Roswell Fanatics

Max was nervous as he took the podium. He hated public speaking – worse yet, he was no good at it. It wasn't like Liz – during the years they had been together hadn't done her best. But even her best really hadn't been very good.

Max certainly didn't blame her – he understood the source of his problem with public speaking – not that knowing it actually did a great deal of good. To a large extent it was analysis-paralysis. He'd get up in front of a crowd and get tongue-tied – worried that he might say something inadvertently that would – well, spill the secret, and worried still more that if he did say something, there'd be almost no possibility he'd be able to think of something – with all those eyes looking at him – which might explain away his faux pas.

To an extent, the only ones he was ever really comfortable with talking to had been Izzy and Michael – for obvious reasons – and Liz... at least until last Spring.

And yet Max had realized he had to get through this – more than that – he needed to excel. He'd seen Liz's journal and her project write-up. It was good – amazingly good. He'd have given up on that project as difficult as it had obviously been for her. Liz, apparently, never gave up on anything.

She was going to win this regional competition – Max was sure of it. That meant he was sure that in a few more weeks Liz would be presenting her project at the competition up in Colorado. The thought of her being there – what might happen to her without someone looking after her in a big city – that was the only thing that had spurred him on to get up and make this presentation. Even so, he realized his limitations. That's why he'd gotten some help.

It had occurred to Max that if he could somehow automate most of this presentation it would go a whole lot more smoothly. He hadn't known precisely how to do that but he knew someone who did. Even so it would have been all but impossible for Max to ask this guy to help him – outside of Liz, Max really comfortable with any of his fellow students – but strangely enough, this guy was recommended by Izzy.

Of course, Izzy didn't really KNOW she'd recommended Alex Whitman – in fact, if his sister had actually caught him reading her diary she probably would have powerblasted him sometime into next week. Fortunately he'd found it several months ago inside the two layers of drywall in the wall between their rooms where she'd hidden it with her own powers, and when she wasn't around he found the things she wrote about her dreamwalks with Alex quite fascinating.

Alex Whitman was his sister's guilty pleasure – in a way that Max had never really even let himself dream about being close to Liz. We are talking romantic involvement here. Oh, Izzy really didn't expect it to ever happen either – in fact she went out of her way to avoid Alex during the day – in the real world she scarcely knew him but in her dreams on the other hand.... It was only in her dreams where Izzy appeared to give her fantasies license. They had even – Izzy's idea at that – hugged and kissed a couple of times during dreamwalks.

The point, though, was that Izzy wouldn't have been dreamwalking this guy for almost six months if he'd been mean or cruel – and he was a whiz with a computer and – as it turned out – a camera. It had been hard to talk to him but once Max had, Alex had really come through. Videorecording, video-editing, the whole works. He had also mixed music in to the background for the presentation. All Max really had to do was wait for the end and do the question and answer session. That would be hard enough and it certainly couldn't be automated – but that couldn't be helped.

As the lights dimmed the DVD was projected on to the screen behind him. He had already screwed up this presentation every way possible before he got the narration right on the tape, so he actually probably would have gotten it right this time. It didn't matter though – all he had to do was lip-synch in time to his own voice. 'Get ready, he told himself, ...for Milli Vanilli...

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, I'm Max Evans and my presentation today is on improved airfoils for wind turbine generation. Let me first show you the apparatus that I first constructed to study the variables in the airfoils of wind turbines which – if optimized – would give improved performance, efficiency, and - most of all – cost-effectiveness that is urgently needed for this technology to have a realistic chance of competing economically with current generation fossil-fuel generation.

I started out first with a cardboard cylinder of the type generally used as forms for creating concrete pillars....”


'Oh, this just sucks,' thought Liz. 'For years I try to get him to stand up for show and tell and .... nothing. Now I try to stop him from submarining me when I'm just trying to make up for having Pamela Troy as a lab partner, and he's Daniel Webster. Hopefully I can get him to trip up in the question and answer period.'

The plain fact of the matter was that "Doctor" Peter Bradley didn't understand enough mathematics to have the least idea of how Max had derived the formula that showed his airfoil had a 41% increase in efficiency. He was expert, however, at live performances – and the one the boy was doing was sensational. The Evans kid spoke with the sort of easy familiarity of someone who appeared totally comfortable with his material. Like someone who had been scripted, directed, and finally produced a finished product rather than someone standing for the first time in front of several thousand strangers and giving the presentation for his initial time. The kid was good – a natural when it came to talking to a crowd.

And if the subject was way too deep for the non-technical mind of the “doctor” to follow completely, he certainly got the critical points – at least the points that were critical for him.

The boy had – working pretty much by himself – discovered a way that would allow - with minor modifications to airfoil design – his very expensive wind turbines to power his very expensive electric sports cars at a rate that would allow even Peter Bradley to speed through the high deserts of eastern New Mexico to his heart's content.

Moreover, it told Peter something about the character of the boy, which was – after all – much more important than his intellectual achievements or his knowledge of science. Max Evans believed in a world that could be run with clean renewable energy, not some horrid future that included internal combustion engines and would cause the polar bears to melt and the antarctic ice pack to become extinct and in which Charlton Heston's successor would have us all eating Soylent Green.

Peter considered himself an outstanding judge of character – even if his actual knowledge of science was a little on the weak side. Whatever else he took away from Max's presentation, of this Peter Bradley was sure; Max Evans was one of the good guys. And in the dipolar world of the politically correct, that made anyone who gave the kid a bad time in the question and answer period – who asked critical questions no matter how relevant – one of the bad guys. And sure enough, someone did.

“We will now,” said the moderator, “... open the floor to questions from the audience. Any questions for Mr. Evans? Yes, the young lady in the second row – please give your name and your question.”

“My name is Elizabeth Parker and my question is this – Aren't the capital costs for wind farms so high that production of windfarms has been seriously limited. If I recall correctly, the Altamount Pass area in California is the biggest windfarm in existence. It was enormously expensive – even with tax credits – and it produces a relatively puny 125 megawatts on the average – compared to 3500 megawatts on the average for a modern nuclear power plant. So if the costs are this high – how practical is your project rally?”

Max knew Liz's question was relevant, but the REAL answer – this was the only project that I could think of that would get me to Colorado to watch over you – wasn't the sort of thing he could really say to Liz. I mean, he had started this whole thing – the whole miserable summer and Fall when he'd been estranged from his best friend in the world – not because he disliked her, but because he needed to distance himself from her – needed to allow her an opportunity to find her own special someone – her own destiny – a destiny he knew could never include someone like him – someone who was – different. All of these thoughts were going through his mind as he fumbled for an answer on center stage in front of a couple thousand people.

“Well, to make it economical is going to require things like this. A 41% increase in efficiency decreases the capital costs per unit of energy by over a third,” he said, shrugging his shoulder. “You have to start somewhere.”

“But aren't places like the Altamount Pass and the Tehachipi Pass where there are reasonably reliable winds relatively rare? Sort of geographical oddities? And even there in these optimal areas, the actual generated energy is only about one-quarter of their rated capacity, because three-quarters of the time the wind ISN'T right for generating?” asked Liz with a pleasant smile. Once she'd seen him peeking at her project and known he'd made a copy of her notes, she'd researched every possible criticism of his as well. If he thought he was going to undermine her project after all her hard work – well, he had another think coming.

Peter looked at the young girl in the second row who was so savagely attacking the holy grail of renewable energy – and that fine young man who had just solved his electric car recharging problem. He consulted his program – almost certain of the name even before he confirmed it. This was the girl wonder- the 'perfect Miss Parker.'

Peter instantly classified her as one of the bad guys – but she was even worse than that he told himself. He recognized her type. He'd seen them often enough in Hollywood. The girl was like one of the young starlets who had started believing her own press releases – a Mouseketeer marvel who had succumbed to the dark side of her celebrity and soon would be embarrassing herself with her self-centered conceit and dismissive cruelty to others – just as this young girl was starting to do with her vicious public attack on this fine young man.

Peter hated these celebrity mini-bitches whose fifteen minutes of fame invariably changed them into self-centered and ultimately self-loathing tramps who went on to self-destruction in front of the lenses of the papparazzi. He actually had more respect for the hard working gals in the porn films he financed – they at least didn't think they were the be-all and end-all of creation.

No, Peter was working up a real dislike for the young girl, and with every continuing word she said, was marking his scorecard on the boys presentation higher and higher. 'We opponents of the internal combustion engine have to stick together,' he thought.

And by the time another twenty minutes had passed – twenty minutes in which Liz Parker continued to battter away at Max's project, this feeling seemed to become general in the room. Lost in her mission to insure that Max did not steal the prize from her that would permit her to keep her 'A' average, this time it was Liz that wasn't picking up the social vibes of the people around her as – one by one – she pissed off just about everyone in the fieldhouse.

“Isn't it true, Mr. Evans,” asked Liz, ignoring the frantic efforts of the moderator to move on to the next presentation, “that as well as all the raptor deaths – many of them endangered species – there also have been a multitude of complaints concerning the low frequency sound of wind turbines – even a human disease syndrome associated with them?”

“I'm afraid we are out of time for this presentation,” said the moderator, jumping in to the second that Max seemed frozen while trying to decide on a response. “This has been a fascinating presentation and a most – lively – discussion period, but we have three more presentations, and we need to move on.”

Liz looked up at Max. She felt a little guilty – not that her questions had been out of line, it was the kind of hard give and take that scientists in the big leagues have with their fellows. It was just – well, neither she nor Max were really in the big leagues yet – and somehow her dream had been for them to go there together – not as competitors.

It also bothered her that she had spent all those years as his friend and used that knowledge against him. Still, he was the one that was sneaking around copying her notes. He no doubt was going to do it to her. That HAD to be the reason - she could think of no other reason for him to do something like that,

Maybe – if she'd given her presentation first and she'd seen how difficult his questions to her would be – maybe this wouldn't have been necessary. But the presentations were being given alphabetically based upon the last name of the presenter. Her name began with a 'P', it didn't began with an 'E' like Evans – and she felt a small pain gnawing away in her chest – under a spot where a pendant used to be worn – when she realized it almost certainly never would. She had been denying to herself for months how much that last fact bothered her. For the thousandth time she pushed it from her mind to reread the notes for her presentation.

'OK, Miss Parker,' thought Peter Bradley, '... you've had your chance to ask some hardball questions ... We'll see how you like it when your presentation comes up – immediately after this one.'

It was a half hour later and Liz thought her presentation had gone rather well. She'd had to finesse a few issues about her early experiments - not mention she'd damn near blown herself up once for instance. But that had been the only awkward spot. Now. as she reached the question and answer period, she became increasingly nervous. Although Max had been caught off guards by some of her questions he had been great at his initial public presentation - much better thanshe'd ever seen him. With all the time he'd had to prepare - after seeing her work - he was likely to have some rather incisive questions of his own. She only hoped that she was up to it.

But that wasn't the way it happened - when the moderator rose to ask the question, "Are there any questions for Miss Parker regarding her presentation?" Max just sat there - it was one of the judges that got up.

"Yes," said 'Doctor' Peter Bradley. "I have quite a number of questions, actually."

Liz looked at the judge as he smiled at her from the judges table. His eyes seemed to stare at her with annoyance. She had never, to the best of her knowledge, even seen him before. Why did he seem so upset with her?

"First of all, Miss Parker, I believe your choice of a project was - unfortunate. One of the worst problems we have environmentally is the internal combustion engine, but rather than assist with finding an alternative to that engine, you instead attempt to find yet more carbon based fuel for it to consume. Are you not aware that adding carbon to the atmosphere puts us ALL at risk?"

"Well, yes, but..."

"...and it's not just carbon dioxide, Miss Parker, it's particulates that clog up the air sacs of our lungs- nitrogen oxides that lead to smog -that eat away at our lungs... What do you have against the human lung, Miss Parker?"

"Why, nothing but..."

"but you have no problem with poisoning the very air we breathe - and criticizing those like Mr. Evans who try to do something about those problems?"

The rant was a long practiced one. Peter Bradley had copied it from a Sierra Club handout, and given it many times - and the more Liz sputtered and seemed uncertain, the more Liz reminded the man of the airhead starlets who became the self-absorbed pop tarts of the next cycle of celebrity. This 'perfect' Miss Parker clearly was nothing of the sort. And surprisingly, Liz found herself rattled, unable to rebut what the man was saying so confidently. For she HAD been the 'perfect Miss Parker' most of her life, and because of that she had been held in respect publicly, even by the numerous fellow students who resented that she was always right - always the teacher's pet.

Liz sensed it then - something she had never felt before. The crowd was siding with the judge. They were nodding their heads as he talked and looking at her with the same disdain that he did. For the first time in her life the faces looking back at her were not in awe of her - in fact with each word she could sense the crowd growing more hostile. Nothing in her life had prepared her for this. She had always been the one who dominated any social gathering - but not in this one. She stammered and tried to defend herself, but still the words wouldn't come.

"Are you not aware, Miss Parker, with the current worldwide famine that's been caused by the alternative fuels program? People are starving in the Third World, Miss Parker, starving because the cost of the basic staples they use for subsistence has been driven sky high by the diversion of critical cropland to production of ethanol for flex-85 vehicles and for adding to the US gasoline supply to stretch the existing supply of fossil fuels for the internal combustion engine. The government in more civilized nations are already backing away from their biofuel programs. I take it that you are indifferent to the plight of these starving people, Miss Parker?"

"Well, no ... but uh...," Liz tried to speak - tried to defend herself - but all she could see was the angry faces - all she could hear was the voices of people agreeing with Bradley. She'd always been the one that was respected - today she seemed to be the one that was reviled. All thoughts of winning any prizes - or even defending her project - suddenly were beyond her. With tears falling from her cheeks and shaking hands clutching her project report, she stepped away from the podium and started to hurry toward the side of the stage.

Max looked at her as she walked off the stage and he understood. Public speaking petrified him, and he didn't need to connect with any of these people to understand that the crowd has suddenly swung against Liz.
It wasn't fair - it wasn't right. Liz was too upset even to defend herself - and the reality was that had she been less upset, she COULD have defended herself. But she was frightened and humiliated - by the circumstances and by the crowd - and most especially by that one of the three judges that had unleashed this onslaught against her - the guy he's seen drive up in the electric sports car.

For years Liz had helped him with social situations that were beyond his skills - the least he could do was to try to help her.

"I'm not that much of a tequila drinker personally," came the young voice over the PA system, and everyone looked to the questioners microphone, where Max Evans was now standing.

Since he was only fourteen, it was an amusing attention-getting line and everyone smiled and quieted down to listen. But then the speaker took on a more serious tone.

"...but one of my earliest memories in life was walking along in the desert hand in hand with my sister - and seeing the agave plants. I know Clovis has a lot of agriculture fields of clover... cotton ... hay ... corn ... alfalfa ... even some soybeans, I guess. None of those are native crops. All require chemicals - most of them made from petrochemicals - for fertilizer, for insecticides, for the tractors that plant and till and harvest these crops. It takes big irrigation systems, too, .... you've all seen them. That's because none of that stuff is native. Agave is.

It doesn't require you to create irrigation systems that take energy - most of that coming from fossil fuels. It doesn't require you to bring in honeybees or other creatures to fertilize it - they are already here. It doesn't need insecticides to protect it from the local critters - it evolved with the local critters.


Doctor Bradley, you talk about particulates - well we've all seen dust storms around here - they are our major particulates. None of the local crops make that much better, but agave does. If you've ever walked through the desert you've seen it - it's roots holding the soil together - decreasing the erosion from the wind and from the flashfloods that the summer thunderstorms cause. That's the real particulate problem around here, and it's made worse by the plowing you get with seasonal crops - but not by agave.

The fact of the matter is that Agave DOESN'T contribute to carbon release because it isn't a fossil fuel. Every single atom of carbon in Liz's... that is Miss Parker's fuel was once carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the agave used solar power to make it into those terpenoids. What she did in finding an enzyme to enable her to convert them into fuel without the use of smelly refineries or any waste products was positively .... elegant. Her fuel can be used by motor vehicles or by jet aircraft at a price fully competitive with fossil fuels and you don't even need to buy carbon credits to offset it, because it is carbon neutral.

Now you speak about nitrogen oxides and - I have to admit - some of those are formed when her fuel is burned, but not all that many, and most of those are scavenged by the catalytic converter of a vehicle. But the other thing you have to understand is that the terpenoids themselves were going to cause pollution if she didn't process them. They stay in the waste mash after tequila fermentation and get fed to pigs. They degrade to terpenes, which not only cause air pollution, but don't do the pigs just a heck of a lot of good, either..."

Bradley and the other judges chuckled as a laugh went through the crowd in the hall. The kid was giving him what for - but he really didn't mind it. It was kind of like a celebrity roast with a 14 year-old master of ceremonies....

"Now like I said, I don't drink much tequila, but a lot of people do. The agave that's used both in this country and in northern Mexico is going to be grown and harvested no matter whether this process is used on them or not, but it'll be better on the environment if it is used. Better for the hard-working people that grow this as well ... they'll get a useful and valuable byproduct from something they are already doing and they won't be polluting their pork with terpenes - I'm sure we'll all agree that pig poop smells bad enough without the critters off-gassing something even more flammable than methane.

But it goes beyond that, Doctor Bradley. It'd be nice if it was as easy as just buying an electric car, but it isn't. In the first place, the technology just isn't adequate for some uses - not yet anyway. Take your sports car - my guess is it'll do about 200 miles - at forty miles an hour - or maybe about fifty miles at full speed. Is that about right? Then it takes six hours to recharge."

Bradley nodded, still smiling at Max. "Almost eight hours if I use my windmills..."

"Well, let's say that my project gets that back to six hours. That still leaves you going 200 miles in five hours - then recharging for six hours. That's 200 miles in eleven hours. That's eighteen miles an hour. I hate to sound critical, but the Pony Express did twelve miles an hour. Or you can drive 50 miles in 20 minutes and recharge for six hours. That's less than eight miles an hour - or two-thirds the speed of the pony express. Maybe in the big city that's fast enough, but we have a whole lot of distance between folks out here, Doctor Bradley. At eight miles an hour it'd take our school bus about thirteen hours to drive the 108 miles back to Roswell tonight and that's going to put me out after curfew I'm afraid...."

Liz watched from the edge of the stage. Max always had been good at word problems, but he'd never been this good at public speaking. And he knew as much - or more - about her project as she did. He certainly must have been interested in her report. Liz shook her head in wonder as his speaking pulled another chuckle from the audience - the same audience who had been so hostile to her. Max was maturing - probably doing better with out her than when thye'd been together.

"But the point, Doctor Bradley, is that this is a big state and sparsely populated and people need their mobility here. Electric vehicles aren't carbon neutral either. You may not put fossil fuel into them, but a lot of fossil fuel went into making them. Then there was the environmental cost of that. The copper wire mostly comes from strip mines in Utah. The aluminum frame started out as a Bauxite strip mine - probably in Arkansas. The body is plastic - more fossil fuel - fiberglass, and carbon fiber - that's made from polyacrylonitrile by decomposing it into carbon fibers and acrolein - about as nasty a stuff environmentally as you will ever find so bad it was used as a war gas in WWI.

The point is, everything has its environmental downsides, but if we work hard, we can find the science to improve them. Electric cars have their place and wind turbines have their place but ... inventions like this one for Miss Parker's process for making a good grade biofuel out of what is essentially toxic waste otherwise also have a place - an important one until our other technologies improve enough to meet our needs in other ways. She worked hard on this - I would have given up - and the solution she found was absolutely elegant.

What I'm trying to say is... maybe you ought to go a little easier on Miss Parker. Her project is great and it'll help to meet our transportation needs without taking food out of anybody's mouth, without increasing air pollution or particulate pollution or anything else. And maybe the internal combustion engine isn't all that great, but for the technology we have right now, it's the least bad of a lot of options."

Bradley looked at the boy and chuckled, marking his scoresheet higher for Liz's project as the other two judges flipped back through their notes and upgraded Max's oral presentation skills. The competition wasn't finished yet, but when it was all over the two young teens from Roswell New Mexico would finish first and second - Liz getting the top award.


It was two hours later as all the Roswell teens boarded the bus. Despite the fact that she had won the grand prize, Liz coud still feel the disapproval of the others as she boarded the bus. There were - it seemed - a number of people who had resented her 'perfect Miss Parker' status, and her backstabbing of her fellow Roswellite had not been well received either.

As Liz walked on the bus she was greeted with blank stares and a few frowns and many turned heads. She walked quietly to the back seat - not feeling at all like she'd won any great victory today. The feeling that she was alienated from the others was made worse when Max came up the steps of the bus - to be greeted by hand-shakes and attaboys. He was younger, of course, than the high schoolers. But for that one trip - those two hours on the bus - he was one of them - accepted as an equal in their social world while she was shunned. He looked back at her from time to time - feeling bad to see her alone back there looking out the window - but he couldn't tell if she even noticed.

For two hours Liz rode along in her misery - feeling every bit the outcast. She had been right about Max copying her work - she knew that for sure. But if it wasn't to use it against her - why had he done it at all? If they were 'too different,' to be together, she told herself, why had he even bothered to pay attention to her project. As she looked at the front of the bus - where Max, not her, was getting the attention and approval of the older students, she just didn't get it. She should, she supposed, apologize to him for going after him in the question and answer period after his presentation - that was obviously what the other kids on the bus wanted her to do -she'd overheard two of the high school girls calling her 'that little Parker bitch' for how she'd treated him - but why had he done that? Why had he copied her journal and report if it hadn't been to attack her? It wasn't like he could have known he'd have to defend her?

Eventually the bus got back to Roswell and a dazed Liz Parker was met by hr parents at the school.

"Well," said her mom,"...how did your presentation go?"

"Oh, I had some troubles but - well the good news is I won first place."

"That's great, dear," said Jeff Parker.

"Wonderful," said her mother. "Of course, someone told me that's what would happen."

"Who?"

"Diane Evans. She said that Max had assured her that your project was awesome and going to win the regionals hands down."

"Max said that?"

"Yeah. That's not quite all he did. We've got some good news for you, dear," said her father. "Remember how you always dreamed about going to Harvard and being a molecular biologist? And we always told you you'd have to settle for going to one of the state universities because Harvard was a little too pricey?"

Liz nodded her head slowly, almost afraid of what was coming, even without being sure what it was.

"Well, Max got a copy of your project and - well he had his mother patent your process for you. There have already been several offers from energy companies. It looks like your process can do a great deal of good for a lot of people of modest means in Texas and Arizona and New Mexico. It will provide them with employment - decent jobs at a reasonable wage - but besides that... with the royalties that you'll be collecting - well, you won't be rich exactly, but you certainly won't have any financial trouble attending Harvard if you want to."

Both parents waited for a response from their daughter - riding alone in the darkness in the back of the car - but there was only stony silence. Obviously, the girl was speechless.

"Would you like to have a Martian Blast Sundae to celebrate your award and your good fortune with your old mom and dad?" Jeff Parker asked finally.

"Uh - we ate in Clovis before we got on the bus. I'm kind of tired, Daddy. I think I'll just go up to bed," said Liz, opening up the back passenger door and stepping quickly to the stair leading in to the house.

"OK dear, see you in the morning," said Nancy. "Sweet dreams."

"Goodnight dear!" called out her father. The two sat in the car for a moment, then started to talk.

"Did you see the shocked look on her face about the money to go to Harvard? I was expecting to see tears of joy any second," said Nancy

"Me too. She's dreamed about being able to go to Harvard for a long time. Now it can happen just like she wants. It's a good feeling when your princess finally gets what she really wants," replied Jeff.

"Yes," said Nancy, "...yes it is."

Liz climbed the back stairs to her upstairs room in the near-darkness, the tears already falling. She threw herself on the bed of the empty room and sobbed. How could she have believed anything bad of him? How many times had he proved himself to her? How many times had he thought of her first? How many times had he done things to help her - never worrying about himself?

Max was right - they were different, she told herself. Max was a better human being than she was, and probably always would be.

Liz cried on her bed for several hours - not stopping until well after midnight when she finally turned on the light and found her jewelry case. She upended it and scattered her jewelry on her bed until finally she found the copper-silver pendant. She touched the face of it - felt the words engraved there My Friend Liz.

She knew she didn't deserve to have him for a friend - but even so she put the chain around her neck. The touch of it between her breasts seemed soothing - a memory of what she once had.

Obviously she didn't deserve him - certainly he deserved better than her and she knew that between the day she had thrown it away at the quarry and what she'd tried to do to him today she'd almost certainly burned that bridge behind her for all time. No, she'd never have and didn't deserve Max's friendship - and certainly not his love - but still the feel of it against her comforted her.


'I'll wear it under my blouse - always,' she told herself. 'If nothing else, it'll remind me of the kind of person I want to be...'

Her right hand never left the pendant, and its presence somehow calmed her. Eventually the tears slowed and the eyes closed and she was able to sleep.

Latitude 6°56′ South by longitude 14°01′ West.
It was a somewhat statistically improbable event - but you certainly couldn't say it was rare. Tropical depressions did not usually form there. The odds of it happening on any given day were only one in several thousand - but put another way that means that is generally did happen once every six or seven years. Perhaps today it was the influence of El Nino or La Nina or maybe the South Atlantic Gyre was just acting up, or perhaps - hell, it could have been anything. Meteorology is predicted as well by chaos theory as anything else. Whatever the cause, it was a rapidly developing tropical depression in an area of the world where there wasn't a whole lot of weather stations to detect it. There was one - one that could have detected it. But disasters are often caused by a chain of improbable events. Little things - things that don't seem that important at the time.

Wideawake airfield, Ascension Island
The 45th Weather Squadron was based at Patrick AFB - near Cape Canaveral - but they had several detachments in the atlantic. The one at Ascension Auxiliary Airfield - was by far the smallest. It consisted of three people - normally. Today was not really a normal day. While three people were technically assigned, one of those people was on emergency leave back in the United States, assisting his 68 year old grandmother - the woman who had raised him after his own parents had died in an automobile accident twenty-one years previously - deal with the loss of her spouse of almost fifty years. That left two assigned personnel. Except one of the assigned personnel was in the local hospital - a ruptured appendix. That left Airman Blake. To say that Airman Blake was a new troop didn't actually do his newness justice. Airman Blake had come in on the aircraft this morning - before TSgt Graves had started getting the belly pain - and the guy he replaced had departed Ascension Island only two hours ago and was - in fact - still on his way to Patrick AFB. Now that was new.

Airman Blake had just completed his weather service training - most of it, anyway. When you get a lot of young people from different parts of the country in close proximity in a training environment it's a little like a kindergarten - they swap viruses. In fairness, Blake had only missed two days of training with the influenza-like syndrome that had put him on quarters and - once again it had just been bad luck that one of those days was the lecture on radiosondes.

A radiosonde is something you hang under a balloon that gives off radio signals as the balloon drifts. It records a number of things but the critical ones are altitude and barometric pressure. These days, satellites can give a whole lot of information about what's going on in the weather, but for accurate predictions you really need to know the barometric pressure throughout the world because it tells you about crucial things that will affect the weather. Things like unexpected tropical depressions.

In fairness, under normal circumstances it wouldn't have made a damn bit of difference that Airman Blake missed that particular lecture. He'd have launched his first radiosonde - hardly something that required a genius to do - under the watchful eyes of his more senior weathermen. But today there were none of those available. Even so, he had the checklist - how hard could it be?

He activated the radiosonde and attached it with the provided harness to the weather balloon - inflated the weather balloon with a premeasured charge of Helium and ... and ... and as he got ready to let it go, realized it really didn't look much like the pictures of weather balloons in flight he'd seen gracing the walls of his tech school. It looked - kind of droopy. Flaccid. Underinflated. This was a scheduled launch and he wanted to get it right. This didn't look right. The balloon would lift the radiosonde - but not by much. And there was no one on the whole damn island who wasn't recovering from anesthesia right now who could tell him what to do about that.

So he made a decision - an uninformed decision, but a decision nonetheless. He topped off the weather balloon with more Helium - if a little was good, more certainly had to be better, and with a smile on his face, he launched the balloon.

It would be four hours later that the balloon would reach a height of 22,584 feet - a height where the expansion of the Helium caused by the lower atmospheric pressure at altitude would finally reach the elastic limit of the weather balloon to stretch and contain it. A height at which the balloon would rupture from the excessive pressure of the too-big charge of Helium and fall over four miles into the South Atlantic. The radiosonde therefore would never reach the tropical depression forming just north of there. And the weather services would be unaware of the small tropical depression heading northward toward the Sargasso Sea.

It was Sunday afternoon- the day after she had returned from Clovis - and Liz still hadn't decided what to do tomorrow morning. She knew that she' needed to apologize to Max - she owed him that much - but she had no idea what else she was going to do. Apologizing for what she'd done might get her back to where they'd been before the trip - but she still wanted more than that with Max. She wanted him to feel about her just like she felt about him - or at least opposite polarity for the same thing - and she had no idea how to get there from here. She'd been thinking about it all morning - hovering on the edge of tears.

On the good side - except for the chaperones, she and Max were the only people who had been on the bus to Clovis who weren't high schoolers. Nobody except Mr. and Mrs. Raff - and of course Max himself - would know what she'd done to Max in Clovis, and half of the high-schoolers would have graduated before she and Max were in high school themselves. As for the others - well, that was almost two years away - a lifetime to a teenager.

So strictly from the standpoint of other people rubbing her nose into the fact that she'd been a backstabbing bitch - it wasn't going to happen. Max certainly would never do that - although he would certainly have been entitled to do it after what she'd done to him. But he wouldn't and none of the other seventh graders knew. But she knew - and although wearing the pendant had somehow allowed her to fall asleep last night, her guilt had awakened with the morning. That was the bad side.

The worst thing is that she didn't have any idea how she was going to explain to him that she'd actually believed he was trying to backstab her. How could she ever tell him that she actually had brought herself to think that of him? And how much more would knowing that hurt Max. Maybe, she thought, it would simply be better if she claimed that she'd had PMS or something and gone temporarily insane.

She shook her head in disgust. 'Lying to Max is not the answer.' But she wasn't really sure that telling the truth was either. For all his strength in some areas, Max was curiously vulnerable when it came to dealing with people.

She'd screwed up once - she didn't want to make it any worse. What she needed was advice from someone with greater insight in to Max than she had. Unfortunately, that narrowed the field down considerable. As luck would have it though, one of those people showed up.

It had been planned by the two women for several weeks - you can't live in the house with a teenager and be totally unaware when they are in a funk. Teenagers aren't that subtle - besides, Max had wound up having a mental health social worker visit over the episode out at the quarry. And Liz - Nancy had never seen her daughter - normally the perfect Miss Parker - so out of sorts. So in a way, it was supposed to be a reprise of their sex ed lecture - without the sex. The virtues of patience were the intended topic. It wouldn't work out quite that way.

"Liz dear," said Nancy, "... Diane Evans stopped by for tea with me - but she also has some patent paperwork she wants to show you. You are too young to sign it - I'll have to do that for you - but you need to know what's going on. Would you come in here please?"

The question immediately went through Liz's mind - has Max told her? One look at Diane's smiling face as she saw her told Liz that Max hadn't told his mother a thing about how she'd treated him. No mother would look that happy to see a conniving little bitch who'd backstabbed their child - and that's pretty much how she'd felt about herself all day.

"Hi Liz...," said Diane. "Congratulations on your award. Max told me that your project was amazing - so did my friend Barbara Bingman."

"Barbara Bingman?"

"Barb is a classmate from law school. Patent law is a little specialized, so I ran your project by her. She was really impressed."

"Max's project was real good too. I'm not near as good at physics as Max is, but it really is good original work. You ought to consider patenting it for him."

Grown women, Liz thought, didn't ever really giggle. Nonetheless, her mother and Diane Evans came very close as they looked at each other and smiled a quirky smile - like they shared some hidden secret.

"What...?" Liz asked warily.

Nancy smiled at her daughter. "It's just that it was only a little over a week ago that Max came to talk to us - right here when we were having coffee together, and what Max said to me was...," she nodded to Diane who looked up at the ceiling trying to remember the exact words before continuing, "...I'm not really as good at biology as Liz is, but it's great original work and you really ought to consider patenting it for her."

"Max said that?"

"Yes, in those exact words. The two of you can be so much alike sometimes," said Diane Evans, "... although, I guess that's natural enough under the circumstances."

"What do you mean... under the circumstances?"

"It's just that - well, I'm not sure you realize what a huge influence you've been in Max's life."

"Why do you say that?"

"When my husband and I first adopted Max and Izzy, they were probably about six years old. They had rather severe ... psychological issues. Even today Izzy says - and I believe her - that they remember nothing of their lives prior to the day that Philip and I found them walking along that desert road. Even what they remember of that day they seem somewhat evasive about..."

"What do you mean - evasive?"

"Well, at first they couldn't talk about it so it never really occurred to me to ask. They didn't speak English - didn't speak ANY language as far as we could tell. The state agency psychiatrists said they might never really learn to communicate - feral children often don't - but they were wrong. Max and Izzy learned English quite quickly. Later on - well it seemed like the kids just WOULDN'T talk about it. The psychiatrists next theory was that Max and Izzy had been through something terrible in their early childhood - some terrible treatment - maternal deprivation - there were many theories. Some said repressed memories because of that - some thought that they had been some sort of captive that was just fed and watered but never - never loved."

"That would be .... terrible. I read an article once about maternally deprived animals. It was so sad..."

"Yes, well, I was determined that they would never be maternally deprived - not ever again. I stayed home those two years and worked with them constantly. They learned fast but neither was normal .... socially. Isabel was better than Max - or at least faked it better. I thought that she really was attached emotionally to Philip and me - Max was less so. There were times I didn't think Max was attached at all. It was then that we tried all sorts of tricks - gave him a little model of a house to tell him - symbolically at least - that he would always be home. None of it really seemed to work.
Finally I told his sister that I didn't think we'd start Max in school yet - just her. I told Izzy I didn't think he was ready - but to tell the truth I was afraid if I let him out of my sight he'd run off - back to wherever he'd been before we found him. She looked in my eyes and - well, it seems like she was almost reading my mind. She told me that Max wanted to love me and his father - but he was afraid."

"Afraid?"

"She said that he was afraid because he wanted it so much that if he ever really accepted our love - and if we changed our minds because we found out he was different than we expected him to be - he was afraid he really wouldn't survive that. He wanted it so badly that if he let himself believe in it - and it didn't happen - it would devastate him.
We told her that was nonsense, of course. Whatever had gone on in their lives before that day we found them - they'd only been children. It wasn't their fault and it didn't reflect on the kind of people they were - what kind of human beings they would be as they grew up. We'd always love them anyway. Izzy just gave me a sad little smile and said she thought we were probably right - but Max just wasn't sure. Not sure enough to commit to being part of our family. Not sure enough to put him and us through the pain if he somehow disappointed us."

Liz nodded her head when she heard the pain in Diane's voice - still there after all these years. It seemed oddly familiar.

"But Izzy also told me not to push Max - that would only frighten him - that eventually she thought he would come around and in the end he has - not completely perhaps, I can still tell that. It's like he has some secret fear that he'll do something and our whole family will come apart - but it's better - much better - than it was. The key thing was patience - and giving Max time to get over his fear."

Liz nodded again. Max didn't frighten easily - of all people in the world, she more than any knew that Max could be very brave, but she knew that social situations did scare him sometimes. But the idea that he was once - and perhaps was still afraid of his own mother's love...? Well, that was - strange ... and difficult to believe.

"So what did you decide to do?" she asked.

"I took him to third grade registration - and there was this big mean dog - and this pretty young girl - and suddenly Max had a friend and the world became a better place for him. She sort of took him under her wing - taught him things that I'd forgotten about how to be a third grader - how to be someone who didn't feel so different because of his background."

"Different ..." said Liz. "Maybe Max WILL always be that," she said nodding her head in agreement. As she moved she felt the warmth of the pendant between her breasts and it reminded her of all the times he'd helped her. Max was different alright, how many other guys would have done what he'd done? How many would have faced death for her? But what did he mean by different? Obviously, it wasn't the same as what she believed. That difference wasn't something he would have felt the need to hide.

"But different doesn't mean bad," she said.
What she actually thought was, 'Maybe that's why I love him so much,.'

Of course that particular thought that came in to her mind and threatened to force itself from her lips was not exactly the sort of thing a fourteen year old girl says to the mother of the boy she has a crush on, even if it was how she felt.

"No, no it doesn't. But feeling different is alarming to a third grader. Only that third grade girl made him feel that he was less different - or maybe that the difference was unimportant," said Diane, joining Nancy in smiling at the young girl.

"I think perhaps you might have said something to Max last Spring - perhaps something you said about some sort of relationship that went beyond simple friendship - that Max found threatening, dear," said Nancy, with Diane nodding her head in agreement.

"Both of you are very young," said her mother. "It's not really reasonable for you to expect any sort of - of commitment - from a fourteen year-old - heck there are thirty year-olds that aren't capable of commitment. I think maybe Max felt pushed and because of that he backed away - and I think that hurt both of you."

"I think your mother might be right, Liz," Diane said. "You have to understand - you are special to Max - just like I'm special to him - but Max's difference really makes him slow to commit. You need to be patient, Liz. You need to give him time, If you do - well, I'm sure eventually everything will be alright. But that's going to take years - which is alright - you two are only fourteen."

"I guess so," said Liz.

She didn't mean it though. Somehow Diane Evans had missed on her interpretation of what was going on with Max - she knew that with certainty. Liz didn't want to hurt Max's mom - but Diane Evans had settled for less than what Max could have given her.

Liz had seen Max commit - it was in many ways his defining trait. She'd seen him take that man over the guardrail - expecting himself to die doing it. Now that was commitment.

Even that first day - that big dog - it had known that it wasn't going to get to her without going through Max - and it had feared doing it. Max hadn't been afraid and the dog could tell.

No, she wouldn't tell his mother, but it wasn't fear of commitment. She didn't know what it was.... but it wasn't that.

"Anyway," Diane went on, "I know that the two of you have had some problems. I've talked with your mother about it. I think maybe given time Max will get more comfortable with the whole idea of being a social person. After all, both of you are still awfully young yet. Commitment may require more maturity than either of you have just yet - but you have years and years ahead of you."

Liz smiled and shrugged her shoulders - but she knew that Diane was wrong. She'd treated Max poorly - she knew that. She'd been hurt and angry and believed him to be doing something she should have known he wasn't capable of. Perhaps that had been immaturity, but she WAS capable of commitment - and certainly Max was. If he hadn't committed fully to being Diane Evans' son there was a reason.

It had to be that Max truly thought he was different - different enough that it was somehow a problem. Max could be wrong - he'd been wrong about her project - but he wasn't stupid and he wasn't incapable of commitment. Whatever was stopping him - however he believed himself to be 'too different' to be loved - well she hoped he was wrong about it too. In any event, she had to find out.

"Anyway," she said, deciding to change the subject, "...you still ought to patent Max's project findings."

"You know," said Diane, "... I talked to him about that. He told me not to bother - that the market for wind turbines was too small to make it worthwhile.. I asked him why he even did the project then..."

"And what did he tell you?"

"He didn't, but I know what Izzy thinks - that it was the only way he could think to get to Colorado when he knew you'd be there."

"Somehow I doubt that," said Liz, but even so she felt her face flush. She could hope, even if she had treated him like crap and probably ruined whatever chance she did have to make things up with him.

But even as she thought it she knew - whatever Max's secret was - whatever part of himself he refused to show to the world - even to his mother - until she knew that, there probably wasn't any chance for her and Max to ever be a twosome. Of course, she was good at research.....if she could find out his secret, perhaps she could help him with - well with whatever it was that frightened him too much to get close to people - especially to a person named Liz Parker.

"But he's wrong about the wind turbine blades," Liz said, changing the subject. "Oh, he might be right about there being no real market for wind turbine blades, but they still make plenty of aircraft with propellers. If it's a good design for the wind to push efficiently, it ought to be a good design to push the wind efficiently. You still ought to patent it for him."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes," said Liz. "Like I said, I'm not as good as he is at physics and stuff - but that doesn't mean he doesn't make mistakes too. There are lots of turboprop airplanes out there that I'm sure could benefit by a more efficient propeller design, even if the market for wind turbines is kind of sketchy. "

Yes, Liz thought to herself, whatever the problem with Max was - she was going to find it. Fix it too, if she could.

"Besides," Liz said, "... I heard Max talk once about going to MIT. It's kind of expensive - like Harvard - and very exclusive. It'll help him get in to have a technology patent in his name and the money from it will help him cover tuition and living expenses."

The next twenty minutes was - for Diane and Nancy - mostly signing paperwork and exchanging pleasantries. As soon as Liz left, the two women clicked their coffee cup together to celebrate a counseling session that had apparently gone well.

Diane and Nancy watched her through the window.
"I really think it helped," said Nancy. "I swear, I thought the girl has had one continuous case of PMS the last few weeks. Thank goodness we seem to have calmed her down."

"She always seemed quite level-headed to me," said Diane. "I'm sure we got through to her. You know, I've always liked your daughter. Who knows - maybe when they really grow up, she and Max will care for each other - I mean REALLY care for each other."

"Jeff and I like Max too, how could we not? ," said Nancy. "I wouldn't mind at all if they became a couple - you know, their senior year in high school or something. You know - when they are more mature."


As Liz walked away, she was deep in thought.

A girl had to have a plan if she was going to get what she wanted out of life. She knew what she wanted - she just needed to figure out how to get it. Max would like MIT - it was a great school - in Cambridge - just like Harvard. It was within walking distance to Harvard too. They could get an apartment halfway between the two schools.

All she had to do was discover his secret - fix whatever the problem was - and live happily ever after. Granted, the plan was a little sketchy right now, but it would flesh out after she did some research - it always did. As for patience - well - patience had never really been her style.

She'd start the research tomorrow when the public library opened tomorrow and she could check the old newspaper records of Max and Isabel's discovery. She'd eventually find something - just like she had with the enzyme for the terpenoids. If you worked hard enough, good things happened to you. The harder you worked, the quicker they happened.

'Patience? Naw ,' she thought, '... the sooner the better.'

It was an hour later when Diane got back home. She saw the pickup truck leaving the garage - the large 220 volt fan in the back - along with the empty box from a rather large 220 volt air compressor. Max was just plugging it in to the electric outlet recently used by the huge fan.

"How does it work, Max?"

Max flipped the gray switch on the front panel of the large compressor. The huge electric motor instantly turned over and the compressor started pumping air into the large tank.

"It looks like it works fine, Mom," replied Max.

"Well thank you so much for hooking up the outlet."

"You don't need to thank me. Besides, I had to do it anyway for my project. Thank you for suggesting Izzy and I get Dad the collection of air tools. I think he's really going to like them."

"Max... speaking of your project - I was over talking to Nancy Parker this afternoon and I happened to bump in to Liz. Actually, it was more than just bumping in to her - we had to tell her about her patent application. She suggested that we patent your new wind turbine airfoil as well."

Max appeared to sigh deeply. "Mom - I told you there really wouldn't be enough of a market to bother. I still think that's the case."

"Liz differs in her opinion about that. She says that even if the market for wind turbines isn't all that great, it ought to work for propellers on turboprop aircraft."

Max looked stunned for a moment. Maybe Liz was right. "Well, it's possible, I guess. Except that I designed it for optimal low speed operation. I'll have to recheck it for aircraft speeds."

"Well, Liz has this plan that you get it patented and that it pays your way to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and even if it didn't - just having a technology patent would help you get admitted there. I think she may well be right - at least on the latter part. So go ahead and recheck it. In the meantime, I'll be back in the house starting dinner." She looked at the big compressor and smiled. "Your Dad is really going to love his new compressor..."

As the door closed, Max looked at his wind tunnel and winced. No way was he getting the wind tunnel up to the speed he needed without the fan that just went away on the back of the pickup truck. If only his mom had told him this an hour ago, it would have been so easy.

Oh well...,' thought Max, '...I guess it can't be helped...

Except Max found that he couldn't leave it there. You didn't have to be all THAT socially perceptive to understand that Liz had been upset with him. He hadn't meant it to happen - but she didn't know about him being different. If she did - well she'd probably have been just as happy that he'd let her go to find her own special someone. But Liz didn't know that and she'd gotten mad and that's why she had asked those pointed questions about his project up in Clovis.

This, he decided - trying to make it possible for him to go to MIT - was her way of apologizing. If he didn't at least try - it would be like hurting her feelings all over again. He didn't want that. It was bad enough they couldn't really hang out anymore - he didn't want her unhappy with him. He walked to the closed doors ... and locked them.

It would all depend, he decided, on whether he could get the airflow in the wind tunnel fast enough. First he turned on the small fan that was at the exit end of the wind tunnel. It didn't even come close to fast enough to assess how the wind turbine airfoils would work as aircraft propellers. He looked at the doors again - then at the window. Then he formed the torus over the other end of the wind tunnel. He pushed the air with his mind - a rolling doughnut of air with the doughnut hole centered over the open mouth of the wind tunnel and the wind rushing in to the mouth. On the edge of the quarry he'd been leaning out almost 45 degrees - supporting over 70% of his weight by wind surfing on the wind from the torus. He might be able to do it - not for very long - it was terribly tiring - but maybe for long enough...

He pushed harder with his telekinesis, watching the airspeed climb. It hit - briefly - almost 200 mph - more than enough considering the scale of the airfoil to prove it could survive as a propeller. But had it been efficient enough? He'd have to do some heavy calculations on the readings to be absolutely sure - but just eyeballing it, he thought that it had.

He'd tell her tomorrow - thank her. Heck, he might even go to MIT someday. It might be an interesting enough diversion. They did cool things there.

It wouldn't be like being with Liz - but then what was. Liz was unique. She was kind and caring and beautiful and .... he forced that line of thought to a stop.
He'd knew he'd never care for any human being as much as he did Liz. That's why he had to give her up and let her find her own destiny. If he really ever let that thought carry him where it wanted to go.... NO! There was too much pain there. Pain for both of them. He couldn't think those thoughts.

Liz needed to find her own special someone - someone who wasn't - different. She could be happy with him - whoever he was. He'd be normal. 'Even so,' a voice deep within him whispered, '....he'll never care for her any more than you do.'
But he did his best to ignore that small voice. He needed to do what was best for Liz - that's what you did if you really cared for someone.

It was 7:00 Monday morning and Captain Roger “Rabbit” Reynolds saluted the guard in the gate shack at Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo New Mexico. “Rabbit” got his appellation – hit “tactical call sign” years ago – back when he was a young Lieutenant and he and a young Second Lieutenant OB nurse at the Nellis AFB hospital had left the Officer’s Club together one night while he was deployed to his first Red Flag exercise.

The young lady had been exceptionally cute – and there had been a bet with his squadron mates involved as to who would be “the first to leave the club with a "pulchritudinous member of the opposite sex for purposes of mutual enjoyment”– as well as the usual amount of alcohol that was consumed on Friday nights at the O-club bar when a Red Flag was going on.

He’d gotten the name ‘ Rabbit ‘ when he’d returned with the young lady after only twenty minutes and they’d spent the rest of the night on the dance floor together. In point of fact, he’d never actually claimed that he had slept with the young lady at the time. That actually did occur – three months and a proposal later – and the young lady involved was now a Captain – or perhaps that should be ANOTHER Captain Reynolds - at the Holloman AFB hospital. They had a three year old and another on the way – estimated arrival date in about four months.

But, even if the legend wasn’t quite true, the name had stuck. He had ever since been called ‘Rabbit.’

As Captain Reynolds drove down First Street of Holloman Air Force Patch, his eyes fell on the hospital. Suzanne would be getting there in a half hour. She was probably in the final stages of getting little Katie ready to go to the base daycare center right now. Rabbit himself had been getting in early for most of the last two years. You did that when you were the Wing Exec.

As Rabbit turned left toward the 49th Wing – down Holloman Avenue – he heard the rumble of an aircraft taxiing for take-off and his eyes widened involuntarily. It was one of the new F-22s. Except they weren’t really ALL that new any more. One squadron had already totally converted and most of his own squadron of attachment – the 7th Fighter squadron, nick-named by their predecessors in WWII, “the Bunyaps,” after a mythological Australian aboriginal demon – was in the midst of conversion already. Yes, MOST of the Bunyaps – the ‘bunnies’ to their detractors in the two other squadrons of the 49th, were already in the new aircraft – but not the Wing Exec.

Wing Execs – for those who have never been in the Air Force – are not really executives in the larger sense. They are more like aides – to the Wing Commander (AKA Wing King) and Vice Commander (AKA the Vice). THAT more than any other reason was why Rabbit was still looking at the F-22s out on the tarmac rather than flying them himself. Oh, he was flying alright – but not the new aircraft – the OLD aircraft – the F-117

Rabbit had flown the F-117 for almost three years and it wasn’t that he didn’t like it. Like most fighter pilots, Rabbit loved every aircraft he flew. It was just that the F-117, for all it’s “F” designation which was supposed to be for “Fighter,” really was NOT a fighter plane. It was an attack plane. Oh, it dropped bombs like some fighters did – it did that exceedingly well. But it didn’t have any guns or missiles. It didn’t do air-to-air fighting, like the F-16 he’d previously flown had done – or like the F-22 did. As much as he loved the Nighthawk, he wanted back in the REAL fighter game. The F-22 would put him there. At least it would if he ever got to go to the RTU.

The F-22 Replacement Training Unit was in at Tyndall AFB. He was scheduled to go there in less than three weeks and he wanted NOTHING to stand in the way of that. Because he’d flown the F-16 before he didn’t have to go through the long course taken by pilots right out of flight training – just the shorter nine week transition course. Even so, that would leave his anticipated graduation date just four short weeks before the scheduled arrival of his unborn son. The problem with that calculation being that transition training could be extended by bad weather – and hurricane season was approaching – while babies coming early were hardly uncommon either. The last thing he needed to hear was that something was coming up that would push him back three weeks to the next class – but that’s what Rabbit was about to hear.

In all fairness, the exec job in the 49th Fighter Wing WAS a responsible position, and his selection three years ago was somewhat of a feather in his hat – and could only help him in his future career – assuming of course he didn’t screw it up. The modern Air Force wasn’t quite like the US Army of the early 1940s when the equivalent position was known as a dog robber. And it had gone well – working harder than most of the other young Captains in the wing – but getting experience dealing with the issues – political as well as operational – that few other Captains on base could boast. But with the near completion of the difficult transition to F-22s – Rabbit was ready to move back to the more humdrum life of one of the regular squadron fighter pilots where he could hopefully put some of that experience to a more practical use than being a senior officer’s gofer. In fact he was already contemplating cleaning out his desk. But as he walked by the open Wing Commander’s door the commander’s voice rang out….

“Rabbit … When I was back at the Pentagon Saturday the public relations people came up with a great idea. You need to give them a call. It looks like before you leave for transition training you are going to get one more opportunity to excel.”

Rabbit knew what that meant – BOHICA


It wasn’t like he could really avoid her, Liz thought as she finished her morning shower almost forty-five minutes sooner than usual. He always rode his bicycle along the same path from his house to the school and he always left early. It was just a matter of her getting up early enough to catch him as he passed the doughnut shop. Twenty minutes later, she hopped on her Schwinn ten-speed and rode off into the cold morning air of the high desert toward the donut shop.

Max was wondering how he was going to find the opportunity to thank her as he rode along the street. I mean, it wasn’t like you could tell who Liz would eventually find to be her special someone – or when. He didn’t want to interfere with that relationship forming by having that guy think that Max Evans was going to be hanging around under foot.

Even so, he wanted to thank her for the suggestion about patenting the airfoil design for propellers – wanted to tell her it probably would work – wanted – well wanted all the pain between the two of them to be over really, although he had no idea how that would ever happen.

She could – he was sure – find a special someone to cherish her as she deserved to be cherished. Someone that would make her happy. But he was pretty sure he’d never again know the sort of happiness being with her had brought him. But he wanted to do that sort of privately – so as to not make her eventual special someone worry that he’d always be in the way.

What he would have liked to have done was engineered some chance meeting away from school – but it was already too late for that. Or was it? – he asked himself as he saw the familiar red Schwinn ten-speed riding down the street toward the doughnut shop. If he hurried, he could get there just about the time that she did.

“Hi Max.”

“Hi Liz – what are you doing out here?”

“It’s kind of cold – so I thought I’d come here and get a doughnut and a cup of hot chocolate on my way to school.”
Now if wasn’t that Max had been missing just this sort of casual conversation with Liz for almost six months, his mind might have dwelt at least briefly upon the fact that the doughnut shop was actually farther away from Liz’s place than the school itself – and for the most part in the wrong direction. Despite the cold morning it would have clearly been more logical – and Liz was a very logical young lady – for her to travel in the other direction and just get to school and warm up. But Max really hadn’t had a casual conversation with Liz for six months, and he did want to thank her for her suggestion that he patent the airfoil and – well let’s face it – sometimes the heart just over-rides the brain and the logical inconsistencies just don’t seem to matter. Perhaps in a few more seconds – left uninterrupted – the significance of this inconsistency might even have occurred to Max. He didn’t get those few seconds though…

“I’d be glad to buy you a doughnut and hot chocolate, too, if you have time to stop,” she said.

“No – but I’ll buy hot chocolates and doughnuts for both of us…” said Max.

“Sure, Max, that would be great,” she said. And that’s pretty much what occurred – except Max had a Maple bar instead of a doughnut.

There was a small table for two – back in the corner – Max hadn’t really noticed it before but he thought it would be perfect – they could talk in private and they’d be reasonably out of sight – if Liz’s special someone was out there somewhere, he wouldn’t notice they were meeting and misinterpret it as more than it was or – he thought sadly – could ever be.

As Max brought the hot chocolates from the counter Liz smiled up at him. She was pleased with herself so far – it had been remarkably easy to haze Max toward the table near the back. She and Maria often came here when they wanted to talk privately. It was the perfect place to make her apology and thank Max – and maybe start the investigation as to why Max thought he was so different that he couldn’t really risk loving people.

Latitude 5' 42" South, Longitude 21' 29" West

Perhaps it was winter in Roswell New Mexico - but here below the equator it was summer. Moreover, while it might be before school in Roswell, here well East of the Atlantic Seaboard it was early afternoon when the rays of the sun beat down their hardest on the open ocean - pumping energy into the sea - and in doing so feeding a small tropical depression that had yet to be discovered by a soul on Earth.

Back at Janie's Doughnuts, Roswell NM.

He wanted to thank her - to tell her that the tests had shown that the airfoil would work as a propeller, but as usual - he was struggling for the right words. He was more comfortable with her than any other human - even his mom - but when he thought back at how upset she'd been - and it really couldn't be any different now, actually....

While Max dithered, Liz watched him briefly as he stalled and sipped at the hot chocolate. They couldn't be late to school - and she had a lot to say - so finally she decided to start the conversation.

"Max, I'm sorry. I've been upset since last Spring - I think you know that - but that's no excuse to behave like I did. I mean of all the people in this world, the guy I most ought to be nice to is you. But instead I got mad and thought I had to punish you. First with my ridiculous decision to dump you as a lab partner for that total twit Pamela Troy, then for the way I tried to submarine you up in Clovis. When you stood up for my project I felt terrible about what I'd done to you. I sat in the back of the bus all the way home wishing that there was some way - any way - that I could undo what I'd done. When I got home and Mom told me about the patent - well, you're right of course, Max. We are different. You'd have never treated me like that - your the finest human being I know. I can't undo any of it - but I needed for you to know how truly sorry I am for all of it, Max."

'Finest human being...,' Max thought. '...if only I was a human being - not some freak,' he started to think, but then pushed those thoughts away. He was, after all, a teenager, and puberty comes even to alien-human hybrids and it wasn't like the thought of he and Liz as a human couple hadn't percolated up out of his subconscious from time to time - but he had always repressed it - just like he repressed thoughts of telling his mother what he really was. There was only pain for all of them down that road. Pain for his mother who deserved a real human being for a son, pain for Liz who deserved her own special someone - someone who she wouldn't go running from in disgust and panic if she found out both what he really was - and how much - and in what way - he really cared for her. No, that was a road he had forbidden his conscious thoughts to go down - not that they didn't try.

"Liz," it's alright. I mean, you didn't say anything about wind power that I hadn't already said - it was all true."

"But that's not the point, Max. That really wasn't about an academic debate. It was about me being a bitch. I'm pretty sure even you have the insight to realize that. What I did to you was wrong - and I was wrong to do it. Knowing you you'll probably just forgive me - which almost makes it worse. It's like when we were little and did something bad and your parents would catch you and give you the not-angry-but-terribly-terribly-hurt look. You'd almost rather they just paddled your bottom."

"Well ,I'm not going to pad..." Max got that much out before he went bright red. He quickly slurped a mouthful of hot chocolate hoping to buy time to figure out how to deal with the thought picture the talk of touching Liz's bottom had brought to his mind. It wasn't exactly what he needed to try to keep his emotional distance right now. The hot chocolate really was hot though- too hot as it turned out. For one brief second it seemed like he'd have no choice but to spit it out on the table. Then he fought back the panic and used his powers - heat was just molecular motion - he fought to still the quickly vibrating molecules and it seemed to work. The hot chocolate was suddenly only lukewarm and he gulped it down hastily past a burned tongue that was already starting to blister.

"What I meant to say, Liz," Max said flushing with embarrassment and perhaps a little residual pain form the scorched tongue, "was that I guess you'll just have to deal with that yourself, because I do forgive you. Besides, you were right about patenting the airfoil. I did some high-speed tests in the wind tunnel and it would work for airplane propellers. So I guess I have to thank you or - if it'll help you deal with your own guilt without anyone resorting to corporal punishment - we could just call it even."

'Even...,' she thought. 'Max, we are so far from even - you've done so much for me...' Liz smiled and blushed, remembering all the times he'd helped her - the times he'd been there for her. But knowing Max, he probably did think they were just even. That was the wonderful kind of guy that he was.
Then she fought her way back to the present. She had to get back on plan. "OK Max, If that's way you want it - we can just call it even."

As he hung up the phone on the Pentagon Public Affairs office, Rabbit breathed a deep sigh of relief. It certainly wasn't as bad as it might have been. His boss - the wing king - was moving on after the wing conversion and in fact wouldn't be coming back to the 49th after he himself went through transition training, but going instead to an Air Division slot at Luke.

The F-117s themselves were old - 1970s technology that had been cobbled together by the {url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunk_Works]Skunkworks[/url] in the 1980s to fight wars in the Nineties and the Noughts, as the Brits called them. Unfortunately, they were way too capable to simply trash. While the big brass had been tempted to just junk them at Davis-Monthan - where most old aircraft went to be recycled, the problem was that they damn sure didn't want the F-117s recycled, and the radar absorbent material on the surface of the wings and fuselage itself was classified. Oh, a little bit getting out likely wouldn't hurt anything, but if someone got a look under the panels and maybe a panel or two itself - which they no doubt WOULD if the remaining aircraft had simply been junked - well it would have jump-started someone else's stealth program, and the pentagon hadn't wanted that.
The decision had therefore been made to return the F-117s back to their roots - fly them back to Tonopah and stack them in the hangars they had once operated from way back at the beginning of the program. The base was still on a secure part of the range with sensors, closed circuit TVs, and monitors. The aircraft could be safely entombed there. But not all of them - hence the call from Air Force Public Affairs.

Rabbit and the Wing Commander would be - in two weeks - the only ones left in the wing still qualified to fly the F-117. That would be OK, because by that time there would only be two left on base anyway. One was going to the Smithsonian - the Wing King would be flying it to Dulles to an airshow and formal presentation. It would ultimately loaded on a truck and carted in to the Museum itself. The place had good security. People would be able to see it on display ,but not allowed to get their hands on it. The aircraft that he flew would be on static display over the weekend and then Sunday afternoon he would be bringing it home to Holloman for one last time before flying the last F-117 flight - likely forever - from Holloman to Tonopah Test Range.

Counting the trip back from Nevada, that would get him freed up to go to transition training only two days later than he had expected - tough luck for his wife, that was about 12 items on the honey-do list that wouldn't be taken care of before he left for three months - but it wouldn't slip his class date which meant he'd in all likelihood be around for the arrival of Rabbit Jr. It was, Rabbit decided, sort of neat to be what would almost certainly be the last guy ever to fly the F-117, but he supposed that Suzanne would have been just as happy if he'd been able to take care of a few projects like repainting the spare bedroom as a nursery before flitting off to Tyndall for his training. It couldn't be helped though, and she too was in the Air Force - she'd understand.

At least he hoped she would, Rabbit thought, as he punched in the numbers for the OB ward at Holloman.


It seemed strange to Max that it seemed so strange. It wasn't like they'd never sat across from each other at a table and had snacks before. Throughout most of their childhood - well what childhood he'd actually had - he'd gone with his mother to visit Liz while she visited Nancy - they'd find their own booth at the Crashdown and enjoy a root beer float or something. But somehow this felt different. Maybe it was that their parents weren't there - maybe it was that - well Liz had changed.

In fact, Liz had been changing for several years - so had he - but seeing each other every day, neither had really noticed it. But it had been almost six months since they had last sat this close - looking at each other across a table, and now they were getting six months of changes up close and personal all at once.

Liz was taller, Max noted, and she had - filled out. Her hips were fuller - more feminine. It wasn't really that there had been anything wrong with her hips before of course - but ... somehow he found himself picturing him standing beside her his hands on her waist and those hands sliding down her waist along those hips - reaching behind her to bup her buttocks and.... Damn! he had to get that thought of her bottom out of his mind.

"Uh, Liz, ... how have your mom and dad been?" OK, so he knew it was lame ... but he had to say something - had to concentrate on her face and not her hips.

Liz was trying to get back to the plan - but she was a little distracted herself. Max had grown taller in the last six months - and his muscles had gotten bigger now that she was close to him she couldn't help but notice that. Not that there had ever been anything wrong with him before, of course, but now he looked more like the older Max in her dream - the one who had dropped his robe on the floor and.... had Max just asked her a question?

"Excuse me, Max...What did you just say?"