And trying to do the secret identity thing was just plain stupid. As if they wouldn’t be able to find the bat cave in real life with satellites and GPS trackers! He was pretty sure facial recognition technology would defeat most disguises given time. And then there was the whole matter of making his family and friends hostages to fortune, which is what would happen. Could he even trust the government? There was a whole raft of books, movies, and television shows that seemed to say that no, he couldn’t trust the government. Were they all being overly paranoid? Maybe. Probably. But there sure were a lot of such stories! Then there was the question of most other governments! Hell, some governments were real hard arses! He had no intention of fighting off waves of Asian, European, or Middle Eastern agents trying to get their hands on him or his family!

As far as he could see, the only way to keep everyone safe was to remain completely anonymous and dressed in such a way as to defeat their recognition software. Hmm. And not do too many things to draw attention to himself! He would have to be so very careful if he did do anything! Make sure he left no DNA behind by always wearing gloves, facial and head coverings, and so on. Sheesh! It sure sounded like a lot of hard work to be a superhero! Was he going to be a superhero? He could be a supervillain! He thought about it but decided it just wasn’t him. He simply didn’t enjoy hurting people or animals, was not into stealing shit, and being a super badass just didn’t really appeal. Not that he was a total goody-two-shoes! He’d done his bit of schoolboy bullying, had shoplifted a chocolate bar once, and been nasty to people, particularly other kids, when he’d been young. He just didn’t enjoy that sort of stuff.

And even if he wanted to be a good guy superhero, unless something was happening right in front of him, he had little or no chance of influencing events at any distance. And that is presuming he knew about whatever it was that was happening when it was happening rather than seeing it on the news that night or the following day. He wasn’t plugged into the NSA or whatever. He decided that he might consider working for the government at some point, but for now, he didn’t think he would be treated in a manner that he would enjoy. He ran these arguments around in his head for several days without reaching any firm conclusions other than that he would hide his talents at this stage. Despite how tempting it was to show off!

Chapter 9

An income source

It was time to get back to real-world matters. He spent a week deliberating on his thesis after he had approved publishing a re-worked version as a book. He had to give it more of a book-like structure, so he made a string of final edits during another week of solid work and then sent it back to the publishers. Did a podcast interview with an archaeology-focused online site and faded back into academic obscurity as others took his work and ran with it. Then some stunning new discoveries in Roman studies attracted all the archaeological news spotlights, and he dropped off the archaeological radar, which suited him just fine