#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.

#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!”

#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!

#62: This Fairground, This Battlefield

I wasn’t wearing my Ms. Megaton Man uniform under my clothes for extra insulation as I usually did this time of year, since I was wearing my nice dress again to visit Mama. So, I had to race back to where Avie had parked her Pacer. There, in the back seat among the groceries and gifts, I had stowed my book bag, just in case. I stripped right there, in the parking lot behind Mama’s apartment building, hoping none of her neighbors happened to be looking out their back windows at just that moment to see her daughter turn into a megahero.

#48: Donna Blank, District Defender

I was in my sweats, shivering at the poor steam heating in my garret apartment, reading over the voluminous notes my advisor had scribbled all over my senior thesis draft, when suddenly there came a knock at the door. “Who is it?”
      “Jasper,” came the reply. “Jasper Johnson.”
     I let him in. Rubber Brother was nattily attired in a sharp business suit with a carefully-folded pocket handkerchief. “You look awful,” he said. “Are you feeling well?”

#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.

#41: The Thirteenth Scientist

So, there I was, standing in the studio space of my garret apartment while my Asian friend, Audrey—who had a body virtually identical to mine, except with slightly bigger boobs—wore my Ms. Megaton Man uniform, while the woman who had sewn it—my long-lost grandmother, Mercedith Robeson-James—inspected her handiwork like it was hanging on a department-store mannequin. I had just phoned my half-sister, Avie, that Seedy James, whom our mother had always died working for the government during World War II, was alive and well, and Avie said she was on her way over…
     But before I tell you what happened next, there’s a part I skipped over. So let me back up.

#22: Dr. Joe’s Lab

I still had no idea where Megatonic University was located. I only recalled Preston Percy saying he had relocated to Ann Arbor to oversee several projects “around and under” the Arbor State University campus. He denied that these had anything to do with any fabled Megaton University, but they must have been important for a secret agent to abandon his perch on the Ivy-Covered Halls of Higher Learning orbiting satellite and relocate from New York besides.
     But I was no closer to knowing exactly where Dr. Joseph Levitch’s secret laboratory was.

#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.

#11: The Ivy-Covered Halls of Higher Learning

Preston led me to the Drowned Mug Café a few doors down from Border Worlds Used and Slightly New Bookstore on State Street—the same place I had had a cup of coffee with Stella the first day I met her. Neither Preston or I said a word. Busted, I thought, for pounding on the door of an official Ivy-Covered Halls of Higher Learning spy van parked around the corner from our Ann Street house.

#10: The Local Section

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#9: The Dean’s List, Again

“You lost your virginity to Yarn Man?” My sister Avril was both horrified and fascinated. “Now I know you’re making it all up—about living in a house with Megaheroes and the whole bit. I don’t believe that Trent Phloog ever was Megaton Man or any other Megahero, either…and Stella, well…she’s pretty and all, but she’s hardly ravishing enough to have been the See-Thru Girl.”

#8: A Night at the Hospital, a Day in the Funny Papers

It was late when the doctor finally spoke to me and Pammy in the waiting room. She told us what Stella had experienced were known as false contractions; she hadn’t gone into labor yet; her membrane hadn’t even ruptured. In other words, her water hadn’t broken. It might still be another seventy-two hours before she went into real labor. The way Stella had been overdoing things lately, this came as no surprise. The stress and strain she’d put herself under to get ahead before she’d have to take time off from school had brought this on, I guessed. Not to mention Trent Phloog reverting to Megaton Man—the father of her child—again, thanks to Secret Agent Preston Percy’s booster shot. Still, the doctor said they wanted to keep her overnight, just in case.