“Well, here goes,” he said, and jumped. The Earth spread out before him.
It looked nice, all that way up. As the rocket whooshed away above and beyond him, he tried to work out where his home would be in the green and blue expanse below. Probably over that way, he decided. It was hard to think over the various falling sounds, the oxygen and all. He resolved to pack a pair of headphones in the utility belt. This was only supposed to be a one-time test, but you never knew.
The counter on his wrist showed the approximate altitude along with the time. He was coming up fast on 60 seconds. This would normally be the point where his parachute would deploy. The government guys had argued every which way they could about that. “Just in case,” they’d said. “Regulations,” they’d said. They’d really made a point about liabilities. He’d had to sign a stack of paperwork. In the end he’d gotten his way. He whooshed past the 60-second mark. No parachute.
Now he had to start thinking about landing. Should he go crater? Or redirect? Could he hold that much force? That was the point, wasn’t it? Then again, best to play it safe. A little, anyway. He made his final decisions as the ground rushed rapidly towards him. Good thing they’d picked a spot out in the desert-
WHUMP.
When the pickup team arrived seconds later, prepared for everything from splatter stains to a hole in the ground, they found him standing, perfectly unharmed, in the middle of a newly formed crater in the Nevada desert. “One second,” he said, and waved towards the sky. A bolt of light cracked towards the heavens and vanished. “Okay, that’s the last of it. You’re safe.”
The government people approached in awe. “You did it,” their leader said. “The first no-chute HALO jump. Holy-”
“Yeah,” he said, showing signs of strain for the first time. “Guess that works.”
“Just wait,” the government man said eagerly. “Just wait till we get you out there on the battlefield-”
“Yeah,” said the Pinball, Edison City’s newest superhero, “I’ll pass,” and he let go the last bit of kinetic energy he’d been holding and blasted away into the sky again. They never did find him after that.
This story inspired by
‘s prompt: The Rushing Sound In Your Ears. Also I’ve been meaning to write an introduction story about the Pinball, and this was the time for it.
PINBALL!!!!!! NEW HERO, WITH A NEW FAN!
I keep coming back to this one, Michael. This is what short fiction is all about.