Fog Bastards 1 Intention by Bill Robinson Page B

breath, hold it, close my eyes, grimace slightly, and jump as hard as I can. Don't know how high I got, but when I open my eyes, I'm well above the Outrigger hotel just next to the bay, and it's 12 stories. I am also well out over the ocean, the wind in my face, dropping toward the dark surface below. I am scared shitless and screaming like a little girl. I hit the water hard, slide quickly 20 feet or so below sea level, and then bob to the surface, my swim trunks and nose full of water and slimy something. It didn't hurt, except that I have no manliness remaining, and I have to spend a couple minutes treading water, cleaning out my pants, portals, and pride.
     
     
I swim to shore with a couple strokes and a few kicks. I look back and have literally left a wake behind me. I turn to the ocean and do it all over again without the screaming. Then a third time and a fourth. The last time I end up a long way off shore, my brain thinks at least a mile, which makes me sure I have this part down, and I'm enjoying it. Actually, I don't know what jumping into the ocean has to do with saving the world anyway.
     
     
There's a car, an old school Civic, parked on the side of the road. I get a crazy idea. Walking over, I stand in front of it, reach down with my right hand, and lift. I get the front end a couple feet up before I realize there is no way to get under it without damaging it. I put it back down, walk over to the passenger side, reach back down, tilt it up and then put my left hand on the underside. Ten seconds later I am walking down Ali'i Drive carrying a vintage automobile. I go 100 feet, put it down, and discover I've bent the side panel in. I decide to leave the car where it is.
     
     
Ok, so not really sure what I'm doing. Running, it occurs to me, running is safe. I do what I used to think was a jog, but is probably faster than I can run when I'm me. Down Ali'i and then up the big hill to Keauhou shopping center, then up the bigger hill to the Queen's highway. I've run three miles up roads that are as close to straight up as any road I have ever been on, at 20 plus miles per hour, and it's nothing, not even breathing hard. As a side benefit, the running has dried my clothes.
     
     
At the top of the hill I turn right at the stop light, heading away from town, and put the hammer down. It doesn't look anything like it does on TV. Nothing appears to be moving fast, but it does. I think I'm getting sea sick. The rocks and grass are moving at normal speed and they are zooming by me at the same time.
     
     
I ignore the ground and focus on going faster. The air pushes back. Am I at the speed of sound? On the ground? Like a hound? Alright, so I am too happy being this fast and my inner Dr. Seuss is coming out. I work harder and push faster, even as the air fights back. And then there is no sound. Which means I'm found, on the ground, in one big bound.
     
     
A real thought hits me. If you can run 100 times as fast as a normal person, then you have to be able to think 100 times as fast as a normal person, your nerves have to impulse 100 times faster than normal, etc., etc., and I do not think any of that is happening. My brain is still the same screwed on sideways lumpy thing it always was.
     
     
I stop. I have traveled 10 miles or so up the road, in about a minute, my rough mental calculation says I averaged about the same speed as my 757 in total, though obviously faster at the end. I look back at where I have come, and utter one of my less nice epithets. The road is a disaster. I walk back toward town at normal human speed, passing my footprints which are about 15 feet apart, and six inches down into the road surface.
     
     
The spot where I broke the speed of sound is obvious too. I generated a shock wave, the same thing that creates a sonic boom. From where I stopped back to that spot the entire road is ripped, bent, torn. Lumps of asphalt litter what was the road surface, and the shoulders as well. Three miles of