Chapter 8: Boston Bound

August was busy, busy, busy. I had a new customer in Seattle, who had chosen the name Shock Chord. He had the ability to generate music on any stringed instrument that caused the hearers intense pain on all their nerve endings. Think the “Crucio” spell from Harry Potter, but not quite so painful as the books describe it. He was still working on his control, but he figured he could get called in for riots and crowd control until he got the hang of it, and he had the bankroll, so he signed on the dotted line, forked over the deposit and we went to work.

It was an endless series of disagreements until I finally told him I would give him his deposit back and chuck the whole thing unless he took his head out of the clouds and thought like a potential hero instead of like some football fanboy with a painted face and a foam hand to wave at the millionaires on the field. That sunk in I guess, and a week later he was a happy, paying customer. He even gave me a bonus for ‘talking some sense into him’.

The first thing I did when I got back from LA was talk to Mike. Stellar and the rest of the Guardians, along with the Chicago Heroes Union, the New York Defenders and the Canadian Hall of Heroes were creating a ‘Museum of North American Super Heroes’, it was already built in fact and was in the process of gathering artifacts and items of interest. They needed ‘something big’ to display in the museum’s Entry Hall, and wanted Gossamer Wings. To top it off, the museum was in St. Louis, Missouri, a 4 hour trip, more or less, almost due south on highway 61.

“I don’t know Nate, I mean it’s a piece of my family’s history!”

“Of course it is!, but its a piece nobody but you and me and your dad know about. Maybe Stellar knows, since he seems to know everything ... but its also a piece of Riverport history, Iowa history and even a piece of American history. On top of that, you’re pretty sure these days you don’t even want to be Dragonfly, but you don’t know what you will be when the time comes or even if you want to at all!”

It took a couple weeks, but Mike came around. I had asked Brainstorm if they wanted it as is, or whether I should take out the tech and replace everything with dummy parts. He told me to strip it, but leave it empty. It really was just going to be used as a display. Since I had already built Mike a replacement Dragonfly suit, he even consented to giving them the original, except I substituted a fake version of the inside liner without the artificial muscles.

The only time we ever flew Gossamer Wings was to move it to a field outside of Riverport once I had stripped her of all the vital interior parts and sprayed her with something I called EverPlast, a clear, non-reflective substance harder than diamond I had created. I sprayed it inside and out. The spray hardened on contact and left it clear-coated and protected forever, or as close to it as I could come. We did it in the middle of the night without lights, taking turns in the pilot’s seat so we both had our moment with her. Then I called Brainstorm. He arrived with Portal and Stellar. Portal created a huge portal and Stellar lifted it with telekinesis and walked it through.

A week later, Portal and Stellar appeared through a giant portal in the hangar where Gossamer Wings used to reside. Stellar was floating my side of the trade beside him, setting it down square in the middle of the hangar. “There you go,” he said. “Brainstorm says to have fun.” We shook hands, I waved at Portal and the two of them walked back through the portal, which promptly disappeared.

I was now the proud owner of a genuine alien flying saucer. A 120 foot diameter Frisbee-shaped mystery that looked something like the ship Leslie Nielsen captained in the old movie Forbidden Planet. The Feds, with assistance from Stellar had ‘captured’ it some years earlier. The government hadn’t been able to get into it let alone get it to work. They couldn’t take it apart and hadn’t been able to plumb the mystery of its hidden spaces, as the hull and all the interior surfaces were impervious to all the tools in their arsenal. Lasers, x-rays, gamma rays, nothing penetrated the material. They couldn’t even look at its guts, let alone get to them. So, since they couldn’t get anything out of it, they gave it to the L.A. Guardians. At least that was the government’s story.

Stellar told me in secret, meaning telepathically, that the Feds hadn’t ‘captured’ it, Stellar found it in the same base on Ganymede where the inter-dimensional aliens had returned him after ‘fixing’ him.

Sadly, I barely had a chance to do more than fondle her hull before it was time for Mike and I to head to Boston. Mike’s dad dropped us off at the airport for our 6 am flight and mercifully kept his questions during the drive limited to Harvard, MIT and Boston. Soon we were in the air and on our way to Logan International Airport. We each had a carry on bag with two changes of clothes and the usual grooming stuff. Inside our carry on bags we had packed light backpacks that were more suited for schlepping around the city than a carry on bag.

Our realtor picked us up at Logan and asked us if we wanted lunch first, or to look at our first choice. We suggested stopping at a drive-thru on the way, preferably something local and popular.

“If you want local and popular, I’ll call my assistant and have her meet us at our first stop with Lobster Rolls from Kelly’s.” He looked at Mike. “Maybe two for you, and Frappes for both of you.” He saw me raise my eyebrow at that. “What you would call a milkshake. Chocolate, strawberry or vanilla. Coffee flavor too, if I remember right.”

So we had two lobster roll sandwiches and milkshakes waiting for us when we got to our destination. I was worried about eating in the condo we were viewing, but Gordon, our realtor told us not worry, that Denise, the assistant who brought us the sandwiches would clean up after we were gone.

Lobster rolls are the bomb, and I could see Mike and I finding the nearest Kelly’s once we were here permanently. As far as the condo, I was half sold. It was almost exactly halfway between MIT and Harvard, was in a quiet neighborhood but close to just about anything we wanted. We would have to flip a coin to see who got the master suite, though as a scholarship football player, we weren’t even sure if he would be allowed to live off campus yet. We didn’t like the price, but it was not unreasonable for the area, and as they say in the real estate business, location, location, location.