Enhanced

by Cosca, Paul

  “This law states that an Enhanced person is one who tests positive for the RGR (Retroactive Genetic Remapping) virus, whether or not that person exhibits any documented physical or mental Enhancements.”

  “Children born in facilities capable of, or with sufficient access to other facilities capable of genetic testing, shall be tested at birth for the presence of the RGR virus. This shall be done in the course of other routine blood tests conducted at birth. The results of this test shall be stated on that child’s birth certificate. Any attempt to alter this information shall be deemed fraud, and shall be punishable by applicable state or federal laws in accordance with applicable prosecutorial guidelines. Those not born in a facility with such capabilities may be required to procure the test when seeking employment.”

  “Enhanced persons are prohibited from using a mental or physical Enhancement for the benefit of any job, whether for profit or not-for-profit, without first applying and being approved for an applicable permit for

  Professional Enhancement. Those who apply for and are accepted to receive a Professional Enhancement permit shall be entered into a database in that state. The department in each state that is in charge of handling those permits shall submit the information gathered to a federal department that shall create and maintain a national database of those who have used their Enhancements for professional gain. It shall be the burden of individual states to determine the requirements for obtaining a Professional Enhancement permit in that state. Any Enhanced person who uses physical or mental Enhancements for professional gain without first obtaining a Professional Enhancement permit shall be guilty of fraud, and shall be subject to any applicable sentencing. Additionally, they shall be guilty of Enhanced Fraud, which is a federal offense that carries, as a sentence, the order to repay any money earned while in that employment. The Internal Revenue Service may also pursue monetary compensation to adjust for taxes paid or refunds received while in that fraudulent employment. These laws shall not apply to those working directly for any government agency.”

  “This law commands that citizens, particularly those citizens with mental or physical Enhancements, do not have the same legal rights, responsibilities, and protections as those who are employed in law enforcement. No private citizen has the right to carry out the duties of law enforcement unless they are specifically requested to do so by a qualified agent of law enforcement. If such a request is made by a qualified law enforcement agent to an Enhanced individual, that individual may not be paid for their services unless they first obtain a Professional Enhancement permit. If an Enhanced individual works outside the bounds of law to perform acts

  of vigilante justice, regardless of whether or not the subject of that vigilantism is indeed performing a crime, that individual shall be guilty of the federal crime of Enhanced Vigilantism, which carries a minimum sentence of five years in federal prison on top of any other crime that might have been

  committed during the course of the vigilantism. This charge may be brought individually on each act that occurs, and the sentences for multiple counts of Enhanced vigilantism may run consecutively.”

  “This law shall command that no person may take steps to conceal their Enhanced status from anyone who requires knowledge of it. Any employer, financier, or any other person that might require knowledge of a person’s Enhanced status must be allowed unfettered access to it. Blocking such information shall be considered fraudulent.”

  “It is not the intent of this law to infringe on the rights of any individual. Instead, it is the intent of this law to create a more level playing field for all Americans. American citizens who are not Enhanced will not have to compete in a workforce in which they have an inherent disadvantage, and law enforcement officials will not have to worry about citizens inserting themselves into dangerous situations and becoming liabilities. The intent of this law is to create a fair, just, and balanced nation in which all citizens may participate.”

  May 20th, 1995

  Today I am in one of the more curious cities I’ve encountered in my travels. I’ve been to San Francisco, San Diego, and Los Angeles. I’ve just been spending time in Chicago and New Orleans. Compared to all of those cities, Sacramento, California is very underwhelming. How this ever became the capital, as opposed to all the other beautiful cities in this state, I’m not sure. Maybe it had something to do with the gold rush.

  The airport has a somewhat charming sculpture made of old suitcases that extends all the way to the ceiling. But really, it just reminds me how many times my bag has been misplaced as I’ve traveled around for all this project. I’m a little relieved when my directions take me out of downtown and into the suburbs. As suburban sprawl goes, this isn’t half bad. And here in the middle of the sprawl I catch sight of the setting for today’s interview.

  To a seasoned golfer, Wildhawk Golf Club might be particularly impressive. But to me, one golf course looks much like another. I am no seasoned golfer, though I hold my own pretty well in putt-putt. In any case, this is a lovely bit of green space, and I anticipate a nice walk in my immediate future.

  Today is the 8th Annual Silver Sparrow Golf Tournament, which supports The Boys and Girls Club of Sacramento. It’s a worthy tournament that gets quite a prestigious mix of golf pros, celebrities, and business moguls (the moguls being the ones who are really shelling out the big bucks to rub elbows with the rich and famous). I’m pretty sure there are at least two Baldwin brothers around here somewhere.

  At the center of it all, currently shaking hands with everyone in sight, is Silver Sparrow himself. At 6’7”, he strikes an imposing figure, even for a man well into his middle age. The black hair that used to reside over his silver eye mask has now gone grey, and the Silver Sparrow costume seems built more for comfort than utility these days. But despite that, there’s no denying that this is the same crime fighter who made headlines back in the Golden Age of heroes. And certainly he’s one of the few that made any headlines after the Golden Age ended, since nearly all of the superheroes that had been out in public went deep underground after The Invasion.

  I hold back a bit and wait for the tournament to get started. Silver Sparrow says a few words about The Boys and Girls Club (and parades a few of the kids in front of the crowd), and then the first team tees off.

  Eventually it’s just Silver Sparrow and the small group he’s golfing with, and I finally get the chance to introduce myself. I’m tossed a set of keys, which I learn go to an appropriately silver-colored golf cart which I will be driving as he takes his shots around the course. There are cold beers in a cooler on the back of the cart, and the sun is shining. All in all, it’s a good day to not play golf.

  SILVER SPARROW: You know, the whole concept of what it means to be a superhero is a hell of a lot different than it used to be. You want to make a difference these days? You put on your costume and give time to charity. Read to kids at the library or work at a soup kitchen. I’m not against any of that stuff, of course. That’s what I do now. It’s just not as direct as it used to be. You can still see an impact being made, it’s just in a more roundabout way.

  Time was, if you wanted to do good in your community, you’d go find a guy who was making trouble and you’d kick his ass. Go a few rounds with some lowlife, tie him up, and leave him on the doorstep of the police station. Direct impact. Hell, some weekends I’d go down to the post office and just check out the “Wanted” posters on the wall and go try to find ‘em. Collect some reward money. Do a good deed. I was never really the kind to interrupt bank robberies or anything. That kind of work takes constant patrol, and that just isn’t practical if you’ve got bills to pay. You still need a job, because you’re never going to get rich off of reward money. No way.

  But you know, it was something I really enjoyed. I grew up around here, so being able to make a difference by taking assholes off the streets felt really good. I mean, let’s be honest here. Sacramento isn’t the best of places. There’s a lot of great things going on about this
town, but there’s a lot of crap, too. If you want to try to find crime, you don’t really have to look too

  far.

  When everything went down in ‘77, when all the new laws went into place, I bitched about it. We all did. There were a lot of real good guys around back then, and some girls too. We put on our costumes, went out, and made a real difference. And if you were Enhanced, that was the very best way to show it off, you know? You got to look good and feel good for doing something of worth. Win/Win, you know? But the new laws really hit people hard. I guess that was the point, but it was really tough to see. Some of these guys...they weren’t anything special. They were accountants, and sales guys, and office drones. Nine-to-five guys who turned into weekend warriors. But the new laws meant there was no way a normal Joe was going to stick his neck out there. If you got busted, you’d be in prison for a long time, and there was just too much to risk. And you know, I was right there with ‘em.

  After the laws went in, I really had to look at my priorities. I had a good job. I had my apartment and a girl I’d been seeing for a long time. Was I going to risk all that? Let the police handle it, you know? I had hung up the suit for almost two years when I heard about the vampire.

  First victim they’d found was a homeless guy who’d been pretty mutilated. Now, I don’t want to be mean or nothin’, but a homeless guy getting murdered really isn’t news. Sacramento is a big city. Homeless guys die. That’s just life, you know?

  A couple weeks later though, they found the second victim. She was a young lady. Guy had broken into her house and murdered her. And according to a friend of mine down at the police station, he’d eaten part of her. They’d found teeth marks and missing pieces. And then, to top it all off, he’d had sex with her dead body. Is that sick or what?

  I talked with one of my buddies from the old days, one of the guys I used to run with, and asked him what he thought about getting back out there...and for him there was no way. He had a kid by that point, and being a

  superhero means putting your ass on the line every day. You can’t really risk leaving your kid without a parent. The mask can protect you from being found out by criminals, but the cops don’t care about masks. You get locked up in the pen, your kid will be almost full grown by the time you get out.

  The Sacramento Vampire hit the third time about two weeks later. He was moving fast. He broke into a house while the husband was away. Shot the kids and the mother. He did...you know, all that sick, twisted crap that he did. Mutilated the bodies. He’d left fingerprints all over, but there weren’t any central databases or anything back then. They couldn’t match him to anybody.

  Less than a week later he hit again. Broke into a home and shot the woman to death. Did his awful work. And I was in there, doing everything I could to find out who this guy was. I was sneaking peeks at police reports, breaking into old crime scenes. See, all the murders happened within a couple miles of each other, and there were a few other crimes I thought maybe I could link to him too. Attempted break ins, you know? Everything was in the same area, and I made a map looking at it all. I had narrowed it down to maybe a square mile of space that he might be hiding out...but I wasn’t fast enough.

  Her name was Melissa Harris. She was twenty-two years old and pregnant.

  Silver Sparrow takes a long drink of his beer.

  That sick son of a bitch cut the baby right out of her after he killed her. When they found the fetus, it had been gnawed on. What...what kind of insanity is that? In the Golden Age I was taking down wife beaters and drug pushers. What the hell could possibly be going on in the mind of a guy who eats dead babies? At least...at least her death wasn’t totally in vain, because he finally made a big mistake. When he left, he took her car. Nobody knew a thing about who this guy was, but I knew he’d be driving a four-door

  Chrysler. So that’s when I finally got back in the game.

  People have a funny reaction when a superhero is out on patrol. You knock on the door, and the first thing you have to do is introduce yourself and explain what the heck you’re doing wearing a costume. Otherwise, people are just going to think you’re a weirdo, you know? And I’ll tell you, wearing the costume makes doing patrols near Halloween next to impossible.

  So you knock on the door and you say “Hello, I’m Silver Sparrow. I’m a superhero in the area and I’m looking for...” and fill in the blanks, you know? I probably knocked on fifty doors that day. Described the vehicle, asked if they’d seen anyone suspicious. It wasn’t until evening that I finally started getting some hits. A woman said someone had tried to break in her house. A man said his dog had gone missing out of the backyard. Closer and closer. And finally, when it was dark and I was about ready to pack it in for the night, I knocked on the door of a woman who knew exactly who I was talking about.

  Her boyfriend had lived with a heavy drug and alcohol user. They found he was killing small animals and keeping them in his room. He walked around naked, even with other people in the house. And when they asked him to leave, he refused, so everyone else left instead. He lived in a house just five blocks away.

  I stepped back out into the night...my heart was racing. I’ll be honest with you. I’d fought a lot of crime, but that doesn’t mean I felt ready to step up toe-to-toe with a serial killer. I didn’t get too involved in violent crime. Call it self-preservation. You want to maximize glory and minimize risk, so you don’t go after the gun-toting psychopaths. But I felt in my gut that I needed to do this.

  The house was...I don’t know. You expect to go to a place like that and see something dark about it. Like that Amityville Horror house, you know? But this was just a little white house amidst a bunch of other little

  white houses. Except this little white house was a little house of horrors.

  I couldn’t just bust in the place until I could be sure it was the right one. You make a mistake like that, you’re going to end up going to jail for B&E. I found a door next to the garage that was open, and inside I found what I was looking for. Melissa Harris’ 1968 baby blue Chrysler. Inside there was blood everywhere, and something...maybe a dog or something...dead in the back seat. This was the house of the Sacramento Vampire.

  I opened the door to the house, and the smell hit me like a truck. Woof. I almost threw up right there in the living room. It was like opening up a dead whale and sticking your head inside. The smell of...rot. Death, and piss and shit. Calling it a dump would be an insult to dumps everywhere.

  I had a flashlight in one hand and my old police baton in the other. That’s an important point for anyone wanting to go out and fight crime: whatever you use to protect yourself, you’ve got to make sure it’s non-lethal. Yeah, you want it to be effective. But if you end up with a dead perp on your hands, you’re boned. There are legal groups that help out superheroes who get tangled up with the cops, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to avoid jail time. My friend Iron Curtain still hasn’t gotten out of White Sands after tossing a rapist through a window.

  Anyway, I had my flashlight and my baton and I cleared the bottom floor. Nothing down there but dead animals and, literally I’m talkin’ here, piles of crap. I got upstairs...just one light on at the end of the hall. I figured that’s where I’d find him, but I cleared the rest of the rooms anyway. Then there was just that one door left.

  The light in the room was a desk lamp sitting on the floor. As bad as the rest of this house was, this room was a hundred times worse. Blood and urine stained the walls almost up to the ceiling. There must have been a hundred little animal corpses all over. And there he was at the end of the room. I froze for a second...this was my first look at the vampire, and a look

  at what level of crazy he actually was.

  He had a hypodermic needle in one hand and a dead rabbit in the other. He was drawing the blood out of the poor little guy. And as I watched...I’m sure my jaw was hanging open to the friggin’ floor, he put that needle in his arm and injected himself with it. Yeah. That look you’re giving me is th
e same look I had. What in god’s name was going on?

  I finally snapped out of it and rushed in, hoping I’d catch him by surprise. But I was too slow and he was way too fast. I know there are some drugs that do that, and he must have been on something pretty hardcore. By the time I’d gotten halfway across the room he’d picked up his gun and got two shots off. I knew I was hit, but I was just going to have to deal with that later. I figured I’d better take him down so I didn’t die in that hellhole.

  I must have outweighed him by seventy pounds, but like I said, he was on some serious stuff. I knocked the gun out of his hands, but he kicked me across the room like I was a bag of flour. Oof. That hurt worse than the gunshots right off the bat. He came rushing after me, and I had just enough time to step to the side and give him a good one with the baton in the back of the knee. Another one to the neck and he was out. I got him tied up and dragged him out of the house.

  Lucky for me, he was stronger than he was accurate. I’d taken a flesh wound in the arm and a through-and-through in the calf. It hurt, but not too much damage done. When the cops came, they took him off in one of the cars. And...I really should have seen this coming, they shuffled me off in the next car. The Sacramento Vampire and I went to jail together. It’s kind of funny if you think about it.

  That evil son of a bitch plead out and got life in prison, but he ended up overdosing in there just a couple years later. Saved the taxpayers some money, huh? As for me, I plead guilty to Enhanced Vigilantism, and the DA struck a deal with the feds to get me out of jail time. I mean, I did bust one of