You wonder about the future of transportation; or at least I do. What will ships look like fifty years from now, a hundred years from now? The US government developed the Sea Shadow, an A-shaped vehicle that skims the waves, a sort of cross between a hydrofoil and an ordinary ship, where only the two sides of the "A" contact the waves....

Is that the future of shipping on the waves?

One could imagine that combined with a modular submarine, that would drop out of the larger ship. One could imagine someone with ultraintelligence, as Mindmistress has, devising such a ship...

Perhaps calling the A-shaped ship the Brain Wave and the smaller submarine, the Subconscious, keeping to the "mind" motif.

With advanced control of molecular surfaces, one might be able to make an almost frictionless surface for the surface ship, at least where it impacts the water. If it were almost frictionless, and propelled fast enough, the ship might go fast enough to break the sound barrier...on the surface of the sea.

With illusionary controls, the ship could appear to most who see it as just another houseboat...until she really lets it go.

The submarine might be made of a special polymer that reacts to outside pressure by becoming harder and harder. Even a small one-man sub might be able to go far deeper than the most advanced bathyscape.

With the same control of substances on the molecular level, one could imagine building a plane that can go at hypersonic speeds. Most jets, even the fastest, only go at mach 3 at most within the atmosphere. Any faster, and many of the jets would overheat and melt. Only in airless space can you go much faster. Yet a substance that distributed and dissipated the heat could go at hypersonic speeds, which begin at mach 5...perhaps as fast as Mach Ten.

It would make the Batplane, the Fantasti-Car, even the Pogo Plane of the Fantastic Four, look slow.

Mach Ten is roughly 7,500 miles per hour. That would render almost anywhere on Earth just an hour or two away. Imagine going ten times faster than the Concorde between Europe and America...

Again, illusionary projectors could make it appear as a simple cropduster...until she really lets it go full-out....

Its name? Quickthinking comes to mind....uh, no pun intended.

A module within the plane might have the landing wheels and detach---to form the car to end all cars, able to go at amazing speeds, able to sense via radar objects in its path and avoid them, something that would make the Batmobile or James Bond's car look tame.

Again, illusionary projectors could make it look like an ordinary beat-up old car...until she decided to floor it.

All the modes of transportation would be able to be directly thought-controlled, responding to her brain-wave patterns, reacting much quicker than her reflexes.

There would be a couple of reasons she might need these vehicles. Even if she can do the teleporting "catwalk" that I discussed weeks ago, that might just be to known places. She might need exploratory vehicles to go places she's never been before.

Yet there's the merchandising possibilities...if by any chance she becomes very popular, it might not be a bad idea to have possible toys and subsidiary toys to add...

Again, much of the fun of FANTASTIC FOUR was to see Reed Richards' latest inventions. It's childish of me, but why shouldn't I be childish? What good is a superhero(ine) if not to live out childish fantasies?

Besides, there are story possibilities there. What if others take pictures of the beat-up old houseboat or cropduster, and see from the pictures---the marvellous machines they really are?

Finally, I think it would be part of Mindmistress' character. Just because she's brillant beyond brillant, I don't want her to be an emotionless Spock. She might be a modern Athena...but I also want her to be the kind of person who would say,

"I loooove my toys!"