#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.”

#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.

#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.

#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.

#92: Magic Carpet Ride

That afternoon, I went up to the Inland Ocean Archeological and Anthropological Institute. Given the time of year, I expected Doctor Messiah to be off on a mystical summer sabbatical in some exotic, foreign place like Tibet or Transylvania. But to my surprise, I found him in. As usual, he wasn’t busy studying any of the arcane materials stored on the endless shelves which took up nearly the entire top floor of the Wardell Hotel. Instead, he was just silently sitting cross-legged on his oriental carpet, barefoot in worn flared jeans, the yin-yang symbol on the chest of his black turtleneck oddly glowing, meditating.

#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.

#89: Crown Heights

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.

#85: Who Watches the Watchmen?

I’d been haranguing Avie for twenty minutes with my theory about the Multimensions, and my suspicions concerning Reverend Enoch, while she went through her workout in the basement of our apartment.

#83: The Tragic Realization of Temporal-Dimensional Travel

Before I could clamber to my feet, two of the Megaton Mice had grabbed Kozmik Kat by the whiskers and were flinging him around the clearing.
        “Hey, you guys! Cut that out!” I shouted. But the other two had clamped onto my ankles. For their size, they were strong. “Ouch! That hurts!
        I shook them off; they went rolling toward the rubble pile. But Koz wasn’t faring as well. “Guys! I’m a different person now!” he cried, as one twirled him by his tail. “I would never chomp your brother today—really! He even tasted lousy, compared to other mice. I haven’t touched one since!”

#82: My Excellent Adventure with Kozmik Kat

I had often wondered what caused readers of popular fantastic fiction to spend as much time, if not more, poring over the writings of Emil Reardon Ryerson, Grover Edwin Honath, and Henry Potsdam Lipschitz, and memorizing shelves of information of completely made-up worlds like Whagool or the Daemonic Ravines of New Hampshire, or the Antediluvian Age, and yet be unwilling to put the same energy into public school, and later a master’s degree in history, philosophy, or French Medieval lit?

#81: Views from Olympus

“What up doe, Banky?” I said as I entered the Troy+Thems hall.
     Few people get my sense of humor to begin with, and my white colleagues weren’t sure they had permission to laugh at a black woman doing her impression of a racial stereotype. But Rubber Brother loved it.
     “Ha! Buckwheat from The Little Rascals,” he chortled. “Clarissa, that breaks me up every time you do it!”

#78: Afternoon of the Asp

After my morning art history class at the Detroit Museum of Fine Arts, I found myself chatting with Michele Selket, Doctor Messiah’s teaching fellow. Ostensibly, I had questions of her about the class, but to be honest, I also had much bigger concerns outside of school.
     On the steps, we considered Rodin’s Thinker and watched the water cascade down the steps of the newly-installed fountain pouring down toward Woodward Avenue. After she answered my questions concerning how to distinguish between the Renaissance, Palladianism, Greek Revival, and neoclassicism—her answer in fact didn’t clear anything up for me and I doubt anyone’s ever would—she asked, “Is there anything else on your mind, Clarissa?”

#57: The Revelation from Missouri

I should probably mention that in my student days, especially when I wore my civilian clothes over my Ms. Megaton Man uniform, I was never anything to look at. I dressed down in the cooler months, September through May in Detroit. I wore jeans that were neither excessively baggy nor excessively tight; a baseball jersey, extra-large T-shirt, sweater, or school sweatshirt, depending on the weather; and a hoody, windbreaker, or baseball jacket over that. In really cold weather, I had a winter coat—kind of a weatherproof parka with a fake-fur hood. Oh, and I got an old army jacket just for kicks. I seldom wore makeup during the day, and I never wore my wavy, burgundy hair any special way other than sometimes pulled back in a ponytail. It wasn’t that I was necessarily going for the lesbian look—I never went in for plaid shirts and work boots, the de rigueur uniform of the brush-cut bull dyke; I just never wanted to attract sexual attention to myself when I was hoofing between my classes at the Arbor State Extension and Warren Woodward University campus. In a harsh city like Detroit, it seemed an eminently practical decision.

#46: Will the Real Mervyn Goldfarb Please Stand Up?

The man casually perusing a magazine at the newsstand at the front of Border Worlds Used and Slightly New Bookstore turned to me, perhaps expecting to see an old friend. But I could tell from the look in his eyes that he didn’t recognize me at all.
     “I saw you shoot yourself up with the homemade Megasoldier Syrup you cooked up in your bathtub and sold to unsuspecting college students as a steroid shortcut to megaheroic physique,” I said, “Your musculature puffed up to the size of Megaton Man—then you exploded into bluish slime all over the alley next door!”

#45: Reality’s Leftovers

Both Simon and I awoke early, not even daybreak, well before either Trent or Stella. We snuck down to the kitchen, me in my replacement civvies and Simon in his pajamas, clutching his stuffed dinosaur. I began to make us some pancakes. For a kid who’d nearly been blown to pieces by Arms of Krupp henchmen a mere twelve hours earlier, he hardly seemed traumatized at all—he seemed well-rested and cheerful, whereas I had hardly slept a wink. “I’m going to call her Dobie, Aunt Clarissa,” he said. “Dobie the Dinosword.”
     “How do you know she’s a girl?” I asked. “On second thought, don’t answer that; I want to go on thinking of you as an innocent kid for as long as I can.”

#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.