Talking to the concierge felt like I was making a wish, so it didn’t seem real until a small army of smiling young men and women filed in and started stacking twenty boxes of toaster tarts on a big round table in the center of Minerva’s suite.
“I think you’re supposed to give those guys a tip,” I said, as they filed out.
“A tip about what?” Minerva asked. I just let it go and hoped someone in Bluestar accounting was taking care of this stuff for her.
Minerva was already in casual clothes, and I took off all my Bluestar stuff so I would look like a civilian. She looked profoundly uncomfortable as I set up the floating camera. I was just going to do a standard top ten list, where we ranked each flavor and tried to put them in order.
I had Jeeves whip up an interactive version to get feedback from the audience so we would end up with three lists. One for Minerva, one for me, and one that would aggregate choices from the audience.
Then I hit the button and started the stream. “Hey everybody, my name is Tim and I’m hoping you guys can help me settle an argument with Minerva…
“So, here we go, top ten breakfast foods selected by parents who do not actually love you. First up, banana pudding toaster tarts!”
Everything went fine at first, with Minerva putting various fruit flavors at the top of her list while I reversed her preferences, with the audience landing somewhere in between.
I thought I might have to explain who I was, but nobody even cared. I just introduced us as “Tim and Minerva” and let everybody assume I was a PR flack.
It was going so well, we got a delighted message from Bluestar Public Relations, congratulating us on our fantastic idea for audience engagement. Even got a personal one thanking me for my assistance with Minerva’s “image rehabilitation,” whatever the hell that meant.
But then I started reading the comments, scrolling backwards through the chat, reading them out loud in my slightly awkward, “I am reading comments” voice.
“‘I can’t believe Minerva is doing one of these!’ I quoted. ‘I can’t believe Minerva eats this crap!’ and I made a special effort to read the next one, ‘I thought she was a bitch, but this is actually kind of funny.’”
That one made my phone ding with an angry message from PR, but instead of responding, I read the complaint out loud for chat.
“PR guy says I’m not supposed to read the bad ones. So, here’s what I’ll do. Every time I get an angry message from PR, I’ll indicate with a buzzer and a red square with an X in it.”
And, as expected, I immediately got three messages from PR telling me not to do this, causing Jeeves to obediently put up three strikes with three corresponding buzzing noises, while he updated a rapidly escalating counter.
I continued reading comments: “I’m just going to skip over all these guys asking Minerva to step on them. Jeeves, you can filter those. Oh, here’s a good one for Minerva: ‘Did Sonny Mao get divorced because of you?’”
My screen went BZZT with another angry text from PR as Minerva snorted, “Sonny got divorced because he’s a sentimental idiot who got seduced by a gold digger. You would not believe how he bent over backwards to please that woman. He bought her a house and went to rehab for her, but she still divorced him and took off with half a million dollars’ worth of jewelry she made him buy.
“Now she’s on a beach with Sonny’s old account manager, and he’s back drinking again. Sonny has a lot of bad habits, but he doesn’t cheat on his wives, even if he has had six of them.”
Jeeves immediately put up five strikes in a row, as five different PR agents buzzed through to my phone, begging us to shut up.
But chat loved it. Her straightforward answer triggered a flood of gossip questions, as PR complaints buzzed quietly in the background.
“Question: Are you going to the Daedalus wedding?”
“Of course,” Minerva said. “Marty is a great guy and a great friend. I just hope he comes back to North America when he’s done. Half the teams in Europe are trying to poach him.”
“Question: Why is Minerva eating pop tarts when she’s rich as fuck?”
She shrugged. “Just comfort food, I guess.”
“Question: Do you miss Olympus?”
“Every day.”
“Question: What’s your favorite thing about Earth?”
“Raspberry toaster tarts.”
“Question: What do you hate about the Earth?”
“All the meat here tastes funny.”
“Question: Any special guys in your life right now?”
Minerva just said, “No.”
“Question: What traits do you look for in a guy?”
“Structural integrity.”
“Question: Why did they cancel your reality show?”
“The show runner said too much reality, not enough show.”
“Question: Do you like Boston?”
“Not at first,” she said, glancing at me. “But it’s not all bad.”
“Question: Who is this Tim guy?”
I jumped in before she could answer and said, “Bluestar 7 team liaison,” which was not technically a lie.
And here’s one I didn’t read out loud: “The guy on your right looks like Tim Kovak. Are you related to James Kovak, who did CIA assassination missions in the 1980s?”
I ignored that one and just said, “No questions for me, please. Today is all about her.” But then I said, “Ok, fine. I’ll take this one for me.”
“Question: Minerva is supposed to have a divine aura that makes men worship her. How are you dealing with it?”
I answered, “By surrendering to it, sir! In my culture, toaster tarts are considered a form of worship.”
“Question: Do you get along with the members of Bluestar 7?”
“I’ll answer that one,” I jumped in. “The new members of Bluestar 7 love working with her and they’ve learned a lot. The goddess Minerva is welcome back any time.”
“Will you stop that?” Minerva snapped. “I am not your goddess, and I am not your mistress! It’s just Minerva!”
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Her sudden, honest discomfort cracked me up. I started laughing and saw the whole chat was laughing with me.
“You don’t even care, do you?” Minerva said, still half-shouting. Then she gestured to the hovering chat window. “You just say these things because they like it when I yell at you!”
Chat did indeed like it when she yelled at me. I was laughing so hard, only part of my face, bright red, was visible in frame.
“Please stop calling me that!” Minerva insisted. “Everybody already talks like I’m some kind of dominatrix!”
I sat back up and tried to compose myself. “No, wait a minute,” I said. “You wear leather pants and beat bad guys with a magic whip. If people think you’re a dominatrix, at least half of that is on you!”
“It’s not a whip!” Minerva shouted, holding the coiled, flaming Brand of Athena up for the camera. “It’s a rope! It’s a… cord!”
I shook my head. “No, I’m sorry. If you’re in the middle of a fight and you’re doin’ this?” I mimed it. “You are whippin’ a motherfucker!”
Jeeves threw up half a dozen red Xs across the screen as the senior PR flack lit up my phone again, begging me to shut this down.
“Yeah, fuck you, buddy,” I finally said, losing my temper. “I don’t work for you and neither does she. I know you think you’re really important, but honestly, there is no one on Earth strong enough to tell this woman what to do, and if she ever figures that out, you guys are fucked!”
I knew I had fucked up the moment it came out of my mouth, but it was out of my mouth and around the world in five seconds.
The buzz from the PR texts got louder and angrier until I had to mute them. My phone lit up with ten incoming calls. Then Minerva’s phone lit up, and I waved at her not to answer it.
“Okay guys, I think that’s my cue to end the stream. Hope you all enjoyed it, because I’m pretty sure it was my last one.”
I ended the stream and finally got a call that I had to take. I ducked in the side room and tried to look innocent. “Hey, Denise! How did you like the show?”
“Tim, what the fuck did you do? We’re trying to make people love superheroes, not be afraid of them!”
“Wait!” I held up one hand. “Look at the comments. Use the filter I gave you and only look at verified people. Most of the people pretending to be afraid of her are bots. It’s part of how they control her. The real people know who she is, and they know she’s on their side.”
She just shook her head at me.
“Denise, if I lose my job tonight, I’m really sorry. You know our project means the world to me, but what the corps are doing to this woman… it’s wrong. She’s too powerful for physical coercion, so they control her with emotional abuse. I know it sounds crazy to abuse a woman who could kill you with a fingernail, but if they get you young enough, they can beat you down for the rest of your life. No matter how smart you are or how strong you get, part of you will always want to obey.
“At first, I believed the rumors. I thought she was the problem, that she really was just mean and irritating and constantly rude to people, but she’s not. Sure, she’s a little blunt, and she doesn’t use a lot of facial expressions, but that describes every engineer I ever met, and those guys have friends.
“They’re doing this to her on purpose to keep her isolated. Every time she gets close to somebody, they get kicked off the team. It’s happened to her four times, and they may have actually murdered the last guy. He was a mind reader, and god knows what he saw in her head.
“That’s why she’s in the exchange program. They keep sending her to other cities to keep her off balance, and to keep her from forming any real connections with people. If I had waited a couple more days to reach out to her, I probably never would have. But I did, so now I have to help her, because she doesn’t have anyone else. I hope you understand, and I hope you can… distance yourself from me, if this ends my career.”
Denise nodded slowly. “Would you stick your neck out like this if she was a man?”
“God, I hope so. And if you ever see me doing that, ignoring a man I would help if he was a woman? I need you to call me on it. I know I’ve got a messiah complex, all right? But I hope it goes both ways.”
Denise lowered her head. “I’m sorry, Tim. That was a shitty thing to say. I’m just… I just don’t want to lose you. Call me selfish, but please don’t throw your life away, fighting a battle for a woman you just met.”
“Denise, you want people to love heroes again? Let’s start with her.”
* * *
Minerva was sitting in a dark corner with her phone turned off, knees pulled up to her chest, like a little girl waiting for daddy to come home. That posture terrified me, because it showed just how deep her conditioning went, and showed me the magnitude of what I was up against.
Lydia would know what to do, but Lydia wasn’t here. All I could do was try and imitate her and handle Minerva the way Lydia would have handled me.
I said, “Stand up,” and pulled her to her feet. “Whatever comes through that door, we’re gonna handle it. Together, as a team.”
“I’m sorry I got you into this,” she said. “I never should have let you turn on that camera.”
“No apologies. You are not responsible for my big mouth. Look, I don’t know what these fuckers did to you, but you are not their little girl anymore, and you are not alone.
“Miner— Jane, these men yell at you and try to intimidate you because they’re afraid. They are terrified of you. Whatever they say, try to look past the anger, and see their fear. I meant what I said for that camera. If you ever realize how powerful you are, you can cut these strings in ten seconds and change your whole damn life.”
The door to the suite burst open, and a mixed group of men and women in fancy suits poured in. It was supposed to be a private room, but all her corporate handlers had access. The oldest woman stepped up to me and waved one perfect pink fingernail in my face.
“Do you realize what you’ve done? Do you realize how much public goodwill you just erased with one fucking sentence? Look at these streams, people are terrified of her!”
“Most of these are fakes,” I said. “Probably whipped up by your own black box AI. Real people aren’t scared of her, because they know exactly who she is. They’ve watched her for twenty years, standing between bad guys and innocent people. Thousands of hours of video watching her fight for them. The only people afraid of her are standing in this room.”
That got a little titter from the drones, as some of them looked at their feet, and others had to hide smiles. Looks like Minerva had some fans, even among the suits.
“And what happens if your worst nightmare comes true?” I continued. “What happens if she goes rogue and quits her Bluestar team? You know what would happen. She would still show up every day and stand between people and monsters, because that’s who she is. This is not a job to her. This woman is a real hero, and she deserves to be treated like one.”
An older man came through the open door and pointed at me, obviously some kind of senior exec. "There you are, you snot-nosed piece of shit. Whoever you are, you are gonna sit in that chair, and I am gonna explain some things to you."
“Clark, you don’t talk to my friend that way,” Minerva said softly.
The man shouted at her as she stepped into the light. “You stay out of this, Minnie. I’ll deal with you in a minute.”
Minerva took an involuntary step back, so I grabbed her hand and squeezed as hard as I could.
“No,” she said. “I don’t think you will.” She said it softly, with no real menace in her voice, but the man froze and turned pale as I saw his eyes dart over to her. She had obviously never spoken to him like this before.
“I think me and Tim are gonna post whatever we want, and all of you people are gonna get the fuck out of my room. If Bluestar 2 has a problem with me or my friends, they can kick me off their team. I’ve been considering a transfer anyway. I think Boston is starting to grow on me.”
Clark turned red as blood rushed back into his face. He looked like he was about to start shouting again, but then something short-circuited him, like he had just been hit with some kind of shock.
I couldn’t see his communicator implant, but Jeeves picked up the signal and outlined it for me. I couldn’t hear what his handlers were telling him, but "Clark" turned on his heel and walked straight out the door, with six PR flacks trailing behind.
Minerva locked the door behind them and jammed a heavy reinforced chair in front of it.
“If you suffer any kind of retaliation for this, call me,” she said. “If anybody threatens your job, if you get so much as a parking ticket over this, call me. But be ready for trouble. They won’t just roll over now, and they’re gonna do everything they can to separate us. See if Hardy can do another couple weeks with B2. They’re gonna order me back, but I’m gonna stay here with you, just long enough to prove a point.”
“Jane, you need to know, you are not driving people away. The team has been reassigning heroes to get them away from you. You’ve got a Bluestar therapist, right? A counselor that’s been telling you it’s your fault?”
She nodded.
“Well, it’s not your fault. You’re a good friend and a great partner, and more people need to see that. I’m not telling you to blindly trust everybody who brings you room service but try and pick two or three people when you get home, people who treat you with respect. Not worship, not kissing your ass, but respect, and give them a few kind words. Tell them you appreciate them and invite a small group up for pizza.
"It may not work the first few times. They may be too scared to open up, but I’m betting you’ve got some people in your corner that you don’t even know about. Anybody you pick, send me their names. I can run a better background check than a whole team at VBC, and if I can’t spot a predator for you, I live with someone who can.
“I’m one call away, day or night, but there’s only one of me, and you need a whole support system up there. I’m betting there’s a few decent people left on your team, and once they see you stand up, they’ll stand with you.”
* * *
We both jumped when we heard a knock on the door, like an invasion of corporate suits was a physical attack, instead of a spiritual one. Then we realized it was room service, delivering a pair of gourmet toaster tarts that we had totally forgotten about.
I took a couple pictures and uploaded them to Minerva’s official account, with a quick note that everything was fine.