Chapter 62

"I appreciate what you're telling me," Bud said in my ears. "I'm sure it was incredible. I'm sure Kelli was incredible. Nevertheless, and for the last time please, this is where I belong. This is where I am meant to be and where I need to be if you are to succeed."

That had been the story from Bud all day long. I had meant to tease him, perhaps torture him a little, with the details of the trip, and particularly the wonderful details of Kelli and I consummating our relationship with our first lovemaking session.

He was glad for me. Happy for us. Confident that we had a real future together, but politely and that was it. Bud was no longer Bud, he was the suit AI. It was as if his personality had only been a reflection of mine and Harley's; borrowed from us rather than genuinely his own.

All business he may have been, but it was an exciting business. I'd come down to the cavern mid-morning and found him patiently waiting for me.

After waking early and running the property line then following that with an hour in the gym and a shower, I made myself bacon and eggs for breakfast. I drank coffee and appreciated it immensely. The coffee we'd had Sunday morning at camp was a french roast that everyone else seemed to like, but I thought it was too bitter and burnt tasting. I needed a hearty roast, but not quite that aggressively roasted, thank you.

Between breakfast and making my way to the cavern I'd called Kelli twice. We spent several minutes together each time being stupid on the phone, bit it was a good kind of stupid, if you know what I mean. She was going to be working a long day today and I told her my day was going to be similarly busy. We wouldn't be able to have dinner tonight, but I offered her lunch tomorrow someplace and then dinner at the house that evening.

Bud had been busy during my absence. A lot of the circuits, pretty much all of which I'd put into the suit without understanding their function, worked together to create something far beyond anything I knew of being even possible.

"I am now almost completely self-repairing," Bud told me once I was wearing the suit and we could communicate. "The microwave treatment Friday has me running on what would normally be the 5 percent reserve. We'll have to go get a better charge somewhere, but our options are considerably improved."

"Can I power the suit? Charge its battery, I mean?"

"You can, and will. You are in fact the preferred means of power, but you aren't ready to try to focus your telekinetic abilities in that direction yet. You could harm yourself if you tried."

"Then what do we do next? Where do we go to juice the suit?"

"We need to go where we can be exposed to a lot of em spectrum emissions. The higher the frequency the better."

"Microwave or radio?" I suggested.

"Those would be common and readily available, but microwave radiation is lower on the frequency spectrum than even visible light. Radio waves are lower still. Frequencies above visible light would be better, but less likely to be available."

"Above light, that's like x rays then?"

"Yes, and Gamma radiation above that and Ultraviolet radiation between light and x rays."

We sat in silence for a while. Well, I sat and Bud did whatever he does. But for a change, sitting and thinking actually produced a result.

"Tanning beds," I blurted.

"What?" Bud said in my ear with Harley's simultaneous exclamation echoing in my head.

"Tanning beds. They use ultraviolet radiation to tan you," I said.

Here we ran into a small problem, although we didn't realize it at the time. Most large businesses who offered tanning beds make an effort to monitor their beds, both for safety and liability reasons. I had three tanning sessions before I found one that didn't have cameras and offered privacy for getting that all over tan.

Thank god I did, because one more actual session and I would've been burnt to a crisp! The place I found was in a semi-seamy side of Santa Rosa and was called Diosa De Oro – Golden Goddess in English.

"Three sessions like this will be enough for now," Bud said when our first was done. I made an appointment for the next day then smiled at the girl working the counter and asked her when she got off work.

"Three honey," she smiled at me rapaciously. "Are you sure you can afford me though?"

"Maybe not," I laughed. I left shaking my head. No amount of money would have been enough to make me meet her at three. I would be back here at four though, to get in another session with a different clerk.

"This doesn't exactly feel like being a super hero," I mentioned to Bud later when discussing the seedy places I'd been in search of unmonitored tanning beds.

"I understand, but some aspects of what you will have to do will be, of necessity, less than glamorous.