The Cobalt Sphericity (Patreon)

The honeycomb-ship sailed through a sea of stars, traveling faster than light. It did not simply zoom along at an impossible multiple of the speed of light, nor did it travel through a wormhole or other extradimensional space suitable to FTL travel. Rather, it rolled like a marble on facets of space-time that folded like origami under it, riding a never-ending fractal of cascading patterns.

If it looked strange from the outside, it was all the more dazzling, and horrifying, from the bridge. Reed Richards watched breathlessly as space-time was spindled and mutilated in ways thought impossible by the laws of physics. He moved only to scratch equational observations down on the forearm of his uniform, which had been designed to record such notes and store them throughout the miniature cloud network of his suit. Were only a scrap to remain, the data would still be encoded there.

He and the rest of his team—his family—were just returning from a mission of mercy to Rigon IV, where the native population had called upon them to expel a tyrant who had taken over the planetary government by promising to save them from an oncoming singularity. The Fantastic Four (a name Reed stood by without irony, since he could see no way it didn’t apply to them) had proven him a charlatan, deposed him, and found a way for the insectile Rigonians to slow the onset of the singularity long enough to begin a generational evacuation. It would be a long and hard project, but with decades of time in which to act and no Lord Slayfist to curtail them, the hardest part of it was over.

Now—as if totally forgetting the injuries he’d sustained, and in fact having unslung his sprained wrist from the cast Sue had forced him to wear—Reed was entirely focused on this new, hitherfore unknown means of propulsion.

“How can your power core possibly sustain this reaction?” he asked, more as if musing aloud than sharing his thoughts. The captain of the ship, Mm’rxx, raised a finger as he prepared to answer, but Reed quickly shushed him. “Never mind, don’t tell me. Not important. I’m on the verge of something, it’s on the tip of my tongue—the right answer might spoil it. Tell me later. Better yet, write it down and put it in my pocket. I’ll check it when I’m ready.”

“My Lord Fantastic, most revered of heroes and saviors—“

“I said not now,” Reed barked, actually having to reverse course on his calculations and scratch out an incorrect integer on his forearm.

“But sir, we are but two mate-cycles from your home planet. We must begin disembark protocol. Will you be needing quarantine? A specific landing site? A—“

“That’s not important!” Reed cried, almost moaning as a thought fled. He hastily searched the equations of the last ten seconds, trying to summon back his inspiration. “Ask Sue.”

“Sue?” Mm’rxx asked. Despite all the Fantastic Four had done for him, he just could not get his head around their strange naming conventions.

“The—“ Reed gestured absently to indicate long hair, felt a twinge, and realized he had agitated his injured arm. “Golden hair. You can see color, right? Yellow? Sue. Sue Storm. She’ll take care of everything.”

“Yes, sir. As you wish, sir.”

Reed was barely listening, having recovered the thought and now happily occupied with jotting it down. A few moments later, he began to hum to himself.

***

“Are you Storm’su?”

“Am I what?” Johnny asked, turning around, and suddenly finding himself faced with one stacked bug.

She was only about four and a half feet tall, and stylized after a praying mantis, but her triangular head was softened and shrunk so much it could almost be a cute cosplay girl doing a Star Trek act. Her red eyes barely bulged, and her mandibles reminded him of a girl licking her lips. Plus, she had a nice rack. Johnny didn’t know why it was so many non-mammalian species had breasts—Reed wondered too, so he wasn’t just a pervert—but Johnny suspected it was proof that God loved him and wanted him to be happy.

Yeah, sure, maybe evolution could explain breasts, but could they explain C-cups?

“Storm’su?” the bug chica said, mangling his name as usual.

“Yeah. Sure. That’s me!” Johnny answered.

“Richard’re would like for you to review disembark protocol before you leave us.”

“Absolutely! Sure thing! I’m your guy!” Johnny sat down, patting the chair next to him. “How about you, can I get you anything? Something to drink, maybe? You guys drink, right?”

She didn’t seem to understand the question, but she sure looked cute doing it (not doing it). No way a bug should be so cute. Reptiles were one thing, but a bug? Gross. Kinky, too. “We know that in space travel to other planets, there is a risk of infection by another species’ virus, bacteria, or parasites. Do you have a procedure in place for decontamination on your planet?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, yeah, Reed has us get a little zap in the Baxter Building first thing when we get back.” She looked crestfallen. Or maybe it was just that her mandibles had stopped moving. “But hey, better safe than sorry! A second coat of paint never hurt anyone!”

“Then you would like us to apply decontamination nanobots to you? To ensure that you are… clean?”

“Oh yeah, baby.” Then Johnny realized what she was implying. “I mean, not that I’m not clean! I don’t have any—y’know—anything. It’s just that I take precautions anyway. Really, it’s neurotic of me, I just do it to put my mind at ease, I’ve never had any sorta—“

“We will apply the decontamination nanobots.”

“And then you won’t have to worry about me infecting you with anything,” Johnny added. “That must be a load off your mind. I mean, not that you think I have parasites… you don’t, do you?”

“I have no parasites.”

“No, I mean—never mind.”

***

With nothing better to do, Sue touched up her make-up. As she might’ve expected, an alien spaceship had little in the way of cosmetics, but it did have a washroom with a decent mirror, and she always brought along a few essentials on these long-distance trips. Power bars too, for the boys.

She might be thirty-two, but everybody thought she was in her twenties, sometimes even her early twenties. And she did look wonderful, if she did say so herself. Her tall, slim figure had hips that swung like a wrecking ball, with her uppermost curves standing out from her body with no need of support at all. Nonetheless, she’d tailored her uniform to give them a ‘wonderful’ treatment. A girl had to compete, after all, with heroines like Emma Frost running around. Hell, She-Hulk had joined the team for a while! Sue liked her, but geez, was that a lot to compete with.

Sue turned to get a better look. Her costume had gotten a bit of battle damage, and it would be some time before its self-replicating fabric fully covered her again. Fortunately, the damage exposed little of her body—and what it did expose, she was quite proud of. A little hip, a little cleavage, a bit of stomach with some muscular definition. From her tiny waist her hips swelled out and led down to a pair of legs that were all the more breathtaking for being completely encased in the almost latexesque material of the unstable molecules. 

Still, it was an old look. Classic, maybe, but old. Maybe she should experiment a bit. Not to go all Malice or everything, but maybe she could be seen in public with a tight blouse and some tiny little shorts to show off her figure, the way that Mary Jane Watson woman did whenever the paparazzi got photos of her. Wouldn’t people be surprised at the figure she had, particularly after two kids!

Suddenly, the air conditioning—or whatever it was this alien race had—came on, blowing a spray of tiny, cobalt spheres out like paintball pellets. Sue instinctively raised her forcefield, but they did nothing she could see, quickly being sucked back into the vents, though a few lingered. She touched the team logo on her breast, opening a channel to Reed by the quadrant of the circled 4 that she pressed. She asked him what it had been, but he apparently hadn’t even noticed, and was quick to apologize but he had to get back to work…

Sue guessed that was it. Just one of those alien things. She lowered her forcefield, and felt the urge to sneeze as she breathed in some of the mist, but after rubbing her nose it was quickly gone. 

I should write a book about weird alien ways, make some spending money that way,, she thought. Why should the anally probed have all the fun?

***

Ben pumped iron, or whatever it was these aliens had that looked like iron but was much heavier. Enough to give him a hard time twisting it into pretzels. One thing he’d say for them, they might be ugly, but they made it easy for a guy to keep up his exercise regimen. If it wasn’t giant robots to fight, it was a barbell of some goobelygook only Reed could pronounce past three syllables. 

And there was one of them scurrying by now. He must’ve left some crumbs on the pantry or something. “Excuse me, my Lord Thing—“

“Ah, heck, yer making me sound like a porn star or sumthin--!”

“A porn—“

“Neve’ mind. Whassup?”

“What is—“

“Neve’ mind. What do you want?”

“Ah, yes, my Lord Th—my Lord—you know how you received decontamination nanobots a few moments ago?”

“Was dat what dat was?” Ben asked. The air conditioner had kicked and blown out a fine blue mist that’d made him sneeze a little, but nothing he couldn’t handle. He’d just figured that living under space tyranny had left them too busy to wash out their vent covers, not that he expected a bunch of bugs to have sinus problems, so who cared?

“Yes, my Lord. There’s been a slight… irregularity?”

***

“The nanobots are doing what?” Reed asked, finally looking up from his sleeve now that the team was all assembled on the bridge.

Mm’rxx looked pretty sheepish for a guy with compound eyes. “Naturally, they were calibrated for baseline humans. To detect and repair any irregularities in your DNA. Unfortunately, the scanner only registered your various powers as a sort of… increase in tasking. You have indeed overdosed on nanobots.”

“On what?” Johnny asked.

“Tiny blue balls,” Sue said, and give Ben a look before he could turn it into a joke. “And they’re going to take our powers away because they think they’re metaphysical STDs or something—“

“ST—“ Ben stood, hulking and ominous as a rockslide about to begin. “Wait a minute, youse mugs, whacha sayin’ about Suzie Q here!?”

Reed reached out an arm from across the room, landing it restrainingly across Ben’s chest. “They don’t mean anything by it. It was merely meant as a precaution, like an immunization shot or a vitamin pill.”

“So if we’d been sick, it’d’ve fixed us?” Ben asked.

“Yes. But because we’re not sick, and it’s present in such large quantities, and it’s registering our—for lack of a better word—mutations as malevolent…”

“We’re losing our powers?” Johnny cried. “Ah man, not again! Are we gonna have ta call Parker and Ghost Rider and Wolverine again?”

“I’m afraid it’s worse than that,” Reed said, and cut off a quip with his own look at Johnny. “Much worse. Our powers are integral to our biologies—woven into our systems, with millions of connections to the rest of our bodies to work in concert with our vision, our hearing, our reflexes… if the powers are excised, somehow, we won’t be able to survive.” He looked wistfully at Ben. “That’s part of why curing you has been so difficult. It’s always been kill or cure.”

“Not something I’ll hafta worry ‘bout now,” Ben rumbled. “So what’s the trick? How do we beat this stuff? We gotta go beat down Doctor Doom? Lance one of Ego the Living Planet’s boils? Shave off Diablo’s moustache?”

“Been there,” Johnny muttered under his breath.

“I’ve downloaded everything about this system from the Rigonian database and uploaded it to the Baxter Building’s supercomputers,” Reed said authoritatively. “As well as several hypothetical treatments. It should have winnowed down a number of viable cures…”

A light blinked on in his wrist-mounted UI—the flexible screen on his glove a conduit to the computing systems of his suit. 

“Hmmm,” Reed said. “Only one.”

“As long as it works!” Johnny cried.

Reed nodded solemnly. “A good attitude to have.”

***

“You want us to what?” Sue demanded, in the tone she got when she had been pushed far enough to really regret her life.

“Ya gots ta be jokin, Stretch!” Ben added.

“I think I can swing it,” Johnny said.

“All of you, please, a modicum of maturity?” Reed called, brimming over with such paternal rigor that they were all cowed. Even Sue crossed her arms and waited expectantly. “Thank you. The simple fact is, these nanobots are Gray-Goo-certified. They cannot reproduce beyond a certain number of iterations, so they will simply die out and become harmless at a certain point.”

“How does that help us if they’s cure us to death first?” Ben demanded.

“As I just explained,” Reed said patiently, “these nanobots are partially meant as prophylactic. Very effective ones, at that—not only do they seek out diseases in the patient, but in any subject the patient comes into contact, to ensure there’s no threat. Thus, by coming into contact with others, the patient can divulge himself of a number of the nanobots—their quantity being the chief danger to us. If we can spread the nanobots out such that their presence in us is below a certain threshold, then we can just wait them out. They won’t be able to regain their harmful numbers, and the wear and tear of an invasive presence in our bodies will eventually dwindle them down to nothing, like any foreign matter. They’ll be digested, excreted, destroyed by antibodies—“

“We all get that!” Sue said.

“I don’t get that,” Johnny said.

Sue ignored him. “What we don’t get it—well—why sex?”

“Yeah, Stretch—there ain’t no other way of spreading these things around th’n bumpin’ uglies?”

“None,” Reed confirmed. “The nanobots are designed to be unobtrusive in the event of blood transfusions, to reduce complications. They won’t even enter a syringe.”

“And it can’t be anyone we’ve had sex with before?” Johnny asked. “Ever? What difference could that make?”

Mm’rxx, looking plainly embarrassed despite his spectacularly nonhuman face, spoke up. “It is magitech. It works not just based on science, but also on the metaphysical—“

“Oh yes, of course!” Reed looked as close as he ever got to slapping his forehead, which he never did. “Spellwork coupled with science! No wonder you’re able to fold interstellar distances so easily!”

“Not the time, Reed,” Sue said pointedly, and Reed finally looked abashed.

Mm’rxx continued. “To avoid prolonged and repeated contact—as you’ve become aware, there is a known risk—we don’t wish the nanobots to be shared with someone who’s already been ‘vaccinated’. I understand this would be similarly dangerous on your world. So the nanobot scans for a difference in chakra between two individuals that have already been intimate and two who have never interacted in that way. If the former, they will not activate. If the latter, they will, simply as a precaution. In this way, we eradicated all sexually transmitted diseases on our planet, without having to inject every Rigonian individually. That and our orgies.”

“Bully f’r yas!” Ben gritted out. “But y’r telling us we gotta step out on our loved ones! Reed and Sues is married! I’ve got a girlfriend! I can’t go around making some Lothario o’ myself!”

“Too bad for you,” Johnny said, pulling heartily on his glove to ensure its exacting tightness, along with the rest of his costume. “As for me, I get an excuse to slut it up! Best mission ever!”

Sue’s arms were crossed. “Have you considered it has to be someone you’ve never slept with before? Ever?”

 

“Can’t be that hard to find. In New York? It’s a big city!”

“But how can ya be sure?” Ben needled. “Ya gotta be absolutely sure that whatever skirt ya grab up ain’t no repeat offender. Seems like dat knocks a lotta da fangirls and cape chasers—“

“And C-list models,” Sue said, “and aspiring actresses…”

“Outta da running,” Ben finished. “Ya might wanna do Wolverine or someones, just to be on da safe side!”

“I wouldn’t go for a swim in that gene pool if you paid me,” Johnny said. “And can we quit it with the bisexual shit? Just cuz a guy has nice hair—Reed, Reed has nice hair, no one ever says that he—“

“Reed hangs out with very few men in skintight spandex.”

“If you’re talking about Spider-Man, he is all-man.”

“Uh-huh.”

“He’s actually dating this hot…” Johnny blinked. “Actually, that gives me an idea.”

“Spider-Woman? Not in a million years. She’s an Avenger, kid. She’s got better things to do with her time.”

Johnny scowled at Ben. “Find something we can tape over, rock-heap. Johnny’s making a new sex tape!”

Sue pinched her sinuses between her fingers. “No cameras! No anything! As far as I’m concerned, this is all Las Vegas! Whatever happens in the next twenty-four hours, never happened.”

“Well, it will have happened, otherwise it’ll have no effect on the nanobots,” Reed said, “but we can certainly approach it like a Rinsgeld quantum field entanglement and say that it’s impossible to be observed from any point on the spectrum of—“

“Reed!”

“We won’t talk about it,” Reed promised.

“But I’ve got a girlfriend!” Ben protested.

“And you’ll die if you don’t get some strange,” Johnny replied, “take the win, dude. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go pick up a kitty…”

He flamed on and flew, Reed watching him go in confusion. “Get some—I don’t think Dr. Strange can be of any help in this situation.”

Sue rested a hand on his shoulder as she faced Ben. “Thing, just talk to her. Tell her the truth. She’ll understand, I’m sure. I don’t think she even cares if you’re exclusive or not, just that you’re open and honest.”

“Open and honest,” Ben repeated. “Ah, geez. Dis is gonna break her heart, I knows it…”

Trudging along, his footfalls sounded like cinder blocks being dropped from great heights. Usually, he was a bit more light on his feet.

That left Reed and Sue.

“Darling,” Reed said, “of course you know, what you said precisely encapsulates my feelings. This is an emergency situation, and what you do to survive will have no impact on my feelings for you.”

“Nor mine for you,” Sue answered. “The flipside is, if you trust me to be understanding, you can’t pussyfoot around like you’re afraid I’ll get angry anyway. Trust goes both ways. Hell, trust goes every which way, in our lives.”

“What are you getting at, Susan?”

“I know every superhero has some Catwoman that’s tried to tempt them at one point or another. So call her. I won’t get jealous.”

Reed replied, but not in the manner Sue would’ve suspected. Now that the others were gone, he spoke slowly and carefully. “Susan… I can’t tell you how sorry I am that this has happened.”

Sue just smiled at him. “It’s not your fault. And don’t go all sadsack on me now—me, I’m going to think of this as just one more adventure, another experiment. That isn’t so bad, is it?”

Reed smiled back, his upturned lips as soft and gentle as a kitten’s. “No. Not so bad at all.”

“Then let’s do this the way we’ve always adventured, always experimented. Together.”

***

“So dat’s da gist of it,” Ben concluded, sighing heavily—not that there was anything he did that wasn’t ‘heavily.’

He’d come into Alicia Masters’ apartment in his anonymous trenchcoat and fedora—which these days was more likely to get him accused of being a sexist than a freak, which he’d take—and barely been able to strip down to his blue trousers before he started pacing and gesticulating and getting out his explanation like he was using leeches to draw it out.

Finally, his story finished, he sat down on one of the easy chairs Alicia had specifically furnished to handle his weight. It creaked under him, and for a moment, Ben thought he’d sat down in one of the wrong chairs and was about to reduce part of Alicia’s furnishings to matchsticks. But it held.

“It’s da truth, I swear! We can call Reed Richards, babe, I wouldn’t lie—“

“I know you wouldn’t,” Alicia said, gesturing for calm. “You’re Ben Grimm. You wouldn’t make up some wild story to excuse yourself from fooling around.”

“Thank ya’s. Thank ya’s. I don’t know who else in the wide world would believe a wild story like dis!”

Alicia smiled gently. “There’s no one else in the world who I’d believe it from.”

“Yeah, cuz a all da weird shtopn I dumps on ya. I’m a crumb, Alicia. Ya shouldn’t have to put up with any a dis…”

Alicia held out her hand and Ben obligingly took it, though her fingers only wrapped around one of his oversized digits and he could barely feel her strongest grip. “Because you’re the most trustworthy man I know and you’d never lie to me, because you know that if I can accept the way you look and the life you lead, I can accept anything. And I will. Accept anything.”

“Aww, Alicia… I don’t deserve dat. I don’t deserve youse. Ya shouldn’t hafta put up with—“

“Hey, the only reason it can’t be me who does the honors is because we’ve already played that game. And that alone is worth all I put up with, which is nothing compared to what you’ve been through. Honestly, all the times you’ve been hurt, injured—if I could trade you lying in a hospital bed, even once, for you having sex with another woman, I’d do it in a heartbeat. Because I know no matter what the other woman, you’ll come back to me.”

“Aww, nertz, Alicia. Youse gonna make me well up! I swear, honey, if it weren’t for this, I wouldn’t even look at another woman—I mean, uh, oh…”

Alicia smiled to herself, the bashfulness in Ben’s chagrinned voice every bit as adorable as she thought his expression must be.

“Tell ya what,” she said smartly, pumping her grip on his finger. “Let’s both of us have ourselves a—a ‘hall pass’. That’s fair, right? For as long as it takes for this to be over, I can be with anyone you like, and you can be with anyone you like. So you don’t have to feel guilty, because you know I’ll be doing the exact same thing you’ll be doing. It’ll be like… a game we’re playing. Or an anniversary present, or something.”

“Dat’s nice of ya’s to say, Alicia, but I know you’d never go through with it. You just don’t have it in ya. Y’r just tryin’ ta make me feel better.”

“If I find a man half as good as you, I’ll be the one feeling better. And no questions, okay? You don’t tell me who you use your hall pass on, I won’t tell you who I use mine on. Fair?”

“If yer… if yer sure it’s what ya’s wants, yeah. Of course. Anyone ya wants ta be with.”

“I don’t want to be with them, Ben. I want to be with you. But since that’s not possible right now—we might as well enjoy what is possible.”

“Not sure there’s much that is. You’re one gorgeous gal, no matter how your peepers are doin’. Me… I suppose I’m just gonna hafta find some, ah, paid companionship… hope they’re real open-minded.” Ben muttered. “Open everything…”

“Benjy… you’ve got no idea just how popular you are, do you? Wasn’t it Thundra who tried to steal you away from me?”

“Yeah, but that was just—“

“And didn’t Tigra make a pass at you?”

“She was just being friendly—“

“Trust me, Ben. As a woman—you’re big, sweet, caring, kind, considerate, and you can lift over a hundred tons. Along with some other… sterling qualities. You’d be surprised how many takers there are out there. You know the Scarlet Witch?”

“Wanda? Yeah, we’ve met once or twice—“

“Attractive, isn’t she?”

 

“Yes, but she ain’t gonna—“

“She married the Vision, did she not? Someone who’s not even human? Not even alive?”

“Dat’s… dat’s different…”

“Not as much as you might think, Ben.” Alicia reached out and unerringly patted Ben on the cheek. “Wait here. Let me make a few phone calls, explaining your situation. You just might be surprised by the response you get.”

“Alicia, they make dose personal massagers out of rubber, not stone.”

“But Ben, there’s a reason women prefer the real thing.”

***

Ben went back to the Baxter Building feeling ten inches tall. Not a usual occurrence for someone pushing seven feet, even before he began to rock. He knew what he had to do. Hire some hookers, lie back and think of England, get it over with. He’d have to find some pimp that was discreet if he didn’t want to get on TMZ, and he had no idea where to begin there. Not even who he could ask. He didn’t think even Matchstick would stoop so low as that. 

So what the hell was he supposed to do, trawl around the bad parts of town, looking for someone standing on a corner in fishnets? Seemed like rolling down the window for one of them was ground for a classic “Eek! A monster!” reaction. Not what he needed at the best of times.

“Why so glum, stranger? Didn’t anybody tell you you’re a superhero?”

“Ehhh? What in the…” Ben looked around, suddenly realizing he was in the Baxter Building—riding the elevator, even. It’d just stopped and opened up its doors. He’d walked back from Alicia’s apartment, cleared Four Freedoms Plaza’s security, and punched in the code to his floor, all on autopilot as he brooded about his trouble. Just like spacing out while on a long-range flight. And if he’d bumped into someone mistakenly, it could’ve been as bad as a plane crash…

The woman who’d spoken to him was Jennifer Walters, looking as good as ever in a sweatsuit. The pants—maybe it was his predicament, but the drawstring seemed to draw his eye to her crotch—were laid over her well-muscled legs like those Bernini marble sculptures, where the artist had been good enough to render tissue-thin silk in his work. It was loose enough to give her some motion, but in other places it strained to cover her shapely thighs and strong calves. He had to think that pretty soon she’d have those pants worn out.

Her sweatshirt was the same story, hoodie up, a purple sweatband holding her hair out of her eyes. With the gray fabric covering her from limb to limb, her jade skin flared even brighter, like it was catching all the light her sweatsuit disdained. The jacket was partially unzipped, revealing some of the cleavage of the white shirt she wore under it, and how hard-pressed it was to hold in her breasts. They pushed out far through both the shirt and the jacket, so that even though the jacket was loose enough to take the strain, it sloped steeply down into an indistinguishable mass of dangling folds instead of really covering her diamond-hard abs. He could see a swath of damp green flesh at her navel when she walked, and her jiggling cleavage jostled her clothing up from her waist.

Ben had, of course, seen her in the skintight spandex that served as her costume, as well as any number of clothes that looked more fashionable on her muscular, six foot seven frame than they had any right to. But something about these work-out clothes—nice and tight, but thick and modest enough to be disarming—sent a powerful surge of lust through Ben. He tugged on the collar of his shirt, and heard a seam rip. Yeesh.

“Oh, it’s you, Jen.” Covering up his boner—his accident—was enough to finally prompt him to speak. “What are ya doin’ here? Ain’t there enough lawyering in New York for ya?”

“Plenty, but all of it’s boring. I have associates for boring. Thought I’d come by the good ol’ Baxter, see if there’s any good mad science on. Just the thing for a lame-ass Sunday, right?”

“Yeah. Haha. Right.” The doors started to close and Ben stopped them, stepping off the elevator before it had to stand his weight anymore. He thought he heard a groan of relief as it rocked back on its brakes. 

His long strides put him closer to She-Hulk, so much so that he could smell her sweat, strong but not unpleasant, and impossible for a mook like him to describe.

She’d run her way here. “I’m sorry, Jen, it’s not you. I’ve just gotten myself in a fix. Maybe ya oughta come back tomorrow, see if Reed can scare you up some weird science then.”

Jen crossed her arms, and it was impossible not to notice how far away she had to hold them from her chest to avoid crushing her breasts. Really, she had to set them on top of her cleavage, like a shelf—“Well, why don’t you tell me about it? Believe me, lawyers make great listeners. And I won’t even bill you.”

“Nah, it’s pretty personal.” Ben pushed past her. “Just some annoying stuff I gotta deal with, y’know. Hafta psyche myself up for it. Means I’m not much good for anything else.”

“Well, speaking not as a lawyer, but as a law student, have you ever tried procrastination?”

“And I thought you was a grade-A nerd. Got all your assignments turned in early with the extra credit done.”

“Yeah, that was me, alright. Means I’ve got a lot of productive time to make up for. So how ‘bout it, Benjy? Let’s step into the sparring room and go a few rounds. Could cheer you up.”

There was a slight rattle of stone, like pebbles rubbing together, as the Thing’s rocky brows knitted together. He didn’t really feel like mixing it up, and he always felt like mixing it up, but maybe he should fake it till he made it. He did have a lot of anxiety to burn off, and Jen knew him better than he knew himself, for Christ’s sake. If she thought it was a good idea, surely he had time to indulge her before he got on with lying back and thinking of England.

They went into the sparring room, a wide, tall gymnasium that was not made of tiles or floorboards, but of a concentric pattern of squares. Each one was equipped with a sophisticated mini-computer and some gravitational doohickey that was pretty much a spring. When it detected a mass incoming—say, a robot Ben had thrown, or less frequently, Ben himself—it loaded the targeted square up with potential energy that would counteract their momentum, checking them instead of letting them continue on to burst through the wall and damage the rest of the building. So the whole room was a million-dollar-gym-mat, only worth a lot more than one million dollars.

“Alright, Ben,” Jen said challengingly. “So let’s see if you can take me.” She unzipped her sweatshirt. “And if I can take you.”

“Course ya can take me,” Ben replied, himself stripping off his outer layer of garments. There weren’t many tailors who sold clothes in his size. He preferred keeping them intact as long as possible, even if it was a doomed proposition. The baddies loved blasting him while he was in his nice, spiffy clothes way too much to ever be gents about it and let him change into his playsuit first. 

“But not today,” he finished, kicking his boots off for good measure. He wore no socks, and when one of the boots fell over instead of landing upright, some motes of sediment fell out. Looked like he was due for a power-washing of the ol’ wardrobe.

With his stuff put away in one of the lockers that bordered the door—that whole, necessarily bared section of the room about to have a forcefield covering it—he turned to face Jen. 

And got the shock of his life.