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observed that when he’s significantly powered-up he doesn’t get hungry, and doesn’t even need to breathe. Though, of course, he can’t speak without exhaling, but he doesn’t seem to need oxygen. As such, I theorize – there we go – that he might be able to sustain long-term exposure to outer space without a protective suit.”
    Jake had buried his face in one hand. “Do we have to do this now?”
    “Sorry,” she said. “I’m Mandy Waid.”
    She extended her hand and he shook it. More politely than enthusiastically. He said, wearily, “Jake Calder.”
    “Yeah.” She said with a smile. “I know who you are.”
    “So,” Jake said. “You seem like you have at least half a brain. What were you doing with that loser?”
    “Oh, Rick? I was just trying to land an interview. I’m a journalism major, and I write for the campus paper. It’s not like I’m dating him, or anything.” The vodka martini was now in front of her, and she took a sip. “Well, just once. But what-the-hell, you know?”
    Jake shook his head. The longer this night lasted, the more he found he simply wanted to be left alone.
    She carried a small purse that seemed to match her skirt, and from it she pulled a note pad and pen, and began quickly jotting stuff down. She looked over to Scott. “And you are?”
    “Scott Tempest,” Scott replied.
    “Scott Tempest.” She knew the name. “Wow. Both of you, sitting right here in this bar.”
    Jake nodded. “The smartest frigging man on the planet, three sheets to the wind.”
    “Look,” she said, once again directing her attention to Jake. “Why don’t we get out of here? Go someplace a little more private?”
    He turned his dark gaze toward her. “You lose the interview with the jock, so you want to make up for it with the superhero?”
    “No,” she said, putting her pad and pen away. “Nothing like that. This will be totally off the record. What do you say?”
    Scott said, “It’ll do you good, Jake. You don’t get out enough.”
    Jake turned from Mandy to his drunk friend. “And whose fault is that?”
    “All right, all right. Everything’s my fault.”
    “Well, it really is. Can you get home okay?”
    “Can I get home okay? Can I get home okay? I’m the smartest man on the planet, remember?”
    “The smartest man on the planet who can’t remember to do his laundry or gas up his car.”
    Jake looked to the bartender, who said, “I’ll call him a cab.”
    “Thanks, man.”

CHAPTER SEVEN
     
    Serving as assistant to Scott Tempest meant a good many things. Body guard, which Jake was quite good at. He also was called upon to offer muscle when it came to one of Scott’s bizarre experiments and some heavy lifting was required. It also meant accompanying Scott when he went into the field. All of this was monitored strictly by the United States government, and most of it was listed as classified.
    Scott Tempest was indeed pursuing a doctorate at the University of Massachusetts, in fact four of them simultaneously. But even more importantly, the school was serving as a cover for Scott’s activities, a cover that was funded by the government.
    For instance, when Scott theorized time travel might be feasible, if he only had the materials to construct the necessary devices, the government took him seriously enough to offer wads of cash so he could get the materials he needed for further research.
    Teleportation, the process of breaking down an object to its molecular level, sending those molecules along on a laser beam, and then reassembling the object in another location with every molecule in its proper spot like reassembling a puzzle, was theoretically possible.
    “You’re nuts,” Jake had said, when Scott first mentioned this to him.
    “Undoubtedly. But it is theoretically possible.”
    Scott presented his theory regarding teleportation, along with his six-hundred page proposal, to the Secretary of Technological Development, a member of the President’s cabinet