by Baron Sord
Hopefully, I could reduce my mass burn with improved nozzling practice. I wasn’t going to tell Arnold that Beast Mode was probably not the best solution for extending flight times. Efficiency was. Logically, slower flying would also increase fuel efficiency. That rule held true for every other vehicle and land animal I could think of (except birds, which had the luxury of riding updrafts), and it likely held true for me too — based on what I’d learned about the limits of my powers thus far, and because I didn’t have wings.
If practice improved my efficiency, a gain as modest as 20% or 30% could potentially be huge. 2 or 3 extra minutes of flight time could mean the difference between life or death for someone in distress.
Like any good pilot, I would have to be conscientious about my fuel calculations before each flight. I would have to plan my flight routes carefully, something I might not be able to do on the fly, pun intended. It wouldn’t make any sense if I ran out of fuel and ended up flying short of a destination and had to run on foot the remainder of the way, not if driving a car the entire distance would’ve gotten me there faster.
Hence the need for pre-flight fuel calculations.
Boring but relevant. If it was your life I was saving, I had no doubt you’d want me doing those calculations. And I was pretty sure you wanted your commercial airline pilot to do correct fuel calculations before he flew you up to 35,000 feet. Am I right?
As for top speed, if Heph’s guess of 250mph was even marginally accurate, I had already put Yves Rossy’s Jet Wingpack in the dust with it’s 120mph top speed.
With practice, I was confident I could improve my top end significantly if I could simply learn to apply thrust in a continuously straight line, instead of wasting forward velocity on tumbling and spiraling like I had today.
Why not hit 350mph?
Or 450?
It was a goal to aim for.
Obviously, flying like a blazing fast fireball was something I’d save for special occasions.
My real hope was that my crazy and illogical super powers would continue to improve over time like they had been. There was no reason to think I couldn’t double or triple my flight time to 20 or 30 minutes.
Or top speed.
Why not Mach 1?
Or Mach 2?
If F-22s could do it, why not me?
Okay, maybe I was thinking like Arnold, but I had to set the intention, right?
Again, thinking like Arnold.
But hey, I had fricking flown today!
Sky was the limit, right?
Pun. Intended.
—: Chapter 45 :—
The sun was heading toward the horizon when Arnold and I drove home.
Heph followed in his flatbed truck. My fire coffin was strapped to the back.
Before leaving, we had checked on his cistern. The water inside had still been frozen. Turned out to be an easy fix. I simply had to walk a couple hundred yards away from where it was buried, extract a big dose of heat from the ground, then return to the location of the cistern. There, I simply stood directly above it and emptied heat into the dirt through my feet. I monitored the temperature of the water and the cistern walls using my TGV. Once the water and surrounding buried dirt had turned bluish green in my TGV, I had Heph try to draw some water up from his cistern using the electrical pump. Thankfully, it ran fine and the water was pleasantly ice cold. Heph was quite happy about that, being that it was still September and the desert would remain plenty hot during the days well into fall and early winter.
Now, Arnold said from the passenger seat of the Prius, “Doug, we totally need to post these videos when we get home. You have to go public with what you did. It is totally badass.”
“Are you insane?” I scoffed from behind the wheel. “I can barely fly! Currently, I look more like a klutzy hazard to humanity than a superhero. People don’t want that. They want a competent savior.”
“Okay, then we don’t show you flying until you figure it out. In the mean time, you’re a walking inferno! How is that not badass? You don’t even have to fly! Just stand around burning like you do and shoot some fireballs at targets. You’re a pro at that. People will go nuts when they see what you can do. You’re a freaking inferno, man!”
“Inferno Man?” I joked. “I thought my name was Wildfire.”
“No, we’re changing it to Disco Inferno Man,” he grinned.
I laughed.
He said, “Anyway, we have to put you and your powers out there on YouTube—”
“YourView,” I interjected.
“Whatever. We need to get your videos out so everyone can see what Wildfire can do.”
“What if Justine finds out?”
“Who?”
“Justine Escala,” I said.
“Oh, her. Screw her. No seriously, screw her, Doug. I saw her the night you went out with her. She’s freaking hot. Totally sexy librarian like you said. I don’t know why you didn’t bang her that night. You said she totally wanted it.”
I groaned, “I also said she works for Max Garrison at the DA’s office, which you conveniently forgot. Now she knows my name is Doug because you had to have a fricking Hammond’s sundae yesterday! I never would’ve run in to her if it wasn’t for you, by the way.”
Arnold waved a dismissive hand, “Eh, she probably forgot about you already. Hot chick like that? Probably banged a thousand guys since you saw her.”
“I saw her yesterday.”
“I mean since you went out with her. You think she waited around for you? Hell no. I’m telling you, she banged a thousand guys since you went out with her.”
“A thousand?” I snorted. “I went out with her a month ago.”
“So? What’s that? Like 100 guys a day?” He chortled.
“Sixteen and two thirds.”
“See? That’s nothing,” he grinned, “She totally banged that many since then. The two-thirds guy didn’t even have to finish. Because he’s, you know, two-thirds and stuff,” he laughed. “Doesn’t even have a dick. He just watched the gang bang.”
I chuckled, “Are you listening to yourself? No woman bangs sixteen guys a day.”
“Unless it’s a gang bang.”
I rolled my eyes, “Even porn actresses — I mean, adult film stars — rarely do gang bangs.”
“Adult film stars? You are so PC, Doug,” he snorted. “Anyway, don’t worry about Justits.”
“Justits?” I winced. “You mean Justine?”
“Yeah, her,” he grinned.
“Please don’t call her that, as a favor to women everywhere.”
“Why? She’s your enemy, and she has everything going on in the looks department except… she Just Needs Tits.” He gave me a ridiculous wink. “Ah? Aaaah? Aaaaaaah! You know that’s freaking funny.”
I groaned, trying not to laugh, “That is so wrong, Arn.”
“Yeah, but it’s sooo true,” he chortled.
“Her breasts are just fine.”
“What can I say? I’m a boob connoisseur and hers have yet to ripen.”
I cringed at the image.
“Now, Stazia…” Arnold practically licked his chops, “…now that babe has boobs! Boobs for miles! Boobs from here to New York!”
“Huh? Boobs that are 3000 miles long?”
“No!” he laughed.
I said thoughtfully, “Uhhh… millions of boobs along the freeway from here to New York? How many boobs would it take to bridge the distance from here to there if you placed them side by side? Let’s see, assuming a big boob is approximately 6 or 7 inches wide, probably in the neighborhood of 30 million boobs laid out in a line. That’s a lot of fricking boobs,” I snorted.
Arnold plugged his nose and said in a nasally voice, “Paging Dr. Literal! Dr. Literal to the OR, stat!”
Ignoring him, I said, “You’d need 15 million women with D-cup breasts willing to take their shirts off and stand side by side.”
Arnold’s eyes lit up, “Now THAT I would PAY to see! We’ll sell tickets! Make a milli
on! No, $30 million! A dollar a boob!”
I laughed, “What do we pay the women?”
“They get half. We get $15 million. They get the other 15.”
“Meaning they each get one dollar? For standing topless on the freeway? That’s fifty cents a boob.”
“Oh, true. That’s not much money, is it?”
“Uh uh,” I shook my head.
“Anyway,” he sighed. “I was talking about Stazia. You never told me what happened at her house yesterday.”
“Nothing,” I grumbled.
“Is she not into you?”
“She was,” I said.
“What’d you do, Doug? Did you find out she’s married like Vangelina and you told her no?” He smirked at me like I was an idiot for having principles.
“No! She’s not married! I had a distress call to deal with! What do you think?! I had to leave at the worst possible time!”
Arnold nodded thoughtfully, “Super powers kinda suck, don’t they?”
“So far,” I grumbled.
“But they don’t suck you, and neither did Stazia! Ah ha! Wait, did she?”
“No,” I groaned.
He sighed, “Anyway, we need to put Wildfire videos online! No more keeping you a secret. You need PR, Doug! That’s the only way we’ll ever get any donations or endorsements.”
I said, “That is a terrible idea, Arn! If I start putting my face all over the internet, Justine or Max Garrison will find out! They’ll connect me to the Masked Jumper and then to Bitch Boots, aka Hollis Yates. Then they’ll have me arrested.”
“They haven’t yet, and your face was showing in that video on the news where you punched Bitchy Boo-tay. Remember? Nobody came looking for you after that, and they probably never will.”
“Only because my face was so small in the video.”
“So we’ll shoot Wildfire burning things from far away. No one will ever know it’s you.”
“But if they figure it out, and they realize Wildfire is Doug Moore is the Masked Jumper is the Parking Lot Puncher of Bitch Boots—”
“Bitchy Boo-tay,” Arnold emphasized. “Say it. Bitch Boo-tay.”
Glaring at him and refusing to say it, I said, “If they connect me to him, they will come looking for me.”
“Listen to you, Dr. Logical. That’s waaaay too many dots to connect. Stop worrying already. They’re not gonna find you on my watch.”
I snorted, “You don’t have a watch.”
“Dude, you’re such a nerd. That was not funny at all,” he chuckled.
“You laughed,” I snorted.
“You wish,” he smirked.
—: o o o :—
“I can’t believe you can lift that,” Heph said when we were back at Arnold’s house in Bankers Hill.
I had the fire coffin on my back like it weighed nothing. I carried it over to Arnold’s pool and set it down on the concrete deck with a clang.
Once it was in place and secure (Heph had brought wood blocks to shim it to level), I said, “How much will it cost to operate this thing?”
Heph said, “Well, you might wanna buy yourself a second 500 gallon propane tank to hold your fuel.”
I said, “To power the fire coffin.”
“Exactly.” He clicked a finger bullet at me. “A tank’ll run you about $2,000 for the tank and install. Filling it will cost about $1,000. But that’ll last you a long time.”
“Three thousand?” I groaned. “I can’t afford that.”
Heph shrugged, “I can install it for you, run the gas line too, but you still gotta buy the tank and gas. Call it two grand.”
I sighed, “I don’t have that much either.”
“Endorsements,” Arnold grinned.
“Endorsements,” Heph said with a wink. “I want that proximity suit from HeaTex, man.”
“Right,” I smiled.
“Oh,” Heph added, “and you’ll need a permit for the install.”
I said, “Will I need a permit for the fire coffin too?”
Heph chuckled, “Tell people it’s a wicked big grill.”
“The coffin isn’t legal, is it?” I said. “Or to code?”
“Don’t ask me, man,” Heph grinned. “I live in the desert. Nobody cares what I do out there. Well, I better head back. Long drive.”
“Thanks again,” I said.
“You got it, man. Later, gators!” Heph climbed into the cab of his flatbed and slowly drove down the long driveway toward the gate. He honked and waved when his truck hit the street and disappeared past the hedges.
Arnold said to me, “Dude, I can’t wait until you get to start using your fire coffin! It’s gonna be awesome! You can be Wildfire every damn day! No more Masked Jumper for you. From here on out, it’s gonna be Wildfire and the Machinist to the rescue!”
“Yeah,” I chuckled.
“Our lives are gonna change forever after this. You watch.”
“Yeah,” I muttered.
That was exactly what I was worried about. Specifically, I was worried what Arnold would say when I told him the Machinist was officially retired.
No, I already knew.
He’d be completely disappointed.
Superheroing, right?
—: Chapter 46 :—
“Dude, Stazia came by looking for you last week,” Rene Dominguez said as I walked past his cubicle early Monday morning.
“When?” I asked, stopping in the long aisle in front of his cube. I couldn’t admit that I had seen Stazia two days ago. I would have to play dumb.
“Friday morning,” Rene said.
That was the day before my dating disaster with Stazia. In other words, she had not come looking for me since.
I sighed and said to Rene, “How’s your back, by the way?”
“Fine. I stopped doing pushups.”
I smirked, “What’s that, three for the year?”
“Wait, I got something in my eye,” Rene said sarcastically, rubbing his tear duct vigorously with his middle finger. “Can you see something in my eye?”
“Just a bird,” I snickered.
Rene snorted a laugh.
Clifton Yu emerged from his cube and said, “I told Stazia you were out sick.”
“Thanks,” I nodded. “What else did you tell her?” I couldn’t admit the truth, but I could gather facts.
Clifton said, “Just that you would probably be back Monday.”
“Good,” I said. “Did she say anything else?”
Rene said, “She asked if you signed the paperwork she’d given you.”
I nodded, “What’d you guys say?”
Clifton smirked suggestively, “I told her I’d sign her paperwork for you, if she needed it right away.” By paperwork, he obviously meant her boobs — the real ones, not the color copy.
I frowned, “Did you really?”
“No,” Clifton said, snarfing a laugh and shaking his head.
I said, “Has anyone else said anything about her coming to our department?” Whether or not Stazia ever talked to me again, I didn’t want her getting in trouble because of me. If she somehow got fired from YouDoIt, I’d feel terrible.
Clifton shook his head, “Not that I heard.”
“Me neither,” Rene said.
“Good,” I nodded and sat down at my desk to consider my options.
I desperately wanted to talk to Stazia and explain things. I had no idea what I’d say, but I wanted to apologize at the very least. My super-powered looks had taught me one thing about most beautiful women: they weren’t used to rejection, especially not when they were rejected in a very insensitive fashion, as I had done to Stazia on Saturday. Having been rejected more than my fair share by insensitive women, I didn’t want to pay that sort of bad karma forward, not if I didn’t have to, and definitely not to Stazia.
More importantly, I wasn’t rejecting Stazia.
I wanted to see her again. Frequently.
The question was, how?
I started by sending her a text:
I’m sorry about what happened Saturday. Can I make it up to you somehow?
Time crawled from that point forward.
I checked my Robot phone every five minutes to see if she’d replied.
She hadn’t.
There was a slight chance she was out of town again on another business trip. She was in sales. Maybe that was why she wasn’t answering my texts. Maybe she was too busy.
By 3 o’clock, I couldn’t stand it.
I had to know if she was in the office or not.
I got up from my cube and went into Clifton’s.
“Yo!” he said cheerfully when he spun his chair around.
I leaned down and whispered, “Hey. Do me a favor?”
He draped one arm casually over the back of his chair and smirked, “Gimme Stazia’s boob pic, and I will.”
“No!”
“Kidding,” he grinned. “Whadda you need?”
“Can you check and see if she’s at work today?”
“Go look yourself. You know where sales is. If she’s there, talk to her.”
I shook my head, “I promised her I wouldn’t.”
“Why?”
“It’s…” I never thought I’d be saying this, but I did, “…it’s complicated.” Which was code for, “Don’t ask.”
Clifton nodded, “Sure. I’ll go look. Be back shortly.”
He got up and I went back to my cube.
Minutes seemed like hours until Clifton’s reflection appeared in the rearview mirror stuck to my monitor.
I turned around in my chair, “Is she here?”
He nodded, “Yup. She’s in her office now.”
“She has an office?”
“Nice one,” he emphasized. “Go talk to her. Tell her to close the door so you can talk in private. And do other… things…” Clifton grinned, his face pinching into a snivel.
I rolled my eyes at his last comment.
I wanted to go talk to Stazia, but she had made herself clear. No interaction of any kind here at YouDoIt. She had also made her current disinterest clear by not responding to my text from 6 hours ago.
Conclusion: I had botched things up beyond repair.
