ORIGINS, Porter

“If you beat me, I’ll suck you clean all night. If I beat you, you go down on me until you pass out from oxygen deprivation.” The confident twenty one year old college junior ran her fingers through her hair and continued, “so whaddya say? Scared to get beat by a girl?” 

The cocky frat boy took the aviator sunglasses off of his backward 49ers ball cap and put them on his face. “So you’re saying I get a blow job? Cuz there’s no way in hell you’ll beat me, Frenchie.” 

The college girl grinned as the small crowd of aeronautical students muttered excitedly to each other in anticipation of the two best student pilots going toe to toe in the air. The combatants took their controllers and faced the helipad. Two remote control helicopters flew into the air. An aerial dance began. 

At California’s prestigious Golden Hills Aeronautics College, one of the rites of passage was that each student had to successfully complete a drone flight through a massive 10 acre aerial obstacle course.  There were hoops at various heights and of different sizes, pillars, arches, floating rings from air balloons moving in the breeze, and other random obstructions meant to confuse students into failing. When two students raced the course, it almost always ended in one or both of them crashing their remote flyer. 

Not today. 

These two students were the cream of the crop, the best of the best. Frenchie dove her helicopter with the precision of a falcon, easily weaving in, out and around the obstacle course laid out before them. As she cleared the course, her infrared lasers easily hit the target she was aiming at and she laughed boisterously. “Better catch up, frat boy.” 

“Fuck you, FUCKY,” said the flustered boy. Frenchie giggled carelessly as she masterfully picked up a fifty pound weight with the helicopter drop claw and repeated all the same maneuvers using different timing to adjust for the changed weight. Again, she easily crushed her opponent. No matter what the maneuver, what the challenge, her chopper was as graceful in the air as a real bird. 

An hour had passed as the two remote controlled helicopters touched back down on the helipad. Frenchie had crushed the boy by a score of one hundred to zero. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he muttered. “You’re incredible.” 

“That’s just flying. You should see what I can do behind closed doors.” The stunned frat boy’s jaw went agape as he looked her in the eye. She grinned and said, “See you at my apartment at 7pm, and seriously, brush your teeth. No girl wants to get oral pleasure from a guy with bad breath. Oh, and you’re not staying the night.” She turned on her heal and started walking away as she said, “I’ll be fresh out of the shower when you arrive.” 

As the confident pilot walked away, the crowd of students passionately congratulated her while simultaneously dealing with their shock about how she’d crushed her opponent. The frat boy called out, “hey, French, how about we grab a beer first?” Frenchie never looked back as she walked away and answered, “I don’t drink. I fly and I fuck, baby. 7pm. Sharp. Don’t keep a girl waiting.” 

In the distance, two men wearing black suits and sunglasses looked seriously at each other from the air traffic control tower and wordlessly nodded at each other. 

That evening, Frenchie answered her doorbell with wet hair while wearing a big fluffy bath robe at 7pm expecting to see her penitent classmate. Instead, the two men in suits were at her door. “Isabelle Frenchman from Ike Pass, Idaho, aka-Frenchie, I’m Speck and this is Devereaux. We’d like to discuss an employment opportunity for you that would utilize your incredibly unique talents.” 

Frenchie was noticeably startled but she regained her composure quickly as her curiosity piqued. “Two men in suits, wearing sunglasses at night are standing at my door and want to give me a job. You’re rapists, pimps or the mob.” 

The men grinned. “No ma’am, we’re neither. We’re undercover military, ma’am.” 

Frenchie shook her head. “Damn. I had a date tonight, but I’m guessing you two have arranged that he’s not coming. Dammit, so that means I won’t be either. Double damn.” 

The men shrugged and said, “time is of the essence, ma’am, but you’ll be handsomely financially compensated. And you should wear rain gear.” Frenchie closed the door as she muttered to herself, “what’s a girl gotta do to get a decent blow job once in awhile…” 

Later that night, Frenchie was smiling ear to ear and screaming in glee as her remote controlled helicopter gracefully flew away from a tanker cargo ship in pouring rain. “Come on guys,” she said to her two male handlers in suits, “you two said that this was an almost impossible task because of the weather. This is nothing. When I was six years old, I used to pilot my dad’s fire chopper back in Ike Pass during total white out blizzards with a blindfold on.” 

Frenchie had successfully flown a remote control helicopter while standing on the shore several hundred yards away. She used only infrared goggles and pure pilot intuition as torrential rain raged in the pitch blackness. She expertly used a drop claw from a very powerful remote helicopter to grab box after box of some sort of cargo and land it on a waiting flat bed truck five hundred yards away in a parking lot. 

“That’s the last one,” muttered Speck as he watched the helicopter gently set the last cargo box perfectly on the flatbed through his infrared binoculars. “Miss Frenchman, you’ve done your country a great service today. Now that you’ve completed this mission, I can tell you that those boxes are full of illegal explosives. Had they detonated, it could’ve destroyed this whole dock.” 

Frenchie gracefully landed the remote chopper as she said, “Miss Frenchman is my mom. Call me Frenchie, and seriously, for five thousand bucks, I’ll fly this toy anytime you need me to!  Can I take it home?” 

Devereaux spoke up. “Frenchie, we have an opportunity for you. You’re the best pilot we’ve ever encountered, and trust me, we work with the best. We’d like to send you to a secret training base in New Mexico. You’ll learn how to pilot every chopper, propeller and jet engine ever designed, from Russian military planes to South African civilian cargo droppers. It’s a five year training program. When you finish, you’ll go to work for the same undercover agency we work for.” 

Frenchie coughed. “Five years!” she blurted, “in boring New Mexico?!? Nope. The flying sounds like a lot of fun, but I’ll have the training done in three months. Then I’m out of there. No way am I spending any more time in that forsaken state than I have to.” 

Speck and Devereaux grinned and said calmly, “if anyone could complete five years of training in only three months, it very well could be you. We’ll talk to our boss and get back to you. It’s completely undercover, of course. As far as your old friends and family are concerned, your cover story is that you’ll be an overly talented pilot who’s not living up to her potential, flying puddle jumpers for oil rig maintenance in rural northern Alaska.” 

Frenchie nodded and played along as she said, “and chasing roughnecks. That’s actually been one of many fantasies of mine.” 

Speck continued, “and you’ll need a new name. Isabelle Frenchman from Ike Pass, Idaho no longer exists. Your new name will be Porter from now on. One name. No first or last names, just, Porter. Any questions?” 

Frenchie, now known as Porter, smiled as she asked, “fellas, I also like driving insanely fast cars. Pull some strings for me so I don’t have to spend ALL my time in the air, please?” 

The men nodded and said, “not a problem.” 

Porter took a deep breath in the pouring rain, sighed as she exhaled and said, “if y’all feel like flying to New Mexico tonight, I’m game. I’m wound up anyways and can’t sleep. You two big, strong fellas aren’t scared of a girl flying a bird in this kind of weather, are you?” 

Speck and Devereaux simultaneously put on their sunglasses in the pitch black pouring rain of the night. Speck nodded, “we’ll call the airstrip and have them gas up a transport. Looks like the party starts tonight.” 

Porter laughed as she simply said, “boys, with me, the party never ends. Buckle up.”