Frequent Flier (a story excerpt)

So, for years, I’ve intended to periodically publish excerpts of my writing on my webpage.  Stuff which was published ages ago, or that I’m no longer trying to get published.  I write stories, so it always seems a bit odd that my web page is filled with writing that ISN’T stories.  All that to say, the following is excerpted from a short story I published in GUD seven years ago.  It seems sadly topical …

 

Frequent Flier (first published in Spring, 2007)

When third generation superhero, Walter Bennett Remington III, swooped down from the sky, supporting the 747 on his back, no one applauded.  Not the people in the airplane, not their worried relatives on the ground.  Everyone knew about the second law of thermodynamics.  They weren’t sure of the details, but they knew the basics:  all power has to come from somewhere.  Each time power changes hands, you lose a little of it.

And they knew where the power that had Walter swooping in the sky, grinning and pirouetting, had come from.  It had come from them.  The passengers felt little and diminished as they climbed down the stairs to the cement landing pad.  One older man pressed his hand into his back.  “I already had a slipped disc,” he told no one in particular, “But it hurts worse now.”

Walter pretended not to hear, although his super hearing made it impossible not to.  Instead he flew off to his family’s Ski Chateau of Solitude in the mountains of Switzerland.