“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.”
I’d never had a run-in with Bad Guy in my own reality, but I’d heard stories about how he tangled with Megaton Man over the years; their last epic battle had resulted in the complete destruction of Manhattan, which miraculously and spontaneously regenerated only after Megaton Man lost his megapowers.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “What’s Bad Guy got against little old me?”
“Are you kidding?” replied Gene. “In this reality, Ms. Megaton’s been giving Bart Gamble’s criminal operations on the East Coast a real hard time. For the past year she’s single-handedly disrupted his rackets, frustrated his takeover of labor unions, and foiled much of his black market trade. You’re the reason Gamble went into politics—so he could use the federal government to wipe you out.”
“A good, old-fashioned mob hit,” said Orson. “Only employing G-Men. Sounds like the plot to a Broadway musical.”
“But it won’t be a government intelligence agency that does the job,” said Brenda. “Bartholomew Gamble doesn’t wield the levers of presidential power quite yet. He’ll employ any number of connections to the Underworld. With Gamble winning the election with the stated intention to neutralize Ms. Megaton and all megaheroes, the people in power who could be protecting you—like President Harry Foster Lime—are lame ducks; their hands will be tied.”
“That’s why you need to go into hiding, Clarissa,” said Seymour. “That’s why we brought you here—the Doomsday Factory is your hideout, for the time being.”
“You’re already in hiding,” said Grandma Seedy.
“But I have school back in Detroit,” I protested. “I mean, Clarissa Too has school. And so does Avie. What are we going to accomplish by hiding out here.”
“I’m cutting class,” said Avie as she put away her guitar. “At least until this is over. But I agree, we can’t just sit in some old, haunted textile mill while some cheap crook seizes control of the executive branch. I say we take the fight to Bad Guy—we need to take out this sonuvabitch.”
I looked at my sister in astonishment. “You want to go up against the duly elected President of the United States? Do you know what you’re saying? He’s already got Secret Service protection.”
“He’s not the president yet,” said Delbart. “Not until the electoral college convenes and congress ratifies the election. Maybe we can show the world what a crumb-bum he is, turn public opinion so strongly against him that there’s a recall. There’s got to be a way to smoke him out, show the American people his true colors.”
“That won’t do any good,” said Hyacinth. “Harry Foster Lime has already conceded and the transition of administrations has begun. The people have spoken, and they won’t get a chance to weigh in again for another four years. We’re stuck with a corrupt New York real estate developer who’s a mob-connected crook for the next four years.”
All this time, Rex had been fiddling with the Transdimensional Transceiver, lost in thought.
“I have an idea,” he said abruptly. “If Bart Gamble is the megavillain you say he is in your reality, Clarissa, perhaps I can retrieve footage of his dastardly deeds on this device. Then, broadcast it to the world …”
“What will that prove?” said Orson. “The public will regard it was a hoax; Gamble will denounce them as fake newsreels.”
“Besides,” said Glenn, “even if a person could be proven evil in one reality, it doesn’t follow they are necessarily evil, let alone culpable for crimes committed, in another.”
“Evil has a way of destroying itself,” said Grandma Seedy. “Perhaps we don’t have to defeat the president-elect so much as find a way to encourage his worst instincts.”
The discussion ended in a stalemate; Grandma Seedy’s colleagues had been going at it throughout the night and it was now nearly noon. They all said their goodbyes to her, leaving me, Avie, Gene, and Seymour alone in the foreboding Doomsday Factory. We took the stairs to the roof to watch their separate vehicles roll down the gravel path leading from the promontory of Constable Hook to Bayonne below.
Gene watched uneasily the caravan of cars disappear, followed by the cloud of dust they kicked up from the gravel path. He wished the Burly-Boy, Girly-Man scientists could have waited at least until nightfall instead of broad daylight, in the off chance the unusual activity on the promontory might attract attention. But from where, I wondered? Lower Manhattan was five miles away across the bay; the Port of New York and New Jersey and Staten Island were also separated by wide stretches of water. Perhaps a passing ship in the busy waterways might have a high-powered telescope trained on the Doomsday Factory, but this seemed unlikely; this wasn’t 1940 and the bay wasn’t crawling with spying U-boats.
After all, the roof itself showed that considerable activity had already taken place at the Doomsday Factory in the preceding days and weeks. No doubt several white vans from Intelligence Central Headquarters—Heroic Liaison, or ICHHL had arrived at night under cover of darkness to turn on the water and install solar panels on the roof so that the complex could remain off the power grid.
I was still taking in the view from the roof when Grandma Seedy said, “Of course, Clarissa, we can’t keep you here against your will.” She waved her hand toward the Bayonne Bridge and the eastern horizon beyond. “Now’s your chance; you can fly away home.” I hadn’t flown since the last time I was in New York, which was months prior; Detroit was an awful long way away.
“No, I’m sure you know what’s best, Grandma,” I replied. “I’ll hang out with you guys in New Jersey for a while, at least.”
The fourth floor of the Doomsday Factory had been converted into dormitories for the Burly-Boy, Girly-Man scientists in the 1940s. While Gene, Seymour, Seedy, and Dr. Sax had disappeared to other floors, Avie and I busied ourselves readying several rooms with fresh bedding and made sure the communal showers were stocked with towels, soap, shampoo, and other toiletries. We could also tell which rooms were intended for us, since Grandma had stocked jeans, tops, underwear, shoes, and other apparel in our respective sizes in closets and chests of drawers.
“Way better accommodations than South Quad,” I remarked, “and way better than the facilities the Y+Thems had to put up with at the old Navy Yards.” Although the latter reference made no sense to Avie.
After that, we descended to the second floor and checked out the pantry, which we found fully stocked. We fixed ourselves a giant pizza with all kinds of fresh topping for lunch and put it in the restaurant-kitchen grade oven; while it baked, Avie was delighted to find a selection of amps and three more electric and two acoustic guitars set out in the adjacent commons room. Avie practiced her pentatonic scales while I made up a list of provisions for Gene to get that night when he went to town, although there wasn’t much; ICHHL seemed to have thought of everything.
“Well, they certainly have made every effort to make us feel at home,” I remarked.
Gene must have smelled the pizza baking or heard Avie’s guitar gently weeping, for he soon appeared bearing the duffel bag he’d brought up from the van. He spread its contents all over a large table. It was a small arsenal of weapons: handguns, more submachine guns like the one he already carried slung over his shoulder, knives, a high-powered rifle, nunchucks, and other assorted, menacing items, most in their own cases.
“Wow,” said Avie, who stopped strumming. “Are we expecting company any time soon?”
“I don’t mean to shock your sensibilities, ladies,” said. “But everyone here must be able and equipped to defend themselves. Have either of you ever handled a fire arm before? Or wielded a blade as a weapon?”
Daddy had kept guns locked in a steel footlocker up in the attic while we were growing up, ever since the 1967 riots. He’d taken Avie on hunting trips when she was little, and she’d had some experience firing a small hunting rifle. But bookworm me and barely laid eyes on a weapon.
When we informed Gene of this, he said, “I’ve set up a practice range downstairs. You start training after lunch.” He loaded the weapons back into the duffel. “There’s more where these came from, too.”
After we ate, the three of us went down to the second floor. Gene made us put on those ear muffs that look like headphones that protect your hearing, which we had to keep lifting from our ears in order to hear Gene’s instructions. I never realized there was so much to loading, aiming, and firing a weapon, but after an hour, I was already reasonably good with a nice little Beretta I could strap to my ankle under my jeans.
When we returned to the pantry and commons room, Grandma Seedy, Seymour, and Dr. Sax, finishing their lunch. Seedy surprised me by presenting me with a facsimile cape, buttons, and visor to substitute for the ones I lacked, completing my Ms. Megaton Man uniform. They that were virtually indistinguishable from the real thing, except they didn’t compute or communicate with other devices like the genuine articles did.
“That’s amazing, Grandma,” I said, marveling at the machine brass button in particular. “How did you manufacture such convincing replicas?”
“There are still bolt-ends of fabric in the textile works, and sewing machines from when this place still operated as a textile mill,” said Seedy. “And a shop where they used to make parts out of metal to keep the whole works running. Seymour machined your buttons out of some brass that was lying around and even made a make a vacuum mold for your visor.”
“But they didn’t have polyurethane in the nineteenth century,” I observed. “How did you …?”
“I had the boys from ICHHL lay in a few industrial supplies last week,” said Seymour. “I’ve always liked tinkering with chemistry sets.”
I put on the translucent orange visor and tapped the frames, half expecting a computer screen to appear before my eyes; of course, it did not. “At least they’ll afford some protection if I do need to fly,” I said.
The buttons of my cape couldn’t magnetically stick to my collar bones as my real pair had, but Seymour had drilled two holes near the depressed center. “I have to sew these buttons onto your costume,” said Grandma. “You’re going to have hand over your body suit.”
I noticed Gene had slipped away from the commons room but thought nothing of it. I went upstairs to my dorm room by myself to take off my street clothes and remove my Ms. Megaton Man uniform, which I was wearing underneath. First, I had to remove the Beretta in its holster from my ankle. “Dear God,” I said as I examined it before carefully laying it on the bed. “What kind of reality have I found myself in?”
I stripped completely; there were spare hangers in the closet, and I hung my uniform on one of them.
“Clarissa, are you in there?” Gene called from out in the hallway; I had left my door slightly ajar.
“Yes,” I said. “You can come in if you want, although I’m not decent …”
“You shouldn’t have gone off like that, by yourself,” he scolded. “Somebody has to be with you at all times, preferably me.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It won’t happen again.”
“Once you’re dressed, there’s something I want to show you.”
“Before I get dressed, there’s something I want to show you,” I replied.
I opened the door and handed him the uniform on its hanger. I was completely nude.
He didn’t even glance at my little boobies. He just glared at me square in the eye.
“Don’t look so shocked, bodyguard,” I said. “In my reality, we’ve been quite intimate.”
He was not amused.
“What’s wrong? Do you prefer men in this reality?”
“No,” he said coldly. “I’m widowed.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Just take that to my grandma, please,” I said about my uniform. “I’m going to take a shower and get dressed. You’re welcome to join me, but …”
Gene took my uniform and disappeared down the hall in one direction. I grabbed a towel and marched quickly in the other direction, naked, to the communal showers, wanting to kick myself.
“Stupid me,” I muttered, “not considering all the ways this crummy Civilian Reality could differ from my own.”
Afterward, Gene reappeared at my door. My Ms. Megaton Man bodysuit was now adorned with sewn-on brass buttons and a short, red cape.
“That was fast,” I said. “Thanks.” I hung it up in my closet. “And … I’m sorry about before.”
“There’s no time for fucking around,” said Gene. “I mean that both literally and figuratively. There’s no room for mistakes. You want to get your grandmother or sister killed?”
“No, I certainly don’t.”
“Did you put your gun back on?”
“I forgot,” I admitted.
I went back in my room and strapped the Beretta in its holster to my ankle.
“Now, what did you want to show me?”
“Follow me,” said Gene mechanically.
I followed Gene to a small, dark room on the ground floor off the lobby. Inside were a bank of monitors. “A security guard station,” I observed. Each screen showed changing views of the bay, the promontory, the view looking south over a vast yard filled with oil storage tanks, as well as cameras in multiple places on each floor. We watched Avie play acoustic guitar for Grandma Seedy and Seymour Starlight in the commons room; then the picture changed to Dr. Sax traipsing down a hallway, alone, exploring.
“We have closed-circuit cameras set up all over the building and grounds,” he said. “From the rooftop and other vantage points, we can see anyone coming up the gravel path, or climbing up the hill from the shore. We have a helicopter pad out back under camouflage netting, in case we need a quick escape and are cut off on the ground. We have infrared beams and tripwires everywhere to sound an alarm.”
“That’s very impressive,” I said. “Is there a submarine in a tube that leads to the river?”
“No, but that’s not a bad idea,” Gene replied. “I just wanted to show you we’re taking your security very seriously. These people are risking their lives for you. They may not wear capes or costumes, but they have your back.”
“I’m cooperating, aren’t I? I took target practice very seriously.”
“Yes, you did,” said Gene. “You did very well for a beginner.”
“I appreciate everything you’ve done,” I said. “Did I tell you I was sorry about before? I didn’t realize …”
“Yes, you did,” said Gene, cutting me off. “There’s no need to thank me. I’m no volunteer; I’m a freelancer doing contract work.”
“I feel safer with you here,” I said. “I really do.”
“Don’t get all mushy,” said Gene. “There’s no time for complications on this mission. Keep your clothes on. Better yet, wear your Ms. Megaton uniform at all times.”
“I’ll do that, from now on. I promise.”
“You should give up any thoughts of going back to Detroit for the time being,” said Gene, “or doing anything stupid like tackling Bart Gamble on your own.”
“You’re the bodyguard,” I said. “Whatever you say.” I looked at the bank of monitors. “When do you expect them to attack? And whom do you expect to attack?”
“I don’t know,” said Gene. “We’d have been better fending them off in Detroit. But Dr. Robeson-James and Dr. Starlight insisted on coming here, having you meet with their colleagues, show you around this absurd Doomsday Factory. Problem is, it puts us closer to the very forces that seek to do in Ms. Megaton. And it won’t take them long to figure out Clarissa James is no longer in Detroit … and not much longer to trace you here, if they have any brains. If they haven’t figured it out already.”
Next: Banks of the Nile
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| Clarissa over the skies of Megatropolis (unpublished, 2014; inked 2021). |
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