Chapter 7

The rest of the weekend was anti-climatic after last night. I did the exchange with the security guys. I made sure each time to buy a hundred thousand in chips. I would have thought the casino would have reneged on the deal but as long as I bought chips and played, they were okay with it. Becky said that part of it was the illusion. Someone else would sit down beside me and see me playing with a stack of chips in front of me. They would decide that they could do the same. In most cases, they were wrong. Casinos stay in business because the odds favor the house. Even I lost more hands than I won. But I would bet more money on the hands than I knew I would win.

Back at school, we settled back into a routine. Classes during the day and evenings spent in my makeshift lair. The girls were working hard at finishing their Bachelors by the end of the class year so I was alone at night more than I liked. It is funny but I am not as inspired when they are not around. I did have one serious Mad Scientist moment. I developed what was apparently an entirely new kind of plastic. It seemed normal until you ran an electric current through it. Then it had some amazing properties. The initial one I found was a low voltage and frequency that caused it to change shapes. I designed a set of boots for the girls that changed according to the voltage. In one setting they were flat soled boots with hard toe caps for fighting (and Massachusetts winters). The press of a button and they became very stylish high heels. It might seem silly but the girls like high heels and I like them in them.

We put the cash on the cards into our company account and the company donated two hundred and fifty thousand to the kid's fund. I was hoping that I could take all that off on taxes. I knew the feds and state were going to kill me next year in taxes. I was claiming most of my income as gambling winnings and that is taxed close to fifty percent.

I did think about what Tony had said and developed several small weapons that we could keep on us all the time. No big breakthroughs, just smaller versions of our major weapons. I still worried about the inevitable fight with a super hero or another super villain. I resolved to try and get some martial arts training. I wanted Tammy and Terry to take classes too but they were so busy with school it didn't seem practical.

The next trip down to Vegas went down as smooth as ever. We exchanged money, I lost some money at roulette and we picked up my suit. I have to say that I was amazed at the suit. I had never been able to afford a custom suit before this one. I also had been a little leary of the sharkskin. I was afraid it would be too flashy. But it was perfect. That night we finally got to go to "Old Vegas". That was the name of the club. It was so exclusive that it wasn't even trendy. It was pretty much by invitation only. And you had to dress the part, hence the new suit. At first I didn't believe what Tammy and Terry were going to wear. Not that it was revealing, just the opposite. They had on matching little black dresses complete down to gloves and pearls. But the dresses looked like cocktail dresses from the nineteen fifties. Okay, really nice expensive cocktail dresses but not what I was used to them wearing. The hems were just above their knees. When I asked if they had turned over a new leaf, they just smirked. They came up and hugged me from each side. They slide my hands down their back and I realized that they hadn't changed. You couldn't see it but I could feel it. They had on the dress, hose (not panty hose) and heels and that was it. That's my girls.

The club was worth the wait. The floor show was stupendous. They featured one guy that sounded just like Frank Sinatra in his prime. The comedian did a bunch of old Bob Hope jokes. Fifty years later, and they were still funny. A woman that was a dead ringer for Gypsy Rose Lee did a fan dance. I was with two of the hottest women on the planet and I still wished she would drop a fan. After the floor show, they had a full orchestra. I mean, who does that anymore? I alternated dancing with Tammy and Terry. I think they were a little surprised at how well I could waltz. What they didn't know was that one of my non-major classes had been Ballroom dancing. I pretty much sucked at modern dancing but I could waltz, cha-cha and swing with the best of them. They were very flattering about my dance skills as the night wore on. I think I had a new favorite club. I might have looked a looked a little odd dancing with them. In heels, they were both three or four inches taller than me. But I wouldn't have traded a single moment of that time for anything.

Back at the hotel, Tammy and Terry insisted on removing their dresses before we got busy. I was all for just sliding them up and doing the nasty. But they insisted that the dresses and my suit had to be hung up properly and brushed off before we went to bed. Of course, they keep the hose and heels on while they were being domestic. It was killing me. I have to say the wait was worth it. The next several hours are some of my fondest memories. The funny thing is that the hose, while silky, was not as silky as the girls' bare skin. But the visuals were impressive. So one day when I am old and grey and the fire in the furnace is about out, the memory of two blond heads buried between each other's legs with the black hose and heels framing them, will bring a happy smile to my aged face.

The next week at school was the same. I was finally back in the groove. It was still difficult to be excited about teaching but the students deserved my best and I tried hard to give it to them. I was still looking without any success for a martial arts school. On the positive side, I was firing on all eight cylinders in the lab. I came up with several new weapons. I liked the paint ball guns but the balance was terrible. If you are familiar with paint ball guns they usually load from a hopper offset from the top. For a game that is fine but suboptimal for a real weapon. I tried to figure out a different feed system. But gave up after a couple of days. The problem was paintballs had to be fragile. Any feed system with springs or air tended to squish them.

So I went a different way. I thought about a Super Soaker type squirt gun. The problem was that they were wasteful. I found one that fired what they called water rounds. It was pictured as firing global shaped water rounds. In reality they were more elongated. It was just an interrupted stream of water. Terry built one that used high pressure water and a tiny solenoid to do the same thing. It was a little bulky, more the size of a submachine gun vice a pistol. And it had several disadvantages that paintballs didn't. A big one was that up close (within three or four feet of the nozzle), it would cut you like a knife. And in the simplest form it was still wasteful. She finally made two settings like a modern sub-gun. On the regular setting, it would fire three times. Then you had to release the trigger and fire again. On the second setting, it would fire, pause, fire, pause, over and over until you released the trigger. She was also working on one that was a backpack if we ran into any serious social situations.

While Terry was working on offensive weapons, Tammy and I were working on the new plastic. It had some very, well, I have to say, odd properties. One of which we found very useful. With the proper mixture, it had an almost liquid look to it. Sort of like like liquid latex. But when struck, it stiffed and then relaxed in micro-seconds. I "aquired" a single shot .50 BMG rifle. I think I broke more laws bringing it into Massachusetts than robbing drug dealers. Anyway, a sheet of the new plastic would stop a .50 caliber bullet and not transfer the impact. Well, that is not quite accurate, the laws of inertia can not be broken. But a normal bullet proof vest would transfer the impact by bulging inward at the point of impact. This could cause broken ribs and in extreme cases had caused heart trauma and death while preventing the round from penetrating. Our new plastic would stiffen and spread the impact. If the round that hit you was sufficiently powerful, you might stumble or fall but not take any internal damage.