I mentioned to her that I desperately wanted to visit our Grandma while she was in Ann Arbor, and to visit my biological father, the Silver Age Megaton Man, and our alternate mama, the Mod Puma, at Megatonic University.
“Great,” said Avie. “I’ll drive.”
“No, I just want to fly in and out, real quick,” I said. By myself, was the implication.
“Nonsense,” said Avie. “Seedy is my Grandma, too, and Alice2 is our alternate mama.”
“I’ll come along,” said Kozmik Kat. “I like the Mod Puma…I like any feline character of the female persuasion.”
“You’re not invited,” said Avie.
“But I have to, to keep you girls from fighting in the car.”
I relented. “But we don’t have time to visit Ann Street,” I insisted.
So, in the middle of our second week in our new Detroit apartment together, and our first week back to school, on our day off, we planned our visit. An overnight storm had dumped a foot of snow on the region. Again, I told Avie I would just fly, but she still insisted on driving. I threw on some civilian clothes over my Ms. Megaton Man uniform, put my cape, buttons, visor and yellow gloves and boots in my book bag, grabbed my winter coat and my Abyssinian Wolves scarf and cap, and I was ready. I also remembered to grab my Megatonic University I.D. tag and lanyard they had made for me on my last disastrous visit.
Avie, of course, took forever in the shower, then had to get all made up, which gave me and Koz time to brush the snow off the car and dig a path out behind it into the alley so we could get a running start. It was nearly nine a.m. before we all piled into the Pacer and took off.
Naturally, Avie skidded off the road more than once because she doesn’t have snow tires and drives too fast. That last time we ran onto the shoulder, we picked up a nail. So, there we were with a flat on I-23. Avie didn’t have the right kind of jack in her trunk, so Koz had to hold the back end of the car up while I loosened the nuts and Avie put on the spare. Then, it took us an hour at a garage outside Ypsilanti for them to remove the nail, patch the tire, and put in back on for us. By the time we got to the Arbor State campus in downtown Ann Arbor, it was mid-morning already, nearly lunch.
“All the central campus parking lots are going to be full by now,” I said, as we cruised along North University Avenue, which was choked with newly-returned students.
“We’ll just park on Ann Street,” said Avie. “Back at your old house.”
“But Avie, we don’t have time,” I said. “Just drop me and Koz off at the kiosk.”
But she had already made a quick turn up State Street. “Nonsense,” she said. “It’s just a couple-block walk. And Stella never drives anywhere, so we won’t be blocking their driveway.”
“That’s not the point,” I said. “I don’t feel like running into Stella or Dana.”
“I don’t particularly miss Domina, either,” said Koz, referring to Dana’s alter-ego.
“Oh, come on,” said Avie. “At least we can say hello to Simon.”
We pulled into the driveway of the house where I had been roommates with the former Megaton Man and See-Thru Girl, and their nearly three-year-old son, Simon. The Q-Mobile was nowhere to be seen—I presumed it was locked away in the garage in back. In the driveway alongside the house was a brown Chevette, behind which we parked. At least the driveway and sidewalk had been shoveled already.
“Did Dana buy a car already?” asked Avie. “I didn’t know she could drive.”
“Maybe Trent,” I said. “He said he was saving up for a used car.”
My thought was to just go sneaking down the sidewalk before anybody inside the house spotted us. But sure enough, from inside the storm door, Simon stood waving at us; he sported new glasses under his long bangs. Naturally, he had heard Avie’s loud muffler as we pulled in.
“Busted!” said Avie, who waved back. She popped open the trunk and pulled out a beautifully-wrapped present. “Who has a belated Christmas gift for the Son of Megaton Man?” she sang.
Avie and I had gotten the gift before I’d been evicted from by attic garret apartment, and I had forgotten all about it. Luckily, she had remembered to bring it along. “Nice move, Avie.”
Avie and Koz gleefully bounded up the front steps to the porch. “How’re you doing, slugger?” asked Avie as Simon let us in. “How do you like you’re new specs, dude?”
“I can see you now all the way from the curb,” said Simon, brushing away the hair from his eyes. “Dad’s at work. Mommy and Dana are medicating.”
“Medicating?” I asked.
“What is that, bong smoke?” said Koz. Wafts hit us as soon as we stepped into the foyer.
“Incense,” I said. “They’re meditating.”
To our right, on the living room floor, Dana and Stella sat cross-legged on a mat in leotards. Olive-skinned Dana had her back to us; the long, black hair of her Mohawk, usually stiffly spiked, hung loosely down the back of her head; the sides of her scalp she kept shaved several weeks of dense, black growth. Stella, facing us, had her eyes closed. A silver boom box played a cassette of ambient music. Both Stella and Dana had their hands on their knees, palm upwards, the forefinger and thumb of each hand clasped in the Gaya Mudra position.
Dana turned her head toward us. “Can you close the door, please? There’s a draft.”
We shut the door and took off our boots. Simon grabbed his gift and took us down the hallway into the kitchen. Avie asked Simon, “Have you had lunch yet?” He shook his head no, so Avie went to the fridge and pulled out some brunch fixings.
I asked in a low tone of voice, “Was Dana into meditation when she was roommates with you and the other Y+Thems at First Humanist-Holistic Congregation of Cass City communal residence?”
“Hell, no,” said Koz, who climbed into a chair at the kitchen table. “She was into hard drinking and BDSM with other leather dykes she picked up at the Bottleneck & Tie-Up Bar. If I didn’t keep my litter box tidy, she’d kick me with her spiked heel.”
Avie was already cracking some eggs into a skillet. “Isn’t it nice to see her getting in touch with her softer side, isn’t it?”
I was just glad the Youthful Permutation known as Domina hadn’t boiled Simon alive and eaten him, given her loathing for men.
“Dana makes good pizza,” Simon informed us. He had already torn the wrappings off his gift. It was a set of dinosaurs and space soldiers which he quickly set up into a battle on the kitchen table. “She works at Zingle Mans. She brings home great sandwiches—pamastri.”
“Zingle Mans?” asked Avie.
“Zingerman’s,” I translated. “It’s that deli Daddy loves over on Detroit Street.”
“She’s already found the gay side of town,” said Koz.
I said to Simon, “Can you say ‘pastrami’?”
“Spatrami.”
We convinced Simon to move his battle to the dining room table, and bribed Koz with a saucer of milk to go with him while I set the kitchen table. After we fed Simon and had a bite to eat ourselves—Stella and Dana were still blissfully in their trance-world—Koz and Simon resumed their epic battle of prehistoric reptiles versus space soldiers, Simon having listed reinforcements from his stash of action figures upstairs. They were also building barricades out of some set old set of building blocks. Since Kozmik Kat wore his uniform—he refused to be without it in Michigan in winter, we decided he would remain there.
“I’ll catch up with you guys later,” he said. “I can’t leave the front; this kid’s dinosaurs are eating all my space soldiers.”
Avie left him the keys to the Pacer in case whoever owned the Chevette needed it to be moved. We slipped out the back door and began walking the couple of blocks to downtown.
“See, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” said Avie.
“No, it wasn’t,” I said. “But now we have to stop into the bookstore to say hello to Trent, too, or he’ll feel slighted. And then we’ll have to come back and pick up Koz and pick up the car, and that will lead to dinner…”
“Oh, come on! It’s a day in Ann Arbor with your sister,” said Avie, who grabbed some snow off an Ann Street hedge and tossed it at me. “That reminds me, I do need to pick up a few books for school.”
To be honest, so did I, so the next thing we know we’re in Border Worlds Used and Slightly New Bookstore, a place we both love. While Avie searched for a used copy of The Rabble Rousers by J.R. McKimson for her juvenile lit class, I sought out some books on aesthetics for my elective in art history. Naturally, Trent in his black polo shirt and nametag, pushing a cart full of books, spotted us. “What are you girls doing in Ann Arbor? Academic stuff?”
“We’re visiting our Grandma Seedy,” said Avie. “And our alternate Mama…important megahero business.”
“Are they still in town?” asked Trent. “They were in here shopping last week. Clyde and them came over to the house on New Year’s, but I would have thought they had gone back to Megatropolis by now. I don’t know why they would hang around here.”
“Don’t you know about…?” Avie pointed down, indicating the underground laboratories of Megatonic University, the secret installation of laboratories deep under the campus of Arbor State University. I shook my head and gave her a shh sign; I wasn’t sure how much Trent knew about Megatonic U., or was supposed to know. “I guess it’s top secret,” said Avie. “I don’t suppose they keep you in the loop anymore, Trent, now that you’re a civilian. Bet you kinda feel left out, don’cha?”
“Doesn’t hurt my feelings,” said Trent. “I’m not Megaton Man anymore. I’m doing the Border Worlds Used and Slightly New Bookstore thing now, in case you hadn’t noticed.” He turned to me, waving a book. “Hey,” he said, “I’m taking a class in Kantian metaphysics this semester. I’ve been reading about the Ancient Greeks in my spare time, and I think I’m ready for the moderns.”
“That’s great,” I said. “Where at? Arbor State?”
“No, Huron River Community College.”
Avie had to cover her mouth to stifle a laugh.
“Hey, it’s a good teaching school,” said Trent, crossly. He put the book back on the cart.
“How are you getting along with your new housemate?” I asked, mostly to change the subject.
“Dana’s okay,” said Trent. “At least she doesn’t wear her dominatrix outfit around the house. Seems to be taking to Ann Arbor life like a fish to water, and it’s coinciding with a spiritual phase Stella’s going. I guess taking in strays like Dana is a part of that her path to spiritual growth.”
“I know,” I said. “We parked in your driveway. We saw her and Stella meditating in your living room. They’re still at it.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” said Trent. “That could last all afternoon.” He looked around the bookstore, then leaned in to whisper to me, “There in some kind of feminist New Age group organized by Imelda, too.”
“Oh, man,” I said. I looked around for Imelda, one of Trent’s fellow bookstore clerks, but didn’t see her. “The spirit-catcher crystal candle lady.”
“Don’t worry, Imelda doesn’t come in till later,” said Trent. “But they have seances at Imelda’s apartment and all kinds of spooky stuff. They even shower together.”
“All of them?” I asked.
“No, just Dana and Stella, at home.”
“Are they lovers?” asked Avie.
“Stella says it’s purely Platonic,” said Trent. “Just part of her growing mind-body awareness, or somesuch. Frankly, I really don’t care.”
“Stella’s still going to graduate, isn’t she?” I said, in horror.
“Oh, absolutely,” said Trent. “There’s no chance of that not happening. It’s not like you went off the deep end with Yarn Man.”
Ouch.
“Oh, Trent, you poor thing,” said Avie.
“Dana’s always said she had a crush on the See-Thru Girl from a distance,” I said. “But…”
“No, really, I don’t care,” said Trent, who was getting visibly agitated. “As long as they’re cool in front of Simon, I don’t mind. I have my own pursuits going on.”
I didn’t want to unpack that, since whatever his own pursuits were, they obviously didn’t include me. I mentioned the Chevette in the driveway, and Trent confirmed it was his, and promised to visit me in Detroit soon, but that didn’t make me sanguine. He told us he had class straight after work, so it wasn’t likely he would see us again later. So we said our goodbyes and left Trent to restocking the philosophy section.
We made our purchases, which I stuffed into my book bag, and hoofed across downtown.
“What do you make of that?” asked Avie. “Do you think Dana’s become a Zen hippy, or is Stella a lesbian now? …Or both?”
“If they were lovers, Stella would never admit it,” I said. “Stella’s such a girly-girly, she’d be in denial about the whole thing. She’s in denial of everything already, on principle.” Frankly, I was more concerned about what Trent’s other pursuits might include. “Avie, why do you have to taunt him like that, anyway?” I said, to again change the subject. “Civilians aren’t supposed to know anything about Megatonic U. Besides, I think it’s great that the biggest, dumbest megahero in the world is trying to get an education.”
“Oh, come on,” said Avie. “Huron River Community College?!”
We strolled over to Main Street and found the kiosk covered with flyers for local bands in front of the shoe store. As busses passed down the busy street, I surreptitiously opened the concealed plywood panel that led to the spiraling stair.
“I’ll see you in a while,” I said to Avie.
“What are you talking about? I’m going with you.”
“No, you’re not,” I said. “Go do some shopping or hit a library or something.”
“Is that what you had in mind?” asked Avie. “Bullshit. Seedy’s my Grandma, too. And Alice2 is as much nearly my mama as she is yours.”
I hadn’t told Avie of the vision I’d had the last time I visited the underground complex of laboratories under Arbor State University called Megatonic U. There, in the midst of a killer robot attack, my visor had shown me a vision from an alternate reality—one in which Avie perished in my arms. But of course, I hadn’t been able to tell her that.
“Just…be careful, Avie,” I said.
We slid down the stairs. Avie pulled the door closed behind her; lights came on automatically. The two of us descended step by step to about fifty feet below the street, where we came to a sterile, average-looking corridor. We walked toward the guard station, Avie’s platform heels echoing against the white walls. I pulled my I.D. badge from my book bag and put the lanyard around my neck.
The android guard seated behind the desk, watching all the closed-circuit television screens, recognized me. “Miss James, how nice to see you.” She had a name plate in front of her that read “Dotty.”
“You’re ‘Dotty’ now,” I remarked. “How nice.”
Dotty gave me a life-like smile. “We’re trying to warm things up around here, make it more personal,” she said. “You’re grandma bakes cookies. I don’t eat, of course.”
“That’s exactly who we’re here to see,” I said. “Dr. Mercedith Robeson James. This is her other granddaughter, Avril. I guess she’ll need a visitor’s badge.”
“Dr. Seedy’s already had us make up a permanent one for Avril James,” said Dotty, producing an I.D. badge with Avie’s name on it. “We’ve been expecting you.”
“I guess I’m not a civilian,” said Avie, who stuck her tongue out at me for good measure.
“We have the latest thing, too, now—a retinal scanner,” said Dotty. “Everyone who comes in and out has to pass security.” It was a machine like a microscope on the edge of the desk. We put our eyeballs up against the eyepieces to verify who we were, then we could pass.
Dotty escorted us down the hall toward the laboratories. I expected her to be held back by a cord attached to her ankle, but she kept walking with us far past the point she’d stalled out the last time. I looked down, and there was no cord.
“I’m wireless now,” she explained.
She ushered us into a spacious laboratory and left us on our own recognizance. Two men in labcoats were hunched over tables working on scientific equipment. The one nearest to us looked up. “May I help you?” he asked. It was Dr. Joseph Levitch.
“Hi, Dr. Joe,” I said. I was a little surprised to see him. The last time Secret Agent Preston Percy mentioned Dr. Joe, he was supposed to be all wrapped up on the West Coast with the Next Megaton Man Project. “We’re here to see my father.”
Dr. Joe looked at me quizzically, vacantly, with eyes that did not register recognition.
“Uh, this is my half-sister, Avie,” I added.
Dr. Joe still seemed at a loss.
I said, “My father, the Silver Age Megaton Man? You remember? I’m his daughter, Clarissa James. Ms. Megaton Man.”
Dr. Joe extended his hand mechanically to Avie. “And of course, I remember your lovely sister.”
“We’ve never met, sir,” said Avie. “You seem to always be out of town. But I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Ah, yes of course,” said Dr. Joe. “Forgive me, child. I get so wrapped up in my…experiments. I believe the people you’re looking for are all down the hall, in the gymnasium.”
I frowned at Dr. Joe. “Preston said your weren’t expected back for quite some time,” I said. “You picked some bad weather to return to Michigan.”
“Ah, yes,” said Dr. Joe absent-mindedly. “One prefers the warmer climes. But, with all the remodeling going on here, as you see, and with the Cellophane Megaton Man…”
“Silver Age,” I corrected him. “There is no Cellophane version, remember?”
I caught a glimpse of what was lying on the table behind the doctor, that the second man in a lab coat continued to work on, paying no attention to us. It was the damaged remnants of the Contraptoid, a fearsome robot that once had tangled with Trent Phloog when he was Megaton Man. It appeared he was being cleaned up, with new replacement parts being attached.
“That’s pretty dangerous, isn’t it?” I asked. “I mean, rebuilding Doctor Software’s deadliest invention…”
The second man in a lab coat turned and glared at us. He looked like a younger Dr. Joe, only with a more disheveled appearance, unshaven face, and crazed look in his eye. I immediately recognized him as the mad scientist I had encountered twice before at Megatonic U.
“Grady Grinnell!” I said, calling out the scientist who’d order B-50, the Hybrid Man as well as a horde of killer robots to kill me and the Y+Thems when last we’d visited.
“So, you know my son,” said Dr. Joe. “I mean, uh, my nephew. Ahem. As I say, I get so distracted…”
I didn’t have time to consider what this all meant, first with Dr. Joe appearing in the lab unexpectedly, or with his evil, mad relation being welcomed back into Megatonic U. after we’d effectively run him off, let alone why they happened to be hard at work on one of Megaton Man’s fiercest opponents instead of tending to my newly returned father and his partner.
Behind me, the door opened. Into the lab walked our grandmother.
“There you are,” said Grandma Seedy. “Dotty told me you’d dropped by. Here, let’s leave the Levitches to their work; I’m sure you’re eager to visit with Clyde and Alice.” Seedy led us out of the lab and further down the corridor.
“Grandma, what is Dr. Joe doing back in Michigan? Preston told me Dr. Joe was in Anaheim, working on the next generation Megaton Man. And what’s his nephew doing back here? He’s completely mad—he tried to kill me and my friends the last time we were down here, not to mention Avie…”
Avie looked at me. “I’ve never been down here before, Clarissa.”
I didn’t pause to explain. “Besides, Grandma, that robot they’re working on…do you know what that is?”
“Yes, dear, I know,” said Grandma Seedy, smiling warmly. “The Contraptoid. Actually, the Mega-Contraptoid, the souped-up version before it was destroyed. Where else am I going to find the expertise to work on Doctor Software’s invention, but his own twin and his son? You have to learn to delegate if you’re going to run a place as sprawling as Megatonic University.” She saw the incredulity in my eyes and patted my arm. “I’ll explain everything in due course, Sissy.”
I remembered New Year’s Eve just a few days before, when a news alert flashed on the TV about Doctor Software, Megaton Man’s old arch-nemesis, escaping from a high security prison outside of Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Reportedly, the fugitive was heading east. But Doctor Software wasn’t merely Dr. Joe’s identical twin; he was something more. He was Dr. Joe’s counterpart from an alternate reality. He was, in every respect, identical to Dr. Joe…
But before I could work out the implications, Grandma Seedy had ushered me and Avie into an even bigger space, not filled with scientific equipment but rather exercise apparatus—free weights, Nautilus machines, gymnastic rings suspended from tethers, a pommel horse, parallel bars, and a balance beam, and various trampolines, among other things. In the far half of the space stood a fully decked-out, professional boxing ring.
My father, Clyde Phloog, the Silver Age Megaton Man, sat calmly on a folding chair reading the morning edition of The Detroit Day. Alice James, my mama—my mama from another reality—was hurtling through the air using the rings, the balance beam, the trampoline, and ending with a few leg swings on the pommel horse before dismounting. She wasn’t dressed in the psychedelic tie-dyed cat costume of the Mod Puma; instead, she wore a more modest mix-and-match outfit: navy-blue tights, a dark red top that left her midriff exposed, a purple cowl (still with cat ears), and a yellow tail and clawed boots and gloves.
Alice2 landed on a mat in a cat’s position, poised to strike.
That’s when I noticed Koz, stretched out at my father’s feet, watching all this.
“How’d you get here so fast?” I asked.
“I know the shortcut,” said Koz.
Once she spotted us, the Mod Puma cried, “Clarissa! Avril! My offspring from another reality!” She rose, turning her head toward her mate. “Clyde, your daughters are here.”
Clyde looked over his newspaper at us. “Oh,” he said. “Hello, girls.”
“Don’t let us distract you from the funny pages,” said Avie. “Only Clarissa’s your daughter; I’m just her half-sister.”
Alice2 took off her cowl and wiped her face with a towel that had been draped over a chair.
“Those are some nice moves, Alice Too,” said Avie. “If our mama tried that routine, she’d be in traction for a week.”
“Well, she gave birth to two fine, young ladies,” said Alice2, “while I went into the family business, more or less. How you all doing?” She frowned at Clyde. “Clyde, Clarissa’s here to see you.” With a claw, she shredded his newspaper in half.
Clyde snorted, “Now I’ll never know how Doozie Dinkleberry ends today.” He tossed the scraps aside. “They get such good comics in this dimension.” He got up and stepped toward me. Awkwardly, he gave me a hug and kissed me on the cheek.
“Are you here to train?” Alice2 asked Avie.
“Gosh, no,” said Avie. “But I’ve been walking three miles every day, winter or no winter. I’ve lost four pounds since before Christmas.” She patted her tummy. “Daddy’s installing some exercise stuff in the basement of our new apartment, too.”
“So, how do you like Ann Arbor, Dad?” I said. “Do you get out much and see the town?”
“I’ve been kinda cooped up in here,” said Clyde. “I haven’t seen much of the campus; I’d be kind of conspicuous. I tend to freak out the students, even in civilian attire, what with my grotesquely over-muscled physique.” He looked forlornly at the metallic wrist bands he wore over his gloves. “I used to be able to clank these things together; that enabled me to switch back and forth from my megaheroic to my civilian persona. But they haven’t worked in over twenty years.” He clanked them together for emphasis; nothing happened. “All the same, we visited your cousin, Trent and his family. I don’t like that new housemate of theirs—kinda scary. But the little kid’s growing on me.”
“Dr. Joe must be putting you through your paces,” said Avie. “Why else would he be back in Michigan if not to give you a check-up on you, after being lost in another dimension for twenty years?”
“Yeah, they’ve been running a battery of tests on me,” said Clyde, with a funny look on his face. He looked over at my grandma. “When is Agent Percy getting back?”
“He should be here any minute,” said Grandma Seedy. “Detroit Metro Airport is only forty minutes away.”
“Who’s Preston bringing from the airport?” I asked.
“Hey Grandma,” Avie interrupted. “Did you get a chance to work on my outfit?”
“As a matter of fact, Avril, I was going to show it to you,” said Seedy. “It’s nothing fancy, you realize. A lot of my stuff is back in my costume workshop in the Doomsday Factory, so I had to simplify for now. But I had them send me some Quarantinium-Quelluminum fabric from New Jersey. It should tide you over until I can work on all the accoutrements.”
So that’s why Avie was so eager to come to Ann Arbor. Grandma Seedy was fitting her for a new megahero uniform.
“It’s in my office,” said Grandma Seedy. “Let’s see if it fits. Let’s leave Clarissa to spend some time with her dad.” Seedy led Avie out of the room. “We’ll be right down the corridor if you need us.”
As soon as Seedy and Avie were gone, Clyde leaned in to whisper to me. “I didn’t wanted to say anything in front of your grandmother, but I think she’s losing a step.”
“How so?” I asked.
“Well, for one thing, I don’t think Dr. Joe is Dr. Joe at all. He’s an imposter. He didn’t recognize me at all, and he created me in the late nineteen-fifties.”
“Funny, he didn’t seem to recognize me, either, and he examined me several times after I broke out and became Ms. Megaton Man.”
“I know he’s absent-minded and everything,” said Clyde. “But he went through the motions of testing me with all kinds of elaborate gizmos, but I don’t think he knew what he was doing at all.”
Alice2, meanwhile, had donned some boxing shorts over her tights, and had strapped on one of those padded boxing helmets. Kozmik Kat was in the midst of helping her lace up her gloves. “I told Clyde he’s crazy,” she said. “Everyone who comes in and out of her now has to go through a retina scan. An imposter can’t beat that.”
“Not necessarily,” said Koz. “If Clarissa’s mother, Alice One, walked in here, she’d pass the scan same as you. She’s your identical counterpart from another reality.”
“Dr. Joe has a counterpart, too!” I said. “Not a twin brother, but an identical organism, right down to the retina. You don’t think…”
“That would explain why they’re retrofitting that robot down the hall,” said Clyde.
“Here, come on,” said Alice2, pounding her gloves together. “Clarissa, did you bring your uniform?”
“Sure, I’m wearing it under my street clothes,” I said.
“Then let’s climb into the ring and go a few rounds,” said Alice2. “After you warm up on me, you can pound on your father for abandoning you before you were even born.”
Next: Knock Down, Drag Out
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