About two weeks or so before Halloween, I was sitting at the front desk when I got a phone call.
     “Cyber Shop, this is Brian.  How can I help you?”
     “Hey, Brian.  It’s Minerva.”
     “Oh, hey.  What’s up?”
     “I was wondering if I could phone in an order for me and Marcus, since you’ve already got us scanned in and all.”
     “Yeah, no problem.  Shoot.”  I got out a pad of paper and a pen.
     “For me, I’d like to get a second pair of arms.  Can you do that?”
     “Sure.  Replacements for your own arms, or in addition?”
     “In addition.  I’m going as the goddess Kali for Halloween.”
     “Ah.”
     “Marcus wants a pair of wings.  James and Christina came in the other day showing off their new toys, and I think Marcus wants to one-up them.”
     “Gotcha.  What sort of thing is he looking for?”
     “Well, here, I’ll put him on.  I think he’s available now.”  I overheard some customers at Freaks and Geeks talking away from the phone, and then Marcus picked up.
     “Hey, Brian?”
     “Hey, Marcus.  Minerva told me you wanted some wings.”
     “Yeah, but I don’t need ‘em to hide under my clothes like Chris and James got.  I want the whole schmear.  And I’d like a battish look.”
     “Wait, let me get this straight.  You want a pair of wings that don’t hide under your clothes, so I’m guessing you want them full-size?”
     “Yep.”
     “You do realize that a pair of wings scaled up for a human would be about 30 feet across, right?”
     “I know they’d be big, but I wouldn’t walk around with them stretched out all the way all the time.”
     “Because what you’re basically asking me for is to build a hang glider into your back.”
     “Hey, bigger is better here.”
     “Okay, I’ll see what I can do.  How’s next week?”
     “Actually, I’d like to do it on Halloween after work.  We’re having a Halloween party at our place and I want them to be more for the occasion.  Oh, that reminds me.  You’re invited to come if you like.”
     “Sure, I’ll be there.  Well, until Halloween, then.”
     “See you then, Brian.”  He hung up.  Well, the work they wanted me to do wasn’t all that complicated.  As Minerva had said, I already had their data in the computer, and I had already done the wing research, so the only thing to do was figure out how to design a pair of full-size bat wings that could fit behind a person.  Well, whatever.  I had two weeks, and I knew it wouldn’t take me that long.  I had plenty of other stuff to do for other people, anyway.
     The next two weeks passed by, and after Freaks and Geeks closed for the day (they closed early for Halloween), Marcus and Minerva dropped by the office.  To tell the truth, I’d been looking forward to this one a bit, too.
     “You ready for us, Brian?” asked Minerva as they walked through the door.
     “More than ready, Min.  In fact, you’re first.”
     “Ooh, goody!” she squealed.
     “Aww, nuts,” said Marcus.
     “Nothing personal, Marcus, it’s just that hers is a bit simpler to get used to.  You’ve both got arms already.  Neither of you has wings, at least not that I know of.  Right?”
     “Hey, enough talking and let’s get with the armage,” said Minerva as she rushed both of us into the back room, where the first thing she saw was a narrow rod with a flat piece in the middle.
     “What’s that thing?” she asked.
     “It’s part of your prosthesis,” I said.  “The rod gets inserted into the side of your chest and out the other side, to give the arms a place to attach.  Without a firm place to anchor that connects to your skeleton, the arms won’t be able to hold any weight.”
     “Well, what are you waiting for?” she said.  “Get on with it, already!”
     “Okay, hang on.”  I took the rod and gently pressed it into her side a few inches under her right arm.  The rod slipped through her chest and poked out the other side.  I then attached the sockets to the ends of the rod and hooked the arms on.  They matched her existing arms in every way.
     “Okay,” said Minerva, “so what do I do different here?”  She waved her arms around, but the new pair just followed the movements of the old pair, as if they were tied on with fishing line or something.
     “Yeah, this part is a bit tricky.  The arms respond to commands from your motor cortex, just like your own arms, so you need to learn to be aware of them and move them independently of each other.  It’s kind of a visualization exercise.  Okay, Marcus, I need your help here.”
     “Yes?” said Marcus eagerly.  He seemed pleased to be able to do something.
     “I need you to hold Minerva’s wrists behind her back.”
     “Okay.  Just the upper two, I’m assuming.”
     “Right, the previous two.”  He held her old hands behind her back.  “Now, Minerva, I need you to look me in the eyes.  It’s just like learning to ride a bike; you focus ahead, don’t pay too much attention to what you’re doing.”
     “You say so, Brian.”
     “All right.  First, I want you to hold your arms out straight at your sides.”  I saw her tops flexing a little, but Marcus kept them from moving.  The new arms moved just fine, though.
     “No, don’t move your top arms, just the bottom ones.  Your brain’s got some new toys to play with, so just ignore the ones you’ve already got for a moment.  Now, move your arms to the front and raise your hands up in front of your face.”  She did, and I didn’t notice any activity from her existing arms this time.  “Very good, Min.  Can you wiggle your fingers for me?” Her new fingers wiggled.  
     “Now that’s cool,” said Marcus.
     “Hang on, I wanna try something,” said Minerva.  She pulled her wrists away from Marcus and walked behind him.  Standing in front of Marcus, I saw her arms come up around Marcus’s shoulders and neck.  I then saw her head come up over his shoulder, which I thought was a bit odd since he was quite a bit taller than she was.  I figured out what had happened when her other hands came around his waist and her lower half sat down in a chair nearby.
     “Wow,” I said as Minerva smiled in front of me, her torso hanging off of Marcus’s.  “You’ve been practicing, haven’t you?”
     “Every night,” she said.
     “Yeah, we’ve spent plenty of time practicing, haven’t we?” said Marcus as the two of them shared a kiss.
     “Okay, that’s a bit too much information.  Marcus, I’ll move on to your new toy just as soon as you put your backpack down.”
     “What?” he said just as a sudden happy look came over his face.  “Oh, right!  Move over, Min!”  He quickly took Minerva’s torso off of his back and set her down in a chair next to her lower half.  Her lower arms walked over on top of her legs so she could put herself back together as I grabbed a large parcel from under my desk.  
     “Okay,” I said, “this room’s a little small for this, so we’re going to need to go upstairs.  I’ve got some stuff set up on the roof.”
     “The roof?” said Minerva.  “How big are these things, Brian?”
     “About thirty feet across at full extension.  He told me he wanted them full scale, and a bat’s wingspan is about four times its height.  Plus, people are built heavier than bats.  I figure, if a person were to have real wings, this is how big they’d be.  Come on, guys.”  I headed for the elevator, and the two Ms followed after me like kids at Christmas.
     On the roof, Marcus stared a bit at all the stuff I had laid out.  I had set up a small hand-cranked winch and secured it tight to the roof, and there was a harness lying next to it.  
     “Whoa, what is all this?”
     “You’ll see,” I said as I took Marcus’s wings out of the wrapping.  The tips were fastened together with zip-ties so they wouldn’t flop around.  I pressed the spikes on the base of the wings into Marcus’s back between the shoulder blades like I had with James and Christina, and right away he tried to spread them as far as he could.  I guess he’d figured that the stuff I told Minerva worked the same way for him, which was right, but I didn’t want him to try them out just yet.  As I had hoped, it was a windy day today.
     “Before you try those out, I need to put this on you.”  I picked up the harness and strapped it to him, making sure the straps were all tightened as far as they could go.  I then attached the end of the winch rope to the harness with a thick cotter pin.  Once that was done, I finally cut the ties on the wings.  As soon as Marcus opened the wings, the wind quickly knocked him over.
     “Hold on, hotshot,” I said.  “You need to face into the wind and lean forward a bit.  Didn’t you ever fly a kite?”
     “Whoa, whoa,” said Minerva.  “Are you serious?  You’re telling me he can fly with those things?”
     “They’re designed after bat wings, and those tend to work pretty well.  And they’re certainly strong enough to hold his weight.  You can do chin-ups with those new arms of yours, after all.  Well, chest-ups, anyway.”
     “Hey, guys?” said Marcus.  We turned back towards him, and he was hovering on an air current about a foot off the roof, the rope tight in front of him.  “Check this shit out!”
     Minerva stood and stared in awe.  I just walked over to the winch and flipped a little lever.  The crank handle released and rope began to unwind from the spool.  Before long, Marcus was sitting pretty about sixty feet in the air.
     “Hey, I can see my house from here!”
     “Hey Marcus, if you’re feeling cocky, just pull that pin in front of you and it’ll release the rope.  You can try gliding on your own if you…”  Before I could finish talking, he pulled the pin and jumped back on the wind as the rope came spiraling downwards.  As he descended, his angle grew steeper and steeper.  Just before I started running under him, though, he leveled out and dropped into a big lazy circle around the roof before coming to a skidding halt on the rooftop.
     “You, sir,” I said, “have done your homework.”
     “Damn right,” he said.  “I didn’t want to have to work with these too much before the party.”
     “O – kay, then, let’s get the bill sorted out, then.”  We headed back downstairs.
     “You are coming, aren’t you?” asked Minerva.
     “Sure am.  I’ve got my costume all picked out and everything.”
     “Good,” said Marcus.  “Because if you don’t show up, you do know we’re going to hunt you down, right?”
     “Yes, yes, I’m coming, all right?”
     “Good,” said Minerva.  They paid their bill and headed back up to their place to get ready for the party.  As they left, I caught them giving each other some peculiar looks.  It left me wondering just what they had in store for me at this party.  
     And I’ll tell you this right now: I wasn’t ready for it.