Chương 17: Accounting

All day with Christian was an event that might as well be no different than regular torture. Sitting in a concrete bubble in the desert could not have been worse than this. He was just so unnecessarily enthusiastic about everything when you put him on what he thinks is a good idea. We'd made it to about noon with just a non-stop drilling over suit colors.

"We could do purple at the gloves so that any like, dirt or gunk wouldn't stand out as much." I shouldn't have put him on that purple and yellow shit. I shouldn't have even brought the idea of colors up, but I had nothing else to do at this point because of the lockdown. This had to have been Tancred's secret punishment for insubordination. I wanted to do super bullshit myself, so now I was stuck with Mr. Blue Skies. May and Jairo seemed to have been content to entertain themselves in their rooms.

Four walls and a roof probably signaled safety to them more than it did for me. But I was stuck in this situation now, so I had to humor him.

"That sounds nice until you're in a position like me. I'll likely be on demolition duty most of the time since I can't go full force on people. So lots of concrete and wood dust on my hands, that'll stick out." Christian answered with a shrug before he spoke.

"I mean at that point getting dirty is expected. But maybe sometimes a bit of dust and all that would make things look better. I just mean in case you gotta do something gross before you do anything. Maybe Perry will have a better take on this!" Standing from the stool, Chris started moving for the door to the spiral staircase. I quietly watched in hopes he'd just keep going, but he had stopped to look at me.

"... You can't talk to Perry through the ceiling, dude. Come on!" God damn it. I followed after him, through the cafeteria, up the flights of stairs and down the hall before knocking on his office doors.

"Come on in!" Echoed, muffled through the door. Christian was the one to open it and lead us both in. Perry was watching the TVs from his desk, one of them going over a documentary on the Interstellar War. Aliens invaded in the 1970s, and it took every superhuman on the planet to fight them off until The Saint could physically reach their mother ship and throw it to Mars. We hadn't seen them since. But apparently there were still fragments, like that liquid metal the gangster had.

The TV was specifically going over a battle in Florida.

"Florida proved to be the safest part of the planet at the time," spoke the narrator.

"As expected, Florida Man kept K'lar presence off the peninsula if they didn't register as Floridian citizens. Those who said no exploded. Those who said yes did it to try and break into state lines. They were promptly turned into flower gardens." Never felt a better argument against going to Florida. Chris had noticed, and shot a question to Perry.

"So are you old enough to remember the Interstellar War?" His bald head perked up to us.

"Barely. I was six years old when The Saint dealt with the mother ship. I remember my birthday being in one of those big bunkers ConKing's son and Professor Kemp from the Jungle Brigade made. My dad gave me a twinkie and used a lit cigarette for a candle. I only quit smoking four years ago because my girlfriend told me she was tired of how it smelled like shit." Christian looked almost nauseated by that. I decided to fill in to prevent a diplomatic catastrophe.

"Least you made it out alive." Perry pointed a finger gun at me.

"Just one day after my pep talk and you're already hitting me with your own. You're a natural." That felt to be a worse outcome. The redhead saw the opportunity to do me the same solid I did him, and moved to the important topic.

"Leo and I were talking about the costume colors-" Perry's eyes started to glaze over.

"-and we thought maybe we could try a different color scheme instead of the orange and blue. We were talking about yellow and purple since it stands out really well and-" Perry raised a hand.

"I already know where you're going with this. I'm not going to call you dumb, I think it's good that you're considering your image. But I'm going to break down some numbers for you, okay? C'mere. Take a seat. You too, Leo." The two of us had followed his request and sat down as he slid over a piece of paper and a pen, beginning to write. First he wrote a large TM.

"So when you're making a superhero with the expectation they're going to be public facing, with a lot of merchandise like we're using for approval polling, you need trademarks for all of your proprietary stuff and anything you might sell. Trademarks come in classes, for things like paper goods for posters or the custom fabrics we'll be using for your suits." He then drew the number 350.

"Filing a trademark with one class costs three hundred and fifty dollars." He slapped a dollar sign on it. Following the 350 came a cross and the number 39.

"In your situation, just one of you takes up 39 classes of trademark." He drew an equal sign, followed by the number 13, 650.

"Thirteen six-fifty for just one of you for trademarks. There's another..." He drew a 125 after a plus sign.

"Hundred twenty-five for copyright registration so people can't easily make bootlegs or plagiarize your likenesses in any way." He drew another equals sign, producing a 13, 775 and put a dollar sign on it.

"Thirteen seven seventy-five." He then drew an arrow arcing down and away from the final sum to give himself more room on the page.

"Keep in mind that's for one of you, and we have to do this all just for the team itself." Another cross and the number 5, followed by a new equal sign. After that, the number 68, 875.

"It cost us nearly seventy thousand dollars. That is just above the median income for a tax household in Virginia of two people who are both working." He then drew a 40, multiplied it by a 52, and produced a 2080.

"That is two thousand and eighty hours of human life being spent entirely on just the bare minimum for making that blue and orange yours. This does not include the legal fees spent negotiating with the Broncos, Knicks, Mets, Astros, and Tigers to prevent any confusion among consumers." Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. Perry put the pen down.

"I don't feel like writing it, but if you want the numbers on that, triple the amount of money I just said and you're in the right ballpark. We'd have to spend all that, again, if you want purple and yellow. And that's not including the raw time factor for material prep and organization. That's not even including our merchandising costs for what's gotta be made. Those shoes you have?" He asked, pointing at Christian. Chris looked down, and back up at him.

"The FOB — the Free On Board — cost, the final amount it takes to make something and put it in a store, for a pair of shoes is about eight dollars right now. That's an average, accounting for material variability from differing shoe sizes. It's similar to pretty much any other merchandise we'll be putting out." The bald man rolled his hands about as he spoke.

"We've prepared for a very optimistic 20% approval rating from the eight point two million people in Virginia, so we had to prepare each item in capacities for meeting that number. That is one point six million people. At eight bucks a pair of shoes, that is thirteen million dollars paid for by taxes." The air went quiet while he let us ponder that.

"Just the shoes. Now we do that for shirts, hats, plastic dinner plates, bumper stickers, pins, lanyards, pens. And all that has been spent on orange and blue." This was getting ridiculous now.

"So what are you telling us besides no?" The words shot out of me. Perry put on a smile as he seemed to realize I got his point.

"Give it a year. Do well. We can review the approval ratings, see how much we didn't sell, how much we're going to lose on this — and yes kids, we're going to lose money on this — and then you can say that maybe purple and yellow will sell better. But for now you're wearing the orange and blue. Besides, your suits should be here tomorrow." Chris shot up in excitement.

"Our costumes are done!? Already?" The PR agent wiggled his hand a little up and down, prompting Christian to sit back down.

"We'd been working on most of yours for the past month, and the Hercules costume is so straightforward that it went through a very quick craft pipeline with already created materials. You'll be getting them in your theater program meeting. Did you get the brief on that yet?" Chris shook his head, and honesty compelled me to shrug.

"It's all news to me," I had to admit. Perry nodded.

"Makes sense, you've only just got here and yesterday was... busy. But you're going to have a couple of educators from theater coming to speak with you. You've got two teachers, one went to Juilliard and one was a professional wrestler." I cocked my head.

"A wrestler?" Whirling in his chair while he nodded, he turned to face the window behind him.

"Pro wrestling is all performance, and not just in the ring. A lot of wrestlers have to live their persona up to eighteen hours a day, six days a week." That actually made sense.

"He's been teaching at UVA for like sixteen years now too, so he's good at the education angle. And he hasn't quit wrestling entirely either, he still trains a lot of up-and-comers, so he's got a good finger on the pulse of what kind of performances work and which ones really flounder." In the corner of my eye I saw Chris looking like a kid in a candy shop. This was the most cheerful I had seen him, which was not a low bar.

"That's so cool! How much has this all cost?" Perry went pale.

"Kid, you're not ready for those numbers." He was probably right. I was already getting frustrated at the three hundred and fifty. But another thought crossed my mind.

"So where are we actually having the meeting? The common area in the base?" The agent shook his head.

"No, no. First floor." My head tilted.

"The cafeteria?"

"No. Did Tancred not- You know what, of course he didn't. Did you think the first floor was just a cafeteria?" The best answer I could give was a shrug, the second best was, "I assumed there was a kitchen and bathrooms too." Pinching his nose, Perry sighed.

"Leo, look at the size of my office. It's about the size of the cafeteria." He spanned his arms out, and when I glanced around, it did seem pretty close. The spanned arms then gestured past him and off to his right.

"And there's an entire separate office and meeting room on this floor. There's plenty of room for other rooms. And in this case, we have a separate rec room specifically for training, with showers and a changing room. You'll all be doing this meeting there. Civilians aren't allowed in the base area." Chris and I both nodded, and that synchronizing made my skin crawl a little. The redhead followed up with a question, "Is that where we're going to get a full breakdown on our rules of engagement?

Right now all we have is PG-13 and no dating supers." Perry shook his head.

"No, that's gonna be our Tuesday meeting. There's a whole docket but we're not giving that one out because Tancred hasn't finished his portion yet. He's been spending all day talking to the Charlottesville PD to speed up integrating you guys with the system. I know Eliza's handing out Blue Cards then, though. You're gonna get your SINs, kids!" That acronym bothered me a little.

"So what are SINs, just to be clear?" I asked. Perry clasped his hands together.

"I imagine you get it means Superhero Identification Number. It's just a random number that I think is based on your social security number, Uncle Sam keeps a database of registered superhumans with powers and all that so the cops can look you up and confirm you're a superhero. Keep the last four memorized and you'll be able to get through bureaucracy real fast." Chris spoke up after me.

"So do you have a SIN too?" Perry scoffed.

"Bud, I'm a regular guy. My only superpower is damage control. The only superhumans in this building are you kids." My eyes instantly shot towards Chris. I watched his face. His eyes didn't move out of the ordinary. That weird circular reading of faces he does, but nothing else. His smile didn't change. Real emotion. He was ignorant. Fucking Tancred.

"That makes sense. We're pretty rare," Christian conceded. Pushing up from my chair, I started walking without a word. Christian put a hand on my arm and it took a lot for me to not just yank him and watch him fly off like a ragdoll.

"Hands off," I warned. He let go, but I could hear his voice follow it.

"Just wanted to know where you were going, man." Was better to keep it polite, shook my head.

"Just wanted to check out the rec room. I know the meeting stuff now, and we got our answer on the color change, so I don't really need to sit in on this now." My feet led me out of the room. Down the stairs, I was down in the cafeteria area. Left hall led to a pair of bathrooms like I had guessed. Across from them was a door that lined up with where the kitchen was. Right hallway had to be the correct path. Down that hall led to a door which I followed through.

Off to my left I could see the other hallway that led to the spiral staircase. That made enough sense. Moving further down led me to a pair of windowed doors. The doors led to a gymnasium-looking area. Not a very high ceiling, probably twenty feet. Incandescent bulbs buzzed. The floors were matted. Two doors on my left wall, about thirty feet apart. Showers. The room itself was full of exercise equipment. The one that caught my eye was the heavy bag.

Something I could hit that wasn't going to pepper spray or taze me or talk about killing the world. Just a thing to be hit. I wanted to indulge. I didn't even notice how fast my approach was, but when I was in arm's reach, I swung out with everything in me. It sounded like a gunshot. The bag didn't move. I swung too hard for it to even try to resist. The spot I struck just gave way, loose debris from inside the bag spread out across the room. Some was embedded in the wall. Then his voice broke the silence.

Tancred's.

"Kid, you know how much those fucking things cost?"