PART THIRTEEN – Thirteen Years Later

Chapter 1: An Unexpected Phone Call

The call came in the early evening not long after Henry and I had arrived at home. Randy was working out in the home gym, Jake and Clark were watching a movie or maybe a TV program in the home theater and Terrence, as per his texts, was out with friends. With four boys in the house, two of them in their teens and two who acted as if they were in their teens, I sometimes wondered if Nithya and Jack had had the right idea when they moved into a large brownstone in Brooklyn Heights. However, we loved our condo – and our kids.

Henry and I had bought the place when we ourselves were in our teens, and after more than a decade of living there, we were still in love with our apartment. We had great neighbors and loved living in Chelsea and being able to walk to everything. We loved the open layout and the building’s Art Deco architecture. No matter the weather, the view was always spectacular. Besides which, the boys had their friends in Manhattan, too. True, with more bedrooms we could’ve even adopted more kids, with maybe some girls in the mix. The luck of the draw had given us three boys, and then we took in the twins. Brandon was our first adoption, a 12-year-old transgendered boy who’d begun life as Brenda but had the misfortune to have religious parents. Obviously, she was just confused. His parents tried everything – prohibiting participation in sports, making him wear only frilly dresses to school, buying him pretty dolls and frilly furnishings for his room – and still he acted like a boy. He even walked like a boy and looked silly in a dress.

It was bad enough when he started to grow breasts, but at least they were small and noticeable only when his parents made him wear a bra. At least that was something he could remove as soon as he got to school. Then he got his first period, and all hell broke loose. After his third serious suicide attempt, CPS stepped in and took him from his home and placed him in a temporary group home where things went from bad to worse. Having indicated a preference for gay and transgendered youth, we were already in the process of being vetted to take him as a foster child when he made a fourth suicide attempt that was nearly successful. We took him home right from the hospital and found him to be an endearing boy who wanted nothing more than acceptance. That was something Henry and I were able to provide from the get-go, and he couldn’t have been happier. Finally, he was allowed to dress in jeans and even to go shirtless around the apartment. He was passionate about sports, and although neither Henry nor I had an interest, we enrolled him in a private school that had no problem with allowing a transgendered boy to participate in intramural basketball and the like. He even made the middle-school team, and at least one of us attended all of his games.

After getting his parents to sign away their parental rights, we adopted Brandon. More importantly as far as he was concerned, we took him to a specialist, and he was started on hormonal therapy immediately. When the time came, he underwent breast reductions and later, sexual-reassignment surgery. Henry and I learned a lot about the options for creating a functioning neopenis, incorporating the clitoris as a glans and the labia as a scrotum. We learned about hysterectomy, vaginectomy, metoidioplasty, the Centurion procedure, phalloplasty and penile implants. Brandon wasn’t shy about showing off his new equipment, either. With the aid of a pump in one of the former labia to inflate the shaft of the penis, it functioned as well as any boy’s, up to a point. He couldn’t ejaculate, but he certainly was able to cum, as he unhesitatingly showed his buddies by getting naked and jerking off.

Although some idiots would have claimed he was a lesbian, in reality he was a heterosexual, transgendered boy. He even had a steady girlfriend throughout his years in high school, but then she was accepted into Stanford and he got into Princeton, so they agreed to go their separate ways. Brandon was now in his second year of medical school at Harvard and was planning to go into cardiology, just like my own mother had.

Not long after adopting Brandon, we took in our second boy, Randy, a cute redhead whose parents had been killed in an auto accident. Although not all effeminate boys will turn out to be gay, even though he was only six, he’d already come out to his parents and made it clear to his social worker that he identified as gay. Most straight foster parents, no matter how accepting, just didn’t know what to do with an out and proud first-grader. Randy was just the kind of boy we wanted to help, having been precocious gay boys ourselves, and we had no problem with adopting him.

Scarcely two years later, we acquired Terrence, a thirteen-year-old African-American boy who showed up in a homeless shelter one day and was taken in by True Colors, Cindy Lauper’s organization for LGBTQ homeless youth. It seemed young Terrence had been thrown out of his Christian home in central Pennsylvania after being caught giving a blowjob to an older teen. Not that it even meant he was gay, but when asked point blank, he admitted that he’d been performing fellatio on neighborhood youths for more than a year as a means of supplementing his income. It seemed his father thought a young teen should be able to get by with the same allowance that he’d had as a boy, but it wasn’t even enough for a school lunch. With no place to go, he hitchhiked his way to New York.

Homeless shelters are no place for 13-year-old boys, and the shelter director took it upon himself to keep Terrence separate from the rest of the shelter population while he made arrangements with True Colors. Henry and I had started volunteering with the organization, and when we heard about the boy, we interviewed him and took him home that day. Fortunately, he hadn’t been on the street long enough to become indoctrinated into street life, and he wasn’t on drugs, but he did have a history of prostitution, and testing revealed infections with gonorrhea, chlamydia and lice. Fortunately, he didn’t have HIV. Life with Terrence was rough at first because he’d learned to associate sex with a means of making a quick buck, and there were times when he’d vanish for an entire day. He quickly came to learn that the price for doing so was another full round of tests, and after about a year, he was a happy, well-adjusted young boy in a stable relationship with a steady boyfriend.

With only three bedrooms in our apartment, albeit large ones, and Brandon away at college, we assumed that the three boys we had would be the limit for the time being, but then we saw the heartbreaking story on the news of twin boys, Jake and Clark, who’d witnessed their parents’ brutal murder right in front of their house. There were no living relatives, and the boys’ only option seemed to be foster care. We discussed it with Randy and Terrence, and even with Brandon, and we all agreed we had the room, the means and the love to give to a couple of sweet young boys whose lives had been turned upside down. Once we got to know the twins, we fell completely under their spell.

With five boys, one of them in college, and only three bedrooms, there was no way we could accommodate any more kids, not that we wanted to. Five boys were a handful as it was. No matter how desperate other kids might be, there was no possibility of taking in any more kids until Terrence and Randy graduated from high school and moved on to college. That was two and three years away, so there was no more room at the inn – or so we thought.

It was the middle of November and Americans had finally chosen a woman to be their next president. Little did we know that our lives were about to be upended once again. Hearing the distinctive ringtone I’d set for Jeff, I pulled out my phone to see a picture of his smiling face on my screen. Noticing the time, I calculated that it was a bit after three o’clock in Seattle.

Answering the call, I said, “Hi, Jeff. To what do I owe this pleasure? Would you like an invite for Thanksgiving this year?” Jeff Barlow had indeed been a guest at our table for Thanksgiving dinner a couple of times in the past, and with the holiday coming up in two weeks, I thought that might be the reason for his call.

“No, it’s nothing like that,” he began. “J.J., I’m afraid I have some bad news. Better you hear it from me than from the media, as I’m sure it’ll hit your phone soon enough.” However, before he could utter another word, a banner appeared on the screen with a news flash that read, ‘Jitendra Moorthy, founder of internet giant Pegasus, dead at 53 from presumed heart attack.’

“Oh my god, Jeff,” I interrupted. “It just did. When did it happen? I just spoke to him a couple of days ago.” Henry, hearing my words and seeing my shocked expression, checked his own phone and was equally shocked by what he saw. He came up and put his arm around me, hugging me to his side.

“William says Jitendra awoke with what he thought was heartburn.” William was Jitendra’s fourteen-year-old son. “It was bad enough that William asked his dad if it could be a heart attack, but we all know how stubborn Jitendra is – was.” William’s a smart boy. “The kids went off to school, but when their father never showed up at work, they became concerned, especially when he didn’t answer his phone or respond to texts. He cancelled his driver and gave the housekeeping staff the day off, so Trina drove home at lunchtime to check on her dad and found him dead on the floor.” Trina was Jitendra’s sixteen-year-old daughter.

Listening in on the conversation, Henry responded with, “Jesus.”

“Henry’s here with me,” I related to Jeff. “We went through something similar when he was fifteen and I was sixteen and his father passed suddenly from a ruptured aneurysm.”

“I remember that,” Jeff replied. “I couldn’t attend the funeral; Jitendra and Andy went in my place.”

Sometimes Jeff could be so conceited. I responded in a calm voice, “Perhaps they went in your place, too, but they attended the funeral because they were our close friends.”

Rather than address my comment, Jeff did what he usually did and changed the subject. “That was when you met Franklin, wasn’t it? How is Franklin these days?” Actually, I’d met Franklin before that in St. Louis on my spring trip, and Henry had met Franklin online even earlier, through a Facebook group. We only found out that he was my brother at the funeral, but there was no point in correcting Jeff, so I answered, “His company’s designing the bullet-train route west of Denver through the Rockies.

“Most of the old tunnels aren’t wide enough, and a lot of the curves and switch-backs are too sharp for a train traveling at Mach 2. At least with a rail-free design, Franklin can do what the diesel locomotives couldn’t; he can anchor trains to the side of a mountain, just like in that old Star Wars movie.” The rail-free design was Franklin’s own innovation, and already it was changing the face of rail transportation. Using railcars with a thin, circumferential super­conductive ceramic shell, trains could ‘levitate’ from super­conducting tracks embedded underground, hung overhead or embedded in the side of a mountain. The trains literally floated on a quantum magnetic field while the Peltier effect induced laminar airflow, allowing for silent, supersonic operation. “Most of those routes are on Federal land, but building in national forests means going through environmental reviews, and he has to negotiate for routes that are on private land, all of which takes time.”

“The poor guy’s never home,” Jeff responded. “I can relate to that, personally.” I couldn’t help but think that Jeff’s complaint seemed hollow, given that he was never away from Seattle for more than a few days at a time, whereas Franklin, as the lead engineer on the transcontinental, high-speed rail project, would be moving around a lot over the next several years. It made it hard to find a wife, but then again, he was only 26 and already a billionaire. However, Jeff didn’t even hesitate to send astronauts into space for months at a time. The planned Mars mission would take more than a year to complete, during which Jeff would live comfortably in his Seattle penthouse. Once again, I decided to let his comment pass.

“Do you think Jitendra still left us as the guardians of his kids?” Henry quietly asked as I was trying to get more information from Jeff. It had been nearly a dozen years since Jitendra had approached us and asked if we’d be willing to serve as his kids’ guardians in the event that something happened to him. He’d then explained that his wife had just been diagnosed with Stage 4 ovarian cancer and wasn’t expected to survive. What a thing to lay on a couple of then teenage boys! Jitendra had been desperate as his wife was an orphan and his only family lived in India. He’d been estranged from them ever since marrying a Jewish American and rejecting the Indian girl who’d been promised to him. Of course, Henry and I had agreed to being guardians. That was just after we’d gotten our fostering license and had yet to take in any kids. It seemed like such a hypothetical need in any case. After all, Jitendra’s kids would be out of the house long before he died – or so we’d thought.

Muting the phone, I answered, “I doubt it. That was a long time ago and a lot has happened since then. Shit, that was before the Big Tech Breakup.” Then after a pause, I added, “Let’s not tell anyone until we know for sure. There’s no use getting everyone riled up over something that probably won’t happen.”

“Agreed,” Henry chimed in.

Unmuting the phone, I continued my conversation with Jeff Barlow and asked, “So, is there any word on when the funeral will be?”

“Not yet, but I’ll let you know as soon as I know. I’m helping make the arrangements.” By that, undoubtedly he meant that his staff were making the arrangements. “His entire family’s still back in India, and he hasn’t had contact with them in years. I did personally call his parents, but they’re in no position to take care of making the arrangements. Jitendra’s wife died years ago, as you know, and she was an orphan, so it would otherwise fall to his children. A sixteen-year-old and a fourteen-year-old shouldn’t have to do that.”

“Jeff, is there anyone with the children now?” I interrupted. When he didn’t answer, I added, “Henry and I will be on the next flight out. Those two need more than help with funeral arrangements, and you’re in no position to provide it. You wouldn’t be expected to. Other than getting someone to teach our classes, Henry’s and my schedules are flexible. Jitendra was family, and helping his kids during this horrible time in their lives is the least we can do.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Jeff responded, “but what about your boys?”

“It wouldn’t be fair to take them out of school,” I answered, “but they’re perfectly capable of taking care of themselves. Terrence is sixteen and Randy’s fifteen, but even at eleven, Clark and Jake are streetwise and can be trusted. They know where they’re permitted to go and what and whom to avoid, and they’ll have Terrence’s supervision. We’ll have our next door neighbors look in on them too.” It was ironic that parents, who fled to the suburbs for the sake of their kids, raised children who couldn’t take care of themselves. I had every confidence that our boys would be fine.

“Anyway, we’ll stay with Jitendra’s kids and help them deal with the loss of their father, and we’ll help figure out where they go from here,” I continued. “I’ll have my assistant contact your assistant with the arrangements when I have them, and Henry and I will see you soon.”

As I closed the connection, I became aware that Henry and I were no longer alone. “Dad, is everything okay?” Jake asked. Clark was by his side. Both boys weren’t wearing any clothes, which was their preferred state of dress, or rather undress, when in the apartment. Neither Henry nor I had an issue with it, nor did our other boys.

Some parents might worry that a pair of eleven-year-old boys would get into sex play if they were naked all the time, but that wasn’t a concern for us. I knew for a fact that they engaged in sex with each other because I’d asked them. I’d done some reading on twins when we took them in and found that sexual exploration was the norm, especially with boys, and it had nothing to do with being gay or straight. For some twins, sex with each other remained an important part of their lives even after they married.

“Dad?” Clark chimed in.

“Sorry,” I replied. “Do you remember Jitendra Moorthy from Seattle?”

“Yeah, sure,” Clark answered. “He has a couple of kids around Randy’s and Terrence’s age. They’re nice.”

“He had a heart attack this morning,” I replied.

“Is he gonna be okay?” Jake asked.

“I’m afraid he passed away,” I answered. “He was one of my very best friends, and I already miss him.”

“That’s sad,” Clark agreed.

“I was fifteen when I lost my father,” Henry chimed in. “I know what his kids are going through, but for them it’s much worse. They already lost their mother to cancer when they were younger, and now they’ve lost their father, and their only living relatives are in India.”

“Shit, what are they gonna do?” Jake asked.

“Honestly, I don’t know,” I replied. “We’ll start by going out to be with them. That much we can do to help them get sorted out. Hopefully, there’ll be a friend or a colleague who’s willing to take them in. I wouldn’t want to see them go into foster care.”

“Why don’t we take them in?” Clark suggested.

Rather than get into the possibility we might be asked to do just that, I responded, “For one thing, we don’t have enough room, and one of them is a girl. You couldn’t go around in the nude with a girl in the house.”

“So what if she sees us naked,” Clark responded. “It’s not like we’d care or anything, and it’s not like we’d care if she was naked, either. Didn’t you say you used to go around naked all the time when you were growing up?”

“I often went naked in Indiana because we lived out in the middle of the woods,” I replied. “Other than my dad, there was no one there to see me.” Although I’d told the twins about being kidnapped when I was two, I wasn’t about to get into the details of what he did with me or that my nudity was part of his perversion. “And as far as Henry’s house was concerned, there were eight of us, plus their parents, all living in a house that wasn’t as large as our apartment. It wasn’t like we went around in the nude, but seeing each other now and then was inevitable.”

“Didn’t you say in Europe that they sunbathe in the nude?” Jake asked.

“Yeah, in some of the parks they do,” Henry acknowledged, “but we’re not in Europe. We’re in New York City, and here, people are prudes.”

“The penthouse is on the market,” Jake pointed out. That was true, and it had been on the market for more than a year. It had a lot more room than we’d felt we needed, and we were happy where we were. With an asking price that didn’t reflect the glut in the high end of the Manhattan housing market, there hadn’t been a single offer in all that time. There were just too many unoccupied penthouses in the new supertall skyscrapers that dominated Billionaire’s Row, and developers, eager to make a sale, were throwing in free upgrades and even waiving the maintenance payments for the first year or two. The sellers in our building weren’t in a position to compete, nor were they willing to come down on the price.

Personally, we preferred the unique touches that could only be found in an older, Art Deco building like ours, and we’d willingly pay more for the penthouse in our building rather than on ‘Billionaire’s Row’, if we were ever in the market for one. However, the current owners had opted for a fully open design that provided less useable floor space than with our current layout and it wasn’t suitable for a family with kids. Still, if the only alternative was for Jitendra’s kids to go into foster care, we’d buy it in a heartbeat and spend the money to remodel it. The trouble was that we probably wouldn’t even be allowed to take the kids out of Washington State. If it came down to it, we’d hire an attorney specializing in family law.

“It’s a lot more complicated than giving them a roof over their heads,” I explained. “For one thing, we aren’t related to them, and preference is always given to relatives. In the absence of relatives in the U.S., they’d go into the system, and we couldn’t even foster them because we’re from out of state. We couldn’t even adopt them unless we had guardianship. Bringing them to New York would mean uprooting them from their school and all their friends. It would be very traumatic.”

“What’s up?” Randy asked as he walked through the kitchen and joined us. He was dressed in skimpy gym shorts, and sweat glistened on his skin from his workout.

“Jitendra Moorthy died,” Clark answered before I could even open my mouth.

“From Seattle?” Randy asked.

“Yeah, and he had two kids around your age.” Jake chimed in.

“I remember,” Randy responded. “Their mother died of cancer. The boy’s name is William. He’s cute.”

“Do you know if he’s gay,” Jake asked, his curiosity piqued.

“Actually, I do, and he is,” Randy replied. “We, ah, fooled around a bit the last time we visited them.”

“You guys traded blowjobs?” Jake asked.

Turning bright red, Randy answered. “Let’s just say that wasn’t all we did and leave it at that.”

“Guys, this isn’t an appropriate conversation to be having around your dads,” I interjected.

“Why not?” Jake asked. “You and Henry were around Randy’s age when you became boyfriends, but you were screwing each other silly by then, and you’d both had boyfriends before that. You were taking it up the ass since you were twelve, I think.”

“Except that Dad had sex with his pedo kidnapper since he was in diapers,” Clark chimed in.

“Good lord, we never told you any of that,” I responded, “especially about the creep who kidnapped me.”

“You didn’t need to,” Jake answered. “You were kids like us, and I figured you did what other kids do, and why would a guy kidnap you if not for sex? You just confirmed it.”

“Jesus, not all kids are having sex when they’re twelve,” Henry replied.

“Clark and I have been doing it since we were like, eight,” Jake interjected. “We figured it all out on our own. And Randy’s been sexually active for years.”

Turning bright red, Randy said, “I neither confirm nor deny being sexually active.”

“But you told us you gave your first blowjob just before, like, you turned ten,” Clark responded.

“Jeez, that’s private!” Randy yelled back at his adopted brother.

“Boys, your brother’s absolutely right,” Henry responded. “You can’t go around snitching on your brothers’ sex lives unless they’re putting themselves in danger. Short of Randy being a prostitute, what he does in private is his business and his alone. And besides, you’re twins. Twins mess around all the time.”

“But why do you even care?” Jake responded, looking right at Randy. “You’re gay, your dads are gay and we’re gay. We’re an all-male, all-gay household.”

“We are?” Henry responded.

“You never told us you’re gay, ” I added.

“We assumed when we said we were doin’ it with each other, that you knew,” Clark interjected. “We’ve always known we’re gay. Certainly, you knew about Terrence.”

“Yeah,” I admitted. “It was the reason we took him in. It was why he was on the street, and of course we knew about Randy, but not about the two of you. Of course, Brandon’s straight but trans, which is another matter entirely, but he was already in college when you joined the family.”

“Well, now you know about us and about William, too,” Clark responded.

After a bit of a very necessary pause in the conversation, I suggested, “Listen guys, I don’t think Henry’s up to making dinner for us all tonight. Let’s order some pizza from Clyde’s. That’ll give Henry and me a chance to make arrangements to go to Seattle.”

“When’s the funeral?” Randy asked.

“We don’t know yet,” I answered, “but Henry and I thought we should go there right away to stay with the kids. Their only relatives are in India, and they’ve never even met them. They’re all alone and need a lot more help than just someone making the arrangements for the funeral.”

“Are we all gonna go with?” Randy asked.

“I already asked about it, but Dad pointed out we have school,” Clark responded.

“Yeah, and you pests would just get in the way,” Randy said, “but Dad, could I go with you and Henry? No offense, but you guys are old and I’m the same age as they are.”

“Old? By fourteen years! I know of brothers that are further apart in age than that,” I pointed out, “What’s important is that Henry and I have been through something similar to what they’re going through now.”

“I lost both of my parents in a car crash, in case you’ve forgotten,” Randy countered, “so I know what they’re going through, too. And if you’re worried about me and William having sex, if you’d like, I’ll promise not to even jerk off, let alone have sex with him.”

“What you and your hand do in the privacy of your bedroom, so long as it’s consensual, isn’t our concern,” Henry responded with a laugh.

“There’s still the matter of school,” I reminded Randy.

“Yes, and from what I recall, a lot of kids took classes online during the 2020 pandemic,” Randy pointed out. “It’s 2036 now and we know how to do remote learning. I just have to set it up with the school.”

“Can we come along, too,” Clark asked. “We lost our parents, too.”

“Not to negate what you experienced, watching your parents being stabbed to death in front of your home. It’s the stuff of nightmares, and that’s what I’m afraid of,” I said. “I’d rather not have William and Trina be reminded of the violent way your parents died. Besides which, they’re going to have enough people passing in and out of their house without having all six of us staying with them.” Then turning to Randy, I continued, “Randy, you can come with Henry and me. Why don’t you text Terrence and let him know we’re having a family meeting in an hour and that it’s important. He’ll need to supervise the twins while we’re gone. In the meantime, I need to have my assistant make reservations for a flight to Sea-Tac.”

“Already done,” Henry responded. “While you guys were discussing it, I made a reservation in First Class on a Supersonic Dreamcruiser for the three of us on Delta. We leave at ten tonight and get in at ten, Pacific time. I’ve also reserved an Audi Q7. I notified Jeff, and of course we should call rather than text William and Trina. We should let Max and Gideon know that we’ll be away —”

“Already on it,” I responded as I texted our next-door neighbors. “I’m asking them to check in on Terrance and the twins while we’re away.”

“Then all we need to do is pack.”

“Jeez, why did I even bother hiring an administrative assistant? You’re far more efficient,”

“The trouble is you can’t afford me,” Henry replied. How right he was.

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Recognizing that we’d likely still be in Seattle for Thanksgiving, we made arrangements for the twins and Terrence to spend the holiday with their friends’ families. We briefly considered having the three of them fly out the evening before the holiday, but that would be the absolute worst time of all to fly; besides, who wants to spend the holiday in a house in mourning? We called Brandon to let him know of the situation and to confirm his plans to spend the holiday with his girlfriend’s family in Nantucket. The way he spoke, it sounded like things between the two of them were getting serious. Jokingly, I asked him if he needed money to buy a ring, and he said he’d already bought one and was planning to give it to her at Christmas. Wow!

I asked Randy if he wanted to return home after the funeral, but he insisted on being there to help Jitendra’s kids through their first Thanksgiving without their dad. It was obvious from the way he spoke that he remembered all too well his own first Thanksgiving after his parents died.

There wasn’t a lot of time to pack for our flight, but Henry and I were seasoned travelers, and with prepacked toiletry kits at the ready, it was just a matter of deciding what clothes we’d need. Mid-November weather in the Pacific Northwest could be variable and increasingly rainy as temperatures cooled. There was no getting around the need for both warm- and cold-weather clothing. Randy’s experience with travel, on the other hand, was limited, and this would be his first major trip since he’d started shaving. We started out showing him how to pack, but there simply wasn’t enough time, so we told him to focus on the things he wanted to have with him for the next couple of weeks while Henry and I packed up the rest.

There wasn’t time to arrange for his remote learning with the school, so we sent a message to the principal explaining that there’d been a death in the family and that we’d finalize the arrangements in the morning. We actually got a response from her before leaving for the airport. She correctly guessed that we were referring to the death of Jitendra Moorthy and wished us a safe trip.

There were times when being affluent had its advantages, and this was one of them. Rather than fight our way in a limo through heavy traffic, we took a rotorless helicopter from Chelsea Pier to JFK, arriving at our terminal in a matter of minutes. No longer at significant risk of harm, we traveled with bodyguards only when visiting certain parts of the Third World, and we no longer traveled by corporate jet. Supersonic models weren’t even available yet, but even so, we weren’t in that league anymore. We’d used most of our money to buy out our patents, which we gifted to our foundation, and set aside the rest in a trust that provided a lifetime stipend that covered our living expenses. We lived well, and there’d be enough money set aside to give any number of adopted kids a start in life. If we took on caring for Jitendra’s kids, we’d need to request an increase in our stipend and for the purchase of the penthouse.

Someday, it would be possible to travel to Seattle by bullet train. The advent of rail-free technology was a true game changer, cutting construction costs and time by more than eighty percent. Of course, there was still the need to obtain rights of way along the entire route before construction could begin, but once a route was approved and all the environmental impact studies were done, the actual task of laying super­conductive tracks was no more difficult than that of laying fiberoptic cable or power transmission lines. In places where rights of way weren’t an issue, entire routes, hundreds of miles in length, could be completed in less than a year. As much as Franklin wanted to locate the terminals in downtown locations, it was much easier to build where development was sparse, with local transit facilities to be built later. However; in the case of costal cities, Franklin made use of renovated piers, laying the tracks themselves under water.

The route from New York to Chicago was now complete. Passing twenty feet above the surface of the Hudson, it followed the I-90 corridor west. With stops in Albany, Syracuse, Buffalo, Cleveland and Toledo, the route passed above the south shore of Lake Erie and then made use of exiting railroad rights of way before skimming the south shore of Lake Michigan, terminating just south of Lincoln Park. An express train could make the trip in under a half-hour, at a surprisingly affordable price. The route west from Chicago began at O’Hare International Airport and made use of existing Interstate and rail rights of way, passing through Omaha before reaching Denver. The route was compete and was awaiting only the completion of new terminal facilities in both cities. A rail-free connector between the Chicago lakefront and airport terminals was planned, but the rights of way through densely-populated areas were being bitterly contested by those affected, even though the trains would pass silently overhead.

The route from Vancouver, all the way down the Interstate 5 corridor to San Diego, had recently been completed and was in full operation. An I-95 corridor route along the East Coast, from Portland, Maine, to Miami, was largely under construction and would be completed in about five years. A route between Denver and L.A. via the I-70 and I-15 corridors, however, was not projected to be completed for at least another decade, owing to the number of tunnels that needed to be dug and mountain passes to be negotiated. Eventually, we’d be able to make the trip from Chicago to L.A. non-stop in two hours, but then we’d have to take another train north to Seattle, adding another hour and a half. A supersonic jet would still be faster. A Chicago to Minneapolis route was planned, and with a proposed Canadian route from there to Vancouver, the bullet train might one day be the way to go, but the Canadian route was still in the early planning stages.

Although we arrived early at JFK, and even though we were enrolled in the Global Entry program, we were ‘selected’ for additional screening, so we barely got to the gate in time. Since our seats were in first class, at least we didn’t have to worry about the airline giving them away. First class and premium economy seats were the last to be given to people on standby and not until the gate was about to close. The arrangement of the cabins in a supersonic passenger aircraft was different from that used in conventional air travel, owing to the shape of the aircraft, which was often described as that of an elongated stingray. With a flat bottom, an ovoid body and short, triangular wings, it helped to maximize thrust and minimize drag. Rather than having a single passenger compartment, with luggage and cargo stored underneath, there were two passenger compartments, with luggage and cargo stored in the wings. As with the old 747 design, the cockpit was on the top of the aircraft, now located on a level by itself.

The passenger cabin was divided into two levels, each in its own compartment and entered through separate doors via a two-level jetway. An interior stairway could be lowered into place in an emergency, but otherwise, the levels were kept separated and sealed. The upper level consisted of first class in front and premium economy in the rear with a spacious lounge between the two. The seats in first class, which could be laid flat for sleeping, were generous, isolated from each in their own pods, and included a suite of work and entertainment options. Henry and I had two pods next to each other, with a retractable partition that we retracted immediately. Randy was across the aisle in his own pod. Premium economy was similar to what used to be called business class, with generous seats arranged in conventional rows. On the lower level were economy and economy plus, which had skylights instead of windows and where the seats were packed as closely together as they could make them. It was nice to be flying first class.

Most of the movies in first class and premium economy were first run and in DolbyVision 8k Super-HDR. Henry and I both got started on the movie right away, as there was one that we both wanted to see, and there was just enough time to watch it. I let Randy know in case he wanted to watch it, too, which he did. As always, the flight attendants kept us well-fed with snacks and drinks of our choice and an evening meal consisting of artichoke pizzas served by the slice, with a side salad and breadsticks. Not that we were hungry, but it was excellent. Thanks to the speed and smoothness of the flight, the delicious meal and the excellent movie, we were landing before we knew it.