In the Land of Paramount roams Star Trek; and on the Fields created by Decker run Star Traks. A couple of Animals within the Traks Herd are branded BorgSpace and are owned by Meneks. Thank you those who contributed superheroes (and villains) for this story.
Superhero for Rent, Cheap - Part I
"Hello!" called a voice into the lounge. "Hello! Sorry we're a little late. Gary had finals."
A handsome man wearing red and black spandex and a gold-trimmed black cape looked up from the round table in the center of the spacious room. He was holding a handful of playing cards. "Late? Late?! 'Late' would have been an hour ago. Some of us, like The Bailiff, have night jobs, you know. Money doesn't grow on trees. Well, unless you are Green Thumb, the lazy bastard."
The owner of the first voice snorted, "Give it a break, Miraculous Man. You're exaggerating the situation. Okay, maybe me and my buds had to pick up munchies on the way here, but we /are/ going to be guarding The Vault for the next three days and nights."
A short man, dressed in black turtleneck sweater and slacks, huddled in the corner with a variety of unusual equipment, most of which appeared to be fashioned of tinfoil and old radio parts. The aluminum skullcap he wore did not quite hide the fact his hair was a disaster area. He said, "Yah, give it a break, Max. Besides, the gerbil is winning. If we leave now, I figure a 47.3% chance They won't be watching us."
Max - aka Miraculous Man - rolled his eyes. "You got to remember to take your medicine, Toby. Anyway.... Okay folks! Time for the Council of Justice to head out into the night. Our work here is done. For three days we rest and recuperate, after which our contract returns us here."
"Zero Heroes," muttered Voice One, unheard by the seven the lounge busily picking up beer cans, pop bottles, pizza boxes, and candy wrappers.
Pull back a bit to see the whole picture.
The large room is the anteroom to The Vault, depository of secret weapons and devious doomsday devices taken from Evil geniuses and supervillains. The Vault itself is huge, impenetrable, but the Constitution mandated security guards to be stationed at all times. As all the decent superheroes cost extraordinary amounts of money to employ, the less desirable bands tended to actually hold the job. Who did the guarding did not matter, as the Constitution also provided rights to Evil geniuses and supervillains to post cash bond on their do-dads after a mandatory 90 day waiting period and an insincere claim the device in question would not be used for nefarious purposes.
Somebody had to keep the good superheroes in business.
This particular security contract included the Council of Justice and the Seniors, both of whom had underbid the competition by the exact same amount. The teams had been accepted, and time split between the two, final negotiations focusing on Seniors class schedules and employment obligations held by those Council of Justice members who had to hold real jobs to pay rent.
The Seniors were an average-sized team of four, although the group that weekend had swelled to include an additional body on a temporary basis. While no one liked the prospect, Captain Random could not protest when his mother had given him baby-sitting duties. She was off to a deserved vacation at Beachball casinos, and it was most convenient and least expensive if her older son would watch the younger, end of discussion.
The leader of the Seniors was Static Electricity Boy, also known as Johnny by the residents of the dorm in which he was Assistant. SEB was a standard college student in his jeans, T-shirt, and backpack (superhero costumes were expensive!), but, like his moniker implied, he controlled the power of static electricity. He was also a whiz at finding lost socks.
Gary, Narcoleptic Boy, was unsure why he hung out with the likes of the Seniors. He was unsure why the group even called themselves Seniors, as only Johnny was in fact of senior status at school. It was obvious he was not a superhero, but rather one of the vast minority of the population with no powers whatsoever. Obviously the others were pulling his leg when they told him tales of fighting Bad Guys while wearing a bedsheet and beauty mask...all while asleep.
Captain Random - Terry - had a weight-lifter body he was proud of, the ability to fly, and knew an astounding amount of totally useless information. He had memorized pi to 75 decimal places. He could tell you the number of people maimed in molpul ranching over the past five years, as well as the circumstances surrounding each case. He was also afraid of heights, wore a second-hand cape he had nicked out of the dumpster behind Stupendous Man's duplex, and had a very annoying little brother.
Jeb, said very annoying little brother, was nicknamed Raitlan Boy by Terry, but only when his mother wasn't in hearing distance. Jeb was extremely hyperactive, so hyper he made (Terry's words) "Aunt Triste's insane miniature shosho look calm." That particular evening, Jeb was wearing his blue superhero pajamas, featuring a big, backwards "R" on them. He also carried a bookbag full of games to amuse himself.
Cloe the Wonder Chicken rounded out the Seniors. She wore a small cape; and she clucked a lot.
Departing The Vault was the Council of Justice, a seven-member monstrosity which was as likely to get in each other's way as nab a Bad Guy. As schedules did not always overlap, it was rare the entire team showed up in one place to foil a crime. It always seemed someone was "In the middle of ironing my tights," "Trying to pay the back rent by selling my blood," or "At a meeting to learn if I'll still have a job tomorrow."
Leader of the Council of Justice was Maxwell T. Kent V, a pretentious name which fit the pretentious job of corporate attorney. Of the seven, he was the sole member with a well-earning job, which allowed him to custom tailor his bold black, red, and gold costume. Billing himself Miraculous Man, his perfect body and special powers were of the standard variety common to Superman wanna-bes, although his ego was considerably larger than normal. Unfortunately, while he preferred to work alone, one man outfits were not competitive in the contemporary superhero market.
Literally a head above the rest was Clyde - aka The Bailiff. His superhero name was an unimaginative extension of his court bailiff night job. He owned few other clothes except for his bailiff uniform, a garment special ordered by the local municipality to fit his eight foot, 450 pound frame. An incongruous coon-skin hat topped his head, out of place considering the rest of his outfit.
Janine, one of the two women on the team, was known as The Blade, an appropriate description both due to the scimitars she carried and her wicked tongue. Corporate restructuring had trimmed the assassin department of her former employer FacelessCorp, leaving Janine with a simmering resentment greatly out of proportion for her 5' 2" body. As FacelessCorp was a difficult target to exact revenge upon, she amused herself by transferring anger (and scimitars) onto those people Miraculous Man, whom she had a crush upon, deemed.
The other woman, Catfighter - Marta - hated The Blade, a feeling which was mutual. Combining the concepts of "dragonlady" and "femme fatale" into one and twisting them, Marta was a beautiful woman able to turn the head of the most dysfunctional man. She also had a permanent case of mega-PMS. Hating women, hating men, she was a one-woman white hole of hatred. Inexplicable, she was attracted to Miraculous Man, which probably went a long ways towards explaining animosity with The Blade.
Thirty-five years old and still living in his parent's basement, The Paranoid had exceptional intelligence and mental powers hidden behind a facade of, well, paranoia. They, black helicopters, spy satellites, all were realities to Toby, realities he ranted of during his midnight radio show "The Word is Out." Although he had pills to moderate his condition, he often neglected to take them, convinced a government agency was trying to poison him.
The Brick was, as his name implied, living brick. The condition was not unusual considering many members of the local superhero and villain population were comprised of bizarre substances such as avocado dip or green zucchini pudding. Brick, Floyd, was "dumb as a brick" and "swam like a brick," but he also made a dandy shield the other Council of Justice members could hide behind in the case of serious trouble.
The Mutant Gerbil was unarguably the best member of the group and would have long ago struck out on his own if animal laws had not stood in his way. Although he had a humanoid frame and cast to features, stood six feet tall, and commanded a larger vocabulary than his comrades combined, he remained technically classified as "mascot." His proclivity for sunflower seeds had not won supporters during his last court hearing when temporary insanity struck after the judge began snacking from a bag of the tasty items. His part-time job, besides the Council of Justice, was as an activist with the local chapter of Pet Rights, an organization dedicated to putting animals on par with people.
The gerbil looked with satisfaction at his pile of money, mostly bit and tenth coins, although a shiny credit piece sparkled here and there. Opening his mouth, he removed a coin purse from a cheek pouch. The money was shoveled into the purse, and purse placed back in mouth. "I'm ready to go," said Gerbil. "Clyde, can I bum a ride off of you? I need to be at the courthouse to learn what bail was set on a Pet Rights guy who was arrested yesterday."
Clyde grunted. "Sure. You gotta listen to my new poetry tape on the way, though."
Gerbil sighed, "Fine."
Quickly the room was cleaned, garbage pitched into a large plastic bag. Replication recycling service would be by in a couple of hours to pick up the trash. The Council of Justice filed out, Blade and Catfighter separated from each other by poisoned glares and three bodies. The Seniors filed in.
"Three days!" shouted SEB to Miraculous Man's back, "And don't be late! I've a final that morning! In chemistry!"
Clyde, the last one out the anteroom doors, paused. The striped tail of his hat swung back and forth. "There's some candy left on the table. Help yerself."
Terry, at the mini-fridge unloading sodas from a grocery bag, stopped and cursed. "Candy? Oh, Deity, no! Mom's gonna kill me!"
It was too late. The candy bars which had been on the table were gone, replaced by wrappers. Under the table came a child's voice, speaking a single word progressively faster: "Sugar...sugar...sugar...sugarsugarsugarsugar!" Jeb exploded from under the table and began to literally bounce off the walls.
"Come on!" shouted Terry. "Help me catch him! Man, I am dead! Dead dead dead!"
*****
The spy satellite shifted position, dish and cameras rotating to focus on a new target. In a vacuum, no sound is possible, but if noise were feasible, the machine would have been happily emitting a mindless series of beeps and clicks. It orbited a potato shaped asteroid roughly seven kilometers long by two kilometers in diameter, a spy for government or superhero or supervillain, one of many similar devices.
The asteroid was known as Stone in the current epoch. It was an unimaginative name, if fitting. It belonged to the class of AD system objects known as Free Rocks, inhabitable space rocks which lay outside the direct influence of either Arrival or Departure. A Free Rock orbited in its own path around the wormholes, the most distant asteroids having the longest life before tidal disintegration.
Stone was highly unusual. First of all, radionucleogenic radiation saturated the entire asteroid. It was harmless to visitors, but infants born on the rock were affected in peculiar ways. Likely related to the radiation was the fact that of all Free Rocks, Stone appeared to have the sole stable orbit, path never decaying, never showing mathematical possibility of decay, to a wormhole death.
Although Stone appeared to be a stable Free Rock, many epochs it went uninhabited due to the radionucleogenic radiation. Depending upon species, 50% to 95% of newborns would have mutations, providing them with what many races described in colorful comics as superhuman attributes. Extreme strength, the ability to fly, and x-ray vision were common, but the random effect could as likely include the dubious ability to catch cockroaches with one's hair. The superhuman was not exportable: except in rare cases, abilities could only be used on Stone; and in fact, many of the more extreme mutants who might try to leave had a high probability of death. The civilizations which thus arose in such circumstances were all unusual, and all quite dysfunctional in comparison to the rest of AD.
The species currently inhabiting Stone were Hunams. The unmutated 15% of the population appeared to be curiously similar to Terrans, no doubt a humorous joke by the Great Overdeity, or perhaps a mischievous Q. They even spoke a language called Anglish, which although derived on a planet tens of thousands of light years removed from Earth English, sounded eerily similar. Physical differences, such as double belly buttons, were minor and easily overlooked.
The Hunam population on Stone was divided into four ancient cities, metropolitan areas which had survived occupation by many waves of superheroes and villains derived from multitudes of races. Guided by a Stone-wide Constitution, superheroes, villains, and normals were provided a framework of laws which allowed the society to lurch around without self-destructing. While the original Hunam settlers may have preferred to rename the ancient cities suitably "heroic" names, reality was harsh. The "Gothems" of the galaxy were heavily trademarked, copyrighted, or otherwise protected. Therefore, the cities were instead christened Poindexter (the capital), Dullville, Grothet, and Scotch.
The spy satellite slued, focusing on a new location. The autonomic navcomp noted an anomaly slowly enlarging on its startracking camera, an anomaly with crisp edges and ninety degree angles blocking the starfield. It called to its owners for assistance. The satellite's controller proceeded to direct the machine to rotate, to bring precision spy cameras to bear. Lenses irised open, unblinking eyes following the path of the cube shaped intruder.
*****
Cube #347 orbited the Free Rock Stone. The small asteroid serenely rolled beneath planetary sensors, one city after another turning into view. The cities themselves were mostly underground, as expected. However, four large domes of transparent aluminum, plastic compounds, light alloys, and shimmering forcefields peeked from dusty rock along the longitudinal equator, enclosing towering buildings. Spidery mechanoids, made small by distance, skittered over domes on an unceasing mission to find and repair imperfections.
{Where are they?} demanded Weapons. Disrupters were on-line and ready to fire. The target, however, was not obliging, and in fact under dispute as to existence. {Fifty-three targets, all gone! And I did not do anything!}
Cube #347 had registered fifty-three artificial satellites of various mass in orbit around Stone. Or at least it had seemed that way. Sensors was convinced the phenomena had been a sensor ghost caused by residue radionucleogenic radiation emanating from the asteroid. Weapons had locked onto a satellite as the cube had slid into high orbit, only to watch as all fifty-three sensor blips evaporated from the grid.
{They are cloaked,} insisted Weapons. {Realign the grid. Now!}
Sensors was peeved, {What do you think Sensors has been doing? No, don't [fingerprint] the grid! You will ruin it! Sensors has not been twiddling her [tangerines]. No [blanket] of cloaking [telephones] in effect. Sensors insists it was a ghost. She will begin recalibrating [speakers] immediately to optimize the grid for AD systems. Sensors has been lax in [ball-point pen] so.}
Weapons fumed. Several disrupters fired in random directions. Predictably, nothing exploded, which only deepened the weaponry hierarchy head's sullen mood.
Captain locked Weapons away from his toys, before temptation ended with Cube #347 surrounded by debris of Stone. Sifting through millions of metric tons of rock to find an Artifact of unknown configuration would be like looking for a needle in a planet-sized haystack. The task of soothing Weapons was passed onto Second, much to the latter's disgust. However, a hail from the largest city complex demanded attention.
"Helloooo, up there," spoke a frail voice. "Please state your name and business. How do you work this new-fangled contraption again? They didn't have things like this when I was a child, no sir-ee. None of this foreign imported trash." The audio signal expanded as visual was added.
A very old man squinted into the camera pickup. He had a long white beard which disappeared off the bottom of the picture, contrasting lack of hair on top of head. Jaw solemnly moved in a chewing gesture, as if masticating gum, although nothing was in his mouth. The back of a chair framed the old man's head; and by the slight forward and back motion, one supposed it was of the rocking variety. A "Hello, My Name Is" sticker was stuck in the middle of his forehead, blank space completed with "Grandpa Man" in black permanent marker.
"I say, I say," repeated the old man, "what is your name and business? No respect for your elders anymore, by the Directors, no respect from you young whippersnappers."
Captain frowned and he narrowed his eye in collective annoyance. A camera in subsection 11, submatrix 14 was spliced to the return signal, then quickly switched to neighboring submatrix 13. Outsiders did not need to see the cleaning operation under way following a miscalculation involving too much baking soda mixed with too much vinegar and dyed with too much green food coloring. If Grandpa Man noticed any discrepancies, he did not say so.
"We are the Borg. Resistance is futile. You will provide us with the Lock Artifact. Comply."
Grandpa Man lifted one heavily varicose veined hand to cup his ear. "Eh? What did you say? Your name is Lord? Lorg? And there seems to be something wrong with your camera, sonny, as I can't see you.
"Of course, if could be my eyes. Not what they used to be. Used I could melt through a meter of good quality steel with an eyebeam in less than sixty seconds. That was before I was Grandpa Man, naturally. Oh, I was a young and foolish buck then, full of myself. Why, back in '44 - now, that was quite a year - I was involved in the BigOrange caper. We had nasty supervillains back then, BigOrange among them. Today it is the likes of Evil Dr. Ban'Anna. Hah! As if an Evil Genius worth his weigh in salt needs to include 'Evil' as part of their name."
"It is society, now, if you ask me. Society has gone down the drain. 'Evil' and 'Good,' it used to be self-evident. Did you know there is a Neutralman over at Scotch? Neutralman! I could not believe it either when I heard the news."
Grandpa Man had a lot of opinions about a lot of things, the only constant of which was that life was much better in his youth. Likely the degradation in quality of life had more to do with Grandpa Man's own body decline from strapping youth to rocking duffer, rather than civilization itself. In every generation there are those that "disrespect their elders," just as there are elders who have conveniently forgotten their own youthful attitudes towards anyone older than themselves.
The sub-collective tried to squeeze in a word edgewise, attempted to insert a "Resistance is futile" between complaints of arthritis and the neighbor's shosho. Cube #347 had been outmaneuvered by a master. The link was cut; likely the old man never noticed.
{Pan right. Now left. Stop. Zoom in, in, in. Stop. What the hell? All units, focus on what Second sees,} ordered Captain. Five points of view turned to center upon the situation developing across the street.
An exploration unit consisting of Second and five additional drones had been dispatched to the largest city, a complex by the designation Poindexter. It had been the origination of Grandpa Man's peculiar welcome hail. No other contact had been initiated by Stone, and attempts at communication by the cube were ignored.
The drones sent to the surface (randomly chosen, despite Second's claim to the contrary) arrived on the sidewalk of what appeared to be a moderately busy metropolis, mid-afternoon. Glass and steel skyscrapers, superfluous on an asteroid with more than sufficient habitation volume, stretched upwards. The sky was artificially projected, blue with a cheery yellow sun unlike cold reality of black, of stars, of distant Arrival and Departure. Gravity was 0.8 G, too high for a Stone-sized object, hinting at a massive gravity grid in operation. And the inhabitants?
Here and there in the thin crowds or driving silently floating vehicles were beings that resembled humans, but they were the minority. The vast majority fit no specific category, and even the label "bipedal sentient" did not work in all cases. Big and small, many dressed in outrageous costumes, people of all...shapes...populated the city. The Borg were a still eddy in the stream, the city-dweller instinct common throughout the cosmos prompting pedestrians to unconsciously sidestep the stationary knot without registering the cause for disruption. Flying humanoids, flaunting the laws of aerodynamics, were common, airborne without dint of wings or noticeable antigravity devices.
The situation - less than two minutes had elapsed since beam in - was occurring at an establishment with the words "Poindexter First Bank." Ignoring the fact the lettering was written in understandable Terran English was easy in light of the...the...the raspberry(?) hastily emerging from the double set of glass doors.
It was a man dressed in a dumpy raspberry outfit, although the dark color suggested marrionberry or an almost ripe blackberry. Regardless, the outfit needed a good tumble through the washing machine. The costume sagged, as did the black tights, wrinkles in the latter visible even from across the street and half a block distant. A black ski-mask covered the man's face, atop of which was a hat sporting a green stem out of character with the berry motif. One hand clutched a department shopping bag, paper variety, by flimsy handles.
With a dull foomp, the bag bulged outwards, then geysered an orange dye onto the raspberry.
"Excuse me, chaps, think I could hide here with you?" asked a voice with a distinct nasal quality and a hint of accent. "Thanks. It is soooo hard to find good Evil help these days. There just aren't any decent thugs anymore. Everyone wants to go to school, get a degree in crimology, then start up their own gangs. The thugs that are left don't even have a brain cell to their name. I told them to avoid the dye packs when holding up the bank, but did they listen? Nooooo. I'm amazed one even made it out the door. I expect the rest of my unit has already been caught. Oh well, that is what thugs are for."
Two drones turned to regard the intruder in their midst, while the rest continued to watch the bank entrance. A large banana stood there. Well, it was a cross between a humanoid and a banana. It (he?) was yellow and banana-shaped, had two legs, two arms, and what one supposed was a face approximately where faces were traditionally located had the thing had a head. Somehow a suit had been tailored to fit the odd frame, covered by a white lab coat. A sticker reading "Dole" was located on the coat's right front pocket.
Meanwhile, the orange dyed raspberry had been caught by a passerby on the street. The fruit dropped his sack in light of the fact his feet were now half a meter above the ground, the rather rubbery pedestrian in a jogging suit holding his prize high in the air.
The bank door slammed open, a /very/ large humanoid squeezing out. The woman, for the giant Amazon was very obviously female, was wearing a spandex outfit which left little to the imagination. In each enormous hand was clutched a fruit with legs, an apple and a lemon to be exact. The fruits made disillusioned running movements with their legs.
"All that is missing in the bunch of grapes. No, wait. The other bank guard has him," commented the banana.
A second figure exited the bank, as diminutive as the Amazon was huge. Gender was impossible to distinguish from the distance, but the wee person looked to be mostly hands. The hands were larger than the Amazon's. Dragged behind the guard was a bunch of grapes, legs kicking. Being pulled by the hair like that must have been very painful.
The banana sighed, "Here comes the police. I'm going to need new thugs now. Guess I'll put an announcement in the paper and send word to the employment offices. This economy doesn't help the hiring situation at all. I wonder if the temp agencies have any good prospects?"
A paddywagon slowly maneuvered down the street, bobbing to a stop in front of the bank, lights flashing. Like other vehicles, it lacked wheels, and so settled quietly to the ground as its antigravity field disengaged. One after another, the fruits were tossed into the back of the truck. Doors slammed. Commotion done, the police vehicle lifted from pavement and slowly moved away through the traffic.
All drones swiveled their heads to regard the two meter banana.
"Nice to meet you," said the banana as it extended a hand to shake. "I am the Evil Dr. Ban'Anna. Would you fellows maybe be looking for a job?"
*****
"Sugarsugarsugar!"
"Grab him, Gary!"
A body hit the table, spilling stale cookie crumbs and several pencils across the floor. "Sorry, Toby, missed him."
"Sugar! Sugar!"
"Come on Jeb, slow down for your brother. Please? I have some yummy 'vitamins' for you."
"Sugarsugarsugar!"
Hidden by protective cloaks, fifty-three satellites, and through them their owners, observed the Borg cube. Orbits were carefully adjusted where necessary by passive means, allowing the immense ship a clear path of travel, unhindered by satellite speedbumps. Silent cameras watched, reflecting interest of masters who usually occupied their time constructing elaborate plots against foes or scheming how to foil dastardly plans: what would the Borg do next?
Return to the Season 4 page