#149: Hypothetically Speaking

The day before the Hypothetics conference, I got a small package in the mail. It was from Gene. The note read, “Consider this a belated birthday gift”—he’d missed it back in February—“and a congratulations on your presentation, which I’m afraid I’m also going to have to miss. About the gift: Whatever you do, don’t point it at your eye. Good luck.” Inside the padded envelope was a small, silvery, pen-shaped cylinder.
        “It’s too small to be a vibrator,” I said.
        “Get your mind out of the gutter, Sissy,” said Avie, who was reading a textbook for school. “It’s obviously some kind of writing instrument.”

#148: Tête-à-Tête in Troy

“We’re gathered together around the Y+Table,” said Soren “Sabersnag” Sneed (with a slight speech impediment since he was a saber-toothed tiger), “at this, the headquarters of the Troy+Thems, to consider the charges leveled against Clarissa James, the sometime-megahero known as Ms. Megaton Man …”
        “Charges?” I cried.

#147: Deep Throat

“You’ve composed a fine paper,” said my thesis advisor, Dr. Dolores Finch, smiling amiably behind her desk stacked with books and various research projects in progress. “You’ll certainly give those Hypothetics people something to chew on.” She handed back my paper, with several Post-It notes covered in red pen attached. “I’ve made a comment or two for you to consider, but they’re neither here nor there; they’re mostly cosmetic. I think you’re good to go.”

#146: Megatron Man #1

“Chase Bradford’s comic book has been published? By a real publisher? That’s wonderful,” I said. I had seen much of the original artwork while he was working on it, but being busy with grad school myself, hadn’t been in touch with the aspiring cartoonist in quite a while. “How do you know, Nancy? Have you seen it?”

#145: Fusion Jazz

Clarissa’s first-person narrative resumes …
        “You expect me to believe the Quantum Quest Quartet became the Megatropolis Quartet simply because all four people temporarily forgot their team name on the Fourth of July, 1976?” I said. “I assume they later recovered their memories. Why didn’t they go back to the original team name? Had they already filed paperwork that prevented them from changing it back or something?”

#144: The Flight of Dr. Braindead!

Trent Phloog’s third-person flashback continues … (Part 6 of 6)

The Marketable Universe, July 4, 1976

Megaton Man and the Human Meltdown traded blows in midair over the Statue of Liberty, knocking the other back hundreds of feet with each one, and more than once coming perilously close to crashing into the monument. Still aloft, whoever was struck would blasted back, come to a stop, hover for a moment as they recovered, then fly right back at the other one to throw another punch in return. It was a very inefficient way to fight.

#143: The Bicentennial Battle of the Millennium!

Trent Phloog’s third-person flashback continues … (Part 5 of 6)

The Marketable Universe, July 4, 1976

The City Room of The Manhattan Project, nerve center of that great daily newspaper, was empty on the sweltering summer afternoon except for the lone figure of Trent Phloog. The unpaid cub reporter, his padded Robert Mitchum suit soaked in perspiration, snoozed at his desk, his snores in concert with the rattling sounds of the window fans and the smooth murmur of ceiling fans, neither of which did anything to combat the sultry New York City heat.

#142: The Quantum Quest Quartet

Trent Phloog’s third-person flashback continues … (Part 4 of 6)

The Marketable Universe, May 1976

Meanwhile, in a midtown skyscraper, a megahero team was scrambling to an alarm.
        “I’m afraid we’ll have to cancel our regularly-scheduled vacation to Bug-Eyed Island, See-Thru Girl!” announced a bulbous, sloshing, elderly man in blue leotards with a white “Q” on his chest. Rex Rigid’s bloated face stared opaquely at a bank of computer monitors arrayed from floor to ceiling, his gloved hands turning knobs and pressing buttons. “The Quantum Tower’s elaborate defenses systems have detected an emergency!”

#141: The Manhattan Project

Trent Phloog’s third-person flashback continues … (Part 3 of 6)

The Marketable Universe, May 1976

Trent stopped on the busy midtown street and looked up at the granite office building. “It’s the correct address, all right,” he said, checking the street number against what was written on the back of the #10 envelope he pulled from his inside breast pocket. “But for some reason, these aren’t the offices of the Daily Polis, like that nice Mr. Greeley described.”
        Instead, the bronze plaque read,

The Manhattan Project
Est’d 1941
Most of the News We Can Fit, We Print

        “Woo!” said Trent. “Must have been one of those media mergers!”

#140: Cross Under at Manhattan Transfer

Trent Phloog’s third-person flashback from 1976 continues (Part 2 of 6):

A young, long-haired conductor sidled up the aisle, smirking. His uniform was ill-fitting and unkempt. He tapped a more senior conductor on the shoulder.
        “Get a load of this, old-timer,” said the younger man. “It’s a train schedule from 1931!”
        The older conductor, his uniform neatly pressed and immaculate, turned around, annoyed; the rookie was continually pestering him with observations on the peculiarities of passenger rail travel. With a ticket puncher in one hand, he unfolded the brittle, yellowed brochure.
        “Where’d you get this? I haven’t seen one of these since I was your age.”

#139: Flashback to Microville

Editorial Note: We interrupt our regularly-scheduled first-person narrative by Clarissa James to bring you this third person (omniscient) flashback from the life of Trent Phloog. Enjoy! (Part 1 of 6)

The District Universe—May 1976

Golden afternoon sunshine spread across the verdant cornfields surrounding Microville Senior High School as their Bicentennial graduation ceremony came to a rousing conclusion. There was hardly a dry eye as the sixteen-piece Mudcat marching band offered a very out-of-tune rendition of “Pomp and Circumstance” while a score of administrators, faculty, and other dignitaries filed off the plywood platform set up in the Mudcat’s football field—actually, a pasture behind the school building surrounded by cornfields. These joined the crowd of a hundred or more family and friends who were still congratulating their twenty-three members of the Class of ’76, a bumper crop for the rural school district, arrayed in their navy-blue robes and mortarboards.

#138: The Dreaded Conference Paper

Rather than think about the upcoming spring semester and the courses I’d be taking or teaching, I spent the evening pondering the conference paper I promised myself I’d write, the abstract for which had to be submitted by the end of January if I wanted to be included in the program at the end of March. My thesis advisor, Dr. Dolores Finch, had recommended the opportunity to me back in August, but I had procrastinated on the extracurricular project all semester, though it lingered in the back of my mind like a sword of Damocles over my head. Now with the semester and my foray in the Civilian Reality over, I finally had some free head space; it was now or never.

#137: Trading Places

After a night a passion with the overly-muscled Mr. Megaton, Stella reluctantly administered the Mega-Soldier Syrup antidote to Trent, who reverted to civilian form, so he could resume his role as Simon’s normal father and fit in Gene’s white van for the road trip home. By the time we all gathered in the Doomsday Factory pantry for breakfast, Trent, Stella and Simon appeared as one big, happy Nuclear Family. But Trent, again a normal looking man, seemed more than a bit wobbly, not only from his epic battle with Bad Guy but also presumably the unexpected barrage of carnal desire from his usually platonic parenting partner.

#136: Coup Détente

Mr. Megaton, Kozmik Kat, and I—followed by the chopper with Gene, Stella, and Avie—returned from Liberty Island to the Doomsday Factory. As we approached the roof, I noticed a caravan of headlights sweeping down the promontory’s gravel path; they were white vans from an ICHHL front company dubbed Incarcertory Consultants for Hardened, Lawbreaking Louts. They were whisking off Rose Shark and the Megatown Mobsters, presumably to the Civilian Reality’s version of the Criminality Clinic which, for all I knew, may have also been called the Criminality Clinic, too.

#135: Night Flight

“Hey, wait a minute!” Kozmik Kat protested, his paws flailing about, as he tried to wriggle free from my grasp. “My powers are no good in a fight scene, Ms. Megaton.” But it was too late; we were already far out over water and ascending rapidly in the frigid night air.

#134: Mr. Megaton

I hadn’t seen exactly what Stella had done, as my grandmother had been intentionally shielding Stella from the view of the Megatown Mobster guarding us. He wasn’t paying any attention to us anyway; he was too flabbergasted at the transformation of his boss—the President-Elect of the United States, Bartholomew Gamble—into the purple-clad megavillain, Bad Guy.

#133: Rex, Rose, and Mega-Bad Guy

We were screwed.
        Stella quickly slipped the unopened jewel case containing syringes and vials of Mega-Soldier Syrup back into her windbreaker; Avie and Seedy both rolled down their sleeves. No one, it appeared, was going to be transformed into a megahero.
        “You want I should grab their guns, Rose?” said one of the Megatown Mobsters.
        “No need,” said Rose Shark. “This is just a friendly visit. Besides, our next President of these United State believes in fostering the most deadly proliferation of firearms our nation and the world has ever seen.”

#132: The Megatown Mob

“Stella, what are you doing in Bayonne?” I asked. “Don’t tell me you drove ten hours straight all the way from Ann Arbor.”
        “Of course not,” Stella replied. “We flew.”
        “Flew? But Stella, you guys can’t fly. In this reality, you’re civilians, not megaheroes.”
        “On a plane, silly,” she replied.

#131: Banks of the Nile

It seemed to me as we watched the bank of surveillance screens in the darkened guard station that Gene Griffin was anticipating an assault on the Doomsday Factory from land, sea, and air to rival Operation Overlord on D-Day. Yet, despite his misgivings, he projected the brash confidence that we could handily repel the invaders from atop the promontory of Constable Hook for days and weeks, if not forever—just him, me, my sister, my grandma, my former housemate’s invalid father, and a stray black cat named Dr. Sax. Gene reminded me of Daddy, my adoptive father, with his take-charge attitude; Daddy, who could turn a leaky roof into the most insurmountable challenge our family had ever faced, yet certain we would inevitably triumph in the end. This is what turned me on about Gene.

#130: Slaughter on Tenth Avenue

“I’ve heard of political assassinations,” I said. “But a politician having a private citizen whacked—that’s crazy. You really think Bad Guy will try to have me rubbed out?”
        “Bart Gamble predicated his presidential campaign on Ms. Megaton as a menace to society,” said Glenn. “He’s already framed you as Public Enemy Number One, Clarissa, and he’s determined to get you out of the way long before he’s sworn in come January.”

#129: Ex Nihilo

One of the Transdimensional Transceivers appeared identical to the one I had seen in the Troy, Michigan headquarters of the Youthful Permutations team the Y+Thems. I lugged it over to the ringed table in the center of the floor; it was heavier than I expected. Rex followed, uncoiling an extension cord from the workbench he’d plugged into the wall.

#128: The Transdimensional Transceiver

“This is Ms. Megaton?” asked Rex, sizing me up through wire-framed spectacles. I must have seemed especially unprepossessing in my fat jeans and baggy hoodie; I felt his eyes going back and forth between my modest chest and my sister’s ample bosom. “Could have fooled me. She appears much more formidable in news photos and on television.”
        Thanks for talking about me in the third person!

#127: Return to Doomsday

Sunrise beat us to Bayonne, New Jersey the following morning, but only slightly. It was already daylight as Gene drove the white van up a gravelly path up Constable Hook, the promontory Avie and I had visited once before back in our reality. That time, we approached by air and from the east, in the flying Q-Mobile piloted by old boyfriend, Bing Gloom, also known as Yarn Man. This time, of course, we were climbing up the hill from the west. The sun seemed to rise anew as we reached the crest of the hill, casting the hulking old building in stark silhouette.
        “The Doomsday Factory,” I said.

#126: Docs and Cats

“I have a vehicle waiting outside,” said Grandma Seedy in a commanding voice to me. “There isn’t a moment to lose, Clarissa.”
        It crossed my mind that elements within the government might be using my grandmother as a ploy to kidnap me, but that seemed unlikely—and just plain paranoid. And yet, how could I be sure who was friend or foe in this alternate, Civilian Reality?

#125: Re-Election Day

When I got up the following morning, my first priority was to set my Ms. Megaton Man visor and buttons on the windowsill so they could recharge for several hours in the sunlight; after that, to find my polling place, the spooky St. Oriel Byzantine Church. It was a short walk from our West Forest apartment down Third Avenue almost to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. I made it a point to get my ass out of bed early and cast my ballot for the challenger to President Harry Foster Lime, whoever that might be. I couldn’t start my day unless I knew I’d done at least that much to defeat him, as had been accomplished in my own reality.

#124: Melody Chrysanthemum

I supposed Preston’s last remark was intended to end our conversation, because he returned to his work stocking the bookstore shelves with an air that he was going to ignore me until I went away. I didn’t know what else to say, although I didn’t turn away immediately. But then I heard some familiar voices from behind me.

#123: Flying Blind

“They think I’m a Megavillain in this reality?” I cried, stunned. “But look, I’m busting some jewelry thieves or something, right here on the front page.”
        It was true; Clarissa Too was shown in a halftoned photograph busting some crooks with handkerchiefs around their mouths, although the caption read, Who is this mysterious “Megahero,” and what is her agenda?
        “They’re afraid of the color of your skin—and the fact that you have ovaries,” said Avie.

#122: Real Time

“Nuts!” I cried. “Clarissa Too’s the Civilian; she belongs in the Civilian Reality—not me!”
        I rose from my seat; it was no longer a leather-upholstered side chair I had sat down in. Now, it was just a battered, metal folding chair. Gone was the luxuriant Oriental carpet and oaken desk. It was still obviously the same space I had entered with Clarissa Too and Michele Selket, because I could see the distant horizon of Detroit through the windows, but they were no longer there. The top floor of the Wardell Building no longer housed Inland Ocean Archeological and Anthropological Institute and its rare manuscripts and first editions in tall, elegant wooden bookcases. Instead, it was just a massive storage room, dusty and full of cobwebs, filled with utilitarian metal shelves stuffed with old cardboard boxes and rusty filing cabinets nobody ever visited.

# 121: Mistaken Identity

The December morning I had to turn in my final grades to the Urban Policy and Social Planning office was frosty and overcast, but as yet saw no snow. Clarissa Too and I bundled up in scarves and mittens. Underneath our street clothes, we wore our respective Ms. Megaton Man uniforms, she out of habit, me in case of an emergency, but also because that Quarantinium-Quelluminum stuff made for great thermal underwear. Still, because of the cold weather, Clarissa Too could really feel her thigh and was hobbling worse than usual.

#120: Will the Real Ms. Megaton Man Please Stand Up?

Introduction to Volume V: Real Time

Now is perhaps a good as time as any to consider where we are in this little epic saga I’ve been relating to you over several wordy volumes.

#119: I Lost My Powers In This World

“Oh, great,” said Preston Percy, snuffing out his unfiltered cigarette under the toe of his shoe on the pavement of the driveway. “Don’t tell me America just lost her New Nuclear-Powered Hero!”
        The secret agent walked out onto the lawn where Mama and Avie were propping up Clarissa Too.
        “Can you still fly?” he asked.
        “I can barely walk,” said Clarissa Too. “I feel like I did before I got my Megapowers, like in my Civilian reality.”
        “Try lifting that stack of firewood,” said Preston, pointing to the short stack of timber against the garage. “Wait; that’s no good. It’s not heavy enough. Try lifting the car.”

#118: Never Even Kissed a Girl

Back at the apartment, I showed my sister Avie all the clippings Virginia had made for me concerning the other Ms. Megaton Man’s exploits. “Look at all this incredible stuff I’m doing, Avie—I mean my Counterpart is doing, the other Ms. Megaton Man; Frankly, she’s making me look bad—teaming up with the likes of the Doomsday Revengers and Megatropolis Quartet and battling Megavillains on the East Coast, breaking up subversive, insurrectionist militias in Maryland, battling more robots in Troy with the Troy+Thems. Good Lord, I’ve even been to Chicago and Wisconsin by now—only I’ve never once been to Chicago or Wisconsin in my life—battling evildoers. How will I ever live up to her tireless heroism and courage once she’s gone? When all I’ve done in the meantime is grade a few papers? And I’m still behind on my own submission for the upcoming Hypothetics conference!”

#117: America’s New Nuclear-Powered Hero

The following evening, Mama, Alice Too, Clarissa Too, and I all sat at a table in the Union Stripe Tavern watching the election returns on the TV above the bar. My Counterpart was not wearing her Ms. Megaton Man uniform, of course. Instead, she wore an Orchard Lake University sweatshirt and jeans and sneakers Mama went and bought for her. And she and Alice Too appeared virtually indistinguishable, since Mama had been working out so much; she looked like she was ready to fight crime as the Mod Puma, too.

#116: Live, Coast-to-Coast

By the time Preston drove us to the TV station, Mama was already in makeup. “What are you doing here?” I asked.
        “I’m here to tell America you’re my love child,” said Mama. “I don’t know what all the fuss is about. Black folk and white folk have been getting it on since before they discovered America. Hasn’t anybody read Othello?”
        “I think Othello takes place after Columbus discovered America,” I said, “although Avie would know for sure. Besides, it’s far from the ideal love story.”
        “Othello was president of Spain,” said Mama. “If the Spaniards can do without racism in 1492, why can’t America today, in 1984?”

#115: The Burgundy Blip

I hadn’t even been Ms. Megaton Man for the longest time. Some days I was so busy with schoolwork for my own seminars and courses, not to mention my responsibilities as a TA, that I rarely even thought of being a Megahero. I felt more and more like the ordinary Civilian I had been most of my life—I hardly identified with Ms. Megaton Man at all. She had, in a sense, already gone underground—submerged in the background of studious grad student Clarissa James.
        The only visible vestige that remained were the burgundy tresses I had not time to maintain.
        I phoned Tempy first thing in the morning. “Can you come down to my apartment right away? It’s an emergency.”

#114: Hiding in Plain Sight

When I woke up Monday morning, my only thought was to get to school without incident. I tucked my hair up under my old Arbor State Abyssinian Wolves knit cap, pulled up the hood of my Warren Woodward Warhounds hoodie for good measure—nothing like mixing and matching collegiate licensed apparel from my two schools—and marched out the back door with my book bag. I thought I would be clever and instead of taking Second Avenue directly up to the Warren Woodward campus I took a roundabout way along Prentis to Cass Avenue.

#113: October Surprise in November

The first Sunday morning in November started off rather typically for me: playing the clarinet for the nearly-secular First Holistic-Humanist Congregation of Cass City church service. Our dysfunctional music ensemble was led by a long, grey-haired college-dropout organist—really a oboist and English horn player who never practiced the keyboard much during the week—who doubled as our insufferably snobby music director, choosing which hymns to butcher by cleaving out verses that didn’t meet his musical taste; a half-deaf brass player who doubled on electric bass and ukulele; a deeply manic-depressive older lady who played flutes, xylophone, and glockenspiel but always forgot her glasses, music, or the correct instrument she had intended to bring and always arrived in the sanctuary in a state of flustered meltdown; and her codependent husband, a guitarist and flugelhorn player who was forever offering to run home and retrieve his frantic wife’s glasses, music, or alto flute or whatever.

#112: Postmodern Sleeping Arrangements

“Say, what are you doing for Halloween?” asked Trent when I answered the phone. Stella had some academic thing all night, he explained, and he needed me to take Simon Trick-or-Treating while he stayed home and dispensed candy. “I can’t very well have Simon collect a bag of goodies while our house is the only dark one on the street—the other parents in the neighborhood would ostracize us for a year.”

#111: I Was a Graduate-School Sex Addict!

“Where were you all night?” asked Avie, as I bounded into the kitchen. She was already cooking scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast. “Want some? You hungry?”
        “No thanks,” I said. “I just gave Gene a knob-job.”
        “Ew, please! Not before I’ve eaten!” said Avie, making a sour expression and grabbing her midsection while still stirring the eggs. “Not on an empty stomach.”

#110: The Criminality Clinic

The van raced down empty Second Avenue under a succession of street lamps illuminating nothing at this hour. We came to Cass Park at the foot of the avenue and made a sharp left in front of Masonic Temple. Turning right down Cass, we crossed the Fisher Freeway toward Downtown.
        “You’re actually going to try to take extralegally procured prisoners across the border to Canada?” I asked. “I’d like to see how you’ll manage that.”

#109: My Dinner With André

I met Chase, Peggy, and Marge at Union Stripe just as Happy Hour was in full swing and turning into the dinner pre-symphony and theater rush. Because Marge and I used to work there, the hostess treated to the front table in the window facing Woodward Avenue.

#108: West Forest Knight Rangers

I must have dozed off grading stacks of midterm exams for Intro to Urban Social Policy 101, the giant lecture course for which I served as a teaching assistant at Warren Woodward University. They were handwritten in those lined-paper exam booklets, and each one was like deciphering the Dead Sea Scrolls. My job was to assess each one fairly, and discern which students had studied for the exam but froze up under pressure, and which were just bullshitting with a lot of filler material. One student scrawled, “I think the planners of the modern cities did a really good job using modernity to plan modern cities”—What the hell did that even mean? And why would anyone taking a college course in city planning ever bother to write such a trite tautology? Another wrote, “Le Corbusier hated the cramped medieval city; he wanted to replace it with apartment blocks and green lawns. Except that people liked their traditions, so Corbu just built overpriced houses for rich people on the outskirts of Paris instead.” I couldn’t tell if that was brilliant and insightful, or just gobbledygook. After three hours of this kind of rubbish I had to close my eyes to relieve my splitting headache.

#107: Ms. Megatronica and Ponty Polverizzo

Of all the Hypothetic jargon and fantastic visionary concepts swirling around in my head, not to mention the actually disorienting experiences I’d experienced over the preceding several months, something about the comic book story Chase Bradford had created stuck in my head. It was his name for the villains in the title of his story: “Ms. Megatronica vs. the Garnookian Butt Worms of Rott.” It reminded me of something I had read somewhere, but I couldn’t exactly place it at first.

#106: Drawing Board Booty Call

On my way out of Chas’s apartment building the next morning, who do I run into on the landing at the foot of the steps but Peggy, the rich white Grosse Pointe girl slumming in Detroit and studying literature at Warren Woodward University, returning from her escapades out on the town. The look on her face told me immediately she knew the kinds of sleazy things Chas and I had been up to the night before. “How is the undiscovered genius, anyway?” she asked dismissively. “Haven’t seen him crawl out from under his rock lately.”

#105: Blank Book of Dreams

A week before the start of classes, the WWU Student Bookstore was already abuzz with activity. Warren Woodward University, being an urban school, was a very different campus from Arbor State, which was set off in the remote, bucolic woodlands of Michigan west of Detroit. By this time of year, athletes would have already returned to Ann Arbor, and for the past two weeks been jogging around the Diag like troops of marines, whether male or female. By now, one week before the fall semester, regular students would have already begun moving back into dorms and apartments. State Street would be swarming with freshman and returning upperclassmen hunting for textbooks at Border Worlds Used and Slightly New Book Store, filling the bars and restaurants and movie theaters, and generally looking to get laid.

#104: Postcards from the Edge of Forever

Tuesday was too grey and rainy to think of flying up to Royal Oak in my newly-dry-cleaned Ms. Megaton Man uniform—aside from my general aversion to use my Megapowers for merely everyday tasks. I had just read an article about acid rain and feared it might be the one thing that could undo the indestructible Quarantinium-Quelluminum fabric and my Grandma Seedy’s costuming handiwork.

#103: Call for Papers

The week before school started, I attended an afternoon orientation for grad students in the urban theory and social planning program, after which I got a buttload more textbooks and readings for the recitations I’d be teaching. A recitation, in case you don’t know, is a class connected to one of those big lecture classes taught by a professor for hundreds of students in big lecture hall a couple times a week. Then the teaching assistants, grad students like me, go over or “recite” the material in smaller breakout sessions in regular classrooms on another day for about twenty students at a time.

#102: The Multimensional Pinpointer

It was going to take a while for it to sink in that my eighteen-month-old distant cousin had singlehandedly fended off a battalion of robotic invaders at the Youthful Permutations headquarters in Troy while I had been reading my Introduction to Hypothetics textbook for an upcoming seminar in my off-campus apartment in Detroit ten miles away.

#101: Secret-Secret Weapon

I wandered into the living room, sifting through the newspaper clippings. I had difficulty absorbing the information they reported: flying robots had attacked the Youthful Permutations headquarters up in Troy, just north of Detroit, in broad daylight. All of this had taken place within the past week, apparently, while I, holed up in my apartment, hadn’t heard a word about it.

#100: Dr. Sax

Next thing I know, I was back at the Inland Ocean Archeological and Anthropological Institute. The afternoon sunlight was still beaming through the windows on all sides of the top floor of the Wardell Building, through the stacks and stacks of rare books and manuscripts.
        I found myself seated alone, in the cross-legged position, on the oriental rug, barefoot in my athletic shorts and tank top. I looked at my hand; my class ring was still there; I reached over to my book bag—I knew I was back in my native reality because my butthole still hurt from my weekend with Trent. I fished out my wristwatch out of my book bag; the date hadn’t even changed; barely a few minutes had passed.

#99: They Pronounce the Doctor…Braindead!

I didn’t know what to expect when the Time Turntable began to materialize along the side fence in our Ann Street back yard. After all, at different times, I had seen Yarn Man, Kozmik Kat, Liquid Man, the Silver Age Megaton Man, and the Mod Puma appear or disappear on it. But those times all occurred in another reality—my native reality—not this weirdly alternative, civilian one.
        I knew even less what to expect from the oval opening of the Dimensional Doorway over the driveway—which, I hasten to add, appeared of its own accord, without the surrounding hardware, as an eerie, gaping aperture into a wild, unruly cosmic chaos.

#98: George Has a Gun

“Comic Coo-Coo Boo,” said Simon, who had been making Jackson Pollock compositions on the stainless-steel tray of his high chair with his noodles and spaghetti sauce. He was the only one of us able to gaze directly at the Cosmic Cue-Ball with his cyclopic, red-lensed goggles, while the rest of us were practically blinded.
        The incandescent orb looked just the way it was drawn in the comic books, but instead of harsh, black outlines, it burned as brightly as tungsten. The Orb of Great Power, as I’d heard it once described, hung in mid-air over us only briefly before it darted through the kitchen toward the open back door, stopping at the screen. Duchess, barking, chased after it; leaping up, her front paw came down on the handle of the screen door. Her weight carried her out of the house and onto the patio, and the Cue-Ball, sensing an opening, darted out into the back yard.

#97: Secret Identity

Daddy backed his red pickup into the driveway of the Ann Street house. I opened the passenger door, careful to unload my crutches first, then let myself out gently. My balance seemed much improved and my leg felt better, although something told me that if I tried to walk I’d still be rather lame.
        It was clear my perceptions had skipped forward in time once again. Judging from how the leaves on the trees and shrubs were turning, we were in the latter half of September now, at least.