Nonetheless she did ultimately agree to attend college, after much arm-twisting from her mother. She attended nearby LaGuardia Community College, the only certain option available to her after her dismal performance in high school. Here she did at least learn the skill of doing enough to suffice, if not distinguish herself. She achieved her associate’s degree after two years. She then went on to do virtually nothing of importance, at least in the conventional world of academia and careers.
And so a young woman of tremendous ability became an underachiever. It is sometimes so with people of high intelligence. They slip through the cracks. They never discover the challenges and opportunities that suit them, and so their talents are wasted. That frustration was with her all the time. If she seemed arrogant at times, she was also expressing a hidden anger. Behind her smugness was the deep disappointment of someone who simply could not fit in.
11. Behind Every Great Hero…
On the campus of City College, a young man waited outside the office of Professor Boring, waiting for her office hours to begin. He wasn’t sure when it was appropriate to knock. “2:59” read his watch. “Alright,” he thought, “I’ll wait one minute.” But then about thirty seconds later, doubt struck again. “Should I knock?” he wondered. Before he could make up his mind, the professor arrived behind him.
“Hi, Scott,” said Betty warmly, “Could you please wait a moment?”
“Oh. Sure,” said Scott, befuddled.
Betty went into her office and closed the door. After a minute or so, the door opened. “Come on inside dear.”
In the intersection immediately outside, a driver wiped the sweat off his brow. Somehow he had just barely missed being hit by a truck as he turned. Remarkably the truck had stopped in the nick of time.
“I’m sorry Scott,” explained Betty as they sat down, “I just had to fix a few quick things around the office. I just came from a long and noisy faculty meeting. It seemed like you could hear it from space.” The thought it could also drown out noises from space did not occur to her. She failed to notice her cellphone in her bag, carrying a missed call from her daughter, and a text message reading “missyou.”
“That’s okay, Professor Boring,” said Scott.
“I know my name has become a joke all over this school. ‘Whatever you do, don’t end up with Professor Boring.’”
“Then they don’t know what they’re missing.”
“Aw Thanks,” said Betty, “So what can I help you with?”
“I really just don’t get anything from this book,” said Scott, “Physics scares the hell out of me. I’m no Einstein.”
Betty looked at her student endearingly. “Well Scott. I give our Albert Einstein credit. We wouldn’t be where we are now without him, for better or for worse. But here’s a little secret: Genius though he was, so is every one of us. Each of us has wonderful and unique talents. And besides, you can learn anything if you put your mind to it.”
Scott looked at Betty and smiled bashfully. “Do you really think so?”
“Of course! Besides, this is mostly high school physics done over. This is a thing with our freshmen. We’re finding out that many of our students haven’t learned all they need to know to be prepared for college.”
“Yeah. I never learned any of this stuff.”
“Well that’s quite alright. That’s why we’re here. Don’t be intimidated by all this. At this point we’re just using basic formulas. We’re still neglecting friction.”
“That doesn’t sound very nice to friction.”
“That’s cute Listen dear, why don’t you open the book and we’ll go over it.”
Scott looked in his bag, and then looked up. “Oh wait. I left it just outside your office. I was reading it to try and get ready for this meeting. Give me a second.”
Scott stepped outside and reached for his book. Meanwhile, in a building down the block, a painter narrowly avoided falling off the window ledge when by coincidence, his foot got caught in the window. Betty missed a second call from Bonnie.
“Okay,” said Scott, “Got it. These things are expensive. A hundred and ninety bucks!”
“I know,” said Betty, “It’s very unfair to low-income students. Listen, if you need assistance…”
“Ah, that’s alright. Thanks, professor.”
“Any time. You know what? Why don’t you tell me about yourself first? What do you do when you’re not in school?”
“Well, I have to work. I have a job at a factory.”
“That’s great. What do you do there?”
“Shipping. I have to pack and send pencils. Sometimes there’s paintbrushes in there too.”
“So, it sounds like you have to do a lot of lifting.”
“Yeah. Sometimes it gets pretty heavy.”
Betty looked at Scott and smiled. “It’s hard work. I don’t doubt it. And a long day of it, right?”
“Very.”
“I wish more people appreciated it. Have you ever hear of an ‘invisible hand?’”
“No, I haven’t,” said Scott.
“The thing is,” said Betty, “Usually when you hear it, they are talking about economics, the ‘Invisible Hand of the Market,’ the logic being that everything takes care of itself if we leave things alone. It’s almost as if to say that the money does the work for us. But I disagree. Do you feel like money does the work for you?”
Scott was finding the professor confusing to talk to, but he felt he could answer this question. “Well no,” he said, “I work for money.”
“Right,” said Betty, “You’re doing the work. People do the work. The real invisible hands belong to people like you who work hard, and get no appreciation for it. Without you, there is no money for the people you work for. There are many invisible hands which make things possible. You know that without the privilege of wealthy parents and powerful connections, it’s hard to climb that ladder. Those are also invisible hands, the things that are about privilege, behind the scenes matters that can be the difference between making it and not making it.”
“Oh. Yeah. I don’t know what I’ve got there.”
“Yeah. It’s not fair,” said Betty sadly. For a moment, she stared into space. “Sad, but some things cannot be amended. There are many hard truths that are out of reach forever. The past, can’t change the past…”
“You okay, professor?”
“Oh!” said Betty, snapping back to attention, “Okay, maybe you cannot help where you come from. That’s not to say there isn’t hope for you though. Knowledge is power, and that is why we are here.”
“Well, I like to think so.”
“So here’s where you remember the science. Physics is another kind of invisible hand. It’s with you there whether you realize it or not. In a way, each of these concepts, like momentum and energy, are all here around us. And they are always here. That’s why we never really notice them. Sort of like the air you breathe. But each of them is also changeable. If you change one part of them, the whole thing changes.”
“Okay. So how does that help with the subject?”
“Every time you move, you transfer energy. That also applies when you move an object such as a box. So you could think of that as ‘work.’ So when you pick up a box, we measure it by the force you put to it times the distance it travels. Does that make sense? Each of them, we measure, just like measuring someone at the doctor, right? You’re pretty tall right?”
“Six feet.”
“Wow! You have a whole foot one me. But you can measure things like force too, and distance. If either one of those numbers changes, then work changes. And you measure the whole thing by multiplying.”
“So it’s math?”
“Yes dear. Once you get each concept, it’s all about following the formulas. It’s just plugging in the numbers. You replace the letters with the numbers given…”
After a few minutes, Scott began to catch up with the concepts. Betty heard a strange and ominous sound. “Tell you what,” she
said, “Why don’t you practice for a few minutes. There are some practice problems at the end of the chapter. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
There was a major derailment on the Sixth Avenue subway line, some ninety blocks downtown. On an intersecting rail, the signal had failed, and the operator of the train had accidentally passed, and was now on a collision course with the derailed train. Betty could hear the panic in the train operator’s voice. If the Guerilla Public Servant did not intervene immediately, lives would be at stake. Betty slipped into the ladies room. Then she became invisible, and flew downtown at super speed.
She flew invisibly into the subway at the Rockefeller Center station at such a speed that commuters assumed they were being treated to a breeze. Then she flew down through the mezzanine, across the platform area, and into the tracks. There before her was a stopped “F” train. Just a few yards away was an “M” train, about to collide. Invisibly holding her feet to the track floor, she held her arms against the oncoming train. With immense, super powered exertion, she brought it to a stop, an example of “work” that might have been instructional, had it not been both invisible and secret. It was also a noisy job, enough to drown out even to superhuman ears the distant sound of a meteor shower clearing.
Exiting the ladies room, Professor Boring returned to her office and saw Scott beginning to pack up.
“Thank you so much, professor,” he said. “You were a big help.”
“Any time,” she replied.
“By the way, your cellphone rang a few times.”
Betty looked and saw a few missed calls from Bonnie. Then she saw a couple of texts, particularly the code message from Bonnie. It was now almost half an hour ago. She tried to keep her face from turning white.
“Listen, Scott,” she said. “I’m not feeling too well right now. Can you tell any of your classmates you happen to meet that I had to go home?”
“Sure, professor. Feel better.”
“Thanks, Scott.”
Betty slipped quietly into the stairway, and turned herself invisible once again. She flew out through the door into the roof, and across Manhattan, the East River, and into Queens. Finally outside The Big Box, she peered inside. Lisa was there, among others, but Bonnie was gone. She must have taken off on her mission by herself.
Into space Betty flew, faster than human imagination. There, just outside Earth’s orbit, she saw the vapor trail. Bonnie had must have taken their ship, and flown into space. Betty flew on, following the trail, determined to catch her daughter.
Did Bonnie really know what she was up against? She was certainly sure of herself the other day. But now she was going into a battle, far from her help. There were so many things that she did not know, things that should have been said. Maybe it wasn’t too late!
Some distance past Jupiter, she saw the remains of the meteor shower. Past the end of the solar system, there were signs of leftover antimatter. Then the vapor trail ended. This could mean one thing. She had gone into very deep space, and needed to use many different dimensional planes. She could not follow her any farther.
Her daughter was now alone, facing a dangerous enemy. Indeed it was even worse than it sounded. Bonnie was her first love, and she would do anything to protect her. Yet if she were to fail now—the thought was unthinkable—but if she were, Betty’s protection might well have been the cause of her downfall.
From the day she was born, Betty Boring was one who shunned attention. She loved to do for others. Yet she never took credit, nor wanted it. It wasn’t just unselfishness. Attention made her uncomfortable. Her own life was a closed topic that she never wanted to discuss. It was just in her makeup.
It was part of what made her so effective; she was a superb listener. She was always more interested in talking about the person she was talking to than herself. Just as she was now, so she always was. She might make an inconsequential joke about her name or her height, but that was virtually all. Betty was always approachable, kind, warm, and completely silent about herself.
Maybe it was something in her birth name. “Bland Homemaker,” as it translates, was a safe appellation if there ever was one. This was a necessity in a time and place when female names had to be safe; in that culture it was actually a compliment. A boldly named female was certain to be shunned. Like most people of her culture, she understood the consequences of her name; it was the expression of the expectations that would always be upon her. And she had little choice but to follow the script that was given to her. She led the life that a woman was expected to lead, that of a homemaker, a mother, and for that matter, a wife. If she was uncomfortable with any one of those roles, indeed if there was something in her that was profoundly dissonant with a role that she played, then the more reason to be silent.
Yet Betty shared something with her daughter, and for that matter, also her mother. She was, by nature, tremendously powerful. Like them, she possessed strength, speed, and many other powers that were far greater than anyone else. It was something in her bloodline, the origin of which was the subject of many private legends. Yet unlike her mother and her daughter, she kept her powers secret. She used one of their unique powers—invisibility—as her cloak. This was but one way that she kept her actions quiet. She would develop many subtleties, many ways of operating that none could detect. And so she was content to be unknown, her actions taken as happenstance when they were noticed at all.
Friends and acquaintances on Earth may not have known the secret of Betty’s powers, or her true origin. Still, many guessed other things about her, even things she never told. They would respectfully give her space, figuring that private details were hers to disclose if she chose to. Yet there were also certain unusual things that stood out. For one thing, one might surmise that she was a woman of many deep, unspoken regrets. It was there in her bearing, her manner. There was something too in her speech. If one listened, there was a fascination with tyranny, with abuses of power. If one listened very carefully for an extended time, she might reveal something more specific. There was also a deep-seated determination to right an unspoken wrong, though in some way it seemed that it was eternally out of reach.
But never would she tell the specifics. There were things she simply never discussed, even with her daughter. There were memories that she would not share, mistakes from her youth that could not be recalled. Once upon a time decisions in her life could rest upon her romantic notions of progress and reform, and in trust in someone who promised to deliver. But she would never forget how her hopes turned to disaster, how she was suddenly left in isolation. Her parents, her siblings, all other family from her youth now gone, she alone had the task of protecting her daughter from powerful interests who despised her.
And so her ways were hardened. Now she was her daughter’s protector, the invisible hand that kept her safe against all odds. And so she operated, frequently out of sight. Many years she managed so, through different phases and many terrifying events. Her daughter’s survival depended on many maneuvers, strange, complex and often hidden. Even her daughter knew little about her mother’s part in her own story.
And then one day they escaped. Her part in that chapter was also unknown. Here too there were deep regrets, and memories too dark to discuss. She and her daughter would have a chance to start again. But for the rest of her life she would be severed from her past, the family she had lost, and everyone she had once known. And so she would carry this with her, no matter how many years would pass. Her daughter alone remained from her old life.
Living in New York City was a welcome change. She relished her newfound ability to live openly and safely within a community. Yet Betty still hid much of herself, even where it was unnecessary, even where it was now safe to be open. The habit of silence proved hard to break.
It also saddened her to see that Bonnie saw their native culture through such a dark lens, a result of growing up under cruel circumstances, and under a despotic regime. Betty knew another side to their heritage. Their people had
made wonderful achievements in the worlds of art, literature and science. In her own childhood, she had learned an appreciation for beauty, and for keeping an open mind.
There was also much more to their religion than what Bonnie had known; she had only experienced a cruel distortion of their faith by a deeply corrupt government. At its heart, the religion was indeed about awe for the higher being, and much more. The most important values were kindness and decency, and respect for others. There was a special requirement to respect those with less power and privilege than one’s self; that value was considered a prerequisite in the struggle to work for justice for all people.
Still, Betty had much to teach her daughter in their new life. Perhaps Bonnie would never come to identify with the world and the culture that Betty had once known. But then, perhaps this was not important or even desirable. Those things were hardly useful when there were only the two of them in this world; indeed they would only tie her to the past. What did matter was that she learned the best and most important values. These could well be applicable to her present and future on Earth, and any other cultures she might mingle with.
There were also new challenges and dangers, which she met in the manners she was accustomed to. At first she worked to keep Bonnie in check; the girl might not know her own strength, or the full consequences of her actions. So Betty alone had the task of preventing her from harming others, or from overreaching, or becoming tyrannical.
And throughout these long years on Earth, she again acted as her child’s sole protector. These years were far less dark to be sure. Yet she still felt a great burden as the sole bearer of a great responsibility. She was the one parent of a daughter who both possessed great powers—and could potentially pose great dangers to those around her—and who eventually would also put herself in great danger.
Ms. Infinity (Book 1): Earth's Greatest Hero Page 12
