The Edger Collection

by David Beem

  “STOP THAT!” Wang’s voice booms down from the spaceship’s speakers. “WE CAN SEE YOU, YOU KNOW!”

  The crowd below floats upward and scatter. Terrified faces search the skies for whatever physics-defying contraption is lifting them. Dad raises my arms like I’m Gandalf performing sorcery—which, now that I think about it, isn’t too far off.

  Yeah, this is cool, says Dad.

  My brain does the towel-snappy thing again, and the crowd falls asleep. We get them lowered to the ground, and a hand on my shoulder jerks me around to face a towering pile of caveman muscle holding a club.

  “Who’re you supposed to be?” I ask.

  The caveman’s unibrow tightens. He lifts his club. A dagger of psychic energy shoots from the center of my forehead to his. His eyes roll up. The club drops and strikes him on the head. He collapses, and another caveman and three steampunk mad scientists step over him to take his place. My arms lift like I’m Iron Man preparing to fire repulsor rays, and the movie extras collapse, asleep.

  Searching for Nostradamus—there!

  He’s loaded Evil Mary into a two-seater starfighter. Between me and them, the other Mary is swiping her sword to hold at bay a group of mind-control monkeys. And above: the Buck Rogers’ Jollies is speeding toward space.

  It shatters into a million pieces.

  “No!” I scream.

  They’re okay, says Dad. Through him, I sense the minds of the falling people who’d been on board. Terrified, their stomachs in their throats, but they’re alive.

  “Until we meet again,” says Nostradamus, his starfighter rising into the air. My fists clench as I seize control of my body from Dad. I reach out toward the starfighter—

  Dad seizes back control.

  My hand sweeps upward, palms facing the plummeting bodies and set shrapnel. My forehead releases the strange telekinetic energy. The bodies slow. Their minds fall asleep. I’ve got them. Or rather, Dad’s got them. Nostradamus’s starfighter is a speck on the horizon.

  Sorry, Edge. We’ll get Nostradamus another day. Don’t worry.

  Broken shards rain down with jagged edges like knives. Again, my mind releases telekinetic energy. The raining debris compresses as if squeezed by an invisible trash compactor. Sleeping bodies are laid throughout the grounds. We turn to find Mary seated and slumped over, sword chopping air whenever a chimpanzee comes too close. Dad flies the chimps away. Their shrieking bends in pitch as they zip past us. Dad opens car doors, SUVs, pickup trucks, and cracks the windows. He pulls out sleeping passengers and finds spots for each in the grass. When that’s finished, he locks the monkeys inside the emptied vehicles and releases control. My shoulders slump.

  You’re good at this.

  I’ve had some practice, he replies. But through you, I’m a million times more powerful. I never could’ve done this before. We’re more than a match for Nostradamus.

  Until he synthesizes my blood, you mean.

  Dad’s psychic sense turns grim. Right. And don’t forget Tron-Tron. Edge—I can sense him through the Collective Unconscious. He’s been neutralized and captured by a Nostradamus agent. If we can’t free him before she gives him to Nostradamus, it may be time to scrap everything and focus on Plan B.

  Plan B?

  Later.

  “We…are the Church…of the Ladder Day Dudes…”

  That’s Mary’s voice.

  I hurry over, kneel, toss the sword away. She’s on her back, her limbs stretched out in irregular angles, but nothing bent the way it shouldn’t. I slide my hand behind her head. Her sky-blue eyes search my visor.

  “We are the Church…” She blinks. Her eyebrows lower.

  “Mary? You in there?”

  She frowns, and I help her into a seated position. Her costume is in tatters. Cuts and scrapes. Too much exposed skin to hope for a better outcome. It’s a miracle she’s got all her limbs.

  This isn’t your Mary, says Dad.

  Then who is she?

  A copy, Edge. She’s a copy of your Mary.

  I search her face, the cut on her forehead, a smudge on her pretty cheek, unable to keep up.

  A copy..? But then, Mary—my Mary—is real. Right?

  I'm afraid it’s more complicated than that, son.

  “Edger,” she says, ripping me from my thoughts. “I love… I love…”

  My chest swells like a blown-up balloon.

  “Shh,” I say, tears forming in my eyes. “Rest.”

  “I love Shmuel.”

  The pressure in my chest releases like a balloon spitting away in crazy loops.

  “I love Shmuel,” she says again, and her arm lifts like a zombie’s. She points, and I scoot on one knee to follow the trajectory. Wang is helping someone I don’t know to his feet. Next to them, Shmuel is holding a handheld camera trained on his face, the viewfinder flipped around so he can see himself in it. With his free hand, he’s picking his teeth.

  “I love Shmuel,” says Mary. “We are the Church of the Ladder Day Dudes…”

  CHAPTER Fifty-three

  Danny holds up the bottom of the fence. Leo rolls through. On the other side are all the movie trailers. Costume and makeup, going by the preponderance of weirdos. People dressed like space pirates. People dressed like aliens. People dressed like space pirate cavemen aliens. And here, two suspicious-looking robots with pink lipstick smiles on their faces and TV screens on their chests. A sneer curls Danny’s lip.

  “Fucking weirdos,” he mutters.

  “Which one’s Gemini’s, you think?” asks Leo, his gaze skipping from trailer to trailer.

  “Probably the one with the highest concentration of aliens,” says Danny.

  “You mean commie-aliens.”

  “Correction noted. Commie-aliens.”

  “Look at that.” Leo tilts his head to indicate two suspicious-looking, lipstick-smiling, mascara-and-eyeliner-wearing, TV-chested robots walking right for them.

  “What’s with the makeup?” asks Danny. “Cross-dressing commie-alien TV robots?”

  “Huh,” says Leo. “Talk about your basic pandering to special interest groups. When did this become a thing?”

  “Hey,” one of the two robots calls. “You guys missing your badges?”

  “Badges?” says Danny. “We don’t need no stinking badges.”

  The cross-dressing commie-alien TV robots exchange a glance with each other, then focus on Danny and Leo.

  “Yeah. You gotta have badges to be in this area. It’s basic professionalism, guys.”

  “I don’t see your badges,” Leo observes.

  The cross-dressing commie-alien TV robots exchange another look.

  “What part of how we are dressed does not look professional to you?”

  Danny frowns. They’re going to have to do this the hard way.

  “For one thing,” he says, keeping his voice casual, “neither of you shaved this morning.” He turns like he’s going to say something to Leo, and then whips his good arm back in a haymaker that lands cleanly on the TV robot’s jaw. The weirdo drops, his costume cracking in half. To his right, the second TV robot also goes down. Danny turns to see Leo unstrapping his neck brace, tossing it aside, and then rubbing his knuckles.

  “I’m a tolerant person,” says Leo. “But those chest TVs are uncalled for.”

  “You’re damn right,” replies Danny. “People get enough media as it is.”

  “Commie media.”

  “Alien-commie media.”

  “With hooker makeup. Friggin’ disgrace.”

  The pair steps over the fallen movie extras and stomp off toward the nearest trailer.

  Olga finishes wiping off the last of her face paint and then snaps her compact shut. She stuffs it in her purse, chucks the purse into the trunk, and then slams it shut.

  “Mm-mm!” The short bearded man struggles as Boris loads him into the car. Putin’s large bodyguard leans into the passenger seat, buckles the hostage, and shuts the Mustang’s door. Beyond them is the airfield and Pu
tin’s prepped plane. And beyond that, the strange starfighter which had earlier delivered Nostradamus himself, plus the weak girl clone, sits parked in a hangar.

  “Eet eesn’t drooly goodbye, zvyozdochka moya,” says Putin, stroking Olga’s arm, and a fire erupts in her belly like a collapsing neutron star. She snatches the dagger from her back holster and thrusts it one millimeter from the president’s neck.

  “I dold you,” she whispers. “Don’t you zvyozdochka moya me.”

  His half-lidded eyes peer into hers as his hand slides over her forearm. He lowers the weapon. She tenses and thrusts it into his space where it was before. If anything, his smile deepens.

  “You vill alvays be zvyozdochka moya,” he says.

  And, despite herself, despite his infuriating insistence on labeling her his little star—as if she would ever be anyone’s “little” anything—her arm relaxes. She can’t explain it. She could kill him. She wants to. She would… One day. But it is this indecision which fascinates her. Perhaps her legs grow weak because he knows she will kill him, and yet still he flirts with death. Or perhaps it is only the game itself she loves. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t care. She only knows she too doesn’t want this to truly be goodbye. Not yet. And then there’s Avengers Four before it hits the theaters.

  “Kill you later, zen,” she says, sheathing her blade.

  His lopsided smile is his only reply.

  All around them, people are waking up with identical expressions of confusion and disbelief. The grounds surrounding the Golden Dome are strewn with jagged shards of wood, glass, twisted metal, and chimpanzee poop. Those monkeys not flinging it around, have given up on their swag distribution duties in preference of finding fun things to climb. Like the one on top of the Jesus statue reenacting King Kong.

  “Du-ude,” says Shmuel, pointing. “That’s our lord and savior?”

  Wang turns and spots Zarathustra. Edger in a crazy suit.

  “I knew he wasn’t dead.”

  “Or perhaps he is risen?” asks Shmuel.

  “Let me get this straight,” says Ralph, training his camera on the superhero. “This is the guy who cured Shmuel’s hemorrhoids and dance-battled the evil clones at Underwearld in San Diego?”

  “Behold!” says Wang, gesturing with his hands at Zarathustra. “Our lord and savior, Zarathustra!”

  A ripple stirs through the surrounding onlookers. Ralph pans the camera across the crowd. One by one, they kneel. Wang glances at Shmuel, who’s prostrated himself on his stomach. The excitement growing in Wang’s stomach is almost too great to contain. He kicks his friend, and Shmuel’s head comes up.

  “Ouch?”

  “Stand up, stand up!” he says, gesturing, then grabbing Shmuel’s arm and hoisting him to his feet. Thrusting his arms overhead, Wang turns to address the crowd.

  “Soul audits! Soul good! You wanna get to heaven? You gotta go through us!”

  “Uh, yeah?” offers Shmuel.

  “Soul audits start at a cool one grand a pop!” Wang adds. Ralph pulls his arm down. “What?”

  Ralph squints at him. “Are you serious with this right now? Cut the shit, Wang.”

  “How do we sign up?” calls someone from the crowd.

  “Ten thousand over here!” calls another. “I wanna be the first!”

  “Twenty thousand!”

  “Fifty thousand!”

  “One million dollars!”

  Wang’s cheeks tighten as a smile hijacks his face. He slaps his hands and sands them together.

  “Whoa,” mutters Shmuel. “We’re gonna be rich?”

  “Gotta love that Notre Dame money,” says Wang. Facing Ralph, he adds, “Shouldn’t you be filming this?”

  Ralph, gaping and stricken dumb, raises his camera.

  CHAPTER Fifty-Four

  “I love Shmuel, I love Shmuel, I love Shmuel…”

  Edge, says Dad. We have to go save Tron-Tron from Nostradamus.

  Why is she like this? I ask.

  Dad’s psychic sense tamps down his impatience before answering. I’m sorry, Edge. These copies never last long.

  The nitrogen-cold fear I didn’t realize I’d been holding at bay chooses this moment, of course, to pounce. Dad redoubles his effort to strip away my pain and emotional instability. I lower a babbling Mary to the ground. Her head turns to the side. Her vacant gaze is unblinking. The medallion around her neck catches the sunlight and reflects it into my visor, which darkens as the heads-up display automatically compensates.

  “I love Shmuel… I love Shmuel…”

  I don’t understand, I say, swallowing the rising lump in my throat. Are you saying this will happen to my Mary also?

  No, Dad replies. This Mary was cloned from your Mary—which makes this one a copy of a copy of a copy.

  Whoa, I reply, taking a second to process. So it’s like Blythe said. Blythe is the original, and my Mary is a clone? But why wouldn’t my Mary be more like Blythe? And why would my Mary clone herself?

  To your second question: time. Mary—your Mary—knew you needed her, but she couldn’t get here in time. She’s in New York. But then she remembered the old teleporter on campus and used it to—

  Teleporter!

  Well, yeah. That’s how Nostradamus’s clones are made. It’s not true teleportation. Not in the way Star Trek people think of it. It’s more like an advanced 3D printer. But copies of copies of copies never last very long. You can’t make a gazillion of ’em. After a certain point, they just sort of lie down and go to sleep. This Mary must’ve had her brains scrambled by the mind-control function on the medallion. Clones’ minds aren’t like ours. They’re folded in a way I don’t understand. It’s like they’ve got one foot inside the Collective Unconscious and one foot out. Your Mary is different, though. The Collective Unconscious doesn’t understand why your Mary isn’t—

  A hand on my shoulder interrupts.

  “Is she gonna be okay?”

  Wang, Shmuel, and a person holding a camera are facing me. I turn back to face Mary. She’s no longer babbling. Her beautiful eyes are still open. My fingertips close them. I stroke her hair, and a choking grief takes hold. I never got to do this in life, stroke her hair. It’s strange to attach all these feelings to a Mary who isn’t my Mary, feelings that are still trying to pull me under, even with Dad’s trick of keeping me detached from physical and emotional pain. I can’t not think of the first time she came into the Über Dork, or the first time I woke up with her in my bedroom. I can’t not think of her in my boxers and Notre Dame shirt. Or the time we were in the alley behind Caleb’s club in San Diego. Her clean scent, lavender hair mixed with sweat on that night; the thrill of my hand on her waist, her kiss brushing my cheek, and the unanswered question of what we might one day become.

  I’ve got to find my Mary, I say, overcome with urgency. Dad, I don’t want my Mary to die without telling her how I feel. The words feel weak the second I think them. I want so much more than telling her how I feel. So much more than a kiss—but this is my dad in my head here.

  Dad laughs. I get it, relax.

  We’ve got to save Fabio, I say, a newfound clarity coursing through me. I know we’re risking Tron-Tron’s capture. But Mary, Fabio, Gran, Shep… Dad, I already lost you and Mom. I can’t lose more of my tribe. Don’t ask me to lose more of my tribe.

  You haven’t lost your mother, he replies.

  What?!

  I’ll explain everything, says Dad. Just know Mom’s out there, and Mary is safe for now. But if we’re going to save Fabio, we need to move. So, if you’re ready: Attention passengers. Please ensure your tray tables and chairs are in upright and locked positions.

  What’re you doing? I ask as the cold wave of him taking control of my body washes through me. I rest Mary’s head on the ground. My heart sticks in my throat as Dad pulls my gaze from her. I stand and take a few steps away before rocketing skyward through raw telekinetic power and breaking the sound barrier like Superman.

  CHAPTER Fifty-five
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  Danny and Leo stand in front of the trailer with the star on the door that says “Gemini.” Danny knocks twice.

  “Who is it?” a woman’s voice answers.

  “Land friggin’ shark,” Danny replies, too exhausted to give a shit.

  A beat later, the door swings open, and Danny’s exhaustion vanishes, along with all the air in his lungs. He drinks her in.

  Now here is a classic brunette. Stunning because she isn’t blindingly beautiful. It’s taking beauty as far as it can be taken before that point—and then, in realizing this, her beauty takes him the extra step, tips him over the side, and drowns him in a sea of cleverly disguised excess.

  And yet…

  On the collar of her monogrammed Notre Dame varsity jacket is a smudge of green body paint of the exact shade worn by all the other commie-alien slave girls they’ve encountered. Perhaps sensing his evolving appraisal of her, the brunette frowns.

  Danny stands straighter, sucks in his gut, and throws his shoulders back.

  “Can I help you?” she asks.

  “Are you…are you…are you…human?” he asks.

  Still frowning, the brunette nods.

  “Are you…American?” asks Leo.

  Again, she nods.

  Danny swallows. He clears his throat. “In that case, I’m Danny.”

  The brunette smiles. “I’m Kate.”

  Danny smiles. He scans the slogan stitched on her jacket: Livin’ on the Edge. His smile broadens. So she’s a wild one.

  “You like shrimp, Kate?” he asks.

  Kate’s gaze takes in their injuries. “Are you all right? Would you like to come in? Maybe for some water?”

  Danny and Leo exchange hopeful smiles. In Danny’s experience, there is little better than the attention of a beautiful woman after sustaining injuries in the name of testosterone. Sometimes said ministrations came with a big fat complimentary cannoli to boot.

  Danny and Leo enter the trailer. After a quick scan of their surroundings, their smiles fade. In the corner are two other men. Handsome and famous men. Worse, they’re tied up and unconscious. True, one of them is Johnny Gemini, which bodes well in a certain sense. But in Danny’s experience, tied up and unconscious handsome and famous men almost never translated into shrimp dinner dates with beautiful women who enjoy living on the edge to the point they stitch it on their jackets. Come to think of it, the outlook for a good cannoli doesn’t seem very promising either.