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sailor_jim

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 up.  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!”

“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 longer, but nobody paid any attention to them for the first couple of weeks.  Then they decided to barricade them open side 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, explained the matter to his captain.  His captain, seeing his common sense and raising him a good idea, contacted the State Department and asked 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” waited 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, which is where they collected the necessary furniture to blockade the opening.)

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,” he replied, smiling.  “This chair is just 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 sighed and called Johnny Maken, the head of our public relations office.  After training 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 had been terrified and wanted to take a few minutes to put Daniel 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?”

sailor_jim

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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