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"I spoke to my cohort leader today," she said. "He tried to dissuade me, but I told him I was going to."
"So you're free to start straight away?" he asked.
Ness grinned at him. "What time is service?" she asked, he laughed.
"Stay for service tonight," he said. "And you'll get a feel for how we do things here. I'll put you in a few different places in the kitchen and see how you cope. Then tomorrow morning we can work through all the paperwork with the owner. I can offer you a job starting at forty-eight thousand but, if you are as good as I think you are, that will soon increase."
Ness looked at me. I raised an eyebrow.
"One thing," she said. "I have a pre-existing commitment at Christmas. I know it's a busy time for you, but this year only, I'll need the Christmas break off. I'd imagined to be at school this year, so I'd made plans.
I pushed a little, making him think that if he refused this, then he'd lose the chance at working with the best new chef he'd ever encountered.
"That will be fine," he said. "We're closed from 24th until 2nd in any case. Since it's so close I can see how you might have already made plans. But from then on, you'll have to commit to working through most holidays. Those are often our busiest times."
"Of course," she said. "I know that kind of goes with the job." She did glance at me for a moment, and I wondered if she'd seen my interference.
"Excellent," he said. "Normally we'd not be open tonight, but we have a function booked in, and so we're prepping for that."
"Looking forward to it," she said.
He looked at me, rather pointedly.
"I guess," I said with a grin, "that I'll get out of your way. Have a good service."
They both looked at me. Suddenly I was the outsider, and in the way.
I turned and left the kitchen, heading for the door.
"Caleb," Ness chased me out into front of house.
I turned around.
"Sorry," she said. "I'm just so excited. That was horrible of me. Thank you so much for this. I love you."
She pulled my face down to her level and kissed me.
"Ness!!" the shout came from the kitchen. She released me and grinned.
"Yes Chef!!" she shouted back, heading back through the doors.
I drove to the airfield, and was just in time for my afternoon flight.
I was asleep by the time Ness got home that night, but I saw her the next morning, curled up next to her sister in the bed as Sarah, Melanie, and I got up to go to the Dojo.
When we got back, she still hadn't surfaced, so I made breakfast. I guessed that I was going to get to do a lot more of the cooking now, since Ness would simply not be there to do it. I didn't mind, I liked to cook.
Ness came into the kitchen just as the others were leaving to go to school. I was due at the airfield, but not until mid-morning.
"So," I queried, "how did it go?"
"It was amazing," she said. "It's one thing going to school, or cooking at home, but it's an entirely different prospect working in a real kitchen. Everything happens so fast, and you have to keep so many things in your head, all at the same time."
"You're going to accept his job offer then?" I asked.
"I already have," she said. She looked at the clock. "I'm due in work in an hour."
"You want some breakfast?" I asked.
She shook her head. "I'm going to really have to watch what I eat," she said. "You're pretty much always grazing in the kitchen, tasting everything you cook. If I'm not careful I'll put weight on."
"Well just remember what Pops said," I reminded her. "Don't forget your family."
She came around the table and climbed into my lap.
"How could I?" she asked. "I know we'll be seeing a lot less of one another, now I'm working, but that's going to make the time we do get to spend together even more special."
"Just remember we love you."
"I know," she said a thoughtful expression crossing her face. Then she looked a little uncertain.
"I am doing the right thing," she asked, "aren't I?"
I smiled at her. "You've wanted to do this since when exactly?" I asked.
"I don't know," she said. "As long as I can remember."
"Then you're doing the right thing," I said. "We're all going to have to think about how all our jobs fit in with our relationship. I guess it's a part of growing up. You have an opportunity to do something that you've wanted all your life. Grab it."
She grinned at me. "I need to get ready," she said. "Traffic this time of day is a bitch."
When I got to the flying school, Danny was stood waiting for me, a clipboard in his hand.
"Today," he said, "we're going to do a practice check ride. I want you to imagine that I am your DPE, and we'll be flying the flight that we already prepared for your check flight. Okay?"
"Sure," I said.
"Then we'll begin," he said. He cleared his throat and in an official voice introduced himself as my DPE told me what we'd be doing and invited me to start my preflight inspection of the aircraft.
Just over an hour later I finished the shutdown procedure, having completed the flight. I looked across at him.
He grinned at me.
"Do that tomorrow," he said, "and you'll have no trouble. My only concern is that your DPE will wonder how someone with so little stick time can fly like you can."
"I'm a prodigy," I grinned back at him. He snorted.
As we sat there, the Baron taxied up alongside us and shutdown. I looked across to see Arnie, with an older man, going through the shutdown procedure.
"The school is busy I see," I said to Danny.
"It is," he said. "It's getting to the stage where I'm going to need to employ someone to run the office. Arnie and I are spending nearly every hour flying."
"And you'll be getting another plane when the Baron goes back?" I asked.
"Actually," he said, "my friend with the school in Vegas is looking like he's going to retire. There were some complications with the surgery, and I don't think he's going to be able to pass the medical to fly commercially. He's not too upset, he was getting to the age where he was considering it, but it just brought it forward a couple of years.
"I'm hoping to be able to buy the Baron from him," he said.
"Wow," I said. "What does one of these go for?"
"Brand new they're about 1.5 mil" he said. "This one is a bit older, but he's still looking for six-fifty for it."
"Six hundred and fifty thousand?" I asked.
He nodded.
"I'm going to have to finance it," he said. "I'm hopeful the bank will back me. There's enough work on the books to show it's a good investment."
While Danny and I had been talking, Arnie's pupil had left, and Arnie had gone into the office. A moment later he came out, shouting and waving an envelope. Danny and I looked at him, then at each other.
Danny opened the door of the aircraft.
"What is it?" he asked.
"The NTSB report on the crash," he said.
Danny jumped out of the Cirrus, and I followed. We walked into the office.
Danny sat at one of the desks and started to read the report.
"Coffee?" asked Arnie, I nodded in the affirmative, and he made us all a mug.
"Bastards," Danny said, after nearly a half hour of reading.
"What?" asked Arnie and I together.
"From what I understand," Danny said, "there were no safety wires on the prop bolts."
"What?" asked Arnie. "How can that be?"
Danny flipped through pages on the report, and read, then flipped some more and read some more.
"It looks like," he said, "the mechanic that installed the propellor was interrupted as he did the installation. There's no record as to who finished it, but it looks like when we asked to rent the plane, someone simply bolted the spinner cap on and sent it down to us. There was nothing in the maintenance log that I got with it about the prop being changed at all. "
"So, it was a maintenance issue?" I asked.
"It looks like the bolts weren't even torqued down properly. There's nothing in here to say why the mechanic had been interrupted. From what I read, he took ill while he was changing the prop, and then was out sick for the next three days. By the time he returned the plane was gone. He figured someone else had completed the job and thought nothing more of it."
"Don't these things all get signed off?" I asked.
"Supposed to," he said. "But the shop might do the paperwork after the job is completed. Since there's no record of who put the spinner cap on, there's no individual that can be held accountable for the accident, but that still leaves the maintenance company liable for it. I would guess that we, and you, will be hearing from them very soon, looking to head off some kind of litigation."
I grinned at him.
"You think you might get enough to buy the Baron?" I asked.
Danny looked thoughtful.
"I don't know," he said. "Arnie was just too damn efficient in getting you down without a scratch, there are no injuries to be compensated for.
"What about mental anguish?" I asked with a grin.
"Did you need counselling? Go to see anyone? Any documented evidence?" he returned. "If you did, then you might go for that. I suspect that they'll offer us a cursory amount and hope that we go away."
I thought about that.
"You think I should initiate proceedings?" I asked. "Maybe file a lawsuit for a couple of mil and see what happens?"
"If you have a lawyer," he said, "then I'd go speak to him or her. I'll give you the case number for the report. Your lawyer will be able to get a copy."
I had a thought then, but I didn't voice it. I'd speak to the lawyer first and then see what happened.
I called Pops once I got home and spoke to him, and a few minutes later his lawyer called me. We talked for a while.
Wednesday morning was my Ethics class, my only mandatory attendance class in all my courses.
I'd arrived in to school early and dropped off an assignment to one of the professors. Most of them were happy enough for them to be emailed in but for some reason this one was old fashioned and always required assignments printed out and presented old school. He also gave extra marks, or rather deducted marks, for presentation. Putting the assignment in some kind of binding, and making it look pretty, got extra marks.
It made absolutely no sense to me, but if I could up my grade by jumping through some easy hoops, why wouldn't I?
"Today," said my Ethics professor, "we're going to revisit a topic we've touched on before but from a slightly different angle. It was a topic that interested me, and I have spent some time considering it for myself. I'm going to start the discussion by setting a couple of boundaries.
"I want you to imagine that there is someone in the world, who has powers beyond what we would consider normal. What these powers are don't really matter. Whether they can fly, read minds, jump tall buildings in a single bound, whatever. They have powers that we do not.
"If history, tells us anything, it's that anyone who is different from us in any way, gets persecuted, ostracized, attacked, and even killed just for being different. For this reason, our superhero has to maintain their anonymity. If their powers are discovered then they will be in for a whole heap of trouble, and we're not going to discuss the reasons for this. That is a whole separate topic. For the purposes of this discussion, we are going to stipulate that they need to stay in the shadows.
"With this in mind, I'd like to discuss the ethical dilemmas of such a person."
He looked around the room. I waited for someone to talk.
"What powers?" asked someone.
"Does it matter?" returned the professor.
The person who'd asked the question thought about that.
"Not really," said Dana.
"Explain" said the professor.
"The question is not about specific cases," she said, "But in general. So, no matter the superpower, it's not about the powers, but whether the person with them has the responsibility, or right, to use them to interfere with other people's lives just because they can.
"If we're accepting that they need to be anonymous, then there's no way to ask for consent. It's purely down to the person with the power to decide what is right for other people."
"But surely they have a social responsibility to do what is right," said someone else.
"For example?" asked the professor.
"Well, if they see a crime being committed, and they have the power to stop it..." they returned.
"It's easy," said the professor, "to cite extreme circumstances. Someone's life is in danger, and yes you would expect someone with powers that could deal with that to step in. But what about the lesser crimes? What about pickpockets, fare dodgers on the subway, or jay walkers? These are all prima facia crimes, but would you expect our superhero to deal with them?
"Also, what if our hero is a Healer? Do they have the right to intervene without consent? Are there any other circumstances where a Healer might intervene that might have other reasoning. What if a woman conceives a child they didn't want, and healer could prevent that child being born?"
"Abortion is wrong," shouted one of the Kumbaya crowd. It was the same one I'd walked into the trap some time ago regarding choices.
"I don't intend to get into specific topics like that," said the professor. "I was just mentioning them to encompass the range of ethical dilemmas that a superhero might face, without the opportunity to discuss them with anyone else, because their primary concern will ALWAYS be to maintain their anonymity."
"In reality," I said, "having extra powers doesn't really change the dilemma we all face every day."
"Explain," challenged the professor.
"All of us," I said, "every day, make decisions. We see things that we could, possibly should, get involved in, and we make decisions as to whether to intervene or 'mind our own business.' Our superhero has exactly the same choices we have. They could call the police if they see something that shouldn't be happening, they could involve the correct agencies, or give advice to people, support people who are ill without using their powers. They have all the tools that we have. But they also have more.
"Also," I went on, "things aren't always simple. Just because someone has superpowers doesn't mean they can do everything. If they involved themselves each time they see something that they could intervene with, they could soon become swamped, getting deeper and deeper into a morass until the only way out would be to reveal themselves.
"Ultimately, just like everyone else, they have to rely on their own upbringing, sense of morality, and knowledge of what is right and wrong, when they make the decisions. And just like everyone else they will make mistakes. It's the scale of those mistakes that might cause problems that normal people might not encounter."
"I'd agree," said the professor. "With or without superpowers, we all have those dilemmas. We all have to decide whether or not to take action, and we all have the capacity to help or to hurt. We've already discussed the difference between right and wrong, and legal and illegal, and our consensus was that they are not always the same thing.
"But when it comes to the actual argument, of the ethics of someone with superpowers, it seems that they are, by necessity, exactly the same as the ethics of everyone else. They must make decisions in the moment, and they must live with the consequences, whatever those turn out to be."
I left the classroom and headed for lunch. Dana caught up with me.
"It's not simple is it?" she asked quietly as we walked.
"In no way," I said, glancing around to see who might overhear our conversation.
"Gracie told me," she said, having also looked around, "that the guys who attacked her are not having a good time in prison."
I smiled a grim smile. "No," I said. "I guess they wouldn't be."
"Are you going to leave them like that for ever?" she asked. "I know what they did was wrong, but surely..."
I stopped and looked at her.
"Answer me one question," I said. "If Gracie had died that night, how long would she have been dead for?"
Dana bit her lip.
"Caleb, she didn't die," she said.
"That was their intent," I said, my anger stirring a little, "and were it not for Jeevan and I, the likelihood is that she would have."
"But..." she said.
"Dana," I said. "You have no idea what happened to her. I could show you, but it would give you nightmares, possibly worse, and I wouldn't do that to you. Judge Roder did initially order me to reverse what I'd done, until I showed her Gracie's memory of what they did to her. That was when she changed her mind.
"It's possible, that one day I'll undo what I did to them, but I know that were I to go anywhere near either of them just now, I'd likely do far worse. I'm still way too angry with them."
"Couldn't someone else..." she asked.
"Nobody else is powerful enough to undo what I did," I told her, "and even if they could - I'd be angry at them for doing so. And before you ask what right I have to do something like that to someone, then ask yourself what right they had to do what they did to Gracie, and to the many others that they hurt, terrified, or killed. Gracie certainly wasn't the first.
"I'm sorry if that changes your opinion of me, but those two men are getting exactly what they deserve."
Suddenly not hungry any more I turned and headed for the door. I needed some time to cool down before heading toward the airfield.
I arrived at the school in plenty of time. As I entered the school, an older woman, probably in her early fifties followed me. I held the door for her, and she thanked me with a smile.
It was then that I found out that she was to be my DPE. Arnie introduced us, since he'd met her before.
Later, as we sat in the plane, listening to the engine tick as it cooled, she looked at me.
"Looking at your logbook," she said flipping through the pages, "you don't have nearly enough hours to fly like you do."
"Pardon?" I asked.
"You grew up in the country?" she asked.
I nodded.
"Tell me, did they use crop sprayers around where you grew up?" she asked arching her eyebrow at me.
"They might have," I hedged wondering where she was going with this.
"I've come across students before," she said, "who fly like you do, like you have much more experience than your logbook would lead me to believe. Most times it's because they've had some unofficial, and illegal, I might add, stick time."
"I've never flown a crop sprayer," I said, perfectly honestly.
She gave me a long look, then spoke again. "Well, as I said, you fly like you've had much more experience than you apparently have. Congratulations, Mr. Stott, you've passed your check ride."
That night at home, I had to cook my own celebration dinner since Ness was working. Already I was regretting her getting a job. I missed her terribly.
Thursday morning there was a letter from the waiting for me when I got back from the range.
Dear Mr. Stott.
Regarding your application for the position of Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
We would like to invite you to attend a 'Meet and Greet' session at the Seattle Field Office located at 1110 3 rd Ave, Seattle, WA 98101-2904.
It gave a date and time to attend, which was the following week, and a number to call if I were unable to make the meeting and needed to reschedule.
I looked at my diary, and realized I'd have to get Mary to reschedule a couple of my hypnotherapy appointments so I had that day clear. I also looked to see how long it would take me to drive to the Seattle office, just over three hours, depending on traffic.
After Ness left, I cleared away the breakfast dishes and headed for the airfield.
Danny looked up as I entered the office, he smiled at me.
"How's it going?" he asked.
