#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.

#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.”

#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.

#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.

#90: Profusion and Proliferation

Introduction to Volume IV: Civilian

I graduated from Arbor State University in the spring of 1984—a year late, for reasons I’ve explained elsewhere and at the time was still trying to live down. Briefly, I attribute the delay in part to what I call my delayed freshman crisis. Being a studious student, it took me a couple years of college before I came out of my shell socially and sexually, aided by more extroverted friends and various psychoactive substances, not to mention a serendipitous, protracted hookup with Yarn Man.
        Another impediment was my discovery, in the summer of 1982, that I was a natural-born megahero, which earned me a costume and some quirky new colleagues. As Ms. Megaton Man, as I called myself, the few adventures I’d had, if you could call them that, were a distraction at best, only making my return to the dean’s list that much more challenging.

#43: The Arms of Krupp

I didn’t know how to express my concerns to Trent: that we were all in grave danger, civilian and megahero alike; that malevolent scientists had split the universe apart, then recombined it, and might be trying to split it apart yet again; or that the only thing holding this crazy Everything-but-the-Kitchen Sinkverse together at the moment might be the two-year old offspring of Megaton Man and the See-Thru Girl, who at that very moment was busy chasing squirrels with a squirt gun in Broadway Park in Ann Arbor.

#42: The Theoretical Unraveling of the Kitchen Sinkverse

Avie and I immediately wanted to whisk our newfound grandmother up Woodward Avenue to Eight Mile to reunite with our Mama, who hadn’t seen her mother in over forty years. But Grandma said she had to make an urgent phone call first. Seedy used my dial-up rotary phone and Avie, Charles, and I—and Audrey, who was still dressed in my Ms. Megaton Man uniform—crowded into the tiny kitchen of my garret apartment to give Grandma some privacy. I had a feeling it was some kind of official scientific business.

#37: The First Holistic-Humanist Congregation of Cass City

About a week after my tumble with Nuke, I was coming home from my summer class at the Arbor State Extension and passing the church, hoping perhaps to get another glimpse of the man with the stretchy arm. A white van had just pulled into the church parking lot with a New York license plate. The brake lights went out, the engine shut off, and the side passenger door opened. An orange, fur-covered arm had pushed it open; then, a leg that looked more animal than human stepped out. Long, shiny saber teeth protruded from the mouth of the enormous tiger-man that appeared. He wore long shorts, a tank top, and tennis shoes.

#32: Notes from Underground

Foreword to Volume II: North Cass Corridor

I want to thank John Bradford, former columnist of The Detroit Day and longtime adjunct writing instructor at Warren Woodward University—present whereabouts unknown—for the personal encouragement and guidance he provided, which enabled and empowered me to compose this and a previous volume of my reflections on being a megahero—namely, Ms. Megaton Man. Although never formally my editor, the feedback he provided on my first volume and his encouragement to undertake this second were invaluable to me. I will sorely miss him and his inspiration.

#27: A Side Trip to New Jersey

A couple thousand feet in the air now, Yarn Man took a left, which became a wide U-turn; soon we were heading south over the Bay of New York. To the west was New Jersey; below us were Ellis and Liberty Islands; the Statue of Liberty lay dead ahead. Beyond that, as my visor readout labeled for me, were the large gantry cranes loading and unloading container ships in the Port Jersey Marine Terminal. Beyond that was Bayonne, a New Jersey town long industrialized to the point of toxicity, and already past its peak in terms of economic output and population.

#26: The Hole on Fifth Avenue

The next morning I woke up with Avie standing over my lower bunk, soaking wet and wrapped in a towel, in a total panic.
     “I was taking a shower down the hall,” she said, gasping for breath. “And who walked in but that Chuck fellow.”
     “Stella’s half-brother?” I asked. “Chuck Roast? The Human Meltdown? The one you’d cast as America’s Nuclear-Powered Hero?” This was probably no time to rub it in.
     “I don’t think so any more,” said Avie, almost crying. “He barged in on the ladies’ shower, dropped his towel—he’s drop-dead gorgeous, by the way—but then he claimed it was all a mistake.”
     “He was putting the moves on you?” I asked. “Are you sure?”

#17: Body by Nuke

What took place on my virgin flight and immediately thereafter has been greatly exaggerated in the media, most notably in that aforementioned scandalous “novel,” Megasomething. If you believed everything in that account, you’d be persuaded I had gone on a tear with every student athlete returning to the Arbor State campus for late-summer training camps—and taken on scores of lovers besides. The precise number bandied about is one hundred and twenty-seven men and thirty-one women—which was totally made up. I should know, because I made it up.

#16: Ms. Megaton Man Breaks Out!

That summer following my delayed junior-year freshman crisis began quietly enough. Duly chastened by the academic catastrophe of my own making, I begged and got myself hired back as a waitress at the Drowned Mug Café; all seemed forgiven and forgotten. I worked my ass off there for the entire month of May; when June rolled around, I went off again to Camp Michi-Fo-La-Ca again. So far, this was my typical summer routine.

#15: Yarn Man’s Hippie Crash Pad

The next morning, I phoned Avie and told her not to come out to Ann Arbor to pick me up. “What’s the matter?” she asked. “You don’t have any incompletes or anything, do you?”
     “No, of course not,” I said.
     “They don’t need you at the Drowned Mug, do they?” she asked.
     “No,” I said. I didn’t mention I got fired.
     “You met some guy!” she said.
     “No, I did not meet some guy,” I replied. During the entire Thanksgiving weekend at home in Detroit, I had never mentioned once that Yarn Man had shown up and was being held a virtual prisoner—for his own good—in our Ann Street basement. Nor had I mentioned he was still there. “I just like the snow better in Ann Arbor.”

#14: Thanks for the Use of the Safe Room

The object descending upon us was egg-shaped, with a flat bottom; it sprouted retractable landing gear with disc-shaped pads from its underside as it descended from the night sky over Ann Street.
     Pammy and Matt, who by now had come out onto the porch, were also gazing up at the sky.
     “Looks like one of those old-fashioned beauty shop hair dryers,” said Matt, “like old ladies would sit under in hair curlers.”
     He was right—that’s exactly what it looked like.
     “It’s just Preston,” said Pammy, “making a big, show-offy entrance, as usual.”
     “Preston?” I said. “Secret Agent Preston Percy? What’s he doing up in outer space?”

#13: Late to the Party from Mars

As Thanksgiving approached, Stella announced she was going to make a big, traditional Thanksgiving dinner—a giant turkey with all the fixings. It was time to make use of the house and make it feel like a home, Stella said, and everyone was invited. This in itself was remarkable; even though we all lived in the same house, our differing schedules seldom permitted more than two of us to ever sit down and eat at the same time.

#12: Kozmik Kat’s Trick-or-Treat

The next time I saw costumed characters on Ann Street, I happened to be one of them.
     It was October, and apple cider was in season; Trent bought some fresh, at the Ann Arbor farmer’s market, and he and Pammy and I sat on the porch sipping. It was a warm Indian summer afternoon; I realized that Halloween would soon be upon us.