#68: Will the Real Dr. Joe Please Stand Up?

We all looked in horror at my father, the Silver Age Megaton Man, to see what effect, if any, the blue gelatin capsule would have on him. Would it really neutralize his megapowers? Was the man who gave it to him really Dr. Joe, or was he Doctor Software, and the man who just entered the gymnasium the real Dr. Joe? And was the capsule a lethal dose of some kind of poison the arch-nemesis of all Megaton Men had prepared especially for him?
     “This Megaton Man is just as dumb as any of them,” said Kozmik Kat. “Silver Age or otherwise.”
     “Clyde? Are you all right?” asked Alice² with concern. “You look a little peaked.”
     Clyde began to swoon, and let out his trademark “Woo!” He stood outside the boxing ring now, but grabbed up at the ropes to keep his balance. “I feel dizzy, all of a sudden.”
     Alice² grabbed him a stool, and Clyde sat down. What followed was the reverse of the process I had watched Clyde’s cousin Trent undergo after Preston Percy shot him full of Megasoldier Syrup. In Trent’s case, he began to grow from his ordinary civilian physique into the grotesquely over-muscled Man of Molecules; here, America’s Nuclear-Powered Hero—and my biological father—began to shrink before our very eyes.
     When it was done, Clyde appeared to have an ordinary build, not significantly different from Trent except that he seemed more fit. It was hard to tell only because his Silver Age Megaton Man uniform hung limply on his body, baggy now since it was now several times too big.
     “You’re right, Kozmik Kat; I didn’t think this through,” said Clyde, still wobbly. “I don’t have a change of clothes.”
     “I have your uniform right here, Colonel Phloog,” said Preston, suddenly remembering he had brought with him a garment bag. “It’s been at the dry cleaners since 1961.”
     “Another uniform?” I asked.
     “This one’s from the United States Air Force,” Preston explained. “Your old man’s a full lieutenant colonel. He might have gone into orbit in the early sixties if Dr. Joe hadn’t turned him into the Silver Age Megaton Man.”
     “Mama always said your real daddy was in the military,” said Avie. “She never said what branch.”
     The second Dr. Joe, the one who had arrived with Preston, had a hat box with Clyde’s military dress cap. “I brought it with me from the airport,” he said. “That proves I’m the real Dr. Joe.”
     “That doesn’t prove anything,” said Preston. “Yarn Man picked it up and sent it along on the flight from New York you happened to come in on.”
     Clyde reached for the garment bag and hat box, still favoring the side where I’d pummeled his ribs. Apparently, the massive metamorphosis his body had undergone did little to alleviate his soreness. Nonetheless, he smiled and eagerly and ran off to the locker room adjacent to the gymnasium to shower and change.
     The first Dr. Joe scratched his chin. “You came in on a flight from the east?” he asked the second Dr. Joe. “Everybody knows I was out on the west coast, working on the Next Megaton Man.”
     “It was a connecting flight,” said the second Dr. Joe. “You’re the imposter!”
     “I’m not finished,” said the first Dr. Joe. “My blue capsule clearly did not harm Clyde; rather, it neutralized his megapowers as advertised. That proves I’m the real Dr. Joe.”
     The two identical Dr. Joes began to bicker like school children. Bother were really Joseph Julius Levitch, but one was the creator of the Silver Age and Bronze Age Megaton Men while the other, his counterpart from another dimension, became the evil Doctor Software, arch-nemesis of all Megaton Man. They even started slapping one another.
     My grandma, Dr. Mercedith Robeson-James, stepped in to break it up.
     “All right, you two,” she growled. “There’s an easy way to prove which one is which.” She pointed to the wreckage of the Contraptoid I had created when I slugged the Bot and sent it careening into the corridor. “The Dr. Joe who is the real McCoy should have no problem reassembling that.”
     “I’m not a robotics guy,” said the first Dr. Joe. “I only create Megasoldiers…largely through chemistry. That is to say…”
     “Ah ha!” said the second Dr. Joe. “I can easily patch up the Contraptoid, since he’s my own crea…. Wait!” He slapped himself on the forehead. “That’s a trick question! Only Doctor Software could repair that robot…and I’m not Doctor Software, so how could I do such a thing?”
     Grandma Seedy smiled. “All right then. Which one of you can tell me about your father, Elias Levitch? Along with me, he was one of the thirteen scientists who worked on the original Atomic Soldier project in the Doomsday Factory in 1940. But whereas I helped to create Major Meltdown, he worked on the Original Golden Age Megaton Man…”
     “That’s easy,” said the second Dr. Joe. “My father, Elias Levitch, was a great man; he shared all his secrets with me, enabling me to create the Silver Age Megaton Man. I loved him dearly, until he died…at a ripe old age.” He pulled a handkerchief from within his lab coat and dabbed his eyes for dramatic effect.
     “Liar!” shouted the first Dr. Joe. “Elias Levitch died of radiation poisoning, almost immediately after the birth of the Original Golden Age Megaton Man. I was at his bedside…” He swallowed hard and became very somber. “Behind glass windows, of course….  I was only eight years old when he died. He gave me his notebook…” Without looking, Dr. Joe reached into the front lower pocket of his lab coat, and pulled out a small, thin, worn, journal. “That’s what enabled me to create the Silver Age Megaton Man, when the Original Golden Age Megaton Man wore out. Elias Levitch didn’t simply work on Project Megaton. He was the driving force behind it.”
     The second Dr. Joe looked stricken as he listened to this, dabbing his eyes now for real. “All I knew was that he went off to New Jersey to work on some secret project for the war effort, and never came back. I was sent off to the orphanage, hating him, hating the government that took him from me without explanation. Years later, I understood that he had something to do with the creation of Megaton Man, and I hated that nuclear-powered nincompoop, too. I vowed vengeance on the world.” He looked at the other Dr. Joe. “I never realized what you must have gone through.” He suddenly grabbed his counterpart, the Dr. Joe I knew, and hugged him. Both started sobbing.
     “Jeez-oh-Pete,” said Koz. “If I have to witness one more of these human interest moments, I’m going to barf.”
     I looked up at my Grandma Seedy. I expected to see her smiling. After all, she had adroitly maneuvered the escaped felon, Doctor Software, into revealing himself. But she wasn’t gloating at all. Rather, she was crying too. She came over to me and my sister Avie and hugged us.
     “I realize now why your mama must have hated me all these years,” she said, sniffling herself. “I never came home to her, either.”
     Each of the thirteen scientists who had been inside the Doomsday Factory when the universe split in two, I realized, must have had similar stories of friends, family, and loved ones they never saw again, in one dimension or the other.
     “At least their mama didn’t go criminally insane,” said Alice², my mama’s counterpart. “You must have raised us Alices—both One and Two—the right way.” She came over to us and added to our group hug.
     Meanwhile, Preston Percy had slapped a pair of handcuffs on Doctor Software as soon as he separated from his identical counterpart, and Kozmik Kat had done the same to Grady Grinnell. “What do you want me to do with them, Dr. James?” asked Preston.
     “Drat!” said the fake Dr. Joe, the one who went by Julius. “I was so close to taking over this entire laboratory complex. Today Megatonic University, tomorrow, the world!”
     Grady Grinnell looked incredulously at the real Dr. Joe. “You mean you lured me back here under false pretenses? That’s why you had me working on the Contraptoid, while you mixed your chemicals.”
     “I lured both of you back here,” said Grandma Seedy, wiping her eyes with a tissue and pulling herself together. “Better to have two evil geniuses working for Megatonic University than at-large in the world, where you can cause trouble.”
     “What do you mean, working at Megatonic University?” asked Preston. “You’re not thinking of…”
     “Didn’t I just say everyone deserves a second chance?” said Seedy. “If there can be two Alice Jameses in this dimension, I don’t see why we can’t have two Dr. Joseph Julius Levitches—both working productively for the Ivy-Covered Halls of Higher Learning.” She slapped the real Dr. Joe—or at least my Dr. Joe—on the back. “Joseph here can return to California to work on the Next Megaton Man, after he’s given Clyde and Clarissa a quick checkup, of course.” She turned to Julius, who I don’t even think had a doctorate. “Meanwhile, Julius and his nephew can continue working on all those robots from the future that we recovered…and he can take night classes upstairs at Arbor State to round out his education.”
     “You might want to schedule an appointment with a social worker, too,” said Koz.
     “I still vow to take over the world,” said Doctor Software. “Although it would be nice to finish my PhD.”
     Seedy slapped him on the back. “Everyone needs a dream.”

Preston took off the handcuffs and Dottie the guard came in with a couple of ankle bracelets, which she affixed to Grady and Julius. After that, the three of them started picking up the pieces of the Contraptoid and piling them into a wheel barrow Dottie had brought along, and disappeared down the corridor.
     “Our grandmother’s pretty smart,” Avie whispered to me. “She isn’t just some little old lady who sews megahero uniforms for a hobby.”
     I wasn’t so sure. Apparently, Dr. Joe had come back from Anaheim at Seedy’s urging and coaxed Grady to come out of hiding by pretending to be Grady’s uncle, Doctor Software. Then, Dr. Joe had pretended to not recognize Clyde or me—although with his bad memory, I don’t think he had to pretend too much, and in my case, I strongly suspected that most black girls looked alike to him. In any case, Seedy also convinced the newly escaped Doctor Software to also come to Ann Arbor, and had now tricked him into working for the good guys. But did a good cry and a hug with his counterpart really signal a change of heart?
     Preston, reading my thoughts, said, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, I suppose.”
     “Glad to hear you feel that way, Preston,” said Seedy. “You’ll be the one keeping an eye on things here in Ann Arbor. I fly back to Washington, D.C. tonight.”
     “The more the merrier,” said Preston.
     Just then, the Mod Puma let out a howl. My father had returned, dressed in his immaculate Air Force uniform, lugging a duffel bag containing his Silver Age Megaton Man attire. He was clean-shaven, broad-shouldered, normally proportioned, but with a fitter physique than his younger cousin Trent. Both Avie and I could see the handsome man my mama fell for. He gave a crisp salute, his hand snapping up to the visor of his colonel’s cap, although the action made his sore rib cage twinge.
     “Oowie,” said the Mod Puma “I kinda miss the muscles, but I like a man in uniform…any uniform.”
     “No wonder Mama didn’t know she had slept with the Silver Age Megaton Man,” Avie whispered to me. “If Mama met Clyde Phloog when he looked like an ordinary civilian—a military civilian, as it were—she would never have suspected he was a megahero until she read about it later in the papers. And look, his last name’s spelled differently.”
     Over his left breast pocket, the plate read “Lt. Col. Clyde Pflug.”
     Dr. Joe gave Clyde the onceover with his stethoscope and pronounced Clyde fit for duty. “Just remember, those capsules only remain potent for a few hours.”
     Dr. Joe turned to me and checked me out while he was at it. My lip had stopped swelling by then, so he could find nothing to be concerned with other than telling me to do more walking.
     “I know,” I said, sighing. “All the weight goes to my thighs.”
     After we said our goodbyes to Grandma Seedy, she left with Preston for the airport.
     I put my civilian clothes back on over my Ms. Megaton Man body suit. As I did this, Clyde said, “If you girls are heading back to Detroit, maybe you can give me a ride over to Woodward and Eight Mile. I think now would be a good time for me and your mother to talk over a few things.”
     “I’m not tagging along for that,” said Alice². “I make your mama feel uncomfortable enough as it is. She and Clyde need some time to settle accounts.”
     I wondered if we should call ahead to warn my mama—for all I knew, she might have pans with my daddy. But Avie indicated there was little chance of that, and Clyde said he wanted to surprise her.
     Alice² said, “What’s the worst that can happen? That Clyde cheats on me with me?” She picked up shreds of newspaper off the floor searching for the movie listings. “Besides, Dana and I are going to the movies tonight. Some European art flick.”
     “Oh, not you too,” I said.

Next: Art History With Doctor Messiah
First Chapter | All Chapters | Latest Chapter

Archival Images:

Julius and Joseph Levitch as they appeared in Megaton Man #1 (Kitchen Sink Press, December 1984). Red color in sweater added in 2020.

Penciled tier previewing themes coming up later in Volume III.

If you’re on Facebook, please consider joining the Ms. Megaton Man™ Maxi-Series Prose Readers group! See exclusive artwork, read advance previews, and enjoy other special stuff.
___________
All characters, character names, likenesses, words and pictures on this page are ™ and © Don Simpson 2020, all rights reserved.