Super: Origins by Palladian Page B

to eat.”
    “All right, all right!” said Lex, shaking her head. “I guess you really do know me well. Anyway, get back to work! I love you, Kurt.”
    “Love you, sweet thing. I’ll see you tonight.”
    And now , Lex thought as she hung up the phone and looked back to the stacks of paper on the coffee table, to figure out more about all the insane things I couldn’t tell you about…

Chapter 4: Decision
    Lex wandered into the kitchen then to see what she could find for lunch. She spent a few minutes staring absently into the refrigerator, considering what Kurt had said, still surprised. For a while now, Kurt had been mentioning again and again his idea that she give up job hunting and become a “lady of leisure,” as he called it. She wondered about his change of mind, and then smiled as she thought of the few comments he’d made recently about trying to be supportive of what she wanted. Figuring that probably explained it, she went about making herself a sandwich and cutting up an apple.
    She took her food back into the living room to plan her attack on the paperwork. She figured she’d focus on the Testing Informed Consent and Confidentiality sections, since she’d noted on her first pass that she needed to read both of those more closely. The Testing Informed Consent document seemed larger, so she thought she’d start with that one and then read the smaller Confidentiality section. After that, she’d read what she could of the other three sections, Lex decided.
    Before she started, she looked at the clock. It was a little after half past noon, which gave her four and a half hours before Carl came back. Making a mental note of that, Lex planned to finish her reading sometime before the deadline, in order to give her time to think about what she’d read and figure out how to respond. She took a deep breath while looking at all of the stacks of papers and then grabbed the one for Testing Informed Consent.
    Lex had sunk into her task hard, and when she finally pried her eyes from the pages, she realized she’d eaten her sandwich and about half of her apple. To give herself some mental distance, Lex wandered into the kitchen to refill her water glass and think a little. She’d finished the first half of the section, but the subject hadn’t gotten much clearer. It had stated that as part of their normal duties, members of the team would be asked to submit to physical examinations and take various medical tests.
    Some of the tests they’d used as examples (since each team member would have a customized plan) had been non-invasive, like CAT scans or X-rays, but others had been more involved, like probes of different types and biopsies. This worried Lex since she didn’t generally like medical procedures, having a tendency to pass out when doctors took her blood or when she had to get a shot. The paperwork did recommend team members to take tests that examining doctors requested, but all members could opt out of anything they didn’t want to have done.
    The part she’d started to read involved treatments and had begun by stating that sometimes the physicians would detect things in their tests for which they’d recommend treatments. As she came back into the living room, Lex sat down on the couch again and scanned ahead to see if she could find out response expectations. Finally, after a long list of potential treatments, she found that, as with the tests, team members could determine whether or not they wanted to follow any treatment regimen, although it was highly recommended to take the physicians’ advice. Nodding at the predictability of the language but still not sure about the intent of the section, Lex made some notes and moved along to read the Confidentiality section.
    She shook her head when she’d finished, due to the repeated dire warnings about telling unauthorized secrets and threats of jailing and death. Fortunately, this document did give specific guidance about what constituted secrets, but