Author notes

PLAYING WITH FIRE, Page 27

alschroeder

on April 27, 2013

They're at the Complex which is the Next Level's headquarters, so Attractive feels free to show off, free from prying eyes.  More about that place later.
Mossad, for those of you who don't read a lot of spy fiction or know much about espionage agencies, is the Israeli intelligence organization.  Soul has used a number of names over the years, and changes them as needed.
 I wanted to show Attractive DOING something, so I thought her walking walls would work.  She could also make guns stick to holsters, teeth clench together, etc. Her power sounds trivial, but it could really be quite overwhelming.
Someone raised an objection to the new name, mentioning how Lore was Data's brother in ST: TNG. If I have to change Ashton Soul's cover name again, he'll start to be like Henry Pym or Jean Grey—more famous under his civilian name than his code name. Sage was a superhero in another superteam, Lore was a character in a couple of episodes of a sf TV show set centuries in the future.  The first is too close, but the second isn't.  I'm not going to worry about it. He's Lore—at least for now.  (Maybe Soul met with Gene Rodenberry and D.C. Fontana and suggested the name. Who knows?)
I like the dialogue here, nicely showing off Lafferty's sarcasm and cynicism,  but one point perhaps needs justifying. "Fruity" is not meant to be insulting, it just sounded more likely to come out of a native New Yorker's  thoughts than "gay". and any other alternative sounded MORE offensive, not less. 
Doubtless someone will take offense, regardless.  Yet sometimes you have to give a character his own voice, and that was what Lafferty would say. Sorry,