been ten thousand dollars in the split bag, and four more bags stuffed with money lay at my feet.
* * *
Of course I took the money. I took the bags, and even stuffed several wadded handfuls of burned 20s from the spilled bag into my pockets. I’d gone out to try to help people, to try to do some good, and ended up almost killing them.
I didn’t blame Atmosphero for that. As much of a hard-headed asshole as he was, the guy saw a dude in black doing creepy shit and went to town. That’s how they are.
Now, these were a bunch of hardened criminals who tried to riddle me with bullets without even thinking about it. If not for Atmosphero, the police would have showed up, and I would’ve been a big hero, and that made no sense to me. At least one of those robbers was seriously burned, but the cops would have patted me on the back and sent me on my way. Maybe I would have gotten the keys to the city.
Was that what it was to be a hero? Was that what I wanted?
Not really. But even then, there wasn’t a seminal moment when I had the epiphany to go bad. It wasn’t like that at all. I didn’t wake up one day and decide to be a villain. It was a series of small steps, each one leading you farther down the downward spiral. I doubt the real bad guys, the monsters the whole world fears, started much different than I. One mistake, then another, and before I knew it, I was the bad guy.
I’d failed out of the system. None of my gifts, intellect, or aptitude could make up for the shortcomings of the world around me. They weren’t willing to accept me; there was always a rule or an angle in place to dull my edge. High school was bullshit, full of idiots and cowards, so easily intimidated by my potential. I never studied in high school and every one of my teachers knew it. There was a very quiet push to get me chucked from the advanced placement program my senior year, but it never materialized. When that failed they decided to override my grades, not enough to fail me, but enough to keep me out of the better schools. I aced every class my senior year but ended up with a report card full of “C’s.” my first thoughts were uncharitable to say the least, but instead I sent out my college applications, my perfect SAT scores pinned to them, and included a three hour video of me disassembling and reassembling every appliance in the house. That was the hardest work I’d ever done.
Needless to say, some dean saw the talent and accepted me. College was the first time I cracked a book, mostly because I had to pay for them. There were some challenging classes, but I excelled. It took three semesters to get kicked out. The same bullshit as high school, except there was no law forcing them to keep me. That couldn’t keep me down, though. I managed to get a job, a friend of a friend needed an idea guy in his engineering lab, and I was his guy. He used the words “limitless potential.” What’s the point of limitless potential in such a limited atmosphere? Meetings led by bags of hot air whining about missed deadlines, blind to the time they were wasting. And the emails? Who would’ve thought something as simple as the freedom allowed by email could be so easily perverted into a tool chaining you to a desk? In the end they fired me rather than accept that their company had more chores than work. If they’d unshackled me, given me the money and time to work, we’d all be billionaires. Instead, they told me I wasn’t a team player, not a good fit for the working environment, and sent me on my way. The pink slip was taped to one of the walls of my lab.
I was destitute, no degree, no prospects save shady ones, and to tell the truth, the whole situation pissed me off.
One night, soon after the bank robbery debacle, I was at some dive near my East Hollywood apartment. I was drinking some Jack Daniels when this guy walked into the bar, opened up a splitting fat wallet and dropped a hundred on the bar for a few drinks for him and his date. I sat there