Nuklear Age (91 page)

“Thiz izn’t right. The field can’t withztand thiz much power!”

“Perhaps. But think of all the data we’re getting. If we can hold on just a little longer.”

“But the field iz collapzing into an Inversion Loop around Nuklear Man’z fizt. We muzt cut power before there iz a backlash.”

“Just a little longer.”

“No!” Menace said. “What?! The shut off command won’t go through.”

“Of course not, Veronica. This is my experiment after all, so I’m in charge of all the overrides.”

“But there’z no way to know how zevere the backlash will be. We could vaporize thiz whole building az the Negaforce and reality bounze back into equilibrium!”

“Spouting incomprehensible technobabble won’t make your pathetic little field any stronger!” I tell them.

“Nuklear Man! You’re not zuppozed to break it!”

“I know! Don’t you see, that’s the whole point!”

I’m looking right at my fist, staring more power into it as it pushes against the weird wall of purply lights that ripple in squares and triangles from my hand. All of a sudden this bajillion-sided figure pops out of the others and something weird happens. My bones feel like they’re jelly as the freaky shifting shape thingie explodes all around me. The force throws me back and I feel the reinforced wall crumble as I’m hurled through it. An ordinary man would have been liquefied, but not me. I’m that good.

And then it gets weirder. Blood colored flames kick me around for a few seconds. It’s like a bomb blast every time one of them touches me. Another alien attack no doubt. It’s more aggressive than their cage, but I’m sure it will prove just as futile in the end. I snatch up a few flames in my grasp. This must be what it’s like to hold lightning.
Yow!
The crimson storm frenzies at my touch. It lashes out at me with a thousand swords. I don’t know what the deal is with these aliens, but they have got some
messed
up weapons. Time to show ‘em who’s boss. And it’s me. The boss that is. Of them.

I yank at the flames with my hands like I’m pulling on the reins of a horse. There’s resistance and I do it again, only this time like I’m pulling on the reins of a tank.

The fire dissolves. I’m hovering in another painfully white room. The walls seem to hum with their sterile whiteness. Below me, huddled in a corner, is a little boy. His eyes are shut tight and I can hear him sobbing. His clothes are ragged and wrinkled, like he’d been wearing them for weeks and spent at least part of that time in the woods or something. I float down and land in front of him. He looks up with bloodshot eyes.

“All that red stuff, that was yours wasn’t it?”

He nods.

“Hm, I see. Are you currently, or have you ever been, a Psychic Radioactive Vampire Zombie Invader from Beyond the Moon?”

He almost smiles.

“Well,
are
ya!”

“No,” and a full smile.

“Ah-ha! Your refusal proves that you are indeed a Radioactive Psychic Zombie…Moon Invader…Vampire. Guy. Because only, uh, one of those would deny it when asked right out! So ah-ha once more, foul creature, for I have found you out using my advanced intelligence and good looks.”

Now he’s giggling. It must be his plan to disarm my suspicions about his true identity as a Zombie…Psychic Invading Monster Vampire. Beast…Moon Thingie.

“You leave me with no other choice, demonspawn vermin thing!” I toss my cape to one side to make sure he knows how cool I am before I defeat him. And then it all goes black.

“Ah! Come out and face me, coward! How dare you attack me like some sort of, um, coward!”

“You’re funny,” the boy says between laughs.

“Mocking me, eh? Does your evil know any bounds?!”

There’s a tugging at the end of my cape and then light once more. The boy is standing up now. He’s in front of me with tears still on his dirty cheeks, a smile on his face, and my cape in his hands. “You flung it around your face.”

“Er. No I didn’t.”

Laughter. “Did so. I saw it.”

“Ah. Yes. Um, yes, you did see me do it. Yes. It was part of my…oh, what’s the word?”

He shrugs.

“You know, the one that’s a general name for when you plan stuff out ahead of time?”

“Strategy?”

“Yeah! That’s it. It was all part of my strategy. ‘Cause I’m so smart.”

“You sure?”

“…Drat your cunning, boy!”

“Nuklear Man!” Dr. Genius says from right behind me.

“Gah! Don’t do that. You’re lucky you’re not a pile of Plazma Beamed goo right now.”

“Sorry, but this couldn’t wait.”

Her right cheek is all red. Odd.

“Hey, where’s ol’ Doc Menace?”

“I wouldn’t worry about her right now,” Genius says. “She has…some other business to attend to. I want to talk about you two.

“But mostly me, I’m sure.”She kneels down to the boy so she misses out entirely on my poses. Her loss.

“Hello, John.”

He’s looking at her but doesn’t answer. He’s still got my cape in his hands.

“Do you know who this is?” she asks him.

She motions to me. Time to make a good impression. A quick pose, not too fancy, just enough to show off the muscles. That’s right. Hero material right here. Oh yeah.

“This is Nuklear Man.”

“Hi,” he says.

“Ha-ho.”

Hm, the boy laughs. Must be laughing
with
me, though I’m not sure about what specifically. That happens a lot, I’ve found.

“He’s going to be a Hero,” she says, still gesturing to me. “He’s going to help people. Isn’t that nice?”

He nods.

“Wouldn’t you like to help people too?”

He nods again.

“Good. You’ll have to come with me,” she reaches out for his hand.

His eyes go wide with terror and flash red, the universal sign that something bad is about to happen. I step between them and there’s an explosion of blood red fire. Dr. Genius is on the floor in front of me. The boy stands behind me wrapped in jagged angry fire.

“Whoa there, Sparky. You gotta be careful with that thing. I read somewhere ‘With great power comes great something, something, yadda yadda yadda, don’t bite the hand that feeds you.’”

“Hm. Sparky,” Genius says as she stands up. “Yes. Somewhat fitting. Friendly. Fits on a T-shirt. Nuklear Man and Sparky. I think that will do quite nicely.”

“Whazat, Doc?”

“Oh, nothing. Why don’t you take ‘Sparky’ here down to the Scientific: Equipment offices and get him a nice colorful outfit like your own? Something with red in it to go along with that power of his. Maybe some blue to off-set it, make it look more approachable and less demonic.”

“Sure thing. C’mon, Sparky. I’ll race ya.”

“Okay,” he says. “On your mark, get set—hey! You cheated! Come back here!”

“Hero Lesson Number One: The rules are for other people!”

We run through the hole I made in his wall, through a door now open in the room where they were testing me, down a corridor, and into dreams.

No.This isn’t real. It’s only memories. Yes. I’m traveling under the universe. I had forgotten how strange time is here. The only way to describe it is that time works sideways but even that doesn’t make any real sense. You’d just have to be here to get it. It’s like a dream. It’s like the universe dreaming of everything that isn’t. I may be here for a day, a year, maybe forever if I’m not careful. But when I emerge into my universe no time will have passed. It’s a dangerous way to travel. I’d forgotten how to focus my thoughts onto my destination. My home. My Earth.

He fell from the dream and felt the suffocating pressure of reality swallow him up. A world was suspended below him in the claustrophobia of existence. Black clouds and red-orange flames covered its surface in swirling patches.

It is Earth.

It is a hundred other worlds.

It is the work of Nihel.

__________

Nihel swept down into the chaotic parody that had once been Metroville. Echoes of screams and gunshots washed over the monster as he sank between the steel towers of this echo of a city. No traffic, no laughter, no daily bustle. Everywhere below him violence and confusion reigned. “What a creature, Earthim. Take away their endless babbling, their inane toys, all their little distractions, and what do you have? A terrified little thing that simultaneously covets and despises that which it does not have. So they kill and rape and destroy everything they touch. Their denial is all that let’s them live with themselves and each other. Their denial and their words. Now that I’ve taken that from them, they must admit, every last one of them, that they are nothing but pathetic petty creatures. Look at you, Earthim! I disrupt your little world and in a matter of hours you’re reduced to murdering your own neighbor out of blind fear. Oh, how I shall revel in this. Your legacy has been a thorn in my side for thousands upon thousands of years. I shall take great pleasure in watching you die. One. By. One.”

He floated through the upper floors of a bank headquarters like it wasn’t even there. He passed through a window without giving it notice and glass shattered out into the windswept air between high-rises. Tiny shards of light refracted themselves into oblivion. He could hear air split itself open, like the herald of a lightning bolt, and then he was struck head on by a tremendous force. His vision flashed purple.

A block directly ahead of him, among the rooftops, Dr. Menace and her Menacycle were hovering over Metroville as it tore itself apart. Neither of them moved for long moments. Wind softly wafted across her coat and his cape. They slowly approached one another until they met a few feet above the an insurance company. Most of its windows were in pieces on the sidewalk far below. They’d been shattered by people desperate to get out and people desperate to get in. Both groups had considered themselves trapped with whatever plague killed half of the people around them.

“You cannot do thiz,” Dr. Menace said flatly, her voice was calm and determined.

Nihel smiled. “My dear, I already am.” The ravings of employees within the building below rose and fell like some kind of musical score working to emphasize and strengthen the on-screen action.

“Why? What will thiz accomplish? Nuklear Man, Arel iz gone! I saw it all. You have failed!”

“No!” Nihel bellowed above the screams. His body seemed to seethe with force, his blood black cape tossed itself back. “Arel is gone. But I have not failed. Fate will be broken. This galaxy will be destroyed even if I have to tear it apart one miserable rock at a time! I must stop Ragnarok because stopping it is unfated! Don’t you see!”

“You’re mad. You said yourzelf that you muzt obey fate. How do you expect to stop thiz Ragnarok of yourz if you are not fated to do so?”

Nihel roared. It was a mindless, wordless bellowing. The insurance company headquarters collapsed like a crushed soda can. He regained his composure with a deep breath. “You cannot comprehend how long I have been working, how long I have been waiting to break free! You cannot comprehend what it is like to know that your every action, your every thought, everything you are is predetermined! You become nothing! You are destiny’s puppet! You call me mad? Well what you call madness is the only way to keep sane! I shall not be defeated as I stand upon the precipice of liberation!”

Dr. Menace leveled her weapon at Nihel. It was one of her earliest inventions she made to battle Nuklear Man. A small pistol looking device with bulky Negaflux capacitors around it to fire bolts of Negaforce. Every shot struck like an artillery shell. It charged up with a high-pitched whine for another blast.

Nihel crossed his arms and looked down the barrel. “A noble gesture, Dr. Menace. Though I must say I’m a bit disappointed. Where’s the complex machinations? Where’s the subtlety? Where’s that evil genius pulling strings behind the scenes, the wheels within wheels of a criminal intellect setting up scenarios so devious that even failure yields a mark of victory? Instead you give me, what? This? A mindless sacrifice is not what I’ve come to expect from a mind such as yours. You aren’t a follower like all these others. You create your own path. You, you more than anyone should understand why I must do this.”

She pulled the trigger. Instantly, the gun took itself apart. Its individual pieces hung in the air for a fleeting second. Dr. Menace was again reminded of a technical diagram with all the pieces hanging apart in space just before the gun’s bits fell into the rubble below.

“Alas. You disappoint me. You seemed such a rational creature despite the limited view afforded by your mortality. But I suppose in the end, morality is an inevitable consequence of that. Do not take this personally. I would have killed you eventually anyway.”

Dr. Menace did not flinch. She did not pray, weep, curse, or close her eyes. She had no incredible philosophical revelation about life, death, nature, fate, free will, or anything at all. A single regret is all she focused on.
Why couldn’t I have done more?

Her spine tingled. She imagined this was the precursor of what was about to come. It was probably her nerves attempting to relay information to her brain. Impossible information that her biology simply was not designed to transmit. Would she be turned inside out? Would her blood become acid? Would it matter?

And there, beyond Nihel, beyond Metroville, and beyond speed, there was a pinprick of light like a single golden star in the sky. Almost before she’d known she’d seen it, the speck of light raced past her like a freight train of energy. The force of it passing by tossed her like a leaf caught in a tornado and when the Menacycle finally corrected itself, Nihel was gone.

“Nuklear Man?” she whispered. She felt weightless with disbelief and hope.

__________

Two gods screamed through the skies of Earth at incredible speed. They cut through the air with enough force to set it ablaze in their wake. They passed the West Coast in a matter of seconds.

“Why won’t you just
die
!” Nihel roared. He shifted his weight as Japan rushed at them from the horizon. The monster knocked Nuklear Man away and the Hero soared into orbit. The very space around Nihel rippled like water as he instantly accelerated to give chase.