As I watched Gilpatrick, the self-styled 'Agent of Karma' walk away with the woman from the next table, I couldn't help but notice a few things. First and foremost, while his deep bass voice punctuated her speech, he definitely wasn't the one doing most of the talking. I couldn't quite hear what they said, but it was clear he let her take the lead in their conversation. His body language mirrored that same thing, following her lead, while still subtly doing a few maybe chivalric things, like walking on the street side of the sidewalk, or letting her take the lead when a big outdoor display in front of a store forced them to walk single file for a moment. Finally, besides being smoother than melting ice, the man had an ass that would not quit. Matched the rest of him, really, but with him being seated when I arrived I hadn't really got a look at him from the waist down.

Really pushed my credulity to believe he was sixty-five years old, at least until I thought about that body, those looks, and how smooth and deferential he'd been, while still mostly dominating our conversation. Any of the young guys I knew who had half of his looks or body would have been shoving it in my face, but he had that subtle confidence that let you know without speaking that he knew exactly how hot he was. Something about his self-deprecating humor also told me he knew how unimportant hotness was in the grand scheme of things. Well, physical attractiveness, that is. As a historian I'd read far too often about how some 'Great Man' had made all the ladies swoon, only to see a photograph or lifelike, unembellished painting and realized they looked like a chihuahua and a naked mole rat had a baby, dropped it out of the ugly tree in horror, and then some necromantic fiend had used its corpse to build his 'perfect man'. Inappropriate advances by wealthy and influential men aside, power really could be the ultimate aphrodisiac.

As they turned a corner off of the main drag in the quaint little town, I thought about my drive, then walk here. The only places of business in town had their offices on the street the little café sat on, with the side streets being a mix of churches, small apartment buildings, and houses.

I really doubted they were going to church, even if some devout worship might happen.

Chuckling at how brazen he'd been, how he'd managed to pull it off despite that, and maybe even a little at my own envy of the woman he'd walked off with, I took a minute to look at the card he'd given me. One side of it had 'Agent of Karma' across the top, 'happening to people who deserve it' in italics beneath that. The bottom half of the card had a header that read 'services', followed by a two by two table. If the tagline left me smiling at the thought of how he'd have said it, the services had me chuckling out loud. In the left column he'd listed 'Villains Vanquished' and 'Damsels Rescued'. The pair in the right column read, 'Monsters Manhandled' and 'Virginity Corrected'. Gotta say, the man's super power might as well be 'testicles of titanium', what with not just putting it right out there like that, but managing not only to get away with it, but if the success he had with the woman from the next table was any indication, live up to his own hype.

Beneath his super-ID, tagline, and services, he'd listed an eight-hundred number as the 'Karma Hotline'; the number had been crossed out and another number, this one with a real area code, written underneath it in pen, with the kind of almost sloppy handwriting that smacked of someone doing the same thing to every card in a box.

At that point the waitress who'd come out to clean up the table the women had vacated turned to me and asked, "did you want to see a menu?"

I glanced at the stack of twenties he'd dropped, thought about how long it had been since I'd eaten anything but ramen or rice, and nodded. "Yes, please, if you wouldn't mind."

"You got it, hon." She pulled one out from where she'd had it tucked behind her apron, then hoisted the tray full of dirty plates and glasses, saying, "I'll be back in a minute to take your order," as she walked away.

Not knowing how long it would be before she got back, I set Gilpatrick's card down and read through the menu. Fancy coffee filled half of it, with about a third of the rest devoted to other drinks. Nothing alcoholic, but they had fruit smoothies, juice, and even a few different kinds of hot cocoa. The day wasn't really cool enough for that, but I decided I wanted one as dessert anyhow. The final section of the menu held the anemic selection of actual food items, and even there half of the options really belonged in an 'appetizer' section.

She came back out right about then, not surprising given how close the front door of the café was and how few customers they had now that the lunch rush had mostly cleared. "What'll it be?"

"I'll have a club sandwich, a banana strawberry smoothie, and a side of fries. Oh, and can you bring me a hot cinnamon cocoa for desert after?"

She smiled at me, maybe a little more real and less professional than I'd expect from somebody working food service, and said, "sure thing. That'll be a few minutes while they make the smoothie."

She walked back inside, and I flipped Gilpatrick's card over to see if he'd written anything on the back. Instead of a blank space like I'd expected, or even some kind of picture or logo, the back of his card looked like an old school sports trading card. The top had a picture of Gilpatrick with 'Agent of Karma' written across the top in one of the fancy three dimensional fonts like you'd see in a bad PowerPoint presentation. The only difference between the picture and the man I'd seen today was something in Sanskrit silk-screened across the tee shirt's chest. Beneath that he'd listed out his 'Powers and Sources' in another two column chart. Something clicked, and I realized that the whole card likely had been done on a home PC by the man himself, and while he'd checked all the boxes for 'interesting business card', it still came off a little cheap and hokey. Not in an entirely bad way, more the way somebody who knew they needed a card, but had a sense of humor and a tight budget.

That didn't quite jive with the hundred dollars he'd dropped in front of me, but I wasn't here to do forensic accounting on the man.

Stolen novel; please report.

Then I read the 'Powers and Sources' table and completely lost it, barely able to finish as I read through it.

The first row of the table listed out three 'Powers'. 'Superior Human Bean', 'Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger', and 'Black don't Crack'. The 'Source' for all of those? 'Maybe he's born with it, maybe it's Maybelline'. The final row listed just one Power and Source: 'Wrecking your shit' and 'Government Issue'.

I was still chuckling about that as I described the card and read its contents into my recorder. Before I'd quite finished, the waitress brought out my smoothie and my food. When she set it down in front of me, I asked, "including my friend's stuff, how much does the bill come to?"

She pulled her order pad out of her apron pocket, and I watched as she did a little mental math before saying, "including your friend's iced latte and your cocoa, it comes to thirty one fifty."

I picked up the stack of twenties, pulled off one to cover my gas and tolls, and handed her the rest. She smiled, nodded, and said, "thanks, hon. Just lemme know when you want that cocoa, or if you need a refill or something."

I smiled back and said, "I will, thanks."

As I ate my way through what was pretty clearly a pre-made, pre-packaged, just opened-and-set-on-a-plate club sandwich and some mediocre fries, I got to work organizing my notes. I realized immediately that I'd screwed up and completely forgotten to ask him how, or even if, his commentary on a veteran of Thermopylae and a Greek historian from not long after related to Supers. I sighed and jotted that down as the first thing to ask him when we met tomorrow. When I realized that despite not quite getting how his knowledge and apparent collection of scans of ancient documents might relate to my thesis, I still wanted to go ahead with tomorrow's interview, I brought up a list of local motels. I winced when I realized that the chains all had prices not quite in my range, and the local places were all within walking distance of local 'gentlemen's clubs' and listed hourly as well as nightly rates.

Screw it, I'd spent more than one night crashed on somebody's not-too-clean couch, I could suck it up and pretend not to know how my room would light up like a Jackson Pollock painting if someone waved a black light around. I made an 'online reservation' at the cheapest one, wincing a little as I took the plunge and made the reservation for the entire week to get a ten percent discount. If Gilpatrick would keep answering questions, I'd keep asking them, and he didn't seem like the kind of guy who'd run out of stories to tell any time soon.

The waitress came by and scooped up my empty plate and glass, offering to refill my smoothie on the house, but I just asked for my cocoa and a glass of water. I kept working, putting in a set of cheap wired earbuds to transcribe our interview and integrate my handwritten notes about things that didn't record well, if at all, like his posture, gestures, expressions, and the unspoken insights I'd had while he spoke. Just as I finished working, my phone rang.

I looked at it, vaguely hoping for it to be Gilpatrick, but the number came up as unknown. Thinking about how he might well be using a land line at his new lady friend's house or something, I picked it up and answered, "hello, Nelson Samuels speaking. May I ask who's calling?"

"Good afternoon, Mister Samuels. This is Noah Perez, although you may know me better by my working pseudonym, Achilles. It's come to my attention that you're doing some research into the history of those with extraordinary powers, commonly referred to now as 'Supers'?"

Holy. Shit. Agent of Karma might be an E lister, but Achilles? Not only was the dude perpetually wobbling along the line between 'B' and 'A' ratings, he claimed to be the original Achilles, like straight from the Trojan War. Whether or not he was an ancient hero, someone pretending to be him for PR purposes, or a complete loon who just happened to have some serious powers, getting him as a source for my thesis would be a fucking godsend.

I realized suddenly that I'd been sitting there gaping, not saying anything, when the guy said, "hello? Mister Samuels? Can you hear me?"

"Sorry, sorry. I'm just a little surprised to hear someone as famous as yourself calling me, interested in my thesis."

If he took offense, his voice didn't show it. Really, his voice had a weird emotionless quality to it. No, not emotionless, but almost like a really good phone system that could almost fake being a real call center drone, but only because call center drones also wound up sounding like they'd had anything resembling joy or pain wrung out of them years before. "Of course I'm interested in your thesis. I've been studying the topic throughout my existence. For me it's something of a hobby, a way to pass the years, a way to keep track of everything I've seen and done. It would be good to have a professional, even an aspiring professional such as yourself, look everything over and, not to put too fine a point on it, organize it into something more closely adhering to today's scholarly formats."

Okay, The guy sounded as stiff as Gilpatrick wasn't, and it sounded like he basically wanted me to play secretary and organize his newspaper clipping collection, but I still couldn't let the opportunity pass. The only reason Achilles wasn't a solid Class A Super was a lack of reliable offensive powers, coupled with a refusal to supplement his own powers with any modern weaponry. His defenses, on the other hand, topped the charts; he'd not only survived everything anyone had ever thrown at him, including standing in the area of effect of some SS+ class hell weapons, he'd done so without showing a single scratch, the only clear evidence he'd survived something like MadBadLad's 'eradication beam' the smoking remains of his costume and the devastation around him.

"That sounds wonderful, Mister Perez. When would you like to meet?"

"Do you have time tomorrow?"

I winced. I'd figured an A lister would need to schedule something weeks or even months out. I didn't want to screw this opportunity up, but I also didn't want to lose Gilpatrick's interviews either. I temporized, saying, "I'm sorry, Mister Perez, but I'm currently obligated to finish a series of interviews where I'm at presently."

"Completely understandable. Where are you currently located?"

I paused half a tick, pulling my phone from my ear and looking at it before putting it back to my ear and saying, "Vineland, New Jersey."

He hummed an oddly familiar tune for half a moment before saying, "I'll need to make a few arrangements, but I can be there three days from now."

I had all I could do to keep from shouting in triumph, or cursing about having to juggle two different sets of interviews at once. "That would be incredible, Mister Perez. Are you certain, though? I don't want to interrupt your no doubt busy schedule."

He sounded a little offended when he came back with, "why would I offer were I uncertain? Is this number good to call you when I've arrived in town?"

"Absolutely, sir. And thank you for giving me this opportunity."

"De nada, Scholar Samuels. I'll see you on the overmorrow's tomorrow."

With that he hung up. I sat there staring at my phone for long minutes, even going through the effort of checking to be sure that yes, I had just received a call and hadn't imagined the whole thing. I carefully packed up my equipment, carted it all back to my car, and set up my phone's GPS app to guide me to the motel before leaning my forehead against the steering wheel, trying not to hyperventilate from the stress.

I may have gotten a little loud when I screamed out, "YES!" because a guy walking by on the street stopped and stared at me as I did a little victory dance right there in the driver's seat of my car.