Chapter 60

There was something strange in the air, I could feel it. A mood, or sense of something poised to happen.

It made sense. I had the completed suit in front of me. It was not a one piece item.

When I was a kid, I always thought it was funny that Superman's invulnerable, bulletproof suit had no obvious way to take it off or put it on. It seemed to be a single piece with openings for the head and hands. It had to be super stretchy, I assumed.

My suit pieces were surprisingly stretchy themselves, though not to any super degree. The bottom half had built in feet, more like built in shoes to be accurate. The upper torso piece included a hood that covered my whole face, and long sleeves, but left my hands bare. A pair of gloves finished it off. The hood could be pulled back and the gloves removed to allow me to eat and drink while wearing it, but there was no fly. If I needed to go, I would have to do it with the suit bottoms around my knees. I chuckled at the thought of that. 'Pays to be regular if you're a super hero' I thought to myself. Not quite myself – I felt Harley's laughter echoing in my thoughts.

"We'll have something for the eyes," Bud promised. "But that work remains to be done. You need to get a little more comfortable with the rest of the suit before we worry about protecting your eyes."

"So what do we do today?" I asked. "I do still have a few things to do before the trip tomorrow."

"The main thing is to get the Kinetex cells charged up. We could stand in front of a light bulb, or your TV, or anything else that radiates in the EM spectrum and it would do it eventually. The Impervilon will completely absorb it and transfer it to the Kinetex. Anything that slow would take a long time though."

"So we could find some high powered radio or microwave transmitter and stand in front it?"

"That would work very well, and very quickly. The trick is in finding them. Once we have some power, we will have detectors that will do that, but until we get sufficient power levels, we'll be operating blind."

"How about radar?" I asked. "There should be lots of radar near an airport."

"True, but that's a little risky."

"I thought the suit wasn't visible on radar?"

"Its not, but its still visible to human eyes. There are always a lot of eyes at an airport."

"Do I have to be wearing it for it to absorb energy?" I asked, suddenly inspired.

"No, the process is completely automatic," Bud said.

"Then why don't we just wad it up in a ball and put it in the microwave for five minutes, or however long it would take?"

Bud was silent.

"Well?" I asked.

"Sorry, I'm calculating the time based on the 1200 watt power rating of your microwave oven," Bus aid before going silent again. "Yes, that would work very well. We couldn't do it too often, as the power draw would be noticeable at the power company eventually. Still, that's the perfect solution to our bootstrap power problem. An hour on high power should be enough to give us a good start."

"Well lets do it then!" I said excitedly.

"Hell yeah!" Harley came forward to say. It was what we had both been waiting for, after all.

"Very well," Bud said.

The suit did crumple up well. It could crumple into a very small size and fit into the microwave easily. I punched in an hour on high and turned it on. It looked weird seeing the suit slowly spinning on the oven's turntable.

"While we're waiting," Bud said.

"Yeah?" Harley and I echoed.

"Have you considered how you'll travel?"

"Travel?"

"Well, you're a super hero. How do super heroes travel?" Bud teased.

"Well, the good ones fly," I laughed.

"Exactly," Bud said.

"I can't fly," I said, exasperated. "I can't use my telekinesis on myself, remember?"

"No you can't, but you can use it on other things. You could use a kitchen chair to fly around on if you wanted to."

"I can?" I asked, stunned.

"Of course," Bud snickered. "You've been assuming all this time that the movement you subject a molecule to is in relation to your position, but the two do not necessarily have anything to do with each other if you don't want them to."

"So I could lift myself up by the suit?" I said, reasoning it out.

"You could, theoretically, but there are several problems with that. First is the fact that the Impervilon absorbs energy, including kinetic energy. This makes it harder for you to grab, and because the energy is being converted and stored in the Kinetex almost as quickly as you apply it, it would be extremely inefficient."

"I see," I said, disappointed.

"There are several panels of unconverted Impervilon in the suit, remember, so you do have places you could grab, but we should consider those as for emergency use only."

"I wondered about that. They seemed awful useless as shoulder and hip pads when we were adding them."

"you were only paying half attention or you would have asked about them then, wouldn't you?" he laughed.

"I guess," I agreed, miffed at being caught out. "So if not that, then what?"

"I was thinking of something like a hoverboard."

A hove ... you mean like the one in the Back to the Future movies?"

"Yes, though I would envisions something a bit wider and longer."

"Not so long as a surf board though?" I asked.

"No, your suits not shiny enough for you to be the Silver Surfer, so we don't want to go there, do we?" he laughed.

"No, I guess not," I laughed too. "If you're thinking of something longer than a skateboard, then how about a wakeboard? They're usually less than five feet long, and they're wider than a snowboard."

"I'm thinking we need to make our own, is what I'm thinking," Bud said. "We'll wrap it in an Impervilon skin of course, and that will make it easier for you to grab telekinetically, but it can be made out of almost anything because of that. Something simple to manipulate but hard enough to use as a form."