Can You Fly
Copyright© 2026 by TMax
Chapter 3: Thinking and Scheming
A job offer. All this for a job offer. I flippered to a beach in Brazil, where I stayed invisible and stared at the waves. Why go through all this trouble to offer me a job? They could have just left a note, which I would have ignored. Or sent me an offer for obscene money. Which I also would have ignored.
I didn’t like the idea of working for anyone. I had ambition. I had desires. The reason I didn’t just hang out on the beaches all the time.
The salty sea spray, the warmth of the rising sun, made me wonder how my powers worked. Not for the first time, nor the hundredth, I wondered how I could see and feel things. How I flippered. How I could sense where to flipper to. I didn’t need to see the location. I just thought about it, and I flippered there. Never into a wall, or any place dangerous.
I wanted to know. My project. The need for money. All focused on figuring it out. I had kept such a low profile because I didn’t want to get noticed, to get turned into a lab rat.
A job.
Doing what?
Seagulls cried, and a few early risers ran along the beach, none close to me, so I didn’t worry that they might trip over me.
He never mentioned money. Nor any perks. He didn’t need to. The demonstration of cutting me off from the world worked well enough.
I flippered in and out of the room, every hour or so, just to make sure Morro still sat in the chair. A person would bring him coffee, and he would nap with his head on his hands, but other than a couple of bathroom breaks, which the smoker lady covered, I didn’t bother to remember her name, day and night, he stayed in the room, which reeked of body odor and coffee.
On day four, at three in the morning, I flippered in, grabbed the bathrobe that they kept on a hanger behind my chair, and said, “Ok, describe the job, and I’ll think about it.”
Morro, to his credit, didn’t look annoyed, just tired.
“We need your talents. Like the Avengers in the comic. We need someone like you to do stuff that we could never do,” he said. He slurred his words slightly with fatigue.
“Why you?” I asked. I had to know. Why did he sit in the room? Why not a rotation as they used behind the one-way mirror?
He paused and stared at his mug, a new one, red with a green cat face on it. Coffee still steamed in it. Beside it, a half-eaten bagel with salmon.
“I found you. My program found you, and I convinced my superiors that I could recruit you my way.”
He squinted at me while I fiddled with the soft belt of the bathrobe.
“Did they suggest drugs? Did they want to knock me out? Experiment on me?” I asked as I leaned back on the chair. I wanted it to look cool, but I didn’t balance the chair properly and almost fell backward. I flippered to the corner as the chair fell with my robe draped across it. Not sure if it looked better than just falling backward. Naked, in the corner, where I had to walk back over, put the robe back on, reposition the chair, and sit back down.
Morro hadn’t moved.
I asked, to get back control of the conversation, which I later learned actually gave him control, “Who else has powers like me? Who else will be on this Avengers team? And are you Morgan Freeman?”
“It’s Samual Jackson. He’s Nick Fury, the leader, and no, I will not. I’m more like a computer tech that sits in the background. And we have...”
Morro didn’t finish his statement because a person, the man with all the dogs, rushed in and said, “No more information until he agrees. You so suck at negotiation.”
“Lars, nice to meet you,” I said and stuck out my hand. He didn’t pause as he shook it.
Lars patted Morro on the back and said, “I’ve got this. Get some rest.”
Morro stood, glanced at me, then at Lars, before he said, “I was right. I told you. He’s smart. He did the math.”
The smoker woman helped Morro out of the room, while Lars stood off to the side. I had to twist to look at him.
He stared at me while I looked around the room. Blank walls, except for a small sign below the light switch that said, “Don’t be a power bug. Turn off the lights when you leave,” with a lightbulb cartoon firefly with its finger in the air.
“Well, do you have the answers?” I asked.
Lars smiled, stood up straight, and said, “Yes, but you need to agree to work for us.”
“Right, but no one has said what I will do?”