The grizzled-looking, middle-aged man rubbed his eyes as he sat in front of his computer console. It had taken him a while to learn it, but then it had been a necessity. Could anyone get by without computer skills nowadays? No, not unless you lived in the Third World or under a rock.
He finally stopped tapping numbers into the electromagnetically surface-sensitive, built-in desk keyboard and rose. He could always get back to number-crunching later. Right now he realized he was late. His daughter was gonna kill him.
"Mr. Plant!"
Jess Plant stopped and turned around slowly at the authoritative voice. "Yes, sir? How may I help you?" he said in proper English as always.
"I expected the Parker-Kent report on my desk YESTERDAY!" growled his boss, a 21-year-old young woman named Brittany. "What's with the HOLD-UP?"
"I am sorry, sir. It will be on your desk no later than eighteen-hundred hours today."
"It'd better be, or it's YOUR ASS, Plant!"
"Thank you, sir," he replied, rubbing his hands through his greying sandy-blonde hair. "You have my word."
Jess Plant turned and walked out of the office before he could be held up any longer. His daughter was playing grav-ball in New Manchester, and even by hovercar it was a good half an hour flight.
As he hailed a hovercab from the 45th floor balcony he noticed an advertisement for the NY Times Newsfeed, and a holograph with a caption which proclaimed, "The MBL Makes World Safe For Democracy". Of course, Jess knew how to read between the lines. That simply meant that the MBL had done something particularly bloody recently and needed a bit of positive publicity in the press in order to put the proper spin on things.
Part of him was glad that he had walked away from the Metahuman Lifestyle years ago, even though it meant joining the Sheeple of the world, the Norms and Nancys who quietly obeyed their more powerful masters, because he no longer had to deal with the daily menaces which seemed to be caused by the very so-called "heroes" themselves. Oh, he knew they no longer even referred to themselves by that hackneyed old term, but he liked to think that the MBL once stood for heroism.
No longer, though. No longer. In this, the Year of Our Lord 2025, Jess Plant -- once known as MBL member Sir Justin Plantagenet of Camelot, son of the World War II British hero the Green Knight and an otherdimensional Elvish princess -- was now merely a middle-aged, devoted husband and father, and an MBL -- not his MBL -- ran the world...
[ 05-21-2002: Message edited by: TheTimeTrust ]
