4

Hunched over his computer like a mad scientist, a fitting description to the genius-level physicist if there ever was one, Sheldon typed almost a three hundred words a minute at his laptop as a man possessed. Long drawn out scientific equations flowed from his fingertips like water from his brain to the monitor through his mind. To the normal man, they were meaningless jargon for the origins of the universe, Advanced Einstein physics to the Nth degree and formulae to explain everything from gravity to molecular attraction. Nothing could quell his attention at this moment except maybe his body desiring substance. A rustle of a doorknob, the sliding of a latch and his roommate and colleague Leonard Hofstadter returned carrying carryout from the Chinese restaurant down the block.

"What did you do to Penny?" He stood there at the door under the muss of curly brown hair, thick glasses and that defeated state of existence. His voice was annoyed and frustrated. It was almost always like that in this apartment.

"I don't understand the question." Sheldon extended his had as if he was baby bird looking out from the nest for the first time. "Do you mean my confrontation about my ruined t-shirt?" He stood and strided over casually to eat at his spot on the sofa.

"I asked you not to bother her with it." Leonard responded both embarrassed and annoyed.

"Exactly, I acknowledged your request…" Sheldon stood and paused for this discussion. "But the damage was done, and I considered it prudent to bring it up in case she ever does laundry for us again."

"But I didn't want you annoying her with it!" Leonard tried to re-emphasize his point.

"Oh…" Sheldon finally got the point. "Well, then you should really have made your point more clearly." He took the takeout bag from Leonard. "Honestly, Leonard, if you really desire to reach a state of coitus with this girl, you are really making a hard effort at it. I mean… there should be a much easier way to do it."

Leonard could only posture and grimace silently in his pained embarrassed torture. Living with Sheldon was like living with a former psychopathic android programmed especially to drive him crazy. The nut had no understanding of the human condition much less personal boundaries or decorum. None of those human traits had been programmed into him, and if they ever had, that cold analytical brain of his must have erased them as illogical outdated beliefs he didn't think he was required to know in society.

"Whatever…." He stood in disbelief. "Here's you new stinking t-shirt from Penny!" He tossed his extra package at Sheldon trying to bounce it off his head like Penny had bounced it off his. Catching it out of the air, Sheldon grinned like a demented little boy and peeled back the protective wrap, sniffing the interior.

"Ah… I love new t-shirt smell…" He grinned, started to turn away then stepped back. "I wonder how she got it so fast. You know, you can order these from New York City."

"Who cares?" Leonard grimaced and set out the five containers and drinks. The other plates were for his friends Howard and Rajesh, colleagues from Cal Tech, and Penny, should she decide to come by after her encounter with Sheldon. Behind him, the two entered the apartment without casual introduction as usual. They appeared in high spirits. Clad in a blue shirt and tight dark pants, Howard was bursting with significant news and Raj was in a hurry for him to tell it.

"Guys…" He couldn't stop grinning. "Businessman Charles Switzer was discovered murdered this morning!" He continued smiling. Raj was about to burst out laughing.

"I didn't know you found the obituaries so amusing." Leonard look back at him.

"No, not him…" Raj had stepped back a bit to remove his jacket. "It's what happened at the investigation of the murder scene."

"Yeah…" Howard took the floor. "They had no idea who had did it, but then his business partner was dropped out of the sky from twenty-five feet by a certain blonde goddess wearing a certain Kryptonian cutie's costume." He grinned exuberantly. "Do you realize what this means?"

"A short murder trial?"

"No, forget about the murder!" Howard became annoyed and followed Leonard to get forks for the food. "Don't you see? Her appearances in the area are escalating! She's got to live somewhere in the area if her appearances in the vicinity are going up."

He followed Leonard back over to the food. "I've got it all posted on my website. The figures are there. She's drifting south!"

"Maybe she's heading down to Mexico for Mardi Gras." Sheldon remarked. Admittedly, the whole current "Supergirl" phenomenon did fascinate him. He believed in extra-terrestrial life, but that was mostly because of his devotion to science fiction. He had read the article from New York City a few years back where a police sergeant revealed that the girl claimed to be the daughter of Thor and Aphrodite sent to Earth to save humanity from its own sins, but what frustrated him was that instead of the objective and scientific scrutiny of the case it deserved, Howard had devoted his attention to it through his pants. Hormones and a driven lust to want to bed her fueled his attention to the alleged girl. He was not the only one. There was numerous websites directed at solving and displaying the evidence she existed, but most of them were fueled fan boy fantasies. Some of them had photo-shopped images of every blonde female icon from Britney Spears to Taylor Swift in that familiar comic book costume. There were very rare sites along with Howard's that seemed to track and post the reputable evidence the debated girl actually existed.

"Look," Howard sat down with his choice of Chinese carryout. "I've been studying her since her first reported appearances in Detroit. In the beginning, based on an operating flight perimeter of a hundred and fifty miles, she had to have lived there because 97.3 percent of her activities occurred there. She then must have moved to New York City because Detroit dropped to 3.8 and the Big Apple jumped to 98.6. The following year, New York City dropped to 33.8, and Boston shot up to 63.5. By the following fall, Boston was down to 11 percent and San Francisco was up sixty percent. Now, if my figures are right, I'm predicting Pasadena to keep going up. I'm telling you, guys, you lives somewhere around here."

"Dude, you've got way too much time on your hands." Raj took an egg roll.

"Yeah, but…" Leonard sat eating egg foo yung. "Hasn't Los Angeles gone up by 18 percent?" He slurped up a noodle.

"Only because it's so close by." Howard stuck to her beliefs.

"Hi guys…" Bridget stuck her head in the door looking for the food. The guys always shared what they had with her as long as she paid her seven dollars for her share. They'd been doing it since she had moved into her apartment in September of 2007. Trying to ignore Sheldon, she became struggling actress Penny Parker once more and pulled the computer chair over to spend the time with the guys. Sitting across from Raj, who drew quiet in her presence, Bridget reached down to partake in the meal.

"So…" She chose the shrimp and rice first. "What science fiction movie thing are we discussing this time?"

"Supergirl…" Leonard announced between bites. "The real one…"

"Oh, her again…." Bridget mused secretly. She always got a kick about hearing what they were saying about her. "What did she do this time?" She sat back pretending to be oblivious.

"She caught a murderer over on the North side…" Howard revealed over his dish. "Man, I would do anything to meet her, but NASA won't let me hack into their systems to track her flight patterns."

"Good for them…" Bridget ate a small shrimp in sweet-and-sour sauce.

"Penny, I've been meaning to ask…" Leonard spoke up. "You know, Sheldon thinks she's an evolutionary mutant, Raj thinks she's the daughter of ancient former deties and Howard's views are a bit x-rated…." He paused a minute to clear his mouth. "You've never told us what you think she is."

"Well…" Bridget found herself on the spot. "Uh… What do you think she is?"

"Personally, I think she's got to be something extra-dimensional…" Leonard looked down to look for more of the moo goo gui pan. "Maybe from another alternate reality where comic book-like characters actually exist and she just sort of got… trapped here."

"Honestly, Leonard, alternate realities?" Sheldon's pomposity spoke up. He knew he was a genius; the bad news was that he thought he was superior to everyone else. Everyone stopped and looked at him in stunned silence. He paused, ate a piece of shrimp and lifted his head again. "Do you really believe there could possibly be alternate worlds tangential to our own?"

"Einstein suggested it." Howard spoke up. In Bridget's presence, Raj could barely speak out loud unless he had alcohol to loosen his free will.

"Only by the loosest interpretation of his work." Sheldon disapprovingly shook his head condescendingly. "Dimensional beings? Demigods? Penny, do you want to know who she really is?"

"Oh, I don't know, …" Bridget lightly stirred her ingredients. "I never really thought about it. I guess I just figured she was a regular girl with extraordinary gifts. You know… like psychics and those guys who bend spoons with the power of their mind."

Sheldon made his odd chortling noise in trying to laugh. He was always amused by Penny's belief in the paranormal.

"Psychics…" He mumbled flippantly at the topic. "Penny, once again, you are vastly uninformed and I must correct you." He paused for the short breath that started his long tirades as the guys groaned in advance. "This girl is obviously a human mutant, someone exhibiting the prowess and abilities from the next evolutionary rung of human evolution…"

Bridget looked around in disbelief toward the other guys who had heard this rant before.

"Like myself…" Sheldon continued as Leonard reacted in embarrassed disbelief. "Whereas my abilities have increased my brain's ability to store and more intuitively process mathematical and scientific data, her attributes are more physical and possibly mental as per her ability to fly. Therefore, her future chances to successfully propagate progeny along her lines without regressing backward along the evolutionary scale, she would have to find a mate who is equal to herself in human evolution. Of course, as her only real peer on this planet, that would be me."

Upon hearing that, Bridget suddenly felt her stomach heave and its contents burning their way up to her throat. Her mouth over her lips, she rushed over to the guy's kitchen sink and lowered her head just as the Chinese food came pouring out of her mouth. The mere image of her and Sheldon… she did not want that image in her head. Leonard lifted his head confused, and Howard and Raj shared looks at each other.

"Was it something I said?" Sheldon remarked and checked the kung pow chicken.

"Penny…" Leonard set his plate aside and came up to check on her. "Penny, are you okay?" He handed her a towel.

"Yeah…" Bridget washed and wiped her mouth. "Something just went down the wrong pipe." She was going to have nightmares for weeks if not months. Sipping some water from a cup, she tried to recompose herself. "I haven't felt this nauseous in years."

"You know," Sheldon turned around. "You could be menopausal. How often do you ovulate?"

Leonard spun around in shock with his embarrassed hand to his head as if he was trying to hide behind it. Was there anything sacred to Sheldon? Did he have to ask that out loud? Bridget just looked at him with her eyes narrowed in disgust and her head shaking slowly in disbelief. If she did not like Leonard so much, she'd never come over here. It seemed as if Sheldon was constantly trying to top his last flippantly embarrassing question.

"I'm going back to my place to lie down." Bridget started heading to her apartment. "And gargle…." Howard popped up from his sat and started to say something.

"No, you are not coming with me!" She yelled at him.

"I wasn't going to say that." Howard reacted slightly offended. "I was just being a gentleman."

"Whatever!" Bridget opened the door and headed out with her right hand to her abdomen. Her chest was burning from the stomach acid in her esophagus, but it was taking a while to go away. She needed bicarbonate to settle her nerves. As she turned through the doorway to her third floor apartment, her senses suddenly increased. Through all the sounds and incidents her higher brain functions and subconscious filtered through, she was becoming aware of an incident. Shots were fired somewhere in the range of her clairvoyance. There was a police chase on the Los Angeles freeway, and someone was going to get hurt unless she did something.

"Great…." She burped up some gas. "I hope I don't vomit over someone…"