In the meantime, I looked around for Soren, who had been at my side but disappeared. I spotted him over in the lab area. He was setting my visor onto a recharging plate. He motioned me to come over.
“This has to be done every couple years or so, unless you keep it in the sunlight,” he explained.
“I’ll try to remember that,” I said.
“Here, I want to show you what the others have been working on,” he said. “This will interest you.”
At a bank of computers and other high-tech equipment stood teammates Tempy and Andrea, who were hard at work on building some kind of small, round apparatus. Tempy, a.k.a. Kav Kleinfelter, was slender in a unisex Y+Thems uniform. He had on makeup, and his hair looked ravishing—although I had to remind myself that he wanted to be referred to as she. Andrea Revell, the Negative Woman, appeared normal-sized instead of her sometime giant form, although she was still easily a head taller than Tempy. She wore a lab coat over her standard Megahero uniform, which was simply a pair of boots and panties over a leotard, with a simple dash or minus sign across her lovely, modest breasts. I had to admit is was still strange see her as a woman when my first impression of her was as a handsome man named Andre. I thought I felt a weird sexual tension or vibe between the two of them you could cut with a knife, although perhaps it was my own disorientation at the thought of humans who didn’t seem at all hindered by gender categories.
“We’ve been working on an update to Winnie Wertz’s Multimensional technology,” Andrea explained. “You remember how Jasper hooked up one of her old 1940 Transceivers to the Dimensional Doorway?” The small device, which looked like a cross between a primitive portable television and a field walkie-talkie, sat on a nearby table and was still connected by cables to the archway that had flung me into the Forbidden Future. “The idea there was simple: use the audio-visual broadcasts from other dimensions to pinpoint the exact reality the traveler wishes to travel to, instead of having to rely on a random selection—a big drawback to both the Dimensional Doorway and the Time Turntable. The result was primitive, but at least one could reasonably predict where one was going.”
I replied, “Yeah, it was a real help, knowing that I was about to be thrown into the Forbidden Future a split second before Kozmik Kat’s sneeze blew us both into it.”
Tempy ignored my remark. “I’m not much of technician,” he said. “But my idea was, why be stuck with all this heavy lab hardware? Why not reinvent our little makeshift Multimensional navigational whatnot into a sleek, portable, wearable device, that’s a whole lot more fashionable at the same time? Andrea, dear, show Clarissa what we came up with. Drum roll, please.”
The Negative Woman held up the round object they’d been working on: a wonky-looking apparatus that looked like a hockey helmet covered in spare parts from an cannibalized transistor radio.
“We call it the Multimensional Pinpointer,” said Andrea. “All the traveler needs to do is visualize the alternate reality they have in mind, concentrate, and voila—it materializes all around them. Of course, we haven’t tested it yet.”
“How is that different than just dreaming up your own imaginary world, then making it real?” I asked.
Tempy frowned as he pondered the thought. “I hate trick questions,” he said.
“Presumably, the reality already exists, and you’re just locating it,” came a familiar voice. It was Jasper, who appeared on a big flat-screen TV. Apparently, the team had significantly upgraded their teleconferencing technology over the summer, enabling Jasper to collaborate remotely with the Troy+Thems from the Quantum Tower in Megatropolis. “I’ve been working on the theory and design with Andre—I mean, Andrea—and coaching Tempy on the finer points of soldering wires and circuit boards. Luckily, he’s got the requisite light touch.”
“You mean she,” I said.
“Oh, we’re not hung up on pronouns,” said Tempy. “We’ve declared the headquarters a gender-free zone.” She took the helmet from Andrea. “We imagine covering all the works up under a stylish pearlescent shell,” she explained. “We know a shop that makes plastic vacuum molds for car bumpers and so on. Here, Clarissa—do you want to try it on?”
Before I could protest, Andrea sat me down in a tulip chair and Tempy planted the Multimensional Pinpointer on my head.
“Now, visualize the dimension you wish to travel to,” said Jasper.
“Guys, I’m not sure I’m ready for another interdimensional trip so soon,” I protested.
“You don’t have to dream anything up, Clarissa.” said Soren. “Andrea and Tempy have already cataloged a number of alternate realities. Show her the menu.”
Andrea wheeled out a cart with a relatively recent Panasonic cathode-tube TV connected to a beat-up, dusty Betamax machine. “We been using this to record images from the Transceiver-Doorway set up,” Andrea explained. “We’ve already identified several past, present, and future alternate realities to choose from. It’s only the tip of the iceberg, but it’s a sampler of places to start.”
They played for me the highlight tape. In one alternate reality, Adolf Hitler, instead of becoming the world’s most evil megalomaniacal dictator, became a famous modern artist, with a blockbuster career-retrospective show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In another, Lee Harvey Oswald’s rifle jammed, and after John F. Kennedy’s Vietnam-free second term, Mort Sahl won the presidency as a third-party candidate in 1968.
“Oh, phooey with that all that Great Man History business,” said Tempy. “I think it’s better when you decide what reality you want to visit for yourself, Clarissa.”
“Really, guys,” I said. “I’m still recovering from my recent astral journey with Doctor Messiah …”
But before I knew it, somebody flipped the switch on the helmet.
All at once, I was aware I was in different reality. It was the same time of year, but it was now sunny, whereas before it had been rainy. I was back on the Warren Woodward campus—I recognized the exact spot—on a lawn near the athletic fields, not far from the muffled rumble of the Edsel Ford Freeway. There was a large shade tree in the distance that I had spotted and always planned to sit under some time to read, but never had. I walked toward the tree and saw there was figure under it. The figure was me.
“Oh, hello,” I said. “Funny, I was just thinking about you.”
The other me, Clarissa Too, looked up from her book. Her eyes grew wide in disbelief as she recognized herself walking towards her. “Oh!” she said. “Hello.”
“May I sit down?” I asked.
She nodded mutely.
“I was wondering how you were getting along,” I said.
“I’m doing okay,” said Clarissa Too. “How’ve you been?”
“I’ve been kind of at loose ends,” I admitted. “It’s been a tough summer, adjusting to all the changes, particularly after being inside your body for a few months. How’s your hip?”
“All better. In fact, they went in and took the rod out. Now there’s not even a scar. Benefits of have a Megaheroic metabolism, I suppose.”
“I always wanted to know,” I said. “Where were you all the time that I was inside you?”
“Oh, I was there,” said Clarissa Too. “I was kind of weird, watching myself the whole time; It was an out-of-body experience.”
“I guess it would be,” I said. “I hope I made the right decisions on your behalf.”
“Oh, you did fine,” she said. “You did exactly what I would have done.”
“So, how do you like being Ms. Megaton Man now?” I asked.
“It’s kinda cool,” said Clarissa Too. “I like the flying part a lot. And I get to beat up people when I need to. Comes in handy when you’re being mugged and stuff.”
“There aren’t many Megaheroes in this reality, are there?” I tried to imagine what the crime rate in Detroit would be like without them.
“No, none at all,” she said. “But I’m reading up on the culture.” She moved a textbooks to reveal a short stack of comic books. “I’m not much of a fan, but take it these stories are based on happenings in other realities where there must be tons of Megaheroes. It must be great, having all those other characters to team up with. But I’m the only one here. We don’t even have any Megavillains yet, either.”
“So, what do you do?”
“I mostly chase down jewelry thieves,” said Clarissa. “And, there are starting to be a lot of robots around town.”
“Yeah, there are no shortage of robots to run into, in this line of work.”
“How about you? You must have an exciting life,” said my other self. She showed me a comic book called The Youthful Permutations. “You’re a guest star all the time, according to this storyline.”
She handed it to me and I flipped through it. I was surprised to see Chas Bradford listed as the pencil artist. “Oowee, I know him! He’s turned pro.” Then I noticed the artwork. “He draws my boobs too big. I’m going to have to talk to him.” I handed the comic back to her. “I’d be happy to trade places with you, Clarissa Too,” I said. “I feel like a fifth wheel in my reality. I’d rather just be sitting here reading, like you’re doing now; you can have the whole Megahero team-up thing, as far as I’m concerned. I wouldn’t even bother chasing after jewelry thieves. And I’d just hide from the robots.”
We chatted amiably for quite a while, comparing our lives. Obviously, Clarissa Too had finished up at Arbor State and was now a grad student at Warren Woodward. Our lives were remarkably similar—same courses of study, similar family issues. She told me she had broken up with farmboy Trent Phloog, and that he’d moved in with Stella and was now taking classes at Huron River Community College.
I asked her if she’d met Nancy yet. “A magenta-haired art student?” she asked. “I may have seen her around. She waitresses at the Union Stripe, doesn’t she? I don’t get that far down Woodward Avenue too often.”
“She works there off and on,” I said. “In my reality, we were hot and heavy for a while. Although I haven’t seen much of her lately.”
Clarissa Too was horrified. “You mean, you were like … intimate? With another woman?” It never occurred to me that in another reality I wasn’t into girls almost as much as guys. “They kind of hint at it in the comic books, but I thought it was just for male titillation.”
“Yeah,” I confessed. “Nancy and I slept together a lot. She’s a really nice lay. Only, I think she’s really more into sharing her dildos with friends than she is into girls per se. I wouldn’t be surprised if she got married and had kid, eventually—in either reality.”
Clarissa Too revealed that her sexual experience had been rather paltry compared to mine. Trent had taken her virginity, and since he had broken her heart, she had yet to be with anyone else. She was living the celibate life of the scholar.
“You never even kissed a girl?” I asked in astonishment. “Not even once?”
“No,” she said, “although I have thought about it.” I could tell by the distant look in her eyes it was beginning to dawn on her that it could be the solution to her celibacy problems.
I recommended she drop by the Union Stripe Tavern for a half-pounder with bleu cheese and mashed olives to get a closer look at Nancy. “And there’s a great adult section in the used bookstore down the next block from the restaurant,” I suggested. “Keep your eye out for a magazine called Sixty-Nine Double Feature #7. I’m pretty sure you’ll enjoy it.” Here I was corrupting the morals of myself in another dimension, or at least making her gain weight.
I stood up and brushed off my jeans. “Well, I probably should be going,” I said. I reached up to feel for my Multimensional Pinpointer helmet, only to realize it hadn’t come along with me to this alternate reality. “No, how am I expected to end this little visit?”
Maybe I touched the helmet’s invisible controls in another dimension or something, because no sooner had my alternate self and I waved goodbye to each other than I was back in the Troy+Thems headquarters.
Tempy removed the Multimensional Pinpointer helmet. “Sorry,” he said. “I should have warned you before flipping the switch.”
“How was it?” somebody asked.
The voice belonged to the Phantom Jungle Girl. Only, she wasn’t on a TV screen like Jasper, live from New York, as I expected. Instead, she was standing right next to me in the short, spikey-haired Civilian persona of Donna Blank, Licensed Social Worker.
“I flew in this morning to see how everyone was doing,” said Donna. “I figured my psychiatric services might come in handy; sometimes a major Megavillain battle can be traumatic. But I guess Megatoddler manhandled those robotically-armed intruders by himself, and despite the evident destruction, everyone seems emotionally unscathed. Almost everybody, that is.”
Before I could ask whom she meant, our black cat jumped up onto one of the tables in the lab. Donna started petting it. “Oh, hello, Dr. Sax,” she said, quite familiarly.
“You know our cat’s name?” asked Avie. She had come over after finishing her workout and was toweling off her perspiration.
“Of course,” said Donna. “Dr. Sax and I go way back. Don’t we, dear?”
I remembered I had seen a black cat with a man in bandages in a photo back at the Inland Ocean Archeological and Anthropological Institute. I told Donna how the cat had appeared in my apartment over the summer and had named herself by pawing a copy of the Jack Kerouac book. “Don’t tell me that was intentional,” I said.
“She’s a smart pussy,” said Donna.
“So how long are you in town, Donna?” asked Avie.
“Just for a few more days,” she said. “I have to square things away down in Royal Oak. Now that Bobo and the Brilliant Brain are headquartered here, I’m subletting my old offices.”
I realized I hadn’t noticed Bobo the Gorilla or the Brilliant Brain among all the clean-up activity going on at the Troy+Thems headquarters. “Where are those guys, anyway?” I asked.
“Remember I said, ‘Almost everybody’?” said Donna. She pointed over to the part of the floor where the cage was. It was empty, and on a tea table nearby, a brain quietly burbled in a glass jar. “Cowboy Gorilla’s gone off the reservation again. After a fight, he’s so riled up he thinks he’s back in the Old West and goes looking for a saloon. That means I’ll have to spend all night as the Phantom Jungle Girl tracking him down, and all day tomorrow talking him back to himself. Luckily, I know all his old haunts.”
“Say, listen,” I said. “If you’re in town for a few days to give shrink sessions, maybe you’d have time to see me.”
“You need to talk?” she said. “Sure. Can you drop by the office day after tomorrow?”
There was nothing much else Avie and I could do for the Y+Thems, but before we could leave, Alice Too collared me and put me on the treadmill for forty-five minutes; afterward, I could really feel my thighs. Meanwhile, Avie tried on the Multimensional Pinpointer helmet Afterwards., she reported she had visited a reality where she was the Wondrous Warhound full-time. “I fought alongside Mama, who was also a costumed crime fighter—the Taupe Toyger. Boy, was it fun! But we nearly got creamed though, when the Key Lime Kangaroo had to ditch his Kang-Kopter over San Francisco Bay.”
Momentarily, I got my visor back from Soren, recharged, and Mama presented us with our uniforms. “One-hour dry cleaning,” she said. She also gave us a tour of the downstairs dorm floor, with Dr. Sax following along. There were spare rooms. “You are free to use them overnight anytime you girls want to come up and visit your poor Mama,” she said.
Next: Call for Papers [Link available 02/12/2020 10:00 am EST]
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| From the sketchbook: a series of practice inks, c. 2014. |
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