A couple days ago you told me about the winter holidays from your world not being called Christmas or New Year's day, but kind of a joint version of them called Winter's Crest. Seeing that you're kind of a night owl unless you have somewhere to be the next day I made an extra trip to the Giving Tree today as they were getting rid of some Christmas decorations. I got a broken Christmas tree and took some time fixing it while some code was compiling on a scheduled update. I gave it a red star mentioned in the Winter's Crest fable you told me about. It's on the same table where I left the clothes last week. I know it's not much but I wanted to give you something, even belated, to lift your spirits this holiday season. Oh, since you mentioned your Dad was 1/2-American and 1/2-Turkish and your mother was Lebanese, I made some Dolmas and Tabbouleh dishes and left them in the fridge.
8:45pm; "Garrick?" Patsy called out holding the note taped to her door as she walk over to the balcony ledge looking down on to the training area. He wasn't there and as she looked up she could see the plastic tree with lights plugged into an extension cord running to the wall. It was blinking and the red star was the brightest light upon it. Just like the ancient tale of the star that scientists determined was a comet that passed her Earth granting strange powers to some of the world's first powered super beings. Then it hit her that it was Tuesday, he was at the Giving Tree shelter serving dinner and helping out.
Patsy began to study the prodigal scientist that use to be Garrick Faulkner, his father Cuthbert, his sister Adeline. He lost his mother when he was 8 and the father continued to raise both children. Cuthbert was considered by many to be an analytical genius with a Doctorate in Medicine, a Masters in Robotics and Cybernetic Technology, and a second doctorate in Nuclear Engineering.
Garrick really did design a bio dome engineered to be modular, house 10 people at a time, combine with other domes for larger domiciles, and provide redundant systems to prevent single point of failures before repairs could be implemented. Apparently, his father Cuthbert contacted a personal friend and they created Dalus Dome Incorporated to protect Garrick's vision of nearly free housing that had one amazing feature. They could be installed ANYWHERE! Cuthbert designed a mini fusion reactor to power each dome for 50 years before cores required replacement. Garrick managed to come up with a way to process the surrounding environment so the Bio-Dome would begin to convert its structure to blend into the environment as much as it could without degrading the quality of life for the human occupants inside!
When Alpha Prime returned and began to dismantle the Daedalus Project's infrastructure with her fellow galaxy cops. Garrick had already had to bury his father. His sister had also sent him a letter telling him that "he" got their father killed. She never wanted to see him again and any further contact will only be accepted from his lawyer to hers. This news actually broke Garrick according to psychological evaluations and he snapped joining a fringe anti-alien group in an attempt to steal some of the tech back. There were more psychologist notes that while the group wanted the tech to attack the aliens Garrick just wanted to continue his work.
Then from 2016 to 2019 Garrick spent 3 years on Gramercy Island in "A" Block for the hijacking a semi-truck with a group of thugs consisting of color punks and members of the anti-alien group. CSPD was on them to quickly and the official report says everything was recovered according to the victim, and this was interesting, the victim name is redacted! Warden Harker's review reports look like copies of each other with dates and minor details changed. Notes in the margins by Garrick indicating these are fake, citing multiple stab wounds, beatings, and one stint in solitary in an attempt to get him to snitch on his cohorts. Garrick never broke and was released after only three years from a review board that never actually saw Garrick. 3 years of probation and he was free and clear.
Heading upstairs she finds the doors open and she noticed his room could be a home for most families, and a larger version of hers. While she didn't go through anything she did open and close a number of them seeing clothes and collection of a robots built from a red and blue semi truck. It reminded her of the GoBots from her world. The big change was the industrial grade 3D printer he had in a portion of his room. Then she bumped into his 10ft. by 15ft. table that lit up and she realized the transparent surface was in fact a touchscreen tablet. On the screen was notes about scanning her to try and see if radiation she gave off (like all living things do) might be the angle to finding the frequency her dimension vibrated at. Then if that experiment worked could a "tuning fork" be made creating an antenna allowing her access to her powers once more? 'Wait,' she thought to herself. He was actively sketching out designs, working over metallurgist reports about radioactive exposure trying to find a material that could work as a dimensional tuning fork!
When she touched the screen to slide the digital-papers out of the way she found recipes for food from the Middle East. He had a checklist of dishes to try until he got a list of ones she liked. Still other notes revealed his attention to details was astounding, there was a paper titled 'How to make Patsy feel at home until Operation: Go Home and Stop Murder Master is ready.' One of the items mentioned was to not date and bring them home as it may make her feel uncomfortable. 'Huh, maybe he is not actually trying anything, he could still be gay,' she thought and laughed again. Then she found a paystub among the digital papers and saw that he was paying everything fine, however, he had adjusted his savings to accommodate $800 off of each check so she could have enough money to hide and research whatever she needed.
There was a digital stack of papers about how to make those without powers feel like heroes. They talked about honoring police, fire department, EMT's, and all the civic jobs no one cares about. How to make sure your meetings with others nurture relationships and grow self-worth in others. How to find self-worth in your personal life, and a paper about imagining a world without heroes. There were pictures of Garrick dressed up as Santa Claus that Patsy called Father Winter from the Giving Tree. Finally, there were notes about the injector syringes and the name "Fat Lucca" everywhere with question marks. It was apparent Garrick was trying very hard to balance his mundane and super hero duties so everyone was taken care of.
The sound of machinery begins in the background.
She sprinted out of his room telling Optimus to put everything back as Garrick left it when she heard the garage door open up. The master bedroom doors closed behind her and she further asked Optimus to shut down her research profile on Garrick immediately, but crank the music up. As Garrick pulled in to the garage the Call of the Deep band was blaring out the speakers downstairs. She ran into her room and hopped into the shower knowing he must have known how open he had left his info and access. She was a little worried about how he might react if he saw all the work she had dug up going into verifying his story. However, when he got out of the truck he did not get on the PA system and went straight for the stairs in a rather deliberate fashion.
"Yes, but I'll clean the washer off in a minute," Garrick said and Patsy noticed the scars and old faded skin noting stab wounds and remembering the notes on the files from Gramercy Prison. She looked worried and he held up a finger as he touched one the the steel rings he wore, and spoke.
A swirl a golden colored mercury ran over him like an animated wave of water. When it covered him completely it burst into mist and he was standing in boxer-briefs just a smidgen tighter on him than he wanted. He had an angelic beauty about his form at that time. He outstretched his arms not unlike Jesus on the cross, "Please heal me, Ashmadiel, my guardian angel." He began to glow bright yellow and steam rose off him for a scant few seconds. Then he lowered his arms and said, "Take from me the might of the Gryphon." Once more the golden mercury washed over him and he shrunk back down to 5 foot 8 inches from the 6 foot 6 inches he was a few seconds ago. His looks while the same were plainer, mortal, and healed!
"I think I only took about 10 punches between all the sobbing and we talked about our fathers, and I even explained I served time for acting out badly in Gramercy. Let me tell you Gramercy scares kids and adults alike. He looked at me and I told him to not make my mistakes and put that fist away unless he's defending some child here. He finally started to wind down and everyone looked relieved, but no more than my jaw did!
Some nice backstory revelations here with some interesting hooks. Garrick's been keeping pretty busy – hopefully he doesn't have too many irons in the fire!
So is it Him falling for Her, or is it Her falling for Him?? I guess we will know soon enough.
Only one beer and he opens up- cool, we can use that! Lightweight!