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cies, etc.
And you need to have been investing money and amassing
a fortune the entire time, because the technology you'll need
to even get close to a real-world version of Batman will cost
millions of dollars. So you've done that, and now you start
spending the money to get an armored suit full of electronics
to communicate with assistants and have night vision and so
on. You need a base of operations, so you buy one of those
old used missile silos the military sells (yeah, they really do
that, and it's pretty cool inside them) and turn it into a secret
headquarters for the computers and monitoring equipment
and car and bike and other equipment you need for your vigilante
life.
Conservatively, you should probably be about thirty-two at
this point. And you are only about to go out on your first night
as Batman. okay, it's taken longer than expected and been
pretty hard, and honestly you are not quite as much a master
of all fields as Batman, but at least you got the basics and are
pretty well trained and smart and equipped. So off you go,
looking to stop crime . . .
. . . and you're looking. And looking. oh, wait, you hear police
sirens or you get a transmission from picking up the police
radio calls, there's a domestic disturbance in progress . . .
well, that's not really what Batman does, so you let that one
go to the cops. Then you get another call about a robbery,
ah ha! Finally Batman is going into action! You run across
those rooftops, swing across to another roof — whoa crap,
that was a lot more dangerous than it looks in the comics!
But you're booking it, running flat out and probably hitting,
what, a good ten miles per hour? Maybe less actually because
of having to dodge things and stop at the edge of the roof to
swing down again.
Anyway, there you are, rooftop to rooftop, and it occurs to
you that the cop cars are so far gone now that you barely hear
the sirens. So you think, "Hmm, no wonder the real Batman
has a car, this rooftop thing looks cool, but I'll never make it
in time to stop a crime that isn't happening within a block or
two."
And you don't — make it in time, that is. The first few
nights, you keep showing up and the robberies or shootings
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