Ten Sigmas & Other Unlikelihoods by Paul Melko Read Free Book Online Page A

said, “Hey, do you want to get some dinner before I take you back to the Institute for the Criminally Insane?”
    She raised her eyebrows at him, then she smiled with blue lips, made bluer with cyan lip gloss.
    “Yeah, sure. Can we get ice cream after?”
    *
    They got take-out and ate it in the Mightimobile, with the air conditioning cranked up on her side and the heat on on his.
    “So, yeah, I did the whole career quiz thing, and my empathy was zero and my megalomania was like 100, so I went with supervillain,” Auntie said around a mouthful of pad thai. “It was either that or homemaker. What about you?”
    “I was in medical school . . . when the whole mess happened.”
    “Thus the name.”
    “Yeah. But it was just my first year, so I’m not really a doctor.”
    “Really. I always thought you were like an ER doctor when you weren’t superheroing.”
    “No, I dropped out,” Doctor Mighty said.
    “Yeah? Radioactive scorpion? Blast of gamma rays? Glowing meteorite from another planet? Artifact of the Old Ones?”
    “Well . . .”
    “Come on, give. I told you all about how Empress Evil’s perfect heat sink from her freeze ray got lodged in my sternum.”
    “Yeah, well. It’s not a very . . . flattering story.”
    “Like getting speared between the tits with a superconductive brick is. I thought we were sharing here. Just take me back to the Institute now, if that’s the way you’re gonna be.”
    “No. Sorry,” he said. “I was drunk, okay. I don’t even know how it happened.”
    “Oh, boy.”
    “A bunch of us were out late the day after finals. We were drinking, then came back to the radiology lab. The last thing I remember is my buddy daring me to swallow the Strontium-90 sample. Then I woke up strapped to the x-ray machine with it pointed at my . . . er . . . gonads.”
    “It was on?”
    “They said they hadn’t turned it on. It was a joke. But it had been on all night. As near as the scientists at the Superhero Origins Facility can figure, the Rolling Rock and the Strontium were irradiated by the x-rays and started emitting s-rays that enhanced the fast-twitch muscle fibers in my body. I got super strength.”
    “You do have nice biceps,” she said, giving his arm a squeeze. “So. How are the . . . uh . . . the little Mighties.”
    “They’re fine, actually. As far as I can tell.”
    “Well, that’s good. So you dropped out of medical school to be a superhero.”
    “Yeah, everyone was real happy that it had happened to me.”
    “Everyone?”
    “You know, the school. They played down the beer part, and made it seem like they had a world-class superhero generation program or something.” He poked a dumpling with his plastic fork. “We never could figure out the exact sequence of events that created the superstrength. We went through a lot of mice and monkeys trying.”
    She laughed, a maniacal, overzealous cackle that he found endearing. He actually felt better for telling this supervillain his woes. Perhaps it was because she wasn’t a mundane, who always thought it was the coolest thing to have a super talent, and she wasn’t a fellow superhero, who always seemed so on top of his emotions. If anyone could understand him, it was a supervillain. Supervillains had flaws; they appreciated imperfections and could sympathize.
    “So,” Auntie said. “Maybe you could turn me in tomorrow.”
    Doctor Mighty caught her eye, and his cheeks turned mighty red when he realized what she meant.
    “I, uh, sure.”
    *
    They made love gently in a series of bizarre positions that limited the amount of time he was near her heat sink and kept all her parts away from his clenching fists when he orgasmed.
    *
    The next morning he dropped her off at the Institute. As the guards shackled her into a sauna jacket, they awkwardly stood together.
    “Um,” he said.
    “Yeah,” she said.
    “I hope you get better.”
    “Yeah.”
    “You know, maybe we could . . . team-up if you switched sides,” he said.