Monday – 5th of February, 2024

February 5th, 2024 – Monday: A little after 9 PM

After everyone left Jake’s place and make it to there respective homes. Katherine shows up at Garrick’s only to find him dancing and playing air drums when he thinks no one is watching. It’s so dorky it’s hard not to laugh. He stops mid air-drum finale balanced on one leg both arms raised in the air.

“So, stud, would you like a moment to super-glue your dignity back together?”

He straightens up and then breaks into a smile, laughing, “Oh, I think I am way past super-glue at this point!”

Garrick shimmies like he has no shame to loose anymore back to the worktable and begins humming, “After 11 months, 3 weeks and 2 days I have a breakthrough!!” He is stuffing some gray fabric with a very slight sheen on one side into a duffel bag, “Optimus please call Mrs. Falkenberg.” Katherine sees him smiling and looks around for his ‘maid’ but stops when she realizes he is packing his own duffel bag.

Shorty #1 answers, “Hello, you’ve reached the house of the future.”

“Shorty #1, please put your grandmother on the phone.”

Though muted Garrick can hear, “Hey Ethel, Garrick, is on the phone!”

After a few moments, “Yes? Garrick dear, how can I help you?”

He takes the time to make sure her day went well. He asks permission to stop by mentioning to Ethel that he needs to stop by before going out on patrol to drop off fabric for the project, 10 yards worth! Plus, he has the 3-D printed inserts based on the designs he’ll be bringing. He mentions that Katherine will be with him for measurement verification, before saying good bye and hanging up.

“Garrick, what did you make?”

“You’ll have to wait until I show Ethel, but could you please hand me that bag?” After she does, he stuffs it into the duffel bag alongside the fabric. They drive over and Garrick is so excited and animated that Katherine decides to wait to talk about her day. She doesn’t want the pictures to loose any impact and in this state he is not focused on her. It was kind of fun for her to watch him “nerd out” because he just didn’t hide his emotions when excited. He seemed to have some well trained automatic responses to things like making sure he opened the car door for her and shut it as well. Asking if she was comfortable, did he need to stop anywhere, and even mentioning the bottled water he brought two of in case she was thirsty. She reached out and read his surface thoughts and saw a flurry of images about a failed vambrace arm-guard, but the invisible fabric just had a breakthrough in light refraction manipulation via electric current. At a stop light she saw him sigh and the visual image was her in the shower. His cheeks flushed ever so briefly because at the green light it was visions of a jacket with removable sleeves, hidden armor inserts so it could be cleaned…
…followed by a string of profanity because some jackass cut him off and he had to slam the breaks to prevent himself from murdering the idiot on the crotch rocket cycle in front of him. When he was angry his mind was hard to read and she stopped her connection. His arm had swung out instinctively to prevent her from moving forward in her seat. He appeared very conscious of not actually touching her because he was merely and inch or two away from her breasts. He pulled back saying, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to insult you by suggesting you needed my protection, but my father always did that when he drove.”

He was very focused for the remainder of the drive over to the House of the Future. When they arrived at Ethel’s home, Garrick gives Shorty the foldable Samsung phone/tablet that had come out in October of 2023! It could create a virtual keyboard and track-pad when folded into certain configurations. Half of it could even become a drawing tablet for the built in stylus! Garrick had re-formated it back to ‘factory specs’ and then installed his game’s client software. Once Shorty thanked him and found out he could get online he disappeared even though Miss Amazing was there. Garrick told Ethel he would continue to pay the bill so he had access to the unlimited phone and data plan.

Finally came the big reveal. Garrick had been working on a way to make cloth that would turn someone invisible when charged to the correct frequency. He mentioned that to sew it would require leather sewing needles. The kevlar and carbon fiber reinforcement needed the stiffer needles to work with. Ethel and Katherine exchange looks when he drops a self deprecating remark, “I know Jake could probably invented three versions of this in a day, but this has been a pet project of mine for over a year! I think it could give Kat a great new outfit with armor and also parts of it can be worn as normal clothes! Just in case covert ops need to happen!” Looking slightly crestfallen he plunges ahead, “Well, I finally got the material to take on two colors, White & Black! Other colors should come with a few more weeks of testing different frequencies!”

Taking the second bag out of the duffel he clips to wires to the shiny gray cloth. He plugs the wires into a thin, candy bar shaped box and taps a white button on it. The fabric turns completely white! Then he hits the black button and it changes color to black! Ethel claps and mentions she saw something very similar on the other side of the galaxy during their trip! Garrick looks astounded that anything he thought up may have a counterpart out in the galaxy somewhere! Excitedly he rambles on, “Well, soon I should be able to get the prime colors or red, blue, and yellow. Then its just playing with shading and tri-lateral variations to get pink, mint and once I can get them all. I’ll be able to figure out how to get it to bend light around itself and make something invisible!”

He looked super pleased with himself and continued, “Well, Kat, I thought if we gave you a changing outfit maybe we could hide other tech in it to make people confused as to whether the power was in the suit or you! That way the spy group that made you could still think you’re dead!”

Ethel, was very nice and didn’t add the reason he mentioned to her when he asked for her help. Whenever he was excited like this the teenager in him was very visible despite being 27 years old. Katherine had never run across anyone that had been thinking of her well-being this much aside from the director whom was likely dead. He never pressed her for information, he took her at her word, he trusted her when others wouldn’t. Now he was trying to arm and improve her gear! No, he wasn’t Jake smart, but he was very intelligent and diligent in anything he did. She sent him a text of her sitting on the Atorian Starfighter in very suggestive pose, and the group selfie in front of it. Then she submitted to the many, many, measurements Ethel took of her on top of making duct tape body molds for various parts.

By the time they left for patrol it was almost midnight. When he finally checked his phone at 1 AM during a break. Miss Amazing found him excited and a smile with a confused look.

“Gryphon, what’s wrong?”

“I am turned on by your umm, pose in the picture and yet really excited you’re sitting on a real starfighter!!!”

Miss Amazing promised a full run down about the starfighter when they got back to his home! She seemed genuinely surprised he was appeared more excited about the starfighter, when she had a different run down in mind. A brief glimpse at his surface thoughts involved math equations, material density, heat ratio coefficients, her picture, thrust yield tests on the engine, what were the maneuvering thrusters like,….

 

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