As they walked in easy drill formation across the front quad toward the main entrance to the base, they passed the guys from the Green Kryptonite Platoon on their way to the medical center for their transformations. True that Max enjoyed the looks of envy and amazement on their faces when they realized who these NEW New Supermen were, but his thoughts passed quickly to more positive arenas – how great these guys were gonna feel as soon as THEY’D gone through it, what effective, Super-Cops they were ALL going to be!

He wished them well – they ALL did, waving to the flabby, unkempt, awkward middle-aged men (like they used to be) in green spandex shorts as the Reds continued to the front gate. Max knew that the next time he saw the Greens, they’d be as muscular and strong as his own Red group was now. That thought made him feel… well, it made him feel happy, frankly. Everything was making him feel happy – like he’d overdosed on some prescription anti-depressant – like the sun was a drug.

As soon as they’d passed through security, Sarge took them up to a jog. In their red spandex shorts and uniform black workboots, their new S-shields glowed in the noonday sun. The jog felt good. Max was surprised at how easy it was to move his impressive bulk. Big as his legs were, they seemed nearly weightless, they were so easy to lift – true, he had to change the WAY that he ran, getting those big thighs around each other – but it wasn’t difficult to do. And breathing wasn’t an issue, either. Max – a former athlete in high school and college – was always in pretty good shape, even if he’d always hated running drills, but this was easier than anything he’d ever done.

After about a mile, Sarge picked up the pace. Now a run rather than a jog, Max found the shift preferable – his body liked working harder. It sought the challenge. He was almost hungry to test his limits, if this new body of his had any limits. Within a few miles, they were at full stride, probably going twenty, twenty-five miles per hour – Max was aware of his body as a machine, but he floated above it in a meditative zone, an effect marathon-runners would describe.

He felt fantastic.

Running on this un-paved road somewhere deep in the Arizona desert, the hot sun beat down on them – they could almost feel it being absorbed by their muscle. Instead of getting tired or cramped or over-heated however, they just continued to improve, to feel better – more and more powerful.

Then Sarge, who was running in front of them, setting the pace and maintaining the cadence, called out, “See that boulder up the road there?”

It was about a mile beyond, but when he squinted and concentrated, Max was surprised to discover that he could see it. Could see it clearly. He laughed to himself – even his vision was improving!

“That’s about halfway,” barked Sarge. “We’re gonna take a little old-man break there!”

A chuckle from the guys – they knew they’d never be “old men” again.

“So let’s do a little sprinting. Race time gentlemen, on my mark…” He raised his meaty paw in the air, then lowered it suddenly. “GO!”

Max’s huge body moved so gracefully, as if unencumbered by his own muscle. The harder he ran, the more he pumped his arms, the further his stride, the better it felt, as if he could literally LEAP from the Earth and fly, chest up, arms out to his sides!

He passed Sarge with little effort, though he got the feeling Sarge wasn’t giving it his all. Or maybe, Max thought, maybe he WAS going to be the most powerful of the New Superman.

Just when he was entertaining that thought, as if only to keep him humble, Little Zelinski (and “little” was now a very relative term – Zelinski was certainly the smallest of the New Supermen, both stature and density-wise, but he was MUCH larger than professional bodybuilders equal in height – heck, he’d make Lee Priest look tiny) Little Zelinski was suddenly neck and neck with Max, and then zipped past and took the lead.

Max’s mighty legs pounded the ground, more powerful than a locomotive – he felt like he was causing tiny earthquakes with each stride (Little Z’s legs were almost a blur, they moved so quickly) -- but though he made Little Z work for it, there was no way Max was gonna catch the guy and win, no matter the strength of his will.

After they’d reached the boulder, slowed their pace, Max bent over and put his hands on his knees – he was surprised he had to catch his breath. Did Supermen get winded? On the other hand, it only took him seconds to recover, and the moment he stood straight, Zelinski jumped on him like a spider, latching his arms around Max’s neck and his legs around Max’s rib cage. “Gotcha, big man!” he laughed. “Little guy beats the big guy!”

Instead of being angry, or competitive, or a sore loser, Max just laughed. “Little guys for speed, big guys for strength,” he said, getting a quick shoulder-drop on Zelinski. As the two hit the ground, Max easily wrestled Little Z into a full guard (his legs on either side of Zelinski’s torso, his knees on Little Z’s biceps, sitting his weight on Z’s chest), a little schoolboy pin. “Can’t run if you can’t get away,” Max said, still smiling.

“You’re huge all right,” Zelinski said, tapping Max’s hamstring, just below the ass. It was Max’s cue to let him up.

“We all are,” Max said, helping Little Z to his feet. “Don’t judge yourself by me. Apparently, I’m a freak.” He brushed the dirt off Zelinski’s back and put his arm around Z’s neck as the Sarge started talking – the other guys had finished running while he and Z were wrestling around.

“I trust you approve of our little oasis, gentlemen?” Sarge asked, raising his arms to indicate their surroundings. It was a lake! A man-made lake in the middle of the desert (well, thought Max, probably SUPERMAN-made). Easily the size of a city block, carved from the rock and soil of the desert, it was filled with clean, inviting blue water that reflected the cloudless sky.

The men cheered.

“Thank you,” said Sarge. “I carved it myself. Enjoy.”

And so, they spent the high noon hours horsing around in the unrelenting Arizona sunshine, splashing and dunking and diving off the boulders on the shoreline. The guys wrestled and rough-played and informally determined their rank in the group – Max had seen it a million times before. He’d spent most of his life on football teams or in athletic fraternities. He understood the way a group of guys inter-related.

That’s why everyone pretty much left him alone. He was CLEARLY the biggest – and without peer among them. Sure, Rusty was close, but Rusty hardly displayed a “top dog” kind of personality. No, Max was the leader – no one would argue his eventual assumption of that role. (Though right now, he knew, he needed to be the student, to develop his powers and learn how to use them. Let their experience make him the best he could be.)

At one point, as Max sat there on the “beach” reflecting as he watched his brothers play in the lake, Aholelei – the beast from Hawaii – came over and began rolling playfully with Max, but there was nothing in it that was competitive or aggressive. It was obvious Aholelei was just goofing, expending teenaged energy.

“What are you doin’, A-ho?” Max asked, as he put the big Hawaiian on his back and locked up his legs.

“I’m just playin’” Aholelei said. “I can’t help it. I feel like a kid again!”

“It’s this freakin’ sunshine, man!” Max laughed, looking up and throwing his arms out to his sides, sitting his weight on A-ho’s hips. “Every time I think I feel the best I can possibly feel, it gets even better!” He roared, flexing his arms toward the sky. “Is this how Superman feels?”

Sarge landed on the ground next to them, dripping – he must’ve flown from out of the lake, Max thought. “You okay?” he asked Max.

“Do you ever get used to this?” Max asked, standing to let Aholelei up.

Sarge chuckled. “Powering up is a pretty heady experience, ain’t it? But once you get up to full power, you… get used to it… sort of. And I’ll teach you some techniques so you’re able to sleep and relax on your down time, limited as it’ll be. Enjoy the ride, is what I’m sayin’. Worse things could happen than you feel good”

With that said, he then organized them together in a loose circle and they started tossing boulders around.

Seriously.

“What a freakin’ trip!” thought Max. Sarge walked them all over to the big boulder they’d been diving off of – about the size of a car – and told Max to pick it up. “Are you kidding me?” Max asked.

Sarge smiled. “Watch the old man,” he said. And then he grabbed the thing in his outstretched arms, flexed his back and legs, and dead-lifted it up into the air – it wasn’t easy for him, but it would be impossible for anyone other than a Superman. Max – like the rest of them – stood there in awe.

Sarge hoisted it onto his shoulder, like a carpenter carrying lumber, as he made eye-contact with Max. “Ready?” he asked.

“For what?”

And Sarge called, “Catch!” as he tossed the boulder into the air.

And then it was coming at him – this huge freakin’ boulder that Max and several of his friends could sit and have lunch on – but here it was now flying through the air at him – it was almost too unreal for his brain to comprehend (he kept flashing on Road Runner cartoons and the Coyote with a tiny umbrella). There was nothing he could do but solidify his stance and brace for the impact… and the squishing his mind thought sure to follow.

So he was surprised when he caught it – when he felt the rock settle into his hands. Sure, he was aware of its great weight – being super-strong didn’t mean heavy things felt lighter, it just meant you were strong enough to lift it. No, nobody was kidding anyone – this was very big rock. .

Surprised or not, he held it – and was strong enough to control it. Yes, Max was able to press a boulder over his head – heck, he got reps! He got applause!

Then he tossed it across the circle to Rusty, who also handled it with relative ease, other than the awkwardness of its shape. HE shot it to A-ho, and they began to medicine-ball it right down the hierarchy. By the time it got to Little Zelinski, it was clear the guys were challenged by the boulder’s weight, but determined to succeed. Determination personified, Little Z overcompensated and flung it a little too hard back to Max, and it looked doomed to over shoot him.

But Max was in full-out football mode. Without even stopping to consider, he jumped into the air as if he were intercepting a long bomb deep in his own endzone, and he easily caught the boulder in mid-air against his S-shield – it’s weight smacking him square in the breast bone – and landed gracefully beside the Sarge.

The guys were stunned.

“Where do you want this?” he asked Sarge, unable to hide a smirk.

“Ah, put it down anywhere,” said Sarge. “Preferably not on your foot – that’d be a lousy way to end a rescue. And I’ve seen it happen.” Then he added, “Good job, rookie” with a clap on the back.

Max put it back in almost the exact same place they’d found it – it had been a good diving board. He dropped it the last couple of inches, just to hear the satisfying thud.

When he came back to the group, Sarge was lining them up, casting glances down the road. “Time to get a move on, ladies!” he called. “Green company’s coming up the road – they’re about ten miles out. When we pass them on the way back, we will not stop and chatter! It is not a social hour for you girls! I want you to run hard with your heads up and your chests out – I want your pride in your sergeant and your unit to shine brighter than the sun that gives you your powers! Do I make myself clear!?!”

And they all shouted, “Yes, Sargeant!” in unison so quickly and loudly that it echoed across the mesa.

God, Max loved this!

Their positions in formation had altered thanks to some of the horseplay and contests here at the lake. They weren’t lined up by size anymore, but rather loosely ranked by power. Max took careful note to see who was where, though he knew these ranks would change daily as they trained – he was especially pleased to see that Zelinski had moved up an entire row. Little Z would be running directly behind Max.

Very cool.

And so they took off back toward the base – this time, there was no pussy-footing around with the cadence. Sarge set a hard, driving pace – almost a sprint. At one point, he said, “They’re about five miles up the road. Can anybody see them?”

Nobody could – until they were about three miles away, then Max could make them out, dots on the horizon – he wasn’t aware they were men for another half mile or so – then they were muscular dots on the horizon.

A mile away, Max saw them clearly – the Greens, freshly transformed. At first, naturally, he was astounded by their muscle size (never forgetting that HE was even bigger – none of the green guys was much larger than A-ho), but then he found great amusement and distraction in the looks on their faces – the wonder, the joy, the unbridled enthusiasm, they were overdosing on the sun as badly as Max had.

Their sergeant led them at an easy pace as they “tripped” on solar rays. Max’s group steam-rolled by them, never even making eye-contact, though the Greens all turned their heads and stared at Max’s men with a drugged wonder. The sergeants greeted each other with a friendly salute, but the New Supermen minded their orders.

About a half mile after the meeting, Sarge turned to the group and said, “Puny bunch, ain’t they?” and the guys all laughed. Then he said, “Let’s pick it up, ladies,” and drove them even harder. The pace didn’t slack until they were about a hundred yards from the base entrance. Only then did Sarge bring them down to a jog. Once through the gate, he sprinted them to the barracks.

Max was surprised to find himself out of breath and sweating – did Superman sweat? In the slanted rays of the afternoon sun, it didn’t take him long to recover, but it still surprised him. Even Supermen had to build up their endurance, it seemed.

Sarge dismissed them to the shower and said he’d be back to get them for chow at seventeen-hundred – which gave them about an hour. Cheerfully, the men hit the barracks, stripping off their boots and socks, their sweaty spandex shorts. They joked with each other and horsed around – it was every locker room Max had ever been a part of. He loved it.

The shower area was a three-walled, tiled, slight rake to center-drain affair. The far wall had three shower heads, and either side wall had five. Without even stopping to consider, Max took the one in the middle, at the head of the room. No surprise that Rusty and A-ho took the ones on either side of him.

And the jocularity continued in the shower. They soon discovered that washing themselves was tricky to difficult to impossible – muscles that were so powerful and huge seemed to get in the way here. Laughing, they began washing each other.

It was a short step from there to goofing around, to mock wrestling, to flexing, both for display and competition, and finally to the first hard-on. Everything ELSE had improved when they’d been transformed. It shouldn’t be surprising to discover their dicks had as well.

Imagine a soapy shower full of these hyper-masculine, hyper-muscular guys with these translucent S-shields on their mighty chests and these huge erections pointing at the sun. It was a heady experience.

But Max had been part of the male group dynamic before – his high school football and wrestling teams, his college fraternity – same thing – this was an innocent but important part of the bonding process.

So without guilt, Max started beating off.

And that was what being a leader was – as soon as the guys saw and felt that Max was okay with it, they joined in. Be they straight, gay, single or married, guys were guys, and their brotherhood had reached a level that needed to be expressed sexually. Max had seen it a thousand times before.

They needed to be comfortable with their new cocks, too, as much at peace with their new packages as they were with their new bodies. There was no question that sex was going to be completely different for them now, no matter their orientation. They might as well start dealing with it together.

Standing there facing each other in that tight shower as the steam filled the room, they felt a love for each other with an intensity they’d never before experienced. They were blessed. They were brothers.

Max was close. “Guys,” he said, his deep voice bouncing off the shower walls, in this intense huddle, “’New Supermen’ on three! One… two… three!”

“NEW SUPERMEN!” they all yelled – and shot their loads simultaneously.

Max had never felt anything like it – and he wasn’t sure if he ever would again, that was how singularly unique the experience was. His orgasm rocked through his body, as if he were experiencing ALL the guys’ orgasm himself – that’s how connected he was to them.

And them to him.

He wasn’t even sure how long it went on – it felt like forever, like time stopped while they shot, while they experienced their first super-orgasms.

And when it stopped, they stood there breathless, the hot shower water pounding their traps and shoulders and running down their backs. Max was the first to speak.

“Whoa…” he said, still lazily playing with his softening cock. He looked at the other guys and cracked a slanted smile. “Was that freakin’ amazing or what?”

They kicked in their individual reactions. “Damn!” “Holy moley!” “Wow!” “That was incredible!” “Ain’t never felt anything like it.” Johnson, the aptly named, self-proclaimed “lady’s man”, he of the heavy chain and matching bracelet types, said, “Think how good pussy’s gonna feel.”

“Think we’re still gonna be able to HAVE sex with regular women?” Rusty asked, already soaping himself up and rinsing off.

“What do you mean?” asked Johnson, defensively. “I ain’t queer!”

“No. I mean, what’s gonna happen when you let go and really start thrusting? You gonna pound her through a wall? Huh? You see the force of our orgasms a minute ago? You think that’s not gonna knock her into next week?”

“I don’t know…”

“It’s gonna be different is all I’m saying. We’re gonna have to be ready for that.”

“What about all these married guys? What are they supposed to do about sex?”

“We’re married,” said McGrath. “We don’t have sex.”

A laugh – Rusty, who was married himself, included.

Johnson grunted and turned to face the nozzle of his shower, in final rinse. “They better be making some Super-pussy is all I’M sayin’. I ain’t giving up sex to be a superman.” With that, he grabbed his faucet and turned it off with a jerk – the knob broke off easily in his hand.

They all looked at each other silently for a moment. “See?” said Rusty. “Imagine that’s her tittie. It’s gonna be different.”

Johnson snorted, tossed the knob to the floor and strutted out of the shower, his big cock bouncing before him. “I ain’t givin’ up pussy,” he said. Then, in the bunk area, naked with his arms in the air, he yelled it. “I AIN’T GIVIN’ UP PUSSY!”

Some cheers from the guys – some catcalls.

Rusty shook his head. “Boys…” he said, then he looked at Max. “Present company excluded.”

Max chuckled. “You’re only sayin’ that cause I’m bigger than you.”

Rusty smiled, nodding his head. “Yup.”

“We’re all boys compared to you, old man,” cracked A-ho, smacking Max in the gut with the back of his hand.

Rusty addressed him casually. “Am I bigger than you?” he asked, sticking his head under the faucet.

“Yeah…” A-ho said suspiciously. “So…?”

“So shut up.”

They ate dinner, though no one really felt hungry – Max was surprised that he ate little more than he would’ve at his old size. “The sun feeds you now,” Sarge told them. “You can eat whatever you want, however much you want, and your body will metabolize it completely – which is good. We ARE shirtless in uniform.”

McGrath, one of the bigger guys – big enough to sit at the head table with Max, Rusty, A-ho and Sarge himself – chuckled and said, “That means I don’t have to drink Lite Beer anymore.”

“A drunk Superman,” chuckled Rusty. “That’s all we need. Bad enough these over-sexed youngins…” (He punched Max in the shoulder. Max smirked.)

“Drink as much as you want,” Sarge said. “Your body will metabolize it as fast as you take it in. All drinking is for us now is TASTE – food, too…” He snorted. “Drugs, too.”

“Oh, great,” said McGrath. “What’s left?”

Sarge flexed his left biceps and made sure they were all looking at it. “See that? he growled. “You get that – you get the power, which is better than any drug in any dose or any beer ever brewed or any pussy ever put out before you. You get power. And if you think you’re tripping now, you won’t even be up to full strength for another week.”

They sat there at the table flexing their biceps at each other and laughing. When Max finally gave in and flexed his melon-sized peaks, even Sarge said, “Damn!” under his breath.

Yeah, better than any beer.

He taught them how to relax, how to sleep – “You don’t need to rest,” he said, “but you DO need to dream.” So they learned meditation techniques to keep the power at bay, like learning to sleep on super-charged caffeine, on the banks of an electric lake. The first night, Max barely SLEPT more than an hour, but after a few days, he was able to manage six or seven.

On the second day, they were jumping up onto the roofs of the buildings – one story, two stories, then finally three. In the intoxicating morning sunshine, Max overcompensated with his huge legs and leapt OVER the three story building – in a single bound! How they laughed.

Zelinski was the first to fly, though. On the fifth day of their training he just took off during a race – it looked like he was doing a long jump, except he didn’t come down. “Holy cow!” he yelled. “Look at me! I’m FLYING!” And he zipped up into the sky.

“Don’t go too high!” Sarge yelled after him. Then, under his breath to the rest of them, he said, “Little guys always fly first.” The he flew up after Zelinski, calling back to them, “I gotta show him how to land.”

Flight seemed to be the thing that kicked them into high gear, empowered them, intoxicated them, gave them the iron will to commit to their new roles. If any had any doubts about being a New Superman, flight took them away. Even Johnson, who never stopped talking about his eventual super sex-life – or lack thereof – changed his tune when he started flying.

Force of will. The old TV serials and movies would make it seem like flight was a sustained jump - - a bounce on a hidden trampoline that propelled you up, invisible wires that hoisted you into the sky. But for Max it was just the opposite. He forced his will against the ground until he felt resistance – could push against it, almost – and his body was lifted. And Max had quite a lot of body to lift (no surprise that he was the last of them to get in the air).

Flight was everything he’d dreamed it would be since tying a towel around his neck as a little kid. Intoxicating in itself! Because he wasn’t propelled by an engine, he could fly in any physical position he chose, standing, sitting, whatever. That they adopted the flying style of the comic book heroes – or the mighty S-Man himself! – was purely an aesthetic choice.

Truly, they spent as much time on the WAY they flew – whether to point their toes or not, Sarge would joke – as they did perfecting their skills. Still, Max didn’t care. He could fly all day and never tire of it. When Sarge would bring them to the ground and make them run, they’d all moan in disappointment.

The second week, after their powers had developed enough that their attention could shift away from that aspect of their transformations, they focused on their police training – integrating their powers into daily responsibilities as cops.

There were a few slight modifications – for example, the rules for “in plain view” changed. With their vision powers, little remained hidden from the New Supermen – the search for drugs or concealed weapons would be a whole lot easier.

They would be able to eliminate dangerous car chases, learning three different ways to stop a speeding perp, which they practiced in the back lot: grabbing the back bumper and lifting the back end of the car off the ground (before chase starts); flying beneath the car and lifting it off the road (when chase is on-going); standing in the vehicle’s path and letting it slam into you physically (last resort – only if car/ truck has airbags, best if used during initial acceleration during getaway). Max enjoyed practicing for that – a speeding car denting up and mashing itself into junk because it slammed into YOUR thighs was a pretty heady experience!

They did classwork, too, reviewing law and suspect rights and everything they were supposed to have learned in the academy. Max found himself able to remember everything on a page after barely more than a glance – “Tell me I have super-MEMORY now, too!” he thought, wishing he’d had that power when he’d been in academy the first time.

Work and train, train some more, everyday something new – rescuing people from burning buildings, holding back avalanches, standing in the line of fire. The first time Max stopped a bullet with his chest, he was surprised to discover it stung! It didn’t cause any damage physically, but he FELT it! He thought being invulnerable meant not being able to feel pain, but in truth, it just meant he couldn’t be harmed. It hurt less when he flexed and the muscle was hard, even less when emotionally charged, but all in all, bullets bouncing off his chest was less exciting than he thought it would be.

They also took this seminar on Social Adjustment: Living in the Real World. There they discussed strategies for day to day activities when they weren’t on duty – managing their personal lives, their families, the media. The Sergeants, having been transformed for nearly half a year now when Superman began putting his plan in action, spoke very informally with the recruits about what to expect – even, much to Johnson’s chagrin, the difficulties in managing a sex life with non-super partners. To Max, it felt more like a father/son “going out into the world” talk than a class.

And then it was graduation, presided over by Superman himself! It reminded Max of his police academy ceremony – the hundred graduates in their New Supermen uniforms, polyester police pants, black work boots and leather sidearm belts, bare-chested, showing off their massive bodies and luminous S-shields, seated on uncomfortable folding chairs before a small stage where the ten Sergeants, the two Captains, and the gigantic Chief (who was just a hair smaller than Max – who was just a hair smaller than Superman) talked at length about their mission and their duty to this new brotherhood. “Nothing like this has ever existed before,” the Chief boomed. A man in his late fifties or perhaps early sixties when he’d been transformed, he had the look of a mature bodybuilder, of the iron-hard football coach whom no one would DREAM of contradicting. “We expect great things,” he said gruffly, “both the Man of Steel AND myself: the man of iron!”

They laughed.

Superman spoke eloquently, earnestly about his dream for them, even shook their hands as they received their Certificates and new Badges. Half a head taller than Max, they were virtually the same size muscularly. When they shook hands, Superman nodded in approval, saying, “I’ve heard about you, Officer Malone. Seems like you’re the fast-rising star around here. Make me proud, son.”

“Thank you, Sir,” Max said. “I’ve always dreamed of being Superboy.”

Superman winked, and then shifted his attention to the next graduate.

After the ceremony, when the cadets were packing their duffels and flying off to their home cities, giving each other handshakes and pats on the back and promises to keep in touch (which should be pretty easy for super-powered beings), Zelinski approached Max and leaned against the bunk as Max finished packing. They were both still in uniform.

“It’s not like San Francisco is all that far,” Zelinski said. “What’s it take, four… five minutes to fly across the country?”

“I’m sure we’re all gonna see each other a lot,” Max said. “They’ve got the web-site set up, we’re all gonna be linked via wireless-headsets – what did the Sarge call it? The Big Blue-tooth?” He laughed.

Zelinski stepped up to Max and grabbed Max’s substantial package, massaging Max’s balls through the uniform pants – Max didn’t pull away. Instead, he started to get hard. “”That’s not what I meant,” said Zelinski, pressing closer. He came up to Max’s collar bone. “I’m sayin’ that if you get tired of being careful sexually, you fly out to me and we’ll go full out. You dig?”

“I didn’t know you were queer, Little Z,” Max said, smiling.

Zelinski laughed, stroking Max’s chest. “I think more of us are gonna be as time goes by, that’s what I think. I think all that careful fucking they warned us about is gonna be incredibly frustrating to men like us. And there are times when even Superman needs full-out, hard-thrust pound-fucking pig sex, you know what I mean?” Z squeezed Max’s growing hard-on. “I can tell you do.”

Max smirked. “I never said I wasn’t queer, Z. I just know our profession – I try to be discreet.”

“Please don’t be discreet when you’re fucking my ass. Feel free to make as much noise as you want – grunts, groans, moans, whatever. Let ‘em hear you in Kansas, for all I care.”

“Think it’s gonna be like that, do you?”

This time Zelinski smiled, licking his lips. “I know what I could do BEFORE I became one of the New Supermen – I can only IMAGINE what my ass could take now. You want to find out?”

Max did. Before he knew it, he was flying a side trip to San Fran. Why not? He didn’t have anywhere to be before he reported to work on Monday.

In a dense bank of cirrus clouds over the Sierra Nevada mountains, Max and Zelinski acted out a scene that was happening all over the country as the New Supermen arrived home to their wives and partners. The only difference was, Max and Zelinski’s lasted for days and spanned the globe.

A great way to begin a new life. •