by Baron Sord
Heph didn’t seem worried. He walked over to me and waved the Geiger counter’s wand all around me from about two feet away. “I can’t get any closer. You’re too hot.”
Arnold grunted, “Radiation hot or heat hot?”
“Heat hot,” Heph confirmed. He shook his head. “I’m not getting anything. You’re clean, man. No rads.”
I heaved a sigh of relief.
Arnold said seriously, “So you’re not Radioactive Man?”
Heph shook his head, “Nope.”
“Thank fuck,” Arnold sighed.
“Not so fast,” I said. “We still need to test my fire blasts.”
“Great,” Arnold groaned, rolling his eyes.
Heph followed me outside and I shot a quick 3-inch diameter blast from my hand while he held the Geiger wand beside my palm.
He shook his head, “Nothing.”
To be triple sure, I set up one of the metal targets from last time and blasted that with a 10-second burst. Heph monitored the burst at my hand, then walked over to check the target with the Geiger wand after.
“It’s clean,” he said. “I think you’re good to go.”
“Perfect,” I smiled.
Now I could use my flame powers without worry. I would be curious to determine at some point if my digestive tract was radio active on the inside, because it was apparently splitting water molecules into rocket fuel somewhere in my gut at all times. But that would require swallowing the Geiger counter wand, for which we would need a really long cord. Or a Blue Tooth radiation wand, which I doubted anyone made. Or did they? Next time.
Today I was more interested in Heph’s fire coffin. It had serious potential as a semi-portable heat source for me that didn’t require I go around freezing underground water mains. I’d just have to stay awake while using it, lest I unintentionally drop a Sleeping Freeze Sphere.
Heph leaned his head inside the open hatch and marveled, “Well, I’ll be. Thing’s barely warm. Where’d all the heat go?”
“Me,” I grinned. “I collected all of it when I was inside.”
“A course,” Heph chuckled. “Same as how you froze the cistern.” He smirked, “What’d ya need my coffin for then? Don’t tell me I fabricated it for nothing.”
“Not at all,” I said, “I was thinking about this before I fell asleep. The advantage to having your fire coffin is twofold. One, efficiency. Because the coffin is enclosed and I’m inside, minimal heat is wasted or swept away by convection.”
“Right,” Heph nodded.
“Two, if its charged ahead of time, then I don’t need to keep myself charged. It’ll be perfect in an emergency. We can fire up the coffin Friday night after work and let it run all night. Then I’ll have the heat waiting all weekend whenever I need it.”
“Waiting where?” Arnold asked warily, leaning on his crutches. “Waiting here at Heph’s?”
“Uhhh,” I stammered tentatively. “I was thinking your backyard?”
Arnold shook his head, “Uh uh. We’re not leaving this monstrosity cooking in my yard all day. Especially not with no one watching it.”
I cringed, not wanting to tell Arnold that I was thinking he could stay home and monitor it. That way, he wouldn’t be in danger of getting hurt on distress calls, and he could shut down the propane if the fire coffin ever got too hot. Worse case scenario, he could hose it down with a garden hose to cool it off. That might crack the ceramic, but it was better than setting his house on fire or him getting shot.
Heph said, “Why can’t you leave it at your place, Arnold?”
Arnold frowned, “Because I don’t want my grandparents’ house CATCHING ON FREAKING FIRE! That’s why!”
Heph said, “Relax. It won’t get that hot.”
Arnold snorted, “If Doug’s not in it, it will.”
“Nah,” Heph said. “I already tested it. Ran it yesterday all day to check the seals and the external temps. I told you, 2200 inside, cool to the touch outside.”
“How cool?” Arnold pressed. “Like ice cube cool?”
Heph shrugged, “Okay, warm. But it won’t ignite anything. It won’t burn your house down, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Arnold’s eyes goggled, “No way! This thing is not going anywhere near the house!”
Heph said, “Put it in the yard. You’ve got a big yard, right?”
Arnold rolled his eyes in exasperation, “Why can’t we leave it here? In the desert? Where it won’t burn my FREAKING GRANDPARENTS’ HOUSE DOWN?!”
I sighed, “Because, there’s no way I can fly from here to wherever I’m needed in San Diego without using up all my heat energy and burning off substantial body mass.”
While shaking his head from side to side, Arnold smirked, “Myeh, myeh, myeh, myeh.”
Heph chuckled.
I said, “Arn, this fire coffin you loved so much two hours ago won’t do me any good unless it’s at your house where I live. You said yourself, I can’t be Wildfire without fire.”
Heph winked, “And my fire coffin.”
I grinned at him.
Arnold grumbled at both of us, “Fine. FINE! We’ll put it at the freaking house! Geez!”
I added, “A better question is, how are we going to get it there?” I glanced at Heph. “We’d need a flatbed trailer to move it.”
Heph said, “You can use mine.”
“Thanks.” I offered Arnold a hopeful smile.
Arnold sighed, “Okay then. I guess we’re building the Batcave at the Beaks house.” Arnold’s ability to quickly forget his worries and focus on the upside was unparalleled.
I said, “You sure you’re not worried about burning the house down?”
“As long as it’s not radioactive—” Arnold gave me a pointed scowl, “—we can put it in the yard somewhere way far from the house.”
I said, “If we put it by the pool, we can push it in the water in an emergency.”
Arnold said, “Not if we leave it running while we’re gone.”
Rather than explain he would be home to monitor it, I said, “We’ll figure something out.”
“Totally,” Arnold said with his usual optimism.
Heph handed me a pair of silver pants. “Try these. I turned them inside out while you were sleeping.”
I pulled them on. I’d gotten so tall, they were a bit short on me and tight on the thighs. “I feel like I’m going to pop the seems.”
“Don’t worry about it. They’re an old pair. They’re yours.”
“Thanks, but I can’t take them. You already made the fire coffin. I can’t take more.”
Heph’s blond beard smiled and his blue eyes sparkled, “I’ll tell you what, you get an endorsement deal with HeaTex, and you get them to give you a full body proximity suit as a favor, and you pass it on to me, then we’ll call it even. For the fire coffin and those pants and hauling the coffin out to Arnold’s.”
“Really?”
“What he said,” Arnold said, smiling at me. “I’m telling you, Doug. It’s all about the endorsements!”
“Maybe you’re right,” I smiled.
Heph asked, “You guys ready to blow shit up?”
“Actually,” I said, “I want to try flight.”
Heph’s eyes lit up. “No shit?”
I shook my head, “None at all.”
“Hell yeah!” Arnold shouted. “Beast mode, bitches!”
I chuckled and walked out to the runway tarmac like a fricking Fire Lord. Somewhere down on the Ninth Circle of Hell, Kakatal was nodding proudly from where he sat on his throne of hot magma, which was surrounded by a waterfall of flowing lava and a lake of fire. One of these days, I’d have to go visit the guy. We would totally hit it off.
If only. Talk about the perfect hideout.
—: Chapter 44 :—
“Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!” I screamed, blazing past Heph and Arnold.
Fire poured out of my hands and feet as I spiraled through the air a hundred feet off the ground like a human bottle ro
cket. I was tumbling end-over-end so fast, I couldn’t tell up from down. This was ten times worse than the most intense High-G centrifuge NASA had ever devised.
WHOOM!
I crashed into the ground and did my best fiery impression of The Greatest American Hero as I skidded down the runway a quarter mile. I cut off thrust as soon as I could think to do it, but I had a lot of momentum carrying me along. I did my best to roll with it. Tried to drag my fingernails across the tarmac to help slow my slide. That shot up a spray of sparks, but eventually I stopped.
Smiling to myself, I laid on the ground spread-eagled on my back and stared at the sky. Somehow, I had managed flight. I had no control whatsoever over thrust vectoring, which meant I couldn’t steer to save my life (nearly literally), but I had generated more than enough thrust to full-on fricking fly. It was all about the nozzling. By focusing on the shape of the thrust escaping my feet and hands, I had managed it.
Flight.
You saw it here first, folks.
Unassisted human flight.
It was a fricking miracle.
Heph trotted over, followed by Arnold swinging on his crutches.
“Third time’s the charm!” Arnold yelled gleefully. “I got that all on video!” He’d been recording with his phone.
The first two attempts had resulted in me wasting a bunch of heat energy and going nowhere while standing still. Arnold had told me repeatedly to go beast mode. So I finally had. Sort of. I had gone nozzle beast mode.
Heph leaned over me now and grinned, “Nice work, man.”
I said, “How fast was I going?”
“Wish I had a radar gun, but if I had to guess? 250 easy!” Heph chuckled. “You blazed by like a top fuel dragster doing the quarter mile, except airborne! What a trip, man!”
“Jesus, Doug!” Arnold was laughing. “You were a freaking fireball! How did you do it? Beast mode, right?”
“Ahhhh… sort of,” I chuckled, still lying on the ground. I wasn’t going to say Nozzle Beast Mode. Even I knew that sounded dorky.
“Can you move?” Arnold asked, somewhat concerned. “You didn’t break your neck or anything, did you?”
I sat up slowly. “No. Don’t think so. I’m a little shook up, but nothing serious.” My bright white internal burn had faded down to dim orange. It had been bright yellow prior to this third attempt.
Arnold said, “It was beast mode, wasn’t it?”
Heph said, “What did you do different this time, Doug?”
“Nozzling. And using my hands to eject additional thrust. That gave me four points of vector control. And maybe I really pushed it the last time. I actually feel kind of light-headed from the effort.”
“Sounds like beast mode to me,” Arnold grinned.
I said to Heph, “I bet if you weighed me now, I’d weigh less than I did when I got up this morning.”
“How much was that?” Heph asked.
“320 pounds. I was down to 288 after trying to fly at the Oceanside airport ten days ago. I’ve been eating constantly since then, and not using my heat powers. That comes out to gaining around 3 pounds a day.”
“It looks like it’s all muscle,” Heph said.
“Yeah. I haven’t measured my body fat, but it’s got to be down around 5 or 6 percent.” Whenever I exerted myself, my muscle striations popped out, as did my thick veins, which had never been as prominent as they were since getting my powers. Yeah, I had noticed over a week ago that my vascularity had gone comic book and was bordering on Rob Liefeld territory.
Heph nodded, “Let’s head to the hangar. I’ve got a floor scale in there. We can check your weight on that.”
We went inside and I stepped onto the tread plate of Heph’s industrial scale.
“285 pounds, give or take,” Heph said. “You look a bit less impressive than when you showed up, muscle-wise.”
I glanced down at my physique. I could see the difference. Anyone could. Losing 35 pounds of pure muscle in the span of an hour was a tremendous amount of visible body mass gone. But I was still ripped. Less Rob Liefeld and more John Buscema — in other words, more believable but still superheroic. My body fat might have gone down 2 or 3 percent as well. I hardly had any super-powered fat left to loose.
Surprised, Arnold said, “285? Is that how much you weigh now?”
I said, “Yup.”
Arnold grinned, “Definitely beast mode.”
“Mass is fuel, man,” Heph said philosophically.
I said, “I still don’t see how it makes any logical sense. Food and human muscle aren’t that energy dense unless you’re splitting atoms. There has to be another explanation.” Namely, nuclear fission in my GI tract. Or fusion. Who knew. But if I was splitting H2O into hydrogen and oxygen somewhere in my digestive tract to make rocket fuel, that would explain my sudden thirst. My mouth was bone dry and I felt incredibly parched.
“Yeah,” Arnold chuckled. “Freaking beast mode!” He cheered. “I told you, Doug! BEEEAAST MOOOOODEEE!”
Heph started laughing and I did too.
Arnold’s enthusiasm was always catching.
I said, “The next step is figuring out how to steer. Otherwise I won’t be able to fly without killing people.”
“You won’t kill anybody,” Arnold said dismissively. We had gone over this before. Arnold wore silver-lining blinders at all times.
I respected his optimism, but I had to be pragmatic. “I can’t afford to destroy anyone’s house.”
“You won’t crash into anything,” Arnold said. “You totally won’t. Just practice out here at Heph’s until you’re ready to go public.”
I shook my head, “What happens if I accidentally crash through someone’s roof?”
“You won’t if you practice!”
I continued, “Smash into their kid’s bedroom in the middle of the night while everyone is sleeping and kill the kid?”
“That’s never gonna happen,” Arnold said.
“Okay, what if I slam into an office building? Say it’s empty when I hit it. But the building is valued at a hundred million and BOOM! I just destroyed it. The owners will sue.”
“Endorsements,” Arnold said like that was the ultimate counter-argument. “Once you get that Nike money coming in, everything’ll be fine. Trust me.”
—: o o o :—
I said. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m starving. My stomach is in knots. And I’m dying of thirst.”
“Warrior needs food! Badly!” Heph said in a robotic voice.
Arnold and I both stared at him.
Heph frowned. “Gauntlet? By Atari?”
More staring from Arnold and me.
Heph smirked, “Come on, man. Don’t you guys play 8-bit arcade games?”
Arnold shook his head, “XBox, mainly.”
I shrugged, “I just play flight simulators or use my phone.”
“Shit,” Heph grumbled, “I’m not that old, man.”
“Yeah you are,” Arnold chuckled. “Man.”
Heph shook his head with a grin.
Feeling bad for him, I finally said, “Oh, thaaaat Gauntlet!”
“Dicks,” Heph chuckled.
I laughed, “We knew what Gauntlet was all along.”
Arnold winked at Heph, “I hooked my PC up to my big plasma TV last week and we played it on there when I was recovering from my gut shot. You should come over some time and play, old man. We’ll save the Valkyrie for you.”
“Why Thyra?” Heph asked.
“So you can be the bitch,” Arnold chortled.
“Dicks,” Heph laughed.
For lunch, we went behind the hangar where Heph had his grill and he cooked up the ten pounds of steaks Arnold and I had brought in a cooler (kept cold on the long drive here by yours truly, by extracting heat, of course).
I supplied the heat to start the charcoal because I had to get rid of the excess I currently contained. Didn’t use any flames. Just touched the charcoal and released heat until it auto-ignited. I was try
ing to conserve mass. As for Heph’s cistern, I didn’t want to thaw it and risk melting the plastic. When it came time for me and Arnold to go, I would have to check on it and see if Heph could draw water or not. I couldn’t leave him out here in the middle of the desert with no water. For now, the ten gallons he kept in the kitchen were ready to drink. That water was ice cold, which was perfect for a hot day like today. I downed at least five gallons myself. Five. I was sloshing after I finished, but not for long. Yeah, there had to be a connection between my GI-tract fission reactor and my need for water to make my own liquid rocket fuel.
Once the food was cooked, I ate most of the meat and didn’t feel close to full. I had 35 pounds to recover.
Today, my total flight time for all three flights flying at full thrust was about 2 minutes and 45 seconds. Arnold had timed things on his phone at my request. That much flying had cost me 35 pounds of body mass. That meant I had burned about 13 pounds of mass per minute at an estimated speed of 250mph. Heph said he’d been to a lot of drag races over the years, so I trusted his estimate was fairly close. Heck, even hitting 200mph was incredible.
I pondered my total flight time. How much body mass could I burn without killing myself? Assuming a starting weight of 320, and a minimal functional weight of half that, that meant I could burn 160 pounds maximum. That was about 12 minutes of flight time, give or take.
It wasn’t much.
Especially if you considered what losing 160 pounds would do to my muscle mass. At my current height of 6’4” and growing, were I to burn off 160 pounds, I would walk away looking like a skeletal twig. Realistically, I was thinking 10 minutes of flight time. Not much, but better than the 6 minutes of Franky Zapata’s Flyboard Air. But it would take me a whopping 43 days (assuming I gained 3 pounds per day) to eat back the 130 pounds I would burn off.
Surprise!
Flying was costly.
Welcome to the real world.
On the upside, if I kept my flight times short, say a minute or two, I could eat back the 13-26 pounds I would burn off in 4-8 days. Who needed to fly like a fireball more than once a week? That was disappointed sarcasm.
