I looked at my watch. We weren’t scheduled to even be there for another hour or more. I just shook my head and hurried to change clothes.
◊◊◊
The University of Chicago was a private school and a top research center. They spent nearly four hundred million on research and development each year. They’d been endowed with over seven-and-half billion dollars.
Back in the 1930s, the University of Chicago had been one of the top athletic schools in the country, and actually had the first Heisman Trophy winner in 1935. They’d been one of the founding members of what was now the Big 10 conference but had pulled out when their president deemphasized athletics. Football hadn’t been played at the University of Chicago for thirty years.
The University of Chicago had always been a research facility. Early work on the Manhattan Project to develop the first nuclear weapon was done there. In essence, it was a nerd magnet. It was the place to go if you wanted an advanced degree or doctorate. Only a third of the 15,000 students were undergraduates.
Max was right: when our bus pulled up to the Gerald Ratner Athletics Center, about a hundred people were waiting to get in. I smiled when I figured out why. These were fanboys and girls. Several had dressed up as characters from my movie. They saw me get off the bus and broke out of line. The state troopers weren’t sure what to do, but I held up my hands.
“These are my people!” I boomed in my best Stryker persona.
I waded into the crowd to pull them away from the bus so everyone could get off.
“Give us a few minutes to get set up. I have photos I can autograph, and you can get your picture taken with me.”
The prospect of getting a picture taken with a star in a sci-fi movie was almost more than some of them could handle. I sometimes forgot how much people got into this type of stuff.
When I entered the arena, Max was in a full-on lather.
“Nothing’s set up. I need you all to help with chairs.”
I walked into the gym where the rally would take place and saw it was smaller than our basketball gym. It looked like it would only hold a thousand people in the bleachers. There was a stage at one end. Apparently, the plan was to put rows of folding chairs on the court. I wasn’t in the mood to set up that many chairs. But I had an idea. I walked back outside.
“I need some help. We need people to volunteer to set up chairs. Think you could do that for me so we can get to signing autographs and taking pictures?”
I was almost stampeded with volunteers. Max looked bewildered as everyone poured into the gym, eager to help. I had to laugh when an argument broke out as how to set them up to maximize the seating and the most efficient way they could get the job done. I left it to Max to deal with them. Since I’d had the same argument with Alan many times, I knew to stay out of it until they figured it out.
Jett found me.
“‘These are my people’?”
“Hey, no making fun of my fans.”
“Aren’t they a little old to be dressed up like Halloween in the middle of February?” she asked.
“Says the girl with weird hair,” I shot back.
“I thought you liked my hair,” she pouted.
“I’m just saying to each his own. They like to dress up as characters in movies. You like to get all sexy and show off your smoking-hot body when you sing.”
She gave me a smile and kissed me. I looked around and saw that several people were watching us.
“Nice save. So, you think I have a smoking-hot body?” Jett asked.
“I may have to see if they have a rod and reel.”
She actually blinked at that one, so I put her out of her misery.
“You seem to be fishing for compliments. Get a mirror, girl. When you put on your ‘Rocker Girl’ garb, you know you look good. Heck, all the girls in your band are hot.”
Of course, they were all standing behind me.
“He says the sweetest things,” Amy, the one with multicolored hair, said.
◊◊◊
I spent extra time talking to the fanboys and girls who had volunteered. They wanted to talk about different scenes in the movie and pick it apart. It was a lot of fun, more than I would have expected.
I suspect Jett was jealous because the band was all but ignored. Later, when my fans had thinned out, college guys figured out that they would rather get their picture taken with the girls. I then introduced them, and they played for a half-hour. After their set, my new theme song,
When they were done, I introduced Senator Dixon, and we were ushered onto the bus to the next event at Loyola.
◊◊◊
