Nuklear Age (42 page)

“Of course.”

“The ZMAX experience was designed thanks to the tireless efforts of six hundred of these ZMAXineers working in six labs around the globe for the last six years. The result of their expertise, ZMAXination, and a budget that is approximately equal to the total net worth of all the land and resources available in our solar system, is the ZMAX experience.

“But before we begin our feature presentation, in this ZMAX experience, we’d like to show you some of the ZMAXovations employed by our ZMAXineers to make the ZMAX experience possible.”

“Do they give this guy fifty bucks every time he says ZMAX?”

“First, there’s the film itself. In order to achieve the level of visual quality we were striving for, each frame had to be just over seven feet tall.”

“Good lord!”

“That means if you were to unravel a
single
reel of ZMAX film, it would stretch from the Earth to Mars and back with enough left over to use as a tablecloth for a meal serving fifteen. But we wouldn’t recommend it. You see, every frame of ZMAX film is made of a highly experimental and expensive sheet of top secret and potentially hazardous materials and is not meant to be handled by living creatures.”

“O…kay.”

“The second element responsible for the ZMAX experience is the film projection system. In order to achieve the level of fluidity and life-like motion on screen that we were striving for, the film is shown at a rate of nearly three hundred frames per second even though the human eye cannot possibly distinguish more than sixty per second. Because of this high frame rate, our special projectors, or as we like to call them, ZMAXectors, must run at a speed of roughly one-third the speed of light. And in order to ensure the on-screen images during your ZMAX experience are the most vibrant and realistic you’ve ever seen, the ZMAXection Lamp requires its own fission power plant and is so powerful that if one fell into the wrong hands, was mounted on the moon, and aimed at the Earth, it would superheat the entire surface and instantly boil away all the world’s oceans and turn the air into plasma in the .002 seconds before destroying the planet.”

“What the
hell?!”

“And finally, the sound system. In order to achieve the level of audio clarity and range we were striving for, this ZMAX experience theater has been equipped with one hundred thirty-six speakers located in seventy key acoustic positions. Using our super advanced ZMAXology, each speaker is capable of emanating sounds as quiet as the beating of a mosquito’s wings as heard from forty-seven miles away or as loud as the Big Bang would have been had there been an atmosphere in which to hear it. Now prepare yourselves to experience the ZMAX experience. Of ZMAX! Experience it!”

__________

Issue 33 – Getting Choked Up

“Good ol’ fan mail,” Nuklear Man proclaimed. “I sure would hate to get no fan mail. Yup. I’m sure there is a fate worse than not getting fan mail, but I can’t even begin to imagine what it might be.”

The Danger: Phone rang. He was faced with a moral dilemma. “Do I answer the Danger: Phone or keep basking in the beauty of my fan mail?”

Riiiing.

“On the one hand, the city could be in peril. Millions of lives may be at stake.”

Riiiiing.

“On the other, fan mail.”

Riiiing.

“This is nearly as hard as that Heroics vs. Mirror problem I had a couple weeks ago.”

Riiiiiing.

“Hmm. If I answer the phone and save millions of people, that’ll lead to
more
fans mailing me!” He took a step back, impressed by his own brilliance. “Gadzooks. How do I do it?”

Riiiing.

“I’m comin’, I’m comin’.”

He floated across the Danger: Living Room to the Danger: Phone, passing Katkat along the way. The fuzzy-wuzzy sidekick was sitting on the Danger: Floor gently pawing at his three letters. He tilted his head to one side and then the other as he experimentally tapped the envelopes. “Mreow?”

“Helloooo?” Nuklear Man said into the Danger: Phone.

He was answered by silence.

“Okay. I’ll start over. Ahem. Helloooo?”

More silence.

“This better not be Satan again. I know where you live.”

“Nuklear Man.”

“Oh, there you are. What was with the silent treatment?”

“No, Nuklear Man, this is Danger: Computer Lady.”

“Oh, Danger: Computer Lady, you silly digital gal you. You don’t have to use the Danger: Phone to talk to me.”

She counted to ten thousand to calm herself. “Listen. I am not on the Danger: Phone—”

“Then why’d you call?”

She ignored him. “—you are holding the Danger: Phone upside down.”

He held the Danger: Phone at arm’s length and smiled a knowing smile. “Check this out, it’s the ol’ English Ingenuity at work.”

“You are not English.”

“Nor am I ingenuitous! Henceforth, it double negatives itself.”

There was a loud pop and a puff of smoke from Danger: Computer Lady’s logic circuits. Nuklear Man floated himself upside down.

“Now then,” he said into the properly aligned Danger: Phone. “Helloooo?”

“Nuke, what was all that about?”

“Norman, the Nor-Man, The Phunkmaster W, M to the fourth, the—”

“Yo, Nuke. Calm down.”

“Righto.”

“What was all that commotion on your end?”

“Danger: Computer Lady got confused.”

“Ah.”

“And they call this progress. It’s enough to make you sick.”

“Right. Anyway, I was just callin’ to check up on you since Atomik Lad ain’t around. You haven’t managed to burn the place down, have you?”

“Not as yet.”

“That’s good.”

“Ooh! But I did get some fan mail, and all Sparky got was a bunch of hate mail.”

“That’s cool. I guess I’ll check back in a couple—”

“I’ll read it to you!”

“No really, you don’t have to...read...Nuke? You there?”

“I’m back. Ready?”

“Actually, I’m kinda busy over here. Ima’s—”

“Good. Ahem. ‘Greetings. You are Hereby Commanded to be and appear before the Court of Metroville in the Court Building of Metroville on Monday to testify before the State in the case brought against you by a one (1) Dr. Veronica Menace concerning the matter of Destruction of Property at One Abandoned Warehouse Way in the amount of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars and herein fail not under penalty of law.’ Pretty cool, huh?”

“Nuke. You’ve been sued.”

“I think she likes me.”

“No, Nuke. You don’t seem to understand. You’ve been sued by Dr. Menace for destroying her hideout or something. Read back that part with the address.”

The Hero scanned his fan mail. “Was that before or after her confession of eternal love for me?”

“What?”

“No, wait. I think it was around the paragraph where she goes on and on about her cape fetish.” He squealed. “We have so much in common!”

Norman sighed. “This isn’t working. Look, I’ll just come over to help you out.”

“Help me with what?”

“I’ll explain when I get there. Geez, where’s Sparky when you need him?”

“Right. I’ll let you bask in the fan mail when you get here. A little bit, anyway.”

__________

Rachel twisted in her seat. “This movie is
terrible.”

“It’s not too bad. I guess. I mean, I’ve probably seen worse, maybe. But it’s a close call.”

She grabbed Atomik Lad by the collar and shook him. “Why won’t the damn boat sink! It’s called
Lusitania
, it
has
to
sink!”

Atomik Lad removed her death grip. It was quite a feat too. She had Gamer Fingers. “I think this is the plot part.” He looked back at the screen. “Of course, you can only develop two-dimensional characters for so long, and I think they sailed right over that line about an hour ago.”

“Sink the boat!” she yelled to the screen.

A pathetic, sobbing, middle-aged, unfulfilled woman in the row ahead of them immediately responded with, “Shhh! You’re ruining the movie!”

“No, ma’am, I’m afraid the writers beat me to that.”

“Well I
never!”

“You know,” Atomik Lad whispered to Rachel, “I don’t get the big deal about this Leonardo DiTurtlo kid. They could’ve had a monkey play his part.”

“Yes, but it wouldn’t be nearly as satisfying to watch the monkey
drown
at the end!”

“Yeesh.”

“Get to the end! Give me the watery retribution for which I
yearn!”

“You picked this movie, you know.”

“I didn’t know it was going to be this bad for this long. Lord, the damn boat wasn’t at
sea
this long, and the two cliché star-crossed lovers are just now talking for the first time. Shoot me!”

“Could be worse.”

“How?”

“If it were a book, it would’ve taken nearly two hundred pages for them to get that far.”

“I could always put a book down, but a movie. You can’t just leave. It’s different.”

“Why not? The ZMAX cops gonna strap us into our chairs?” Atomik Lad jokingly said as he half rose from his seat.

Automated restraints zipped around Atomik Lad’s chest and strapped him against the seat, painfully squeezing the air from his lungs. “Gasp!”

Too absorbed in hating the movie to notice Atomik Lad’s plight of respiration, Rachel continued heckling the screen. “ARGH! ‘I’m rich.’ ‘I’m poor.’ ‘We’re German, you’re dead.’ The end! Come on!”

Atomik Lad struggled against his bonds but found that every movement only made the straps constrict further. “Can’t. Breathe.”

“Ooh! I think that was the submarine. Schnell! Schneller die Deutsch!”

“Ribs crushed. Movie. Too slow. Atomik...Field...uncooperative. Gasp.”

“Damn, it was only a stupid harmless iceberg.”

__________

The Tungsten Titan slowly touched down on the Danger: Launch Pad and the blue lines of his Magno Force faded away. His armored hide turned to flesh as he landed and announced, “Yo, Nuke.”

“I’m in
here!”
the Hero’s unmelodious voice sang from Danger: Nuke’s Room.

Norman walked across the Danger: Living Room “MREOWR!” nearly tripping over Katkat.

“Oh, Katkat. I’m sorry, boy.”

“Mreowr yeowr meow!”

Norman leaned down to skritch Katkat under his chin. “Hey, I said I was sorry.”

Katkat purred his forgiveness.

“What’cha got there?” Norman asked, picking up a sheet of paper with paw prints all over it. “Ah, answering some fan mail. Seems like there’s a lot of that going on.”

“Mew!”

“Well, here you go. Have fun.” He returned Katkat’s reply letter to the Danger: Floor, right between the Danger: Letter Opener and Danger: Inkwell.

“C’mon Mighty, uh, Lazy Laconic, um, Lman.”

“How’s that?” Norman asked as he entered the Hero’s quarters.

“Shut up, Norman.”

“Uh-huh. So what’s goin’ on here?”

Nuklear Man stepped to the side and revealed his fan letter framed and mounted in a rather central position among other accolades on his Danger: Wall of Accomplishments.

“No, Nuke. This isn’t a fan letter.”

“Yeah, it’s more like a poetic expression of true love.”

“How does Atomik Lad do this every day?”

“It has a certain musical quality, you know? Like a song.”

“A song?”

“Especially the chorus comparing her love for me to the life-sustaining love of light that delicate flowers have, which really makes sense.”

“Does it?” Norman asked while tiredly rubbing his eyes.

“Y’see, I am likened unto the sun in this metaphor because I can oft be found in the sky and I’ve got all those brightly shiny Plazma Powers.”

“Nuke.”

“Whereas she, my future wife, is the delicate flower because women have—”

“
Nuke!
Listen to me. That’s a subpoena. Dr. Menace is
suing
you.”

Nuklear Man gave a knowing and patronizing laugh. “Oh, Norman, Norman, Norman. You don’t have to be jealous just ‘cause I get all the fan mail and chicks. Whereas you do not.”

_________

Meanwhile, back at the Magnopad, the bathroom door opened and a thick cloud of steam poured from it. Dr. Genius walked out, her shapely form covered in a towel. She was adjusting another towel around her water-darkened and slightly uncoiled hair. She made her way to the kitchen while humming a little tune based on one of the more esoteric equations she invented in a Ludicrously Advanced Quantum Theory independent study course from her old university days. Her musings were cut short however. “Hm. A note. ‘Hey hon, I’ve got to check on Nuke. I’ll be back soon, we’ve got some unfinished business to attend to. Love, Your Ebony Stallion.’”

She set the note back down. “Well phooey.”

__________

The fan letter was displayed on the Danger: Kitchen Table. Its broken frame stuck out of the Danger: Trash Can thanks to a series of valiant and deceitful actions on the part of Norman and a lot of crying on the part of Nuklear Man.

“Okay, Nuke. What is this?”

“What, you mean the fan letter?”

Norman clawed at his face.

__________

“Why won’t the Germans sink the damn boat!” Rachel asked God as she writhed in agony. “The end needs to hurry the hell up and be nigh!”

“Oxygen. For brain,” Atomik Lad croaked. “Also good for. Metabolic processes.”

__________

“All right, Nuke. Remember. Subpoena.”

“Fan letter.”

“
Sub
...”

“
Fan
...”

“...poena.”

“...letter.”

Norman shook with rage just like Angus. Only four feet taller. And black.

“ARGH!” he screamed. His patience had withstood the Nuklear Onslaught far better than most people, but it could withstand no more. Having completely lost his cool, Norman sputtered a few half-words of anger, unconsciously turned his body to tungsten, and punched Nuklear Man to the Danger: Floor. Mighty Metallic Magno Man stood, stunned and panting, for several seconds as the rage boiled out of him.

Nuklear Man shot up, his cape draped over his face, “Norman!”