Flyover City! A Novel (with Superheroes)

19. Workout Life

"Nah," he said, with only the slightest hint of strain beneath his voice. "that all came about after I retired."

Retired. All the same questions raced back into my head. "So, then, what really is the training? What's it like? I mean, how exactly does one get into your line of work?"

He just looked at me for a moment. I could see he was considering his words, wary of potential eavesdroppers, or letting me in on something that was still a closely guarded secret. "Well, my benefactor... there's a foundation, see? A group that tracks potential candidates. Psychological profiles are drawn up, based on their surveillance. If you're a tough kid, naturally athletic, with an I.Q. of 139 or above, you're off to a good start." He offered this without a hint of humility, but that's okay, because I sort of felt sorry for him. "There's all these grants and scholarships that just sort of find their way to you through anonymous channels. My parents died when I was young and my aunt didn't have a lot of money, so she wasn't about to question it. But ultimately, it's all science camps and summer programs. You stay in public school - inner city, every one of us - just to keep that 'edge'. That way you're already pretty tough by the time your real training begins."

Okay, so that bugged me. I got an edge: Englewood High, yo. "What about the ones who aren't chosen? Do they just wind up working at Home Depot, or something?"

"From where I sit, it's a pretty sweet deal. The scholarships will eventually sort of fade out, but the candidate's file is destroyed, and they just move on with their lives, none the wiser. They miss out on the insanity; the attempts on your life, and the mad scientists and alternate dimensions..."

Yeah, about that ... "And time travel?" I ask.

"That, too. Not that I've ever done any, myself. The Agency has a special task force of heroes to deal with space-time anomalies."

"But it's a real thing. Like, people going into the past, or the future?"

"Not as much as you'd think. Nobody wants to take the chance of wiping themselves out of existence. Too risky - even for the bad guys."

I thought about telling him my experience at work the other day, but I decided against it. I've pretty much written the whole thing off to stress. Besides, I was still too focused on his "retirement" comment. I mean, you wanna live like common people, you wanna do whatever common people do, okay, fine, but...

"...why Denver?" I asked, looking at his upside-down face, as I was spotting him on the bench press. "You could've done anything. Gone anywhere. Why here?"

He stood up and waved me to the bench. "Your turn."

Looking down at me from above the barbell, he lowered his voice and said, "Alright, keeping in mind that pretty much everything you know about me is top secret information, I'm gonna ask that you keep this to yourself. Not as a matter of national security, but as a personal favor to me." He accepted my grunt of compliance. "Have you ever heard of the Green Lama?"

Oooh, tough one. Obscure. Of course I have. "Wealthy American Jethro Dumont travels to Tibet to become a monk, winds up discovering all sorts of Buddha-riffic super powers. He was the token mystic for the Allied Force during double-u double-u two. Am I missing anything?" I sat up and awaited his point.

"Well, when the Allied Force turned into the Agency after the war, the 'Lama retired to the mountains just outside of Boulder. He lived the ascetic's life for a few years. The rumor among superheroes is that he made some amazing realization, that he witnessed the malphysical nature of the universe itself."

Huh. "More amazing than the ability to levitate? To cloud men's minds? So, what, you want to find him and become his pupil?"

He looked uncomfortable with this. "Yeah, I guess so."

"You think he's created some bad ass martial arts style or something?"

"No, it's nothing like that. It's just," he looked a little sad, just then, "doing what I did... you see some weird shit. It'd just be nice to get some perspective."

"So, you left the biz so you could become one with everything?" It came out harsher than I'd intended.

"It's not a religious pilgrimage or anything. Stupid, I know. Anyway, I'm over it. He pretty much dropped off the face of the Earth in the 70's, after a bunch of hippies came and tried to get him to set up an ashram. He could be dead, for all I know." He sort of faded out for a minute, there, lost in his thoughts. Then: "Hey, I'm not really feeling this. You want to get some margaritas or something?"

I most definitely was feeling it, so a drink sounded just fine to me. Enough margaritas will bring about their own kind of enlightenment.