Supers Box Set

by Kristofer Bartol

  “Instead we have governments bailing-out big businesses when they hedge their capital on balloons that burst the country—and when one economy goes, they all go. Does the government bailout the impoverished? No—they funnel money back into the companies that caused the issue, saying ‘They can hire more people if only they’re profitable again,’ but the companies only pay their executives larger salaries; those lost jobs are automated or outsourced to other countries for cheaper wages; and then the companies plunder more of our natural resources, leased to them by that same government.

  “The late nineteenth century saw the first multilateral treaties, regulating international markets, shortening seas with new telecommunications, and opening borders to mass-migration, thereby booming the international industries of trade, and investment. If the First World War didn’t prove how detrimental this grand machine is, for the human race, then that honor belongs to the Great Depression. Maintaining the ledger of a bank is a challenge; managing a city is a feat; managing a treasury is a burden, even if you can decide the value of your currency—so it goes without saying, regulating an intercontinental web of economies is reckless, if not impossible—and yet, it goes on, because a buck can be made in the process, and even more can be made in the fallout.

  “Decadence—greed and decay. Among our nation’s most immoral acts, often performed behind the curtain, ranks our militaristic intervention of lesser nations; our self-sanctioned role as the world’s parent and supervisor. Look to the Middle East: we've had our hands in their pudding for twenty years, launching coups and revolutions in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran—all the camel countries that happened upon oil, in the deserts between NATO and Soviet Russia. With Imperialist America holding interest in their black gold, these countries are destined for an eternal war—that is, until the oil dries up."

  "You can't guarantee that."

  "Gunboat diplomacy: We loiter offshore and intervene at our discretion, emboldening obedient rebels against resistant monarchies. What other correlation could you see between our recent interest in their oil and the dearth of sudden unrest within each of these countries? Pit them against each other, and themselves, and insert ourselves between the cracks; the faults, to pump the oil. Someday they'll figure out we're rigging the whole thing, and they'll conspire against us to restrict our access to their oil; they'll choke us out of the Middle East. Then we'll have two options: ramp it up, or concede, and have you known America to be a nation that backs down?"

  "No."

  "The grand machine will find an enemy in the desert, and they'll convince us of their evil, and we'll send in the troops. And when that enemy is dead, the grand machine will hype-up another, and so on, ad infinitum. There is always an enemy. Eisenhower tried to warn us against this."

  "Reminds me of Nineteen-Eighty-Four, again: 'Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.'"

  "'Eurasia was always our friends. We were not previously nor desired to be at war with Eurasia.' It's a memory hole; rewriting history as we make it. Turning old allies into enemies, and old enemies into allies, as long as there's someone to be scared of; to demand military actions against; to throw tax money at…

  "Who can ever define when the turning point was, from eminence to decadence? It's the morals that go first, like the virility of an old dog. She grows tired, and her back legs go weak—but is it psychosomatic or derivative? At what point in the arts and culture can you trace the origins of downfall? With what musical fad did interest become self-interest? With what film director did mindful indulgence become gluttonous and referential? We may never know outside of hindsight.

  "The Romans had theirs, and the Byzantines after them; the Spanish, the French, the Vatican, the Kaiser, the Tsar—and the English, too; look at India, and Egypt, and East Africa. Hell—Canada, Ireland, and Australia, too. 'The sun never sets on the British Empire,'" he scoffs. "All empires succumb to the disease of decadence—its symptoms: arrogance, gaudiness, and waste; and faith supplanting all reason—be damned the sciences! The histrionic allure of fictitious truths, like magnified conflicts and astrology, so easily ensnare the minds of the body politik. A nation toils to build prosperity, and two generations later they've bred comfortable animals—those beasts who know not the true fight, nor the true horrors of struggle and fear; those who become the best cogs, for they leave the thinking to others. Like stallions bred to make pasture ponies, all of which imagine themselves the mighty steed. Such is the myth of infallibility, sold by bureaucrats and ad-men to replace those dwindling reserves of ethics and integrity—that which first forged the nation's relevance and pride, through great effort and dedication, thought only now to be a relic of our forefathers; traits of an antiquated time. What all was vigor is lost, in search of greater comforts."

  "Well, what is civilization if not a search for greater comforts?”

  “Alright,” Dark Patriot hems, “but there’s a line between betterment and egoism; between enriching the community and enriching yourself. Maybe it’s the tumult of these assassinations, quietly convincing the public there’s no profit in protest, but we’re seeing a decline in civic action—we’re already seeing that, and a loss of common goal. There’s no vision in America—not anymore. Vision is inspiring; the grand machine doesn’t want inspiration, it wants status quo.

  “We stand upon the threshold of an era of greed. The image of ‘the public,’ by the manipulation of bureaucrats and ad-men, conjures less to mind white-collar veterans and happy housewives, and more the careless hippies and the shifty-eyed vagrants. The good of ‘the public’ now implies welfare, not care; instead we look down upon ‘the public,’ and we turn our pockets only to the Sears catalog—and when we care not for funding public betterment, our taxes remain the same, directed instead toward the defense budget, and the purchasing of war instruments, for furthering our fingers into the global pudding; the military industrial complex.

  “Helping your neighbor, in these days and the days to come, is a deed worth boasting at the watercooler; it’s no longer an expectation, or the obvious. The unwritten agreement of collective benefit has—due to its unwritten nature—been forgotten, despite being the oldest aspect of civilization: the community; the tribe; the pack—those willing to aid their compatriot at a short-term personal loss in exchange for the long-term benefit of the group. With the eons, we’ve gained exponentially in intelligence, and yet we’ve forgotten this kernel of truth that lies within the bones of every organized animal—sparrows and whales; rabbits and wolves; ants, alligators, and sheep—that’s what they call you now: sheep. If you believe in the collective, they call you sheep.

  “If you don’t believe in greed, they call you sheep. If you don’t believe in greed, you’re weak; you’re passionless; you don’t want to provide for your family. Contrast to the turn of the century, the shame now lies in lacking teeth and the will to bite. The only thing ‘public’ that remains is public shame: the perception that the world looks down on you for choosing average; for choosing comfortable mediocrity. America demands its children work themselves to the bone—for ‘self-benefit,’ they say—so long as they don’t usurp the crown in the process. America wants its children busy and starving; grasping eagerly for any scrap of coin; willing to fight his neighbor for the last dime rather than share it. And the robber-barons stand on the balconies above the arena, peering down and belly-laughing; sucking their cigars and shouting, ‘Give ‘em more!’ as they waive fistfuls of cash and finger-flick pennies into the ring, goading the disheveled masses into brawling; saying, ‘Earn your coin!’ and ‘Fortune favors the bold!’ Teaching their carnivorous ways as gospel, so as to keep the masses preoccupied and thinking that the only gold to be had are the coins in the arena; knowing not that the world’s greatest treasuries lie in the chests of the robber-barons, living quietly in vast suburbs far from yours, of hand-me-down Capes and Garrisons and Ranches and Split-levels, and lording over you with grimy teeth and thick red noses; shouting below, ‘Earn your coin!’ as
they hedge their wealth on your fever.

  “The irony of capitalism: the public is convinced that what’s available is what exists; that a thousand dollars is a prize for four weeks’ dutiful labor—but if only they knew: a thousand is only a sliver of what exists, and the robber-barons profit a thousand a minute for every month you labor. Your salary, to them, is tuppence—and, even still, you purchase commodities at their recommendation—as relentless as it may seem—and fund those very monopolies twofold. You’ve been indoctrinated by the system to believe that competition—not collaboration—is the bedrock of the American dream, and such an ideological fight ensures the majority will never realize their indentured servitude to the grand machine; will never imagine an alternative to ‘always being tired’ and argling for fifty-cent raises; will never notice the power in their numbers, if only they could recognize their shared mistreatment and organize against it.

  “And maybe, with a little fire in their bellies—and venom on their lips, and iron in their hands—they could reclaim America for what it once was, before it falls any further from salvation. And in that great reclamation, they will be struck down, for the grand machine will ensure its hegemony at all costs, but they shall not stay down; they shall rise—and with every time they are struck down, they shall rise. And as the fate of their neighbor lies in their hands, and likewise, brothers shall not let brothers stay fallen. They shall expect greatness of one another, and no less; not ‘less’ as it’s encouraged by the grand machine.

  “That which America was still remains, within our souls—like that of when we were young; when our nation was young, and vigorous. When our nation was like our twentysomething self, yearning to cement an identity; to improve the general wellbeing of the people; to expend boundless energies towards the pursuit of moral justice, noble sacrifice, and technological innovation—the scientific leaps of diseases cured, distances shortened, and monuments built. And now that we’ve been to the moon and back, what good is intelligence? What good are the dreams that got us here? What are they worth in an age of managed perception—of bred egotism and blind obedience; of caged freedom and capped potential; of variable value and immutable nationalism—taught on the breath of the Janus-faced bureaucrats and duplicitous robber-barons who insist our ‘collective American greatness’ is eternal, is worth spending for, and is only ‘collective’ in a historical or geographic sense.

  “And within those binds—history, geography—they write the narratives of war between us: the smoldering coals of bitterness between brothers, north and south; industrial and agricultural; blue and grey; red and blue, perpetuated ad infinitum since the dawn of independence; the endless feud of polar political ideologies; the great distraction of the masses. Only when the architects of the grand machine will it, the two feuding parties will hiatus across the aisle to pass some new legislature, institutionalizing new restrictions in the name of momentary retribution—as with the USS Maine, the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor; the Gulf of Tonkin, Tết, and—now—your buddy Pharos.”

  “Buddy? I wouldn't say 'buddy'. I didn’t know him like that; only in passing.”

  “The machine will have the world think otherwise. With the Cotton Act, you and I have become the new enemy: the red side fears our autonomy, the blue side fears our agency, and Pharos was their scapegoat. By the tongues of demagogues, and the saturation of the Fourth Estate, we supers went from paladins to demons in the snap of a finger. Now we can’t even breathe without federal permission, and they demand we register with their new department—lest we face the penalty of death.”

  “Gerhardt can suck my ass. I ain’t signing-up for the next Holocaust.”

  “Watch them demand we wear emblems on our chests in plainclothes, so the public knows to ‘steer clear and stay vigilant’ in our presence.”

  “What’s DAESH even stand for? Department of… American…” he holds his breath, “Evil Shit-Heads?”

  Dark Patriot shrugs. “Something like that.”

  He walks to the railyard’s fence and stares down the berm at the Hudson River—its rippling surface like black glass, reflecting quivering streams of steel as colored by Edison. He lays his hands upon the chainlink.

  “You know,” the nightprowler muses, “in Arabic, the word ‘daes’ means ‘he who crushes underfoot.’ I find I cannot help but draw parallel, as I feel a dismal certainty in our future.”

  “I mean, it plays into your rhetoric, man: the grand machine wants no resistance. They finally got the ball rolling against supers, and there's nothing stopping them from seeing our end. Lord knows there's congressmen who want nothing more than that."

  "Likely all metropolitan stiffs, in the pocket of some chrome-dome police chief or dirty-fingered megalomaniac—themselves all ambitious suits looking to orchestrate an empire, either by way of mergers and acquisitions or by micromanaging some show of force, like suppressing a protest or overseeing an international squabble—on to start some no-goal intervention overseas. It's all politics and no purpose—aside from finagling some cheap trade contracts and electoral bragging rights."

  "Even if you're right, man, you gotta be the most cynical cat I ever met."

  "It's an observation."

  "It's depressing."

  "C'est la vie."

  "You know, if Harmony were here, she'd have a lot to disagree about with you."

  "You mean, she'd be in disagreement?"

  "Whatever, man—she'd call your bluff."

  The nightprowler swallows the word. "Bluff."

  "I get the grand machine—that all sounds legit. That's the world we live in, I think; I don't like it, but it sounds right. Thing is, though, you're taking it too far; you're conflating the system with the people."

  "The people can be saved."

  "Which, again, is implying they're gone."

  "They're in the system!"

  "I'm not in the system—and neither are you! There's a lotta people who operate outside this so-called system—and not just supers! Like, normal people."

  "Normal."

  "You know what I mean."

  "Then why didn't you contact any of your normal people? Unless, of course, you did." He hesitates, reading Ajax's eyes. "What happened—Calypso wasn't home? Creature was tied-up? Vixen missed your call?"

  "You don't want to believe I called you first?"

  "I am often found in the bottom of the barrel. It would not be embarrassing to know you sought Quantum Pilot or Captain Centennial before consulting a non-powered alley-cat like me."

  Ajax sighs. "Yeah, well—I did try a few others before you. They must be off the grid—I dunno—but that don't mean I'm not glad you came out. I am glad. I don't know shit about sleuthing. I mean," he gestures to his torso, "I'm not a discreet individual. I'm more built to wear the bureau than the clothes kept inside."

  The ebony giant grins, and the nightprowler replies in kind.

  "You know the streets, and you know their dark corners. You see shit nobody else sees. And maybe that inspires you to talk my fuckin' ear off," he chuckles, "but it's also a huge asset."

  "My observations."

  "Right."

  "Even if they're… bleak."

  "Again, it's not a bad thing, it's just how you are. There's as much darkness in the world as there is light—you just see the greys."

  "The greys."

  "Yeah. I mean, Harmony knew there darkness in the world. She wasn't some idiot purist—an idealist, sure, and ever the optimist, but she was no fool. She knew the darkness firsthand. She lived it for a long time, and yet she overcame all of it… Washed it off like it was nothing; as easily would a rainfall wash away chalk. I couldn't believe it.

  "I asked her, once, how she could be so positive, so bubbly and brave despite all the shit she'd been through. You know what she told me?"

  "What."

  "That's the flow, man. That's tao."

  "Towel?"

  "Tao, man. It's Chinese. It's the natural order of the universe."

 
"There's no order to the universe. It's all chaos."

  "Is it? Maybe there's no Creator high above, throwing lightning bolts and guarding the pearly gates, but there's still rules, right? Natural law—and you were telling me about that."

  "Natural law: the base state of things without our conscious intervention. Plants, animals; the four elements; physics."

  "Physics, right—that’s what I’m talking about, man: physics, chemistry, biology, all with their own rules. ‘Mass and energy can’t be destroyed;’ ‘hydrogen and oxygen make water;’ ‘dominant genes prevail.’ Tell me: If there's a vast but definite amount of atoms in the universe, all swirling around in the air—becoming you and me based upon interactions, and then leaving to become other things, like… just imagine, a boulder from proterozoic earth is forced underground by tectonic shift, and over millions of years it depresses into the mantle, softening; melting into earth's nougat center, and one of those carbon atoms swimming in the goo makes its way outbound as the mantle cools, forced upward by heat and shift, becoming rock again and surfacing, where the earth churns it into a mountain, and someday the mountain cleaves a boulder containing our atom, and the boulder rolls down to the valley, to the riverbed, where erosion strips our atom from the rock and the river carries our atom to the soil, to the roots of some flower, and the flower grows until it's eaten by a rabbit, who's eaten by a fox, who's eaten by a bear, and the bear shits in the woods, and the woods are charred into soil and tilled for crops, and you eat those crops, and now that atom is a part of you. Maybe it's in your finger, or your heart, but it’s a part of you. And one day you’ll clip your fingernail and it’ll return to the earth, fulfilling its duty for the rest of time. The universe is just atoms, dancing in some contemporary ballet.”

  “Which makes tao—what—Bob Fosse?” he punctuates, riffling his elevated hands.

  Ajax glowers. “Tao isn’t some actor moving the forces. The way Harmony described it to me was that tao is the energy of existence; it’s no one thing or prime-mover, but rather the being of all things in syncopation.”