The Greatest American Leaper

By

Matthew Spence

The blue light faded. Sam felt his arms outstretched as if he were about to take a dive. Have I leaped into a swimmer, he thought. But when he looked down, he saw that he was in fact several dozen feet off the ground. Letting out an involuntary yell, he fell forward out of the blue sky, fully expecting to break every bone in his body as he landed in a patch of grass...

"Owww," he moaned. He heard two cars approaching; he saw that one of them was a yellow early 1980s sedan while the other was a Volkswagen convertible, both with California plates. The drivers, a middle-aged man in an inexpensive suit and glasses, and an attractive brunette, quickly got out and ran up to him.

"Ralph, buddy, are you okay? That was quite a tumble, even for you," the man said.

"Ralph, seriously, are you all right?" the woman asked. "It looked like you lost power or something for a minute." She was at his side, helping him up.

"No, um..." Sam always hated not knowing who the Leapee's friends and family were. "I'm, ah, okay..." Then he looked down at himself. "I'm...wearing my red pajamas?"

It was more like a suit or costume, actually, like something a comic book character might have worn. He had a black cape, and there was a symbol on the front. "Oh boy," he muttered.

The couple helped him back to the car. "Bill, he still doesn't look well," the woman said. "I think Ralph might actually be hurt." Sam was in fact limping, he was pretty sure he had a fractured ankle at least.

"Oh, come on Counselor, Ralph Hinkley is the indestructible man, at least as long as he's got that suit on. The green guys made it that way." Bill, as the woman had called him, seemed uncomfortable when mentioning them, but went on: "Well, you do kinda looked spaced out there, kid. Maybe we oughta get you back home. I already got a lead on the bad guys, we know they're not going anywhere without their goodies. Carlyle is actually happy with me for once, so maybe we can let Uncle Sam handle this one from here on out." He looked at the woman. "Think you can handle him, Counselor?"

The woman rolled her eyes. "I've been handling him so far. Come on, Ralph, I'll get you home. You know, I think you've finally really gotten injured."

"Um, thanks," Sam struggled to find a way to get a name out of her. "And, uh, good luck, uh, Bill." Sam rubbed the back of his head.

The woman looked at him with concern as they got in her car. "Oh no, Ralph, you don't have amnesia again, do you?"

"Uh, no, not really. I'm just, uh, shaken up, that's all." From taking a skydive without a parachute, he thought. "I, uh, guess my brain's a little, ah, swiss-cheesed from that landing."

"Yeah, I saw. Bill was right, you looked like you'd really lost control. At least most of the time you're trying to use the suit."

Ralph looked down at himself. Yes, he was actually still wearing it. He looked at the rear-view mirror and saw that he was a young man with curly blonde hair.

"Nice threads, Sam. Going to a costume party?"

Sam jerked his head to see Al-or, rather, Al's hologram-sitting in the back seat. "Ya know, if she's your nurse, you're gonna have one heck of a recovery."

"Cut it out," Sam whispered. The woman looked at him, but shrugged and kept driving. "Why am I here, and why am I dressed like a refugee from a comic book?"

"Ah." Sam held up the familiar hand link. "Well, according to Ziggy, your name is..."

"Ralph Hinkley," Sam said under his breath. "I got that part."

"And you're a high school teacher in Los Angeles, California in 1982. You teach a bunch of would-be juvenile delinquents and near dropouts, and this very foxy lady here is your girlfriend, Pam Davidson, an attorney. The guy you met back at your crash landing is an FBI agent named Bill Maxwell...he's had quite a career, actually."

They arrived at Ralph's home in a suburban neighborhood. "I'll come by later on to check on you," Pam said. "I'd stay but I've got to work on a deposition, and I'm late as it is." She gave him a kiss on the cheek. "I'll be by later this evening, okay?" She embraced him, and left, allowing Sam to wearily sit down on "his" living-room sofa.

Sam groaned, as much from pain as from confusion. "Al, what have I gotten myself into? Who is this guy?"

"Well, that's where it gets a little confusing. According to Ziggy, there's not much info on him after about 1984 or so. But in the early Eighties there were a lot of sightings and stories about a guy in a red outfit flying around L.A., and other parts of Southern California. And the FBI had quite a thick file on the cases that Ralph and Maxwell were involved in."

"How does a high school teacher wind up working with an FBI agent in the first place?" Sam asked. "And where did I get this...outfit?"

"Ah, that's another weird story. Ralph himself doesn't remember, because his brain is Swiss-cheesed, but according to Ziggy there were reports of a UFO sighting in the desert a couple of years ago."

Sam stared at him. "Are you telling me this...suit...was given to me-to Ralph-by aliens?"

"Hey, it's no weirder than some of the stuff you've already seen. Remember that old man you leaped into in 1966, the one who saw a UFO?"

Sam nodded. "You don't think..."

"The same aliens? I dunno. But what I do know is that you're here to help Bill, because at two thirty this afternoon he's going to get shot by mercenaries working for an unfriendly country who are trying to get their hands on a laser weapon, kind of like what the Navy is working on in our own time, but for the Air Force."

Sam looked around and saw an old-style flip clock on an end table. "Al, that's less than an hour from now."

"Yeah, well, then you'd better hurry."

"How, Al? I'm no superhero!"

"You've got the suit, Sam, remember?" Al patiently reminded him. "Ziggy says it works by some kind of mind control, you just think about what you want to do, and it happens. It can make you fly-sort of-give you super strength, make you bulletproof, just like a real-life Superman."

"Al, I nearly broke my neck trying to 'fly.'"

"Huh, So you did. Well, there's always running. Hey, it works for the Flash," Al said, at seeing Sam's expression.

Twenty minutes later, Sam still couldn't believe he was actually doing it. But here he was, racing down the streets, seeing the world go by in a blur, faster than any normal human. I'm doing it, he thought with a certain giddiness. According to Al's directions, the warehouse where Bill was supposed to get shot was somewhere north of the downtown area. It wasn't far, in fact, from where he'd Leaped into Chad Stone, and, from what he remembered of downtown L.A., he was able to find the place easily enough.

Sam skidded to a halt, temporarily stamping his feet to put out his smoking boots. Remembering what Al had told him about the suit's powers, he focused on a wall and marveled as it seemingly opened up for him, showing Bill tied to a chair while a pair of toughs with AK-47's stood guard over him. There was a stack of crates with the words US AIR FORCE stenciled on them; presumably the parts for the laser weapon.

Sam took a deep breath, and dove for the wall, seeing it crumble before him as he made a home. The startled mercenaries tried to aim their guns at him, but Sam was able to take the guns and crush them in his bare hands as if they were made out of cheap plastic. Then he simply knocked their heads together as he quickly untied Bill.

"Great timing, kid," Bill said. "How'd you find me, anyway?"

"Uh, the suit?" Sam replied. Bill seemed to accept that as Sam helped him up and they made their way out of the warehouse before more of the mercenaries could arrive.

"Okay, kid, I can call this in from here. You'd better take off."

Sam blinked. "Take off? Oh, yeah...right."

Al had told him he really could fly with the suit, but Sam hadn't actually believed him until he found himself soaring, like a bird, over Los Angeles. Looking down, he couldn't help wonder what it was like for Ralph, to see the world this way. Then he found Ralph's house, and carefully, if somewhat awkwardly, landed in the back yard, out of sight of any neighbors that might have seen him.

"You did it, Sam," Al said as he entered the house. "The bad guys got nabbed, and the Air Force got its toy back. So, what was it like, being a superhero?"

"I don't think that's really the point of the suit," Sam said. "I think maybe it was just to help Ralph get his self-confidence. Maybe the real lesson is that we can all be heroes in our own way."

And with that, Sam Leaped.

THE END