When they joined the Reconstituted Megatropolis Quartet,
the Phantom Jungle and Rubber Brother thought they’d be doing glamorous things alongside
Liquid Man, Yarn Man, and Kozmik Kat, like battling intergalactic menaces that threatened
to invade earth.
In truth, so did I.
Instead, our alter-egos—Donna Blank, social worker, Jasper
Johnson, philanthropic volunteer, and myself—had to spend all our time coordinating
with the City of Megatropolis Social Services to find housing, financial assistance,
and food stamps for all the civilians who had lucrative careers in the Quantum
Tower in the other reality, but had found themselves completely dislocated,
socially and financially, by the sudden move to this dimension.
When Rex had appropriated the Quantum Tower from that other dimension—in the middle of the working day, no less—he had also inadvertently brought thousands of office workers along with it. These workers had no housing, no food, no shelter; worse still, the companies for which they worked—that were tenants in the building—suddenly found themselves with no clients, no customers, no suppliers—at least in this dimension. It was a nightmare, reconnecting everybody and getting things squared away as best we could. Not to mention psychological counseling, which kept Donna busy day and night.
Rex was prevailed upon by City Hall to convert the old Y+Thems dormitories and headquarters at the Brooklyn Navy Yards into a temporary homeless shelter—after pocketing a tidy profit—but even that wasn’t nearly enough. Lawsuits and counter-lawsuits followed, along with bankruptcies and evictions, leaving little time for glamorous megaheroics. After six weeks of this, we finally sorted things out almost to everyone’s satisfaction. To avoid receivership—and to get the Megatropolis Quartet back to the business of being a megahero team—Rex agreed to a court decree that he never use his Rextangle for any more interdimensional cutting-and-pasting again. “Just imagine if Rex were to bring an entire city block from another dimension into this one,” remarked Donna. “There’d be no way, even for a city of this size, to absorb it.”
Nearly the entire two months I’d been in New York had been taken up by this madness. Although I’d hardly worn my Ms. Megaton Man uniform after the MQHQ reappeared—it was easier to do all the interviews, phone calls, and paperwork in my civvies—I had constantly worn the class ring my father had bought me for my graduation. Yet, at the end of every day, I was too pooped to contact him, even though the Silver Age Megaton Man was right across the bay in New Jersey. As the Fourth of July I approached, I was feeling pretty burned out and in need of a break. It was only then that I decided I had to come up for air and call him up.
We arranged to meet for a little picnic on the head of the Statue of Liberty in full regalia. Clyde brought a blanket and some wine, and I brought a picnic basket full of egg salad sandwiches, veggies, and dip. It was a beautiful, clear day, and we sat looking at Manhattan, with Long Island and the Atlantic Ocean on the distant horizon. If anyone could spot us from below, we would have made a pretty colorful sight, in our Silver Age Megaton Man and Ms. Megaton Man uniforms, respectively.
“The Quantum Tower is back in town,” said Clyde, gazing admiringly at the as we munched. “The old Megatropolis Quartet Headquarters. That’s pretty impressive. They don’t call Rex Rigid a genius for nothing.”
“But he stole it from another dimension,” I pointed out. “Just lifted it from an alternate reality and plopped it down into this one.”
Clyde shrugged. “I don’t see the problem. Rex built the Quantum Tower to be the headquarters of his megahero team. If he stole it from an alternate reality, as you say, he’s only stealing it from himself…isn’t he?”
“It’s not as simple as that,” I said. I tried explaining all the social upheaval Liquid Man’s seemingly benign architectural restoration had caused.
“Can’t Rex just send them back?” asked Clyde. “And keep the building?”
“Where would he send them?” I said. “There would be no building; they’d fall to their deaths. Face it, they’re stuck here.”
“I still don’t see the harm,” said my father. “Nobody died. And there would still be plenty of office space left in the alternate Midtown Manhattan. How could anyone barely even notice it? Besides, the Megatropolis Quartet is back in business…and you’re near me. That’s a net plus, all the way around.”
“But all those office workers have friends and loved ones they’ll never see again,” I said, “because they’re in this reality now, instead of that alternate reality.”
“Well, what’s done is done,” said Clyde. “I suppose I’m from an older generation of megaheroes—as long as there’s no loss of life, we feel like we’ve done our job. Maybe your generation can afford to care about bleeding-heart social issues, after my generation did all the heavy lifting and saved the world a dozen times over.”
“But, Dad, we all have to live with the consequences,” I said. “How you save the world matters.”
Clyde snorted. “I don’t see how you can be so concerned with what happens in an alternate reality, anyway. It’s only what happens in this one that matters.
I was appalled. “You mean to tell me that if you went to another dimension and murdered somebody, that would be okay?”
“No, of course not,” said Clyde.
“And why not?”
“Because murder would still be murder, I should think,” said Clyde. “But nobody’s murdered anyone; these civilians you care so much about—they’re safe and sound. They just disappeared.”
I punched my father in the shoulder.
“Oww!” he said, rubbing his massive deltoid under his primary-colored uniform. “That’s going to bruise. What was that for?”
“How can you be so callous?” I demanded. “The people that live in that alternate reality are people, too. They have a big hole in their skyline now—and lots of missing loved ones. Look at you—you were trapped in alternate reality all those years. You ‘just disappeared’ before I was born. You think that had no consequences?”
Clyde thought about this for a moment. “No, I suppose not…”
“My Mama thought you had abandoned her…I grew up never knowing who my real biological father was. How do you suppose that made me feel?”
“I, uh…” Clyde couldn’t finish his sentence.
“When the Thirteenth Scientist split reality in two, half a dozen scientists went to one reality, half to the other. Grandma Seedy disappeared from my Mama’s life; Mama was convinced her mother was dead. For forty years.”
“That must have been terrible…” agreed Clyde.
“Then you disappeared on her,” I said. I was crying.
“I’m sorry, Clarissa,” said Clyde.
“Don’t apologize to me,” I said. “You megaheroes think you can travel to other dimensions whenever you want, have adventures, never return.” I blew my nose on a napkin. “You don’t see the consequences to anything you do. But I’ve lived the consequences—I’ve lived with them my whole life.”
Clyde was silent for some moments.
“But I eventually returned, Clarissa,” said Clyde. “Doesn’t that count for something?”
“In some alternate reality, you never returned,” I said. “Don’t you see?”
“Not quite,” said Clyde. “But I’ll take your word for it.”
“You can’t just steal things from other realities, like you were cannibalizing spare parts from an old automobile. You can’t just dump your problems in alternate realities either; that’s just as wrong. Send them our trash, our pollution, our criminals, our nuclear waste, our nuclear weapons. Send them our huddled masses—we’ll send them everyone and everything we don’t want and just horde everything positive we can get our hands, until our reality’s a Utopia—and to hell with every other reality.”
“Okay, you made your point,” said Clyde.
We sat there silently for several minutes, just watching the ships in the harbor, the traffic moving along the West Side Highway, the planes taking off and landing at distant La Guardia and JFK airports, not touching our egg salad sandwiches.
“I didn’t mean to argue with you,” said Clyde. “I’ve been looking forward to this for so long. I guess I just see things a certain way; I can’t help it. But let’s not fight anymore.”
“I didn’t mean to argue, either,” I said. “Especially for our last visit…”
“What do you mean?” asked Clyde, surprised. “This is only our first time we’ve been able to get together since you’ve been in Megatropolis…”
“I’m going back to Detroit.”
Clyde was silent for a moment. “I see.”
“I’m not cut out for megaheroics, at least not in the Big Apple. Not yet. I don’t even see the point in having megapowers, if all they can do is screw up reality in million different dimensions. I’m only beginning to understand what Winnie Wertz was trying to tell me.”
“Just because you’re a megahero, Clarissa, doesn’t mean you have to cross over between dimensions,” said Clyde. “Or steal headquarters from other realities. There’s quite a lot of good you can do, just in this dimension.”
“I know that,” I said. “But I also understand what Stella means when she says she wants a normal life for herself and her son, Simon. Looking back, I was happier when I was living a normal life, a civilian life—when I was just a studious bookworm. My place is back in Detroit, in grad school.”
I swatted away the picnic basket; we watched it sail until in disappeared in the harbor.
“I still wanted that egg salad sandwich,” said Clyde.
“I’m sorry.”
“If that’s your decision, I think that’s a fine choice,” said Clyde. “At least it was worth your while, coming to Megatropolis, so you could make up your mind; I can’t ask for more. I’ll miss not spending time with you, Clarissa, but you’ve got your own destiny to work out.”
We stood up and I gave the old lug a hug.
“You still have the ring I gave you?” he asked.
“Of course,” I said, showing him the small lump under my glove. “I wear it all the time; I never take it off.”
“Don’t ever forget who you really are, Clarissa,” said Clyde. “In case you ever do, you have that ring to remind you.”
I told Bing, Rex, Jasper, Fanny, and Koz my decision back in the lab of the Megatropolis Quartet Headquarters. Everyone was dutifully sad, but like my father, they understood and respected my decision.
“We’re going to miss you, Ms. Megaton Man, I’m not going to lie,” said Rex. “Luckily, both Quintet and Quartet begin with the letter Q. If we have to be a foursome again, at least we won’t have to get the stationery reprinted; those kinds of costs add up and can kill a team.”
“What do you mean?” complained Koz. “It was six before, with me! No one ever counts the talking cat.”
End of Volume III
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Archival Images:
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| Megaton Man (not the Silver Age Megaton Man nor Ms. Megaton Man) in an unpublished sequence with our favorite sculptural monument, circa 2015. |
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