BetaGirl had been keeping herself rather busy and mostly out of the pages of the tabloids, mores' the pity. I don't watch the network news very much and didn't even blink very much when the top news story at Drudge was "Meteor Approaches – End of Life on Earth CERTAIN!!!!!!" Drudge is always wound up about something, but he does link to any updates from my own web site, so I can't much fault him for getting a tad excited. It did seem to be a pretty big hunk of rock quite capable of pulling off another mass extinction event killing off 98% of all life on earth, like the Cretaceous "dinosaur killer" strike 65 million years ago.
There is not much point in being a mad but 'reformed evil scientist' if you don't get to play with forbidden technologies like radical magnetic pulse launchers and massive particle beam generators. I was going to do everyone a favor and quietly blast our incoming uninvited extraterrestrial guest into a few billion pieces of safer rubble that should do nothing scarier than provide a nice light show as they burned up in orbit, but there was just one slight problem. That whole project was still really just in Beta, and not ready for prime time use. My crew of highly paid assistant fellow mad scientists told me that my "super-weapon" was almost finished, but required much more testing before using. No one ever conquered the world by using a beta-version of anything, and we cut every time corner down to the last few seconds before I felt secure enough to press the button to blast that incoming massive hunk of nickel-iron into rubble, virtually at the very last moment as it was starting to enter the earth's atmosphere.
I then sent a few emails around to Drudge and few friendlier news outlets saying "No worries, I blasted that big bad space boulder! Yea, Me!" and parked myself off to bed early to watch the Sci-Fi channel 'Disasterthon' I'd recorded earlier of "Meteor", "Armageddon" and "Deep Impact". Some of our secret space alien watchers would probably be unhappy about my saving the earth, but screw them and their round grey heads. If they wanted to debate the point with me I'll use my new toy against their bright shiny spaceships and see who gets the last laugh!
There was a bit of bitching from the usual eco-freaks about all of the meteor dust that was now in the atmosphere. It would take a few years to entirely go away but even the most aggressive estimates didn't project it to displace more than 1.3% of the earth's incoming sunlight. We'd get a slight touch of global cooling and some pretty red sunsets for awhile – sounds better than species extinction to me, but some folks are never satisfied.
It was early the next morning I learned that BetaGirl was now alleged to be "missing" after her own attempt to stop the meteor, but I didn't think twice about it (I knew she was a tough girl and a survivor) until I found her washed up on the beach of my private island in the southern Bahamas the next morning, when I did my morning walk.
She was breathing, but just barely. She didn't seem to have any major injuries, but her normally invulnerable skin was a mess of small cuts and bruises. She looked like she had gone on a date with Mike Tyson.
All I could tell at first was that she was nude (and pretty), and I assumed that she was just some party girl who had fallen off of a yacht and washed ashore that way. It wasn't until after I picked her up and started to carry her back to my fortress that I recognized her face. As none of her injuries seemed critical, I cleaned and bandaged her up the best I could and put her to bed in a guest room and left her alone to sleep. I then phoned a temporary nursing agency in Andros City stating I would pay top rates for a trained nurse (preferably someone one with an adventureous streak and a sense of humor) and would have a helicopter waiting to collect her in less than a hour.
Normally, according to the Evil Overlord Guidebook, the "Fair Maiden" should never be left unsecured in rooms full of bolt cutters, gasoline cans, knives, scissors, lockpicks, bandsaws, fire axes, chain saws, plasma cutters, electric drills, submachine guns, hand grenades, flame throwers and the like under the assumption that simply because she is unable to leave the room, she is helpless. In her case, I just left her door open and unlocked. Normally, any of my evil minions who ever left any prisoner alone and unsecured would themselves be left alone and unsecured in a very secure room full of angry bio-tech enhanced wolverines. In this case, I was going to make an exception.
Every test I performed indicated that BetaGirl had apparently now somehow lost her powers! Hopefully, this would improve her temperament, but somehow I doubted it.
She slept for the best part of two days, but woke up long enough to drink some water given to her by the nurse and then she went right back to sleep again for another full day. She woke up hungry the next time, and we fed her some soup in bed. She wasn't delighted at all with my company... but she was hungry, so I left the room after making my 'hellos' and left her to fume at the nurse... who turned out to be invaluable. I hired her permanently and put her on the company pension plan. Our medical benefits package had been a bit weak anyway.
BetaGirl stayed in bed for most of the next week while she regained enough strength enough to even be able to sit up in bed. She could only walk in a stiff shuffle at first, and tired out extremely easily. Her wounds seemed to heal very slowly and she was sore all over her abused body, but her mind and memory were as normal. She tried giving me a good deal of lip during my evening short visits with her, but even her nurse told her bluntly to be ungrateful and "shut up and be nice, or leave", and that I'd done everything quite properly and her rescue had been performed in a very gentlemanlike manner in all respects.
I told her bluntly after our first exchange of not so witty repartee that I'd have a helicopter or seaplane standing by to take her anyplace she wanted to go... when she wanted to go. If she couldn't walk, fine – I'd push her wheelchair to the plane myself. If she was going to be a 'guest' then fine – start acting like one, or she could fly or swim her way somewhere else more congenial to her. She bit her lip and vaguely nodded. I guess she thought it was going to be "Zombie Girl - Part 3" and it took a good deal of explaining to convince her that I'd already had my revenge and holding grudges is very counter-productive in the evil mad scientist line of work.
She'd destroyed three of my private and personal pieces of real estate, and put me in a back brace for nearly a month before a really good chiropractor straightened me out. I, in turn, had taken some non-sexual liberties with her personage and made a few entertaining videos, but otherwise, no harm – no foul. I'd gotten my Presidential Full Pardon, royalties were finally flowing into my bank accounts and I was almost in the mood to be creatively constructive and invent new and useful things, for the first time in several years. The slate was even as far as I was concerned, but it took her about another week to shake my hand and agree for us to start on a clean slate.
*****************
After about two weeks of convalescence, BetaGirl was able to shuffle about well enough now to start getting around in the fortress. I offered her a flight or a boat ride out, but she didn't seem to show any particular interest in leaving just yet. She started to take normal meals at the main dining table with me, and spent most of her days sunning on the upper patio deck or going down to the beach to take gradually longer swims in the warm Caribbean waters.
She made a few phone calls to report to her bosses that she was "Ok, but taking a rest for awhile", which they seemed increasingly unhappy about. Apparently, AlphaGirl was giving them some fresh hell about her absence.
