back their mobility.  I hoped to do so by giving them limited flight abilities … but no other powers.  Just paraplegics and just limited – very limited – flight abilities.  “In the future, perhaps, I might find that some aspect of my procedures might help those with either Alzheimer’s or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but – at this precise moment – I only have plan for working with paraplegics.  Sorry.”

Before anyone could speak, I then addressed my ex-employee.  “As for your application for the procedure, it would be rejected as soon as you put it in.  Not because you were an employee, not because you quit when you discovered that none of the employees were going to ever gain any powers … but because you’d fail the psychological testing required to be accepted.  Anyone who’d willingly dig up a back alley quack to deliberately cripple themselves would be too great a psychological threat to the program, period.”

I gave them a few minutes to complain, then – raising my voice loud enough to be heard – told them that the meeting was now ended.  When they redoubled their howls, I simply tapped my knee against the security button mounted on the inside of my desk and, within a minute, they were being escorted out of the building by guards.  I made sure that Howser walked out, pushing his chair in front of him.

I sighed and called Johnny Maken, the head of our public relations office.  After trading bland pleasantries, I explained what had just happened and warned him that it was entirely possible that every employee who’d walked out had already contacted the press or their representative or whomever.  He took his time replying, which clued me that I’d called him a tad late.  I sighed again and asked for the bad news.

“Well, Doctor Socks, the bad news is that you didn’t speak to me when you first decided to invest your time on making cripples fly.  It’s also that you didn’t call when a goodly number of your staff walked out over it.”  He paused for a moment before continuing, “The really bad news, however, is that every single news agency is demanding either an exclusive interview or exclusive information about how we’re ‘going to start handing out super powers to anyone with any handicap.”  The incredibly bad news is that several congressmen and senators have already positioned themselves as being the guiding force behind the government’s decision to start giving normal citizens powers, starting with the underprivileged and handicapped.  And the unbelievably bad news is that every single organization representing the interests of handicapped people, both Americans and foreign, have already started legal action to ensure that their people are the first to receive super powers.”

“Oh God … ”

“Thank for reminding me!  The only slightly annoying news is that almost every religious leader is weighing in on the subject as well, either supporting your decision or calling for your damnation.  At the moment, it’s pretty much a fifty/fifty proposition.  By the way, the Pope would really like to chat.  His people have been calling fairly regularly for the last day or so … I guess at least one of the people who quit were Catholic, huh?”

I let Johnny hear my head strike the desktop.  Then I gave him a couple of extra head whacks as an apology before asking his advice.

“First, I advise you to keep your damn public relations people in the damn loop, you arrogant bastard!  Either start making a habit of letting me know what you’re up to or find yourself a new boy, because I don’t have to put up with this kind of crap!”

I apologized verbally, explaining that I’d only been doing this for a couple of months and promised that I’d invite him to every policy meeting in the future.  He accepted both my apology, my explanation, and my promise.  I waited to see if there was anything else, then repeated myself, “So what do I do now?  How do we solve this?”

“Oh, that?  Easy peasy, Boss.  I’ll set you up for an interview with someone solid, someone who’ll keep the questions friendly and lob some softballs across the plate.  You explain exactly what you’re trying to do, clear up the misunderstandings, and that’s that.”  He chuckled and added, “Oh, yeah; you should also call the Pope for a quick Mea Cupa.  Couldn’t hurt and shows proper respect; do it before the interview and then mention, just casually, that you’d already spoken to His Holiness about the misunderstanding.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have his number, would you?”

He gave me the number and told me to sit tight while he arranged an interview, explaining that doing it today would stop a lot of the problems from building any further.  I told him that I’d make the call and stay at my desk until I’d heard back from him.

Then I called Daniel and asked him to stop by my office.  When he walked in, I said, “Daniel, you speak Italian, right?”

“Si … so?”

“I need you to sit in on a conversation and translate for me.  Would you mind?”

“Nope,” he pulled a chair into a comfortable position.

“Thanks.”  I picked up the phone, put it on speaker, and tapped in the bloody long number.  We can arrange for a man to fly without a plane, but still need to hit over a dozen buttons to reach Italy … what a world.  A woman answered in flavored English, saying “Hello and how might I help you?”

“Doctor Socks for His Holiness, please.”  Daniel fell out of his chair, his face white as a sheet.

“Just one moment, Doctor Socks; I’m putting you though.  Do you need me to stay on the line to translate?”

“Thank you, but no; I have a translator here.”

The next voice I heard was masculine and spoke Italian.  I looked at Daniel … who was on his knees and crossing himself.  I waved frantically at him and said, “Good Afternoon, Your Holiness, and thank you for taking the time to speak to me.”

Daniel, still kneeling, stammered out an brief statement in Italian that I hoped repeated what I said.  The Pope said something else and I stared at Daniel until he shook his head and replied directly to the phone.  While I sat there, flabbergasted, they had a five minute conversation that didn’t include me whatsoever.  Finally, Daniel crossed himself again and told me that the Pope realized that he,  Daniel, had been terrified and wanted to take a few minutes to put him at ease before continuing with our conversation.

I rolled my eyes and thanked the Pope for his kindness and reminded him that I was returning His Holiness’s call … how might I be of assistance to the Vatican?

Twenty minutes later, I hung the phone up and sat back, grinning.  I then got on my com unit and said, “Cratos.”  When Bob answered, I asked him if he was involved with anything special at the moment.  He explained that he was just patrolling at the moment and all was quiet.

I asked him if happened to be Catholic.  He replied that he’d always respected and admired the Catholics, but was a Methodist, himself.

“Good … how’d you like to do me a favor and visit the Pope for a few minutes?”

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http://sailorjim.net/wordpress/?p=271

That taken care of, I took a couple of aspirin and went to bed.  Tomorrow, I had to start the ball rolling on my paraplegic project, find a replacement for Bia, select the first additional member to the team … and, if I had anything at all to say about it, get the uniform design folks to redesign the damn things!  Leather body suits in primary colors, molded masks, and capes … jeez.

* * * * *

“Okay, let me get this straight … your car, which was parked in an illegal secret tunnel that runs under the nation capital, was blown up?”  Here’s a rather unique commentary of federal laws and regulations:  An agency with superheroes had to have a security branch.  Seriously, we employed a dozen security guards and a separate cadre of internal security personnel because it was required by federal law.  The head of that internal security force, who was also the head of our entire security branch, was – and I am not making this up – Clark Kent.

Clark wasn’t from Kansas and didn’t know the first thing about journalism.  He was a gruff, bald, black man with a fierce mustache, bushy eyebrows, and no sense of humor whatsoever about his name.  He also was very unhappy about the fact that there was a tunnel that led to “his” building, one that (a) ran under the Potomac, (b) had been built illegally, and (c) he had no idea about until after my car had been blown up while parked in the secret parking garage at the end of it.

I explained that (a) it ran under the Potomac because it was a secret tunnel, (b) had been built illegally because it was a secret tunnel, and (c) hadn’t been announced to anyone, much less any of our security people because it was – and I hoped I wasn’t banging on with this too much – A SECRET TUNNEL!!

Clark awarded me a hard stare and remarked that it wasn’t going to be a friggin’ secret after he reported it.  I returned his stare blandly and, pulling out my new com unit, asked Donald to have the Force fill in the tunnel before lunch.  We stared it out for a few minutes and he finally said that it wasn’t anyone’s business but ours if we had a private secret tunnel, but that I had – no exceptions – had to keep him in the loop … or else somebody could sneak a bomb into the building though the damn tunnel.

I called Daniel back and canceled the fill-in, then agreed that I should have confided in him, but only him, when I had it built.  Having peed sufficiently, we settled down to discussing the actual explosion.  (I kept the elevator out of the mix because I had no way to explain how I survived.)  He let me know that the FBI had identified the men, the nation involved, and the national agency behind the attempt.

Which is why, roughly five minutes later, Cratos, Zoran, Buzz, and Uniman dropped from the sky and onto the roof of that particular agency … and shook it for one minute.  Not hard enough to do any real structural damage, mind, but hard enough to scare the living daylights out of everyone within.  Then they calmly walked down to the director’s office, walking through several groups of security personnel (never fighting back, just ignoring them) and also through several closed, bolted, and barricaded doors, to do so.

Uniman then, standing at the director’s desk, took out a ordinary cell phone and handed it to the director.  We had a lovely chat about life, security, and the changing face of international politics, during which we came to a mature understanding regarding any future shenanigans.  Afterward, Uniman took the cell phone back and the Force calmly walked back to the roof and left.

By the time they’d returned and resumed their normal duties, I was already on my way to my evaluation meeting with Daniel and Wanda.  Since coming in that morning, I’d given Wilbert my list of the twenty paraplegic vets I’d chosen (both Wanda and Daniel had, after bitching about it when I asked, taken the time to tentatively approve the list) and asked him to do whatever was necessary to get them to our lab for final testing, returned Frank’s spare costume to the valet for cleaning, and sent a fairly polite note to the design team requesting an entire redesign of the Force’s uniforms before the month was up, being sure to run the preliminary sketches by the Force this time for their input and comments.

It took two hours, but we narrowed down the list of potential subjects to six, three possible Bia replacements and five possible new replacements.  (Yes, I know that equals eight – multiple PhD’s remember? – but I wanted to keep the two not chosen for Bia in the running for the new position as well.)  We still had to run them through psychological assessment, a tougher assessment than Barbara had gone through, before we chose the final two.

Although Daniel pointed out that we didn’t have to stop at a replacement and a single new member.  We could, if we thought it best, even the Force up by replacing Bia and creating three new positions.  “After all, it’s up to us how many members we have … and I know you’ve been under pressure from the White House to even up the gender gap.”

I told Daniel I’d think about it and we all went back to our offices.

Rather, they went back to their offices and I tried to go back to mine.  The noise coming from my secretaries office, the sound of several voices raised in argument, indicated to me that I wasn’t going to just walk through to mine.  I stopped at the door and glanced at the scene within.

Three people were haranguing my secretary.  The tallest of the three I knew from his nightly rants on cable, mostly calling on the government in general (and me in specific) to grant humanity it’s due by turning everyone into superhumans.  The next tallest was also known to me, given that he sat on the congressional committee that attempted to force me to give the military all my “magical secrets,” as to guarantee a military superiority forever.  I didn’t recognize the shortest of the three immediately since he was sitting in a wheelchair, but, when he turned around as I entered the room, I realized he was the good looking tech who’d quit just a few days earlier when I told the staff that none of them would ever be given powers, the one who replied, “No chance, huh?  So what the hell am I doing wasting my time here?”

I called out a greeting to my secretary and asked if I had any appointments, deliberately ignoring the three men.  She made a production of checking my schedule and, with a sad tone, announced that I was free for the next thirty minutes.  I then asked the three men if they were together and, when the confirmed they were, asked them into my office.

Settling at my desk, I asked how I could help them?

Mathew Peck, the “reporter,” immediately blurted out, “You could start by giving humanity it’s birthright and releasing the secrets …”

“Shut up, Peck!” Congressman Reed snapped, halting the speech in mid-sentence.  “I’ll do the talking for us, damn it!”  He turned his washed out gray eyes on me and announced that they were there for the new project.

I waited for a beat, just to make sure he was done speaking, and asked, “Which new project?”

“You know damn well what I’m talking about, Socks!  You intend to give the handicapped of this nation powers and we are here to join up!”

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Current Location: with my friends
Current Mood: bored
Current Music: Miyavi - senor senora senorita
Tags: character: kunghung chen, real-life

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Current Location: wrapped up
Current Mood: cold
Current Music: Miyavi - senor senora senorita
Tags: live journal archive

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Current Location: under my blanket
Current Mood: awake
Current Music: Whatever I can find on you tube
Tags: character: hide, character: toshi, character: yoshiki, character; pata, fic: christmas 2009 part two, one-shot, parings: pata/hide, parings: yoshiki/toshi, series: my husband is a pink-hair rock-s, warning: g, warning: yaoi/slash/bl, x japan

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Current Location: under my blanket
Current Mood: awake
Current Music: Whatever I can find on you tube
Tags: character: hide, character: pata, character: toshi, fic: broken heart, one-shot, parings: toshi/hide, warning: character death, warning: yaoi/slash/bl, warning; t, x japan

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Current Location: under my blanket
Current Mood: awake
Current Music: Whatever I can find on you tube
Tags: character: hide, character: toshi, fic: toshi's pink spider, one-shot, parings: toshi/hide, warning: yaoi/slash/bl, warning; t, x japan

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Current Location: under my blanket
Current Mood: awake
Current Music: Whatever I can find on you tube
Tags: character: hide, character: pata, character: toshi, character: yoshiki, fic: may 2 1998, one-shot, parings: yoshiki/hide, warning: character death, warning: yaoi/slash/bl, warning; t, x japan

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Current Location: under my blanket
Current Mood: awake
Current Music: The way to make you cry
Tags: character: hide, character: yoshiki, fic: may 2 1998 au, one-shot, parings: yoshiki/hide, warning: character death, warning: yaoi/slash/bl, warning; t, x japan

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Current Location: under my blanket
Current Mood: awake
Current Music: God is a DJ
Tags: character: hide, character: pata, character: toshi, character: yoshiki, fic: christmas 2009, one-shot, parings: pata/hide, parings: toshi/yoshiki, warning: yaoi/slash/bl, warning; t, x japan

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Current Location: under my blanket
Current Mood: awake
Current Music: The way to make you cry
Tags: character: hide, character: pata, character: yoshiki, one-shot, warning: yaoi/slash/bl, warning; t, x japan

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Current Location: under my blanket
Current Music: Are you still there? Toshi
Tags: character: eiji, character: taco, character: teppei, fic: teppei's affair, one-shot, warning: yaoi/slash/bl, warning; g, wat

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vaughn_r_demont

vaughn_r_demont

id_locke

Tags: free fiction friday, let sleeping foxes lie

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http://xkcd.com/677/

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http://sailorjim.net/wordpress/?p=268

Sarah Palin v. Arnold Schwarzenegger

That’s right (and in this instance, I do mean right), it’s Governator versus the Govern-later in a battle of wits over global warming issues.

Yeah … I know.  It’s a little  like watching Ricky and Lucy argue over quantum physics, isn’t it?  I mean, I’ve heard of the blind leading the blind, but never about the blind trading barbs over the color red.

It’s a tough time to be a Republican, shipmates, and I feel for them.  I honestly do.  On the on hand, there are all these anti-government religious nut-jobs trying to run the party based equally on what their campaign donors believe  … and then there’s the far right, where even Ripley refuses to believe the shit they’re into.

I hear that John Stewart let his writing staff go on holiday early, since the material seems to be writing itself these days.

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vaughn_r_demont

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