Nuklear Age (81 page)

Her comrades all shirked before her might and even Angus caught himself thanking the Benevolent Incarnation of Whisakey that she wasn’t talking to him.

“Such indignation!” Mort wheezed like thunder. “You dare feign ignorance, as though you did not come here specifically to usurp the throne to my most dread empire of doom?”

“What the hell!” Rachel yelled.

A spotlight shone down onto Mort’s desk. The toy weapons, Rachel’s ATM money, the Turbo Fighter game, and Book of Magic Instruction were bathed in a cool luminescence. “You were
all
stealing my treasures!” Mort accused in a wheeze. “And you, my fiery one,” he spun to Rachel. “You traversed the Forbidden Tunnels.” The televisions tuned into one wall-sized image of Rachel and Atomik Lad scurrying through the air conditioning vents. “You must pay, all of you, for your crimes here today. And pay you shall, the same as those who have come before you—with your eternal souls fueling my
continued unlife!”

“Mort is person of the thing that hungries dead?” Shiro asked.

“Why of course,” Mort wheezed. “How do you think I survived these many, many years?”

“Let me get this straight,” Rachel said. “You’re not actually
alive?”

“Correct. It’s the result of a ritual I learned from a Tome of Everyday Magic I picked up in one of my treasure keeps some time ago. It involves Zombie King blood. Very messy.”

“Yeah, right,” she scoffed. “Prove it.”

“Heh. Certainly.” He picked up the Li’l Warrior’s foam sword that Norman had been using. “Behold!” he announced and plunged the blade deep into his breast. “Conventional weapons cannot harm me! I am immortal! I have inside me blood of Zombie Kings! No man can be my equal!”

“It’s just a toy sword, dude” Norman said. “You couldn’t harm a fly with that thing.”

“Ha!” Mort wheeze-coughed. “Your deceit shan’t beguile me. I watched with mine own eyes as you struck down a score of my fiercest monsters with but this very blade.”

Atomik Lad stopped messing with the rope around his wrists. “Screw this. You picked the wrong party of adventurers to mess with, old man.”

“For your insolence,
you
shall be the first to be consumed,” Mort wheezed menacingly.

“Okay.” Atomik Flames engulfed the ex-sidekick. His chair met an untimely and splintered demise.

Mort immediately sat down with his head held low. A pencil materialized in his skeletal hand as he scribbled in a notepad. “But in light of your heartfelt apology, I hereby release you all.”

Atomik Lad’s Field vanished. “Thanks,” he said and went about releasing his friends.

__________

Nuklear Man was used to breaking the commonly held laws of physics. He did it with a kind of clockwork regularity that one wouldn’t expect to find in your average physics defying behavior. And he broke those laws with such force that even the most brilliant scientific minds on Earth had to abandon their comforting theories and grudgingly accept what had previously been assumed to be just plain wrong, Kopelson’s Intrinsity Model of reality.

Kopelson’s First Law. Everything that exists within a system has a tendency to be itself. This fairly straightforward point explains why things like apples don’t suddenly turn into things like cars or orangutans. This is a very convenient state of affairs for things like humans because it keeps reality stable enough to survive in it.

However, Kopelson’s First Law also explained Nuklear Man’s current torment. He had been forced into a realm of nonexistence. No space, no time, nothing outside himself. It was somewhat like being squeezed through a subatomic hole for all eternity. The pain was something that mere words could not convey and I’m sorry for it. He could not help but exist within this realm of Nothing and it ripped at him with the fury of his insult of his mere existence.

His mind reeled to escape from being cut by the razors of unbeing. Images. Strangely familiar, yet tauntingly alien. Wolves with coats of flame. The vast emptiness of some infinite cosmic crevice and the threat of those that call it home. “…Allies of madness, cut their own throats as soon as their foes. This is what Fate would have us fight beside…?”

Familiar voices, whispering. Plotting.

…What has been written will be burned in his flames. The fire of every star in every sky…the Flames of “
Arel!
” He screamed it into the great Nothing. It was a voice of will, not sound. It shattered the Nothingness with a wake of fire. Nuklear Man was the all-burning, all-radiant center of the universe.

He breathed fire.

Variel’s eyes shone with a golden radiance. His body jerked the same way it might if a stranger tapped on his shoulder while he’d been showering. He spun this way and that, looking for…he didn’t know. And then he crumpled over like a meal’s worth of bad oysters had begun their insidious assault on his innards. One black hand held onto his gut, the other gripped the ground to support his unmass. His eyes were an iridescent yellow-white.

“No!” his nonvoice said in wavering tones. “He…he cannot. Not even the Lords could escape my….” And then it occurred to him

Nihel and Arel had made Variel and the others. Had given each a form and power. Had given Variel favor above the others. But never, never would they have given him any power over them. “It was a lie,” Variel unwhispered. His dreams of equality were vaporized.

Cracks of light raced across his depthless body like veins of energy. He was a patchwork quilt of darkness stitched by threads of light. And then he was devoured into himself, and Nuklear Man stood in his stead. He smoked slightly.

“Man, I just
knew
I’d get a headache.”

__________

Issue 54 – Victory, Lunch, and Murder!

Arel, Arel, Arel. What
do
you see in this world?

Nihel walked on air. He walked among high-rises and skyscrapers. His cape, a red so dark it flirted with the idea of being a livid shadow, waltzed itself in the winds that flew through the alleys of the sky.

He looked down.
The streets and sidewalks are choked with them. The buildings are stacked to the clouds with them. The tunnels underground are teeming with them. The air is saturated with the nonsensical roar of their useless little voices reaching out into space. Through time. The great Galactic Territories were built with the very stones of their pettiness. Their one crowning achievement is being the anti-inspiration for a civilization that now spans half a galaxy. And they don’t even know.

Nihel paused several hundred feet above a cramped six lane street that ran between a bank to his left and a lawyer’s firm to his right. He faced the bank. His cape wafted lightly in exhaust-driven updrafts from the unmoving traffic below. He watched the bank rot. He could see its very walls crumbling to dust, the windows eroding back into the sand they once came from. He saw through the façade to decaying bodies living themselves to death. Skin falling off. Cellular genocides. Bacterial invasions.

And what’s worse, they are no different than any others
. He kept walking.
Countless
things
suffocating the cosmos with their existence. And none of them, though they may hope or even suspect it,
none
of them truly know that they are their own masters. As fragile, temporary, and ignorant as they are, they are the ones who possess the only power in the universe.

But not anymore. Even if Arel has lost his memory, he will do as he was designed. I cannot,
will
not live under the edicts of Fate any longer. Arel will tip the scales. He will bring forth his fire.

He turned. Nihel could see the Mall Tower stabbing out of the horizon ahead of him.

__________

Atomik Lad, Rachel, Angus, Shiro, and Norman walked through the Mall. They passed a Shirt Junction, a Pants Junction, a Shoe Junction, and an Electronics Junction at which Shiro came to a dead stop.

“Ah-so,” he said. “Looking at the box of words that travel on light and sound at speeds of time!”

The others stopped and looked at him with stares of incomprehension.

“Nuklear Powaa Man! Supaa heavy with action,” he clarified while pointing at the TVs stacked in front of Electronics Junction. His comrades grouped around the televisions to see what the hubbub was about. Angus had to shoulder his way through a forest of knees to get in front of them so he could see too.

“This is Erica Erikson,” the televisions said. “I am reporting to you live from downtown Metroville at the site of Nuklear Man and Superion’s fateful battle one month ago. But it would seem that lightning has struck this area twice, as this afternoon Nuklear Man fought a foe or foes who was or were trying to destroy or take over Metroville. The battle just concluded moments ago.”

“Wouldn’t you know it?” Norman said. “The
one
day we take off, and that’s when something actually happens.”

“Details of the battle are sketchy,” Erica said. “As you can see behind me, Überdyne has quarantined the area surrounding the fight.” The camera panned to show an Überdyne van parked beside a barricade with flashing lights on it. Two Überdyne employees with clipboards waved into the camera. Erica continued. “According to Überdyne officials, the quarantine is for our own good. They report, and I quote, ‘There is evidence which leads us to believe that there may be an energy or energies given off by Nuklear Man’s opponent or opponents. The energy or energies could potentially be hazardous to electrical equipment or equipments and pose a serious lethal threat to living entities.’ End quote.”

“Well, looks like Nuke was able to handle it,” Atomik Lad said. “Probably just some punks with supped up light guns trying to cause trouble.”

“Aughk,” Angus huffed. “Is we gonna stand around here gawkin’, or are we gonna get to eatin’!”

“Hai!”

Angus shook. “It’s a bi-conditional query, ye daft empty-headed horse’s arse! Ye cannay answer it by just sayin’ ‘Aye’! It don’t make no sense!”

Shiro pondered at length and finally answered, “Hai!”

“Ah’ll back hand ye so ‘hai’ into the air, ye won’t come back down in the same time zone!” the Surly Scot quaked.

“Okay,” Norman said. “Time to get movin’.”

“Hai!”

“Rarghble!”

__________

Meanwhile, deep within the dark innards of a not-so-abandoned warehouse…Dr. Menace leaned heavily on her Evil: Computer Console. The Evil: Screen was filled with windowpanes that spewed data, arcane formulae, and simulations set up on repeating cycles. Afloat in this ocean of information was a windowpane displaying Dr. Genius’ face. She looked unusually pale. Neither woman had spoken for nearly a minute.

“Are you certain thiz iz what you want to do?” Dr. Menace said at last without looking directly into the two-way screen.

“We have to do what we must to resolve the current situation. All else is secondary,” Dr. Genius said.

“You will be ezzentially trapped up there. We cannot know for how long.”

“It doesn’t matter. The Skyjumper has the world’s largest KI Articulation Drive and it’s mobile. If we don’t do this, we’re all dead. It has to be done.”

Dr. Menace let out a slow sigh. “Then let uz get to work. I should have a functioning Nega Bomb ready within the hour.”

“I have no idea how long it will take to recalibrate the Skyjumper’s KI Engines to produce the desired effect. They were specifically designed for flight, not to trick a hundred foot radius into believing it is several hundred thousand miles wide.”

“It better not take long. We haven’t the time,” Dr. Menace said.

“I know.”

They looked into each other’s eyes. They left their respective consoles simultaneously without a word.

Dr. Genius waited for the air lock to the Skyjumper to open. Her thoughts wandered.
There is work to be done. The fate of the world is at stake. This is our routine. But working together after all these years of working against one another? It’s strangely
comforting
.

The air lock opened. She pushed herself through the portal and into the Skyjumper’s passenger section. She floated past the dozens of rows of empty seats to the engine access panel near the back.

__________

They walked along the Mall’s main corridor a little longer until the Food Court Junction spilled out before them like some kind of horribly damaged oil tanker full of odd niche fast food booths. The Food Court Junction was, for lack of a better word, beautiful. The five weary adventurers had completed their quest. The unbridled bounty of the Food Court Junction might’ve gone on for over a mile but was probably considerably less expansive. And beyond the Food Hutts was the Crystal Hall of Dining. It was a section of the Food Court Junction that was walled and roofed in glass to allow diners to view the beauty of the parking lot and nearby Mall Edifices. The adventurers took deep breaths simultaneously. The culinary aromas mingled into a singularly delicious olfactory soup.

“Okay, guys,” Atomik Lad said. “You get the food and Rachel and I will find a table.”

They synchronized their watches and nodded in agreement. The two teams split with regimented precision.

__________

“Okay,” Norman said. He smacked his hands together with a meaty slap and rubbed them together. “It’s our job to get lunch, right?”

“Aye.”

“Hai.”

“And we want to get something everyone wants to eat, right?”

“Aye.”

“Hai.”

“Then we’re agreed. Burgers it is.”

“Nay.”

“Negativities.”

“Hm,” Norman said. “Well, what do you want Angus?”

“Haggis!”

Norman’s face contorted from the mere mention of the word. “Good lord, no. Do you have any idea what that’s made of?”

“Aye, Ah do. And it’ll make a man out o’ ye, too. Ah guarantees that.”

“Assuming I survive getting my stomach pumped, maybe. What do you want, Shiro?”

“Shiro-kun now the got to sushi!”

Norman cringed. “At least they
cook
the haggis.”