Superior - Chapter 11

Chapter 11: Themiskyra

“Th-that’s your mother… In both of the images.”

I usually had such a good grasp on reality. Whenever I was flustered or confused, I’d either keep it to myself or verbalize it as calmly as I could. But now I was stuttering. This had to be some sort of joke, because the implications of what Jane was showing me weren’t physically possible. They… they shouldn’t have been physically possible.

And yet, there they were.

The left photograph was black and white, yellowed with age. It depicted what appeared to be soldiers from the First World War, all posing in victory. Standing beside all of them was a woman who looked rather out-of-place, not only because she towered over all of the other men, but because she wasn’t wearing the same uniform that the others wore. In fact, it looked like she showed up to the battle a couple centuries too late.

From what I could make out amongst the grain, she appeared to be clad in Greek warrior attire. Despite everyone wielding weaponry appropriate to the time, she wielded a massive metal spear. Such a jarring crossover was better found within the depths of comic-con, not a historical photograph.

The right-side photo would have appeared relatively normal, had the previous image’s surrealness not been etched into my skull. It was also a photo from the past, yet appeared to be somewhere in the sixties instead of the 1910’s, given the superior camera quality. The image depicted a singular woman sitting by a rather large computer, its girth filling up the entire frame of the composition. She had a somewhat cocky expression on her face, as if this beautiful blonde knew she was not only mind-bendingly hot, but also smarter than anyone else in that room.

Her legs were crossed, allowing for one high heel to dangle precariously from her foot, held up only by her big toe. The sheer beauty of the woman in the photo meant I could analyze it for hours, but of course, there was a certain elephant in the room that needed to be addressed first.

It was the same woman in both photos.

The exact same woman in both photos.

She didn’t even look a day older in either, despite half a century passing in between them. Was she some sort of genetic clone? Some woman who didn’t age? And how was she so… perfect? How did her beauty practically leap off the page?

This just didn’t add up. I wasn’t a religious man, agnostic if anything, but these photographs screamed “higher being” to me. It was as if this woman had been there for every significant event during the 20th century and someone had just now noticed.

And the biggest bombshell of them all had yet to drop.

I looked up from the photo only to be greeted with Jane’s phone in my face. She was as silent and as swift as a fox with a beautiful shimmering mane, I hadn’t even noticed her place it in front of my face until it was already there. Her face was silent and flat, with almost a glimmer of expectation, begging me quietly to look at the picture.

What I saw was admittedly adorable, only to quickly wrap around to incredulity. There was a younger Jane, she looked around her mid-teens, possibly 14? Because of that, I wasn’t about to comment anything further about her body, besides, the woman next to her quickly absorbed all aspects of my attention—and it wasn’t just because she was the new most attractive woman I had ever seen.

“Is that…?” I began, the fridge horror beginning to piece itself together in my mind.

“Yes, that’s also my mom,” Jane confirmed, as casually as if she were answering a yes or no question about the weather.

“Your mother is a fucking ageless immortal!?” I shouted, eyes blinking more times in disbelief than I could count.

“Yes.”

“A-anything else you’d like to mention while you’re at it?”

“She’s also an Amazonian Warrior of Legend.”

“A-an… Amazonian Warrior of Legend?”

“Yes.”

“An. Amazonian. Warrior. Of. Legend?”

“Correct.”

I had become accustomed to her straightforward, emotionless answers, but this was a new level. An undiscovered secret society of ageless goddesses; Definitive proof that Greek myths were not as mythical as they seemed; and yet her response was as stoic as ever. Clearly, she was better at processing emotions than I was.

I pinched the brim of my nose until it hurt. Maybe she had simply punched me so hard I was currently suffering from a concussion. Whatever this was—be it a prank or a simply another misdirection—I couldn’t even tell anymore. But this wasn’t real. This… couldn’t have been real.

And yet, it explained so much. If her mother was an advanced, ageless warrior human, no wonder Jane didn’t need a wink of sleep when she was motivated! That also explained why her tenacity in the gym was practically unparalleled for a girl her size and… volume. With the genes of a warrior race floating around within her, she wouldn’t even have to try to maintain a body of such impossibly sexy proportions.

“H-how?” was all I could bring myself to respond with.

“I suppose she merely wanted to settle down after a life of accomplishments,” Jane contemplated, bringing a sole finger to her chin. “That’s the only answer I could think of.”

“B-but why here? Why now? Do you have any brothers and sisters? Which religion is the correct one?”

She paused to sigh. “Pull yourself together, John. You’re a grown man.”

I took a deep breath in, letting the cool gym air soothe my mind. She was right—that did help a lot. I couldn’t believe I was being given advice about quelling anxiety from a girl who wasn’t even old enough to drink.

“Now, I can’t answer all your questions, John. This is just as surprising to me as it is to you. All I know is that this happens to be the most logical explanation for why I can do what I do. I’m still learning—learning that my attributes as a half-amazon are going to give me certain advantages over others. I just assumed anyone could put this amount of work in if they were resilient enough. But I don’t expect you to feel well-rested after an all-nighter at work.”

My mind instinctively wanted to take that as an insult, but I quickly quelled the thought. There wasn’t a debate—she simply was superior to me. There was no corporate trickery here, no favoritism from the higher-ups.

“You…

…

You deserve that senior Vice President position more than I do.”

Merely finding the courage to say that sentence out loud felt like a huge weight being released off my chest. Her dumbfounded expression told me all that it needed to, I was definitely not someone who’d freely admit something like that. But there was that nervous face again, that slight crack of composure that I recognized from several events.

“What’s wrong, Jane?”

She looked ready to leave, ready to flee. But I didn’t give up on her. I gently cradled her hand, attempting to soothe her into a calm state.

She seemed ready to cry as she finally admitted the whole truth:

“I don’t want the senior VP position. I don’t want any of this.”

I was sympathetic, but also confused. She didn’t want it? Who the hell wouldn’t want a position as prestigious as that one?

As if reading my mind, she further clarified. “I just want to make enough to scrape by. Just enough so that I can afford a nice house and live comfortably with the, um, hypothetical person of my dreams.”

An admiral goal, at some point, it was probably even considered the American dream.

“Well, then what’s stopping you from doing that?” I asked in earnest.

It was as if a lump had been caught in her throat. Jane had the words right there at the tip of her beautiful tongue, but they just couldn’t be verbalized through some sort of invisible wall. I think I had an inkling of what said barrier could be.

“It’s your mom, isn’t it?” I asked with sorrowful eyes.

I had never seen someone more hesitant to nod in my life. And I worked in a field where everyone was begrudgingly respectful to one another.

I tried my best to give Jane the best advice I could.

“Look, Jane, you can’t keep kowtowing to your mother like this. You’ve been an adult in the state’s eyes for over a year now. You have your own car, which I assume leads to your own house, right?” Her next nod was far less restricted. “Good, that means she has no control over your life any more. You can tell her that you’re done. It’s the beauty of being an adult.”

“Did you go against the wishes of your own parents, John?”

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that my father was one of the original founders of the company we both worked for.

“I understand how tight the grip one’s parents can have on them, but if this is making you miserable, then you deserve to be happy. It’s worth a shot.”

“Maybe you’re right, John. Maybe it is.”