The hovertaxi took a moment to calculate its path options and select a flight transit lane, before lifting off the platform and heading toward the boxy toilet plunger that was his mom’s new job. Zoe sat next to Malcolm, shifting invisible panels of what he presumed were office files that appeared to her through her glasses. He looked out the window as the lights of Shorai City at night once again amazed him.

  “Is everything okay?” he asked his mom.

  “Hmm?”

  “Is everything okay? You seem nervous, and I rarely ever see you nervous.”

  “What makes you say that?” she asked distractedly.

  “Well,” he said, “for starters, in the rare times I see you get nervous, you have a tendency to strap me to you. Like I’m one of those little kids with the leash backpacks. It’s like your brain stops and you can’t figure out what to do with me, so you bring me along.”

  Zoe paused for a beat, turning to her son. “I don’t do that! We’re in a whole new place,” she started, defensively, “filled with god knows what, and the apartment doesn’t even have a chair for you to sit down on. And there was no way for me to arrange for a sitter, and…”

  “Mom, mom, it’s okay,” he said, interrupting, “I wasn’t putting you down, I was just, you know, pointing out a tendency.” He stopped, trying to think of what to say next, before continuing, “Back in Hackensack, you would let me take a bus to the PATH, and head into the city on my own. I rode on every subway line alone. When you’re not nervous about something, you trust me. So when your first reaction now was to grab me and pull me along with you, I had to ask. Again, is everything okay?”

  Zoe regarded her son for a while, glasses dimming to an idle state. “You have always been so independent, and so stupidly smart. I know it’s not normal to let your kid free roam, but every day you seem to amaze me with how much you actually , you know that? And you’re right,” Zoe took a breath. “I tend to default to mama bearing when I’m distracted.”

  “Mama over-bearing.” Malcolm chirped in.

  Zoe squinted. “Fine, yes. Alright. Mama over-bearing. But fine, I get your point. The next time you want to fly off somewhere, I’ll let you soar.” She sighed. “I got this job under some strange circumstances. The lady that led a large robotics division had a bit of a breakdown from what I hear. She was eventually terminated, when she got a bit too volatile.”

  “You mean?” Malcolm asked, mimicking a hangman’s noose while sticking his tongue out.

  “What?! No, Malcolm! She was let go. The executive team hired me because of my background in both robotics and management. She was a robotics genius that was forced to be a manager. I’m a manager with robotics experience. I’m not her, but I’m going to be leading a team of very smart nerds, that all believe they know what’s best, and that I’m an interloper. If that’s not enough, I was just called out of the blue because there is an issue with a robotic line that falls under my department's responsibilities, and I haven’t even had an opportunity to read up on them yet.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “The same thing I did for most of my educational career, my three masters programs, and a doctoral thesis. Going to fake it and get by on my stunning good looks, and dazzling charm.”

  Malcolm rolled his eyes as Zoe gave him a big toothy grin, waggling her eyebrows. “Well, I guess it was fun to visit briefly before we’re kicked back to the mainland.”

  “Hey, now my… Ahh!” she screamed, switching from her patented affront to an actual scream of terror.

  A heavy body hit the top of the hood and rolled off into the night. Malcolm caught a brief glimpse of a Japanese demon mask before the figure vanished below them. A green blast shone out from the left. Port side? He was really going to have to learn these nautical terms if he was going to be zipping about the place in flying vehicles. Another three blasts fired off, each one further and further from their taxi.

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  Malcolm’s first reaction was to brace his mom, making sure she was okay, but after that, immediately he moved toward the front seat to get a better look. A team of costumed characters were leaping from car to car ahead and above them. Blasts and explosions filled the air as they made their way toward the figure, falling away through the numerous lanes of vehicles.

  As they neared, one of the people took to the sky, zipping around a slow moving freighter, and down toward the escaping figure. Green beams continually flew out into the night, but the flying person dodged them deftly before landing a seismic haymaker across the other guy's face.

  “Boy, I hope they’re the good guys,” Malcolm said, turning to see his mom’s panic stricken face.

  Taking in gulping lungful's of air, she finally shouted, “You’re sticking to me like glue mister!”

  ???

  So. That was a thing. Shorai City didn’t just have flying cars, mile high skyscrapers, and robot attendants. It also had super heroes and villains. Granted, the likelihood of the Mile High Yokai slamming into the trunk of your taxi on your first day in town is exceedingly low, it is not in fact, zero. In fact, Shorai City wasn’t alone in this occurrence. There were heroes and villains of all calibers across the entirety of Outage, or at least, so had Malcolm heard.

  After a brief period of ogling, Zoe put herself back together, while Malcolm tried in vain to spot where the heroes had chased the villain off to. Disappointed, he sat back down, but the rush of what he’d just experienced, still tickled the back of his brain. “Relax mom. They have heroes and villains back in Jersey too.”

  “Yeah, but back home they were, you know,” she paused, internally searching for the right term to convey to her son, “Lame. They were lame. Let’s face it, you could walk out of a Comic Con and be no different than any of the heroes on the street. But here,” she said staring out the window, “They all got powers. It’s a magnitude of ‘Awesome’ higher. It’s crazy dangerous.”

  “Mom, let’s be reasonable. An armed person on a bus or a subway car can be just as dangerous, if not more so than any villain here.”

  “Are you trying to get me to regret my decision of letting you fly solo in the past?”

  “No,” he said, dragging it out. “I just want you to realize that there’s risks everywhere. I’ll be fine. We’ll be fine. I mean, heck, the taxi didn’t even budge out of the lane. At best it maybe dipped a little.” Zoe began nodding along, slowing down her breathing to a normal, non-accordion bellows rate.

  The hovertaxi pulled into the grand entrance pavilion of Roboto Corp. Zoe and Malcolm made their way in through the doors, passed security and toward the C-Suite elevators. A soothing feminine but stilted voice said, “Welcome, Ms. Paterson. You are cleared up to, floor three, hundred, and fifty. The Executive Director for the Synthetic High Intelligence Technology Division, will meet with you on the, three hundred and forty second floor. Please, enter the elevator.”

  “That spells…” Malcolm started in a loud stage whisper, before his mom shushed him, mouthing “Zip it!” She made cutting gestures at her neck that let Malcolm know that he should cut it out, real quick.

  The elevator doors opened and they stepped in. Static buzzed briefly over the elevator intercom, this time with a masculine sounding voice stating, “Next Stop. Express to floor three forty two.”

  The doors opened to a large open office. Even at this time of night, it was filled with people, giving Zoe the impression of what was to come from her working there. They approached a receptionist’s desk and Zoe was told she was expected, but Malcolm was eyed askance.

  “Mom, I think it might be a bit too early for ‘Bring Your Kid to Work Day.’ Like, first day on the job, too early.”

  Zoe nodded, biting her thumbnail. He spoke up to ease some of her concerns. “Mom, look, how about I just go back downstairs to the lobby. I won’t leave the building or accept candy from strangers. In fact, I did see some vending machines down there, so I can grab a bite to eat while I wait. I’ll be fine.” Zoe looked at Malcolm, considering, before she finally sighed a breath of relief.

  “Fine,” she said, “Avoid accepting free drinks, free puppies, and free Roblox gift cards from strangers too.”

  “I make no promises outside of a disinterest in candy.”

  Smiling, she said, “Okay. You know you really do keep making things easy on me. Am I going to have to pay this all back by you turning into a jerk at 16?”

  “Of course not,” Malcolm said with exaggerated tones. “You’ve got a dedicated and responsible son at least until the age of nineteen, twenty tops!” With a scruff of his hair, and a hand on his shoulder, Malcolm smiled and turned back to the elevators.

  “I’ll be down as soon as possible, I promise! And after that maybe we’ll get something to eat, because I’m starving.” Malcolm waved as the elevator doors closed around him.

  Malcolm pressed the button for the lobby and pulled back to wait in the center. The same robotic male voice came to life and said, “DNA match accepted. Next Stop. Express to floor negative four hundred eighty three.”

  And that was when Malcolm began to float.