THE METAHUMAN TRANSFIGURATION
Description: The gang gets superpowers. It's not as cool as some of them always thought. Alternate Season 9 premiere.
Notes: Thanks again to the reviewers! Rest assured that I will eventually, and quite soon, reveal what Howard and Leonard have gained from their experience. For further points of interest, for those who have ever seen the show Corner Gas, I have been envisioning the pilot in this story to be played by the Canadian actor Lorne Cardinal—and if anyone is interested in listening to backing music, this chapter was largely written to the accompaniment of the tracks "No Time for Caution," and "Detach," from Hans Zimmer's wonderful soundtrack for the movie Interstellar. Finally, as always, elements of reality have been selectively ignored for the sake of drama—in this case, Pasadena geography. Also, stuff like this should go without saying, but in real life no one should EVER attempt to pilot an actual aerial vehicle based solely on experience in a flight simulator.
Disclaimer: The author does not own THE BIG BANG THEORY or any of the characters. The excerpted conversation quoted in this chapter comes from Episode 2 of Season 1, "The Big Bran Hypothesis", story by Chuck Lorre & Bill Prady and teleplay by Robert Cohen & Dave Goetsch.
- 7 -
PASADENA AIRSPACE
THURSDAY, AUGUST 27, 2015, 6:54 P.M.
For half a second, Penny plunged sickeningly downward before her instinct found the mental trick of her old dream, and she swung her legs around and decelerated with the ease of a diver braking herself in water. She looked up, trying to find the black FBI copters, and just barely flung herself out of the way before another body plunged past her, screaming in terror so acute it was like razors on her ears. A second later she realized who the falling body had been.
"AMY!" she shrieked at the top of her lungs, and dove.
Her panic was a rocket's thrust, driving her downwards faster than gravity. Amy's flailing form grew in her vision, as did the unforgiving cityscape of Pasadena, roaring ever upwards, closer and closer. Invulnerability to bullets and blows was one thing; Penny had absolutely no desire to find out if she could survive ground impact at this speed. She sighted in on Amy, reaching out. And weirdly, the thought that came to her was a conversation she'd had with the guys, long ago, just after they'd met:
"I do like the one where Lois Lane falls from the helicopter and Superman swooshes down and catches her, which one was that?"
"One," Leonard, Sheldon and Howard all said together. Even Raj raised his forefinger helpfully.
"You realize that scene was rife with scientific inaccuracy," said Sheldon disapprovingly.
Penny smiled. "Yes, I know," she said, "men can't fly." Honestly, she knew she wasn't as smart as any of these guys, but they didn't think she was a total airhead, did they?
"Oh no, let's assume that they can," said Sheldon, startling her. "Lois Lane is falling, accelerating at an initial rate of thirty-two feet per second per second. Superman swoops down to save her by reaching out two arms of steel. Miss Lane, who is now travelling at approximately one hundred and twenty miles per hour, hits them and is immediately sliced into three equal pieces."
"Unless," Leonard interrupted, "Superman matches her speed and decelerates."
"In what space, sir, in what space? Frankly, if he really loved her, he'd let her hit the pavement. It would be a more merciful death."
Penny would never be able to match Sheldon's or even Leonard's gift for calculating numbers in their head. But she'd spent her childhood playing baseball with her dad, and knew darn well how to track the path of something falling and how to guess the time left to catch it. She matched her path to Amy's, slid in beside the other woman, slapped one arm around her waist and threw everything she could into pulling their plummeting arc upwards and around. The city hurtled up at them like an oncoming train.
For a few nauseating seconds, she thought they weren't going to make it. The G-force of the turn felt like a massive weight crushing her back; her vision blurred, then seemed to shrink inwards, tunnelling down to a circle like an old-fashioned movie cut. The buildings, cars and traffic lights of downtown Pasadena shot towards them, then by them, as Penny and Amy rocketed down the street like a guided missile. Half-drunk with G-force, Penny thought for a moment she could reach down and touch the traffic with her free hand. And then their arc was bending upwards, upwards, the city falling away once again, and as Penny's vision cleared and the force of the turn eased she was able to draw a great whooping breath. Hundreds of feet above the ground, she brought them to a stop, and got her other arm around Amy's chest, holding her up. She could feel Amy's heartbeat hammering under her arm.
"What—the—hell, Ames?" she bellowed, into Amy's ear.
Amy flinched from the yell. Amazingly, her glasses were still on. "I'm sorry!" she cried. "I thought I could help! I copied your power back at Mrs. Cooper's, I thought—I thought—" Her hitching gasps gave way to sobs, terror and relief overwhelming her; she clung to Penny's arms like a toddler woken from a nightmare. Penny almost broke into sobs herself, but mastered them with a great shudder. There wasn't time.
"Okay—okay, Ames, look, it's all right, it's fine," she finally said. "We know something now; we know you can't just copy someone and do what they do right away, you have to figure out how. When you copied Sheldon's trick to get to his mom's house, how did you do it?"
"I, uh . . . ." Amy snorfled loudly and scrubbed at her nose. "I was . . . I was able to see the traces of what he'd done, and put it back together. I could read the patterns somehow. Like I'd read an EEG, or analyze a dissected brain."
"Okay, good, good. So—here, let me move you 'round—" Awkwardly, Penny managed to get Amy turned in her grip until they were practically nose-to-nose. Amy's face still being tear-stained and snotty from her weeping, it wasn't the prettiest sight, but Penny ignored it. "Okay. The trick I use, I always had dreams about flying when I was a kid. I remember that dream, I remember the way it felt, and . . . ." She willed herself upwards, and they both rose, moving higher and higher. "Are you, like, seeing anything around me that's making sense?"
Amy shook her head helplessly. "No. I'm sorry, but no."
"Shit," Penny muttered. "Okay, um—" The only thought that came to her felt incredibly stupid, but why not? It wasn't like she had any other options. "How about this? What's the happiest memory you have, Amy? The absolute best moment of your life. Ever."
Amy stared at her. Then she looked away, as if she couldn't bear to meet Penny's eyes. "When Sheldon said he loved me," she said, so quietly it was almost a whisper.
Sheldon said WHAT?! Penny almost let go of Amy and only caught herself at the last second. "Okay, maybe not that one, that's got too much conflict tied up with it right now, um—" Then it came to her. "All right: close your eyes, and think about the time you kissed. On the train, the one you told me about. Just go back to that in your head and remember that feeling. As intensely as you can . . . ." She paused a second, then moved very slowly and carefully, still talking. "Remember how it felt, in your mouth, your head, everywhere else. The way your heart sped up, the way your skin tingled, the way it felt . . . um, elsewhere . . . ." She cleared her throat. "Okay, Amy. Open your eyes."
Amy did. For a moment, she stared at Penny uncomprehendingly. Then Penny saw in her eyes the twin realizations slamming home: that Penny had let her go, and that they were both floating in mid-air some two yards apart. Suddenly Amy dropped in the air a few yards—Penny gave a shriek—but then she stopped, seeming to bob back upwards, like an empty plastic bag caught in an updraft. A huge grin spread slowly over her face; she twirled in mid-air, arms out, her cardigan belling out from her. "Oh my God," she said. "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!" Without warning, she flung up her arms and shot skywards, the breeze of her slipstream blowing Penny backwards. "Come on, bestie, catch me if you can!" her cry came back.
Penny shook her head, not sure if she wanted to laugh or groan in frustration, but threw her arms forward and rocketed after Amy. She caught up, matched her speed, then raised her voice to yell at the top of her lungs. "Amy!" she shouted. "Remember? The copters? We came out here to do something?"
Amy looked abruptly sheepish. "Oh, right!" she shouted back. "Um—where are they?"
Penny revolved in mid-air and blinked. "Ah, well, one of them's all the way over there, following the guys," she called. "The other one, uh . . . ." She let herself trail off, waiting for the rising roar to finish her point for her. Amy spun about, then jolted back in shock as the black copter roared towards them and pulled up maybe fifteen yards away, the thunder and wind of its rotors shoving hard against them. Amy held her glasses on her face with both hands while Penny shielded her eyes with her forearm.
"MISS CARMICHAELS. DR. FOWLER." The voice over the helicopter's crowd-control loudspeaker boomed at them like a blow. "BY ORDER OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT YOU ARE REQUESTED TO RETURN TO THE GROUND AND TURN YOURSELF IN TO THE F.B.I. FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH THIS REQUEST WILL BE TAKEN AS RESISTING ARREST AND WILL BE MET WITH APPROPRIATE FORCE. THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING."
Penny and Amy looked at each other. Then back at the helicopter. "Screw that," they both said together, and shot forwards straight at the copter's nose.
6:56 P.M.
"Ow!" Howard yelled. "Holy Jehoshaphat, they both just ripped off that thing's machine guns like they were made of plasticine! Wow!" He ducked back from the copter's window as if dodging a blow, then looked back out. "Now they've grabbed onto the sides—oh my God, the side door's opening, it looks like somebody's leaning out trying to shoot at them—oh! Wow! Penny just haymakered him back inside. Amy's climbing up the other side—yeah, yeah, that's it Amy, right there—bam! Holy guacamole, fist straight through aerospace-grade steel like it was cardboard! There it goes—I can see the fuel trailing from it. Oh, man, that's a gusher. Come on, girls, get out of there—yep, there they go. And there it goes, the chopper's making for the ground. I give them two minutes of flight time."
Bernadette held on tight to his arms, unable to look. Sheldon seemed even worse off—when Amy had flung herself after Penny out the door, he had actually screamed aloud and then collapsed into himself, hiding his head in his arms like a kid whose parents were fighting. Mary had made her way over to him and was holding him tightly, but seemed unable to do much more. Leonard and Raj had together wrestled the door shut, after which Leonard had pinned himself to the window just as Howard had, but hadn't said a word since. He looked like he might throw up any second. Bernadette very much hoped he wouldn't, as she was unsure she'd be able to keep her own cookies down if he did—
No, no, the thought came to her, you actually probably could, if you wanted to. You know how nausea's manufactured, it would be very simple just to turn those signals and nervous impulses off as long as you needed. She swallowed. For some reason that scared her more than what was happening right now.
The pilot looked back into the main cabin. "You folks might want to hear this," he told them, and snapped a switch on his dashboard. Instantly a voice came over hidden speakers in the cabin, loud, angry, strident and scared: "—are ordered to call Carmichaels and Fowler back to your vehicle! Now! By order of the FBI and the United States Government!"
The pilot clicked a button. "FBI chopper Bravo-Delta three-niner-niner-six," he said, sounding bored, "this is a private flight operating by personal charter, and we have no authority over people not currently aboard our vehicle who are not employees of Latham Industries. We also have no means of currently contacting the named individuals anyway. Unless you can cite a specific charge, provide a warrant or cite the authority of the Federal Aviation Administration, we will continue en route to our destination as provided to local air control. We strongly recommend you contact your local FAA office for that information." He clicked off, glanced back and grinned at them. "Who says bureaucracy has no strong points?"
"Private flight Lima India zero zero one three, if you do not comply with our directions we will have no choice but to force you down by any means necessary!" The copter began to judder as the FBI vehicle loomed in above them, its slipstream buffeting their own craft. Bernadette clutched more tightly to Howard, barely managing not to whimper. Maybe she might survive a crash, now; she rather doubted Howard would. Or their baby.
The pilot glanced out the window, nodded thoughtfully, then clicked a switch. "FBI chopper Bravo-Delta three-niner-niner-six," he said, "be advised that the individuals Carmichaels and Fowler are approaching your flank at top speed, and we have no control over their actions."
At that, Bernadette couldn't restrain herself any more. She twisted around and straightened up, pressing her face to the window. The FBI chopper held still, bare yards away, for a long, agonizing second. Beyond it Bernadette could see two specks in the air, coming closer and closer, growing every moment until she could make out Penny's blond hair and Amy's cardigan.
Then, abruptly, the FBI copter dipped, banked away, and shot straight at Penny and Amy, its tail rotor tilting high and its main rotor roaring forward like a blender set to frappé. Bernadette had only a second to realize what the FBI pilot was trying to do, maybe half that time to see Penny and Amy suddenly recoil and curl up, their own movement too close and too fast to avoid it, and no time at all to do more than suck in a breath to scream.
The FBI copter's main rotor struck Penny and Amy head on—and shattered.
A rain of shards of razor-sharp steel engulfed the Latham helicopter, clattering like metal hail. One sliver punched all the way through the hull, flashed straight past Bernadette's blinking eyes and burst a window on the cabin's other side on its way out. Mary and Lucy both screamed. The pilot yelled a vicious oath and banked sharply away, dropping fast. Alarms began to sound from the console, and he shut them off one by one. "Okay, folks," he called back, "enough fucking around. We're going straight for our destination, fast as possible!"
"No!" Leonard shouted. "The girls, we have to wait for the girls!"
"Sorry, Dr. Hofstadter," said the pilot flatly. "I know you people can probably do all sorts of terrible things to me, but we've sustained damage and I don't know how much flight time we have left. If Fowler and Carmichaels can't find their own way back—"
He vanished. The headphones he'd been wearing dropped to the seat. Sheldon clambered past Leonard, dropped into the pilot's seat, picked them up and put them on. Leonard stared at him. "Sheldon!" he yelled. "What the hell did you just do?"
"Teleported him to the comic book store," said Sheldon.
"Why?!"
"First place I thought of that wasn't somebody's home," said Sheldon. "I mean, come on, Leonard, I'm not going to dump a total stranger into somebody's living room. That's just rude."
"No, Sheldon, I mean why would you teleport our pilot anywhere?!" Leonard's voice was halfway between bellow and scream.
"I didn't like his priorities. Thankfully this console's a pretty well-known patch in the flight simulator Apache." He took the controls in his hands, adjusted his grip, then moved; the copter banked back in the other direction. Sheldon nodded in satisfaction. "Yep. Textbook. Remind me to thank ChopperChamp216 for the accuracy of his reproduction."
Leonard stared at him. "Wait a minute. Are you telling me you know the simulator well enough to fly a goddamned helicopter . . . and yet you still can't learn to fricking drive?!"
Sheldon gave him an impatient look. "Driving involves too many distractions for something that's just a convenience. This is about Amy." He patted the co-pilot's seat. "Now get up here so you can navigate for me, Leonard. We still have to go pick them up."
Leonard lifted his hands, let them fall, and climbed into the cabin. Howard and Raj stared after him, then both turned to Bernadette. She shrugged. "Don't look at me."
6:57 P.M.
The impact of the copter's rotor had knocked Penny spinning, but she pulled herself out of it fast when she realized it hadn't actually hurt. A second later, she and Amy were staring down at the black helicopter as it plunged towards the ground, spiraling around itself on the broken rotors. The blue-and-white Latham copter was banking away, smoke coming from it, but seemed to be keeping itself aloft for the moment. That was all Penny waited to see before she dove. The air split in a shriek she could hear as Amy dove after her.
They came down together on opposite sides of the plummeting chopper; Penny got herself under one of the stubby wings on one side, planted herself against the metal and thrust upwards with all her force. The spin slowed. Once again, she could see the city coming towards her with dismaying speed; slower this time, but that only gave her longer to watch it approach. Now she could feel the weight of the thing against her shoulders, gravity and mass pressing together down on her in an ever-greater force. She cast around desperately for something like a safe landing zone, and saw one off to her left: a parking lot, all but empty, with more than enough room for the copter. "Amy!" she bellowed as loudly as she could. "On our left, ten o'clock! The parking lot by the McDonald's! We're setting down there!"
She had half a second to wonder if Amy had heard her; then she felt the momentum of the copter shift, and let out a breath of relief. They were less than two hundred feet from the ground now, she guessed, and coming in hard. The parking lot rushed towards them. Horns and screeches echoed up from the street below, and little flickers of light that she realized were camera flashes. She wanted to laugh. Typical. Californians would take selfies while the tidal wave from the Big One was coming in.
Fifty feet. Forty feet. Thirty. With a last panicked realization, Penny kicked off her shoes and hoped that her invulnerability extended to her feet. Twenty. Ten. Five. Down— They struck hard, screeching along the asphalt, knocking at least one car spinning out of the way. Penny winced, her feet grinding against the asphalt as she braked with all her strength. The copter spun slowly around on its axis, driven by the last movements of its tail rotor. Sparks flew everywhere. And then at last the copter stopped. Penny wasted no time, only leaping up, punching her fists in through the hull and ripping. "Go!" she yelled as she tore open the hull. "Everybody, go, get out of here, before something explodes!"
Men in dark uniforms tumbled through the gap past her, jumping out of the copter, running to gather together on the asphalt. Some of them glared at her, but before any of them could act a crowd rushed up, phone cameras going off in a hailstorm of flashes. Penny shielded her eyes as a babble of questions poured over her. In desperation she shouted as loudly as she could, "Everybody, please, SHUT UP!"
Amazingly, that worked. In the silence, Amy suddenly lofted her way over the copter from the other side, touching down next to Penny. At the sight everyone gasped; the cameras and cellphones started going off again. Penny rolled her eyes. "People," Amy yelled, pointing at the dark-uniformed men, "these gentlemen are from the FBI, they'll tell you everything you need to know; please cooperate with them. Right now you just need to move back, this area is not safe. Okay?"
"Wait a minute!" yelled a girl in the front row of the onlookers. "Who are you two?"
"Aw, jeez." Penny covered her eyes. "Look, that doesn't matter. Just call us guardian angels, okay? Bye!" She grabbed Amy under the arm and leapt skyward, the two of them hurtling upwards into the reddening twilight.
Amy grinned, looking back at the city as it shrank away. "Wow. So this is what playing superhero is like. You know, I think maybe we've been too hard on the guys. I think I see why they liked reading about this kind of thing so much."
Penny had to grin back. "Yeah, I guess, but come on—did you ever expect to be proven wrong like this? Not to mention," she added after a second, "that if I ever do anything that makes the sound 'Brackadoom!', I'm retiring." She looked around. "Come on, Ames—we gotta find our ride."
7:09 P.M.
Raj and Howard slid the side door open, bracing themselves against the wind until Penny and Amy had both squirmed back inside the helicopter, then slammed it shut at the earliest moment they could. Before either woman could move Raj had grabbed them both in a strangling embrace; relief, joy and fury burst off him in a wave, and Penny suddenly found herself sobbing out all the tears she'd managed to hold back during the aerial action. Amy, too, was weeping again, and after a moment Penny realized everybody in the cabin had burst into tears as well—even Howard, who looked flummoxed at himself. Between sobs, she choked out something that was half laugh, half yell. "Raj! Ease up, willya?!"
"Oh—oh my. Sorry." Raj let them go and swiped at his face, and the overwhelming surge of emotion vanished. Then he suddenly looked furious again. "No, wait, I'm not sorry! Well, I'm sorry I hit you all with that, but I am still pissed as all heck with the both of you! You scared the crap out of all of us! Am I right?!" He turned to the cabin at large.
Howard cleared his throat. "I, uh, I actually thought it was kind of awesome," he said sheepishly. He wilted at Raj's glare. "Well, come on, it was."
"It was indeed," agreed Mary, surprisingly. She got up, took Amy by the shoulders, smiled warmly at her—and then slapped her sharply across the face. Raj, Bernadette and Lucy all gasped. Penny's eyebrows went up. "But you listen to me, young lady, I haven't given up hope of welcoming you into my family, and if you ever do something like that again without warning me, well, I won't be happy at all, I'll tell you." Mary glared right into Amy's eyes. "Are we clear?"
Amy stared at her, bewildered; from the lack of red mark on her face, Penny guessed that if the blow had hurt at all it had done so for a fraction of a second at most, but it wasn't the physical pain which mattered. "I—all right, Mrs. Cooper. Next time I'll say something first." She swallowed. "I promise."
Mary pointed at her. "And I'm gonna hold you to that, Dr. Fowler." She looked through the doorway into the cockpit at the back of the pilot's head. "Shelley? You got anything you want to say?"
Shelley? Penny looked closer. Holy crap—that was Sheldon! "Wait a minute!" she burst out. "What the hell happened to the pilot?!"
"He's Stuart's problem now," said Leonard, turning around from his seat in the co-pilot's chair. "Just be grateful the people who make flight simulator games are so anal-retentive about getting details right." He glanced at Amy, then Sheldon, and unbuckled himself. "Sheldon, I think we can spare a few minutes here. I'll be back. Amy?" He stepped out of the cockpit into the passenger cabin, and gestured back behind him at the empty seat.
Slowly, Amy climbed through and sat down. Leonard nodded at her, then pulled the door shut, cutting off any sound. Before he could do anything else Penny had thrown herself at him, and then there was nothing for an all-too-short time but the taste of his mouth and the feel of his arms around her. Finally they separated, leaning their foreheads against one another.
"I'm sorry I scared you," Penny murmured.
Leonard stiffened defensively. "I wasn't scared," he said. Then he snickered, almost reluctantly. "I was terrified. This is not exactly the safest way to test your limits."
"No, I guess it isn't," Penny agreed. "But you know something? I'm glad I did. We saved some lives down there. And like Amy said . . . I'm beginning to see why you love comics. This stuff's addictive, isn't it?"
Leonard chuckled. "It is, kinda. But I'm hoping we can skip having to take another hit for a while." He found an empty seat and sat down, pulling her down to nestle on his lap. It was awkward—Penny was a big girl and Leonard was not a large man—but she snuggled into him anyway, ducking her head down to lay it on his shoulder.
Then she realized something, and looked down at herself. "Aw, crap," she cursed. "Not again." Leonard looked at her inquiringly, and she gestured at her clothes. Her T-shirt and jeans had been shredded by the rotor impact, torn up and down like they'd been through a thresher. She glared at Leonard as he audibly choked back a laugh. "It's not funny! I liked these jeans!" She folded her arms, glowering. "Man, nobody ever told me being a superhero was so tough on the fashion budget."
7:10 P.M.
The seconds had trickled past in silence while Sheldon flew the helicopter, enough time for Amy to realize that her cardigan was absolutely wrecked; for lack of anything else to do, she took it off and dropped it to the cockpit's floor. At least it had been one of her oldest. She hadn't paid much attention to clothes over the summer she and Sheldon had been separated.
At length, she cleared her throat. "I'm sorry for whatever distress I may have caused," he said. "But I'm not sorry for trying to do the right thing and help. If you want to chew me out for that, go ahead."
"I have no intention of 'chewing' anybody 'out'," said Sheldon, his tone even more devoid of affect than usual. "I haven't the concentration or the time to spare at the moment. The simulators aren't usually this detailed above the effect of damage on a craft; I think we may have holed a fuel line, or possibly a transmission line. All I wanted to do," he went on, without changing tone, "is to point out the immense hypocrisy of criticizing me for not thinking enough about how my actions will make people feel, and then going off to risk your life without, apparently, thinking at all about how your actions will make me feel. I mean, you do see the inconsistency there, yes?"
At another time, Amy knew, this might have made her angry. But for all the thrill of the fight and its eventual conclusion, those terrifying moments of falling, before Penny had caught her and taught her how to use the power she'd so thoughtlessly copied, were still fresh enough to remember effortlessly. If Penny had been just a little less quick to react, or missed her catch, or bungled that fantastic pull-up and smashed them both into a building, what might have happened? Mrs. Cooper's slap still tingled in her memory, if not on her skin. So she only looked down at her lap. "You're right, Sheldon," she said. "I didn't think about how it would make you feel. I'm sorry."
He glanced at her sidelong, half wary, half bemused, clearly not expecting her sudden lack of protest. After a moment, he opened his mouth. She cut him off. "How did it make you feel?"
"I don't think that's relevant to the point," he said stiffly.
"Maybe not. But I would please like to know. If we are to renew our relationship with a view to increased emotional honesty, I think it only makes sense."
Another few moments went by. Amy was about to get up and go back to the passenger cabin when Sheldon surprised her. "Sick," he said. "It made me feel sick. Physically and emotionally ill. To have effected what reconciliation we have, only to lose you—it . . . ." The pause was the longest one she'd ever heard from him. "It offends the order of things," he finished at last. "Like violating a universal constant."
Amy had to swallow. She knew what Sheldon's need for order meant to him. That was all she'd needed to hear. "I love you too, Sheldon."
He gave no outward reaction. But after a moment, she saw the imperceptible shifts of posture and focus that signaled his relief; it was as if he had sat down on his spot after a long time away. "I think we need to get Leonard back in here," he said, paused, then added more carefully, "If you don't mind, Amy. It's just that I need him to navigate."
She nodded. "Of course." She got up, slid past him and was about to open the cabin door when, to her surprise and delight, he suddenly grabbed her hand. Looking up at her, their eyes locked, and he kissed the back of her hand. For a moment Amy thought her knees might give way.
Then he let go and nodded. "You'll want to sterilize that, no doubt," he said, and pulled out a small plastic pouch from his shirt pocket. "Handi-Wipe," he said, handing it to her. "For you."
She wanted to laugh, and sat firmly on the impulse, knowing it would either go over his head, or worse, make him misinterpret it. "Thank you," was all she said.
1645 ORLANDO ROAD, PASADENA, CA
7:32 P.M.
The in-flight computer had proven easy enough to navigate, once Leonard had found the main menu controls. Sheldon had, of course, memorized the addresses of Mrs. Latham's key properties back when he'd researched her, and true to his eidetic brain had never forgotten them since. It didn't take much time to figure out which of her Pasadena properties was the only one with enough room, and far enough away from the downtown core, to support a private helipad. Following Leonard's guidance, Sheldon took them down towards a rolling, wooded property surrounding a massive mansion; at the back, near the edge of the lot, a flat granite square with a huge yellow H waited.
Whether it was because landing was the one part of the flight simulation game Sheldon hadn't practiced much, or whether it was because the damage had finally gotten to the engine—and the engine sounded bad enough that that might plausibly have been the case—they touched down harder than might have been advisable, with a teeth-rattling thud and an unpleasant-sounding crunch from somewhere in the rear of the craft. Yells came from the passenger cabin. Sheldon shut everything down as fast as he could, looking paler than was his wont. "Sorry," he said.
"I think Mrs. Latham's insurance is probably good enough to handle that," Leonard said, squinting out the window. A small group of people were marching towards the helipad, and Leonard was pretty sure he recognized the one in the lead. He gulped. "Oh, boy. Here we go."
As they disembarked from the craft, Leonard was proven correct; the first figure up the stairs from the back lawn and onto the helipad proper was Mrs. Latham herself, a tablet cradled in one arm. "Hello, Leonard," she waved cheerfully. "Dr. Cooper. Hello, everyone. Dr. Cooper," she went on without pausing, "why did you send Mr. Rassiter to a comic book store in downtown Pasadena?"
Sheldon still looked pale, but drew himself up with some dignity. "If the former pilot of this vehicle told you where he was, then I've no doubt he told you why I sent him away. Are you testing me to see if I will attempt to conceal that from you?"
"Actually, yes." Mrs. Latham looked pleasantly surprised. "I wouldn't have thought you capable of that degree of psychological perception, Sheldon. You've improved over the past few years. Still the germaphobe?" She didn't give him time to answer, instead moving to Penny, who reflexively drew back closer to Leonard. "And you, young lady, I have to congratulate you. Brilliant public relations move."
Penny blinked. "I'm sorry, what?"
Mrs. Latham nodded in comprehension. "Yes, of course, you haven't seen it yet. The news channels have been full of nothing else—here, let me show you." She opened her tablet, brought up YouTube, typed a few commands and then held it out. The group gathered round to watch, but before Mrs. Latham could even click the video to start it, Lucy gasped and pointed to the title:
Angels Save FBI Agents from Helicopter Crash
"Oh, shit," said Penny. They watched in silence as the news reporter, a dark-haired woman, gushed over the event and played at least twice a jumpy phone-shot video of the crippled FBI copter landing hard in the parking lot. It ended with Penny telling the crowd, "Just call us guardian angels, okay?" and then her and Amy taking off back into the sky. "Whoever the Angels are," the reporter finished, "some of America's finest owe them their lives tonight."
Penny looked at Leonard, then at Mrs. Latham. "We're never going to get anything like our old lives back, are we?" she finally asked.
Mrs. Latham's smile was as close to gentle as Leonard had ever seen. "No, dear. I don't think so."