Enhanced

by Cosca, Paul

  the worst serial killers in state history after all. I earned a little good will there. So instead of prison, I got 1000 hours of community service, and that was the best thing that could have happened to me.

  I showed up to my community service in the Silver Sparrow outfit, and they just loved it. They loved having me there, and even better, I loved being there. I served soup, worked with the elderly, and I spent a lot of time with the Boys and Girls Club. I may not be the most impressive guy, but I love being a superhero. And kids love superheroes too. We’re a perfect match.

  I started up the Silver Sparrow Foundation after the community service was done, and it’s a way better way to make a living. I get to be a superhero, and nobody tries to shoot me. And really...this right here is the new face of superheroes. Now I know there are still guys who are getting out there and doing it the old way. You’ve still got some crime fighters. And hell, you’ve got true Enhanced heroes like Bloody Angel down in Africa, curing AIDS and Ebola. But here in America, it’s just too risky. You try to be a good Samaritan and you get your ass locked in prison like a criminal. I think, more often than not, you’ll find guys like me. Guys doing good where they can, but doing it in ways that don’t put our asses on the line.

  February 15th, 2001,

  Jimmy Iko is one of the most unassuming men I’ve met in my whole life. The mild mannered father of two little girls is a staff accountant at a law firm. The house he lives in is mid-century and eggshell white. Most of the decor reflects the tastes of his lovely wife Diane, but there is one room in the house that is all about Jimmy.

  On one side of the garage there is a pale green minivan and a few tools to keep up the lawn. On the other side of the garage is a collection of old arcade cabinets that would make any video game lover jealous. I remember all of these old titles from my youth, and it’s a wonder to see them all in one place. This is the thing that makes Jimmy Iko unique: he may be gawky, and his hairstyle may be a decade out of date, but he holds five Guinness world records. Jimmy Iko is the world’s most skilled and accomplished classic gamer.

  JIMMY: I was not the world’s most exciting kid. Can you believe it? Oh I know I must look like a dynamo of excitement right now, but if I’m truthful...I was a bit of a nerd. I know, it’s a pretty big revelation.

  Jimmy laughs and parks himself on a bar stool in front of Pac-Man.

  I tried sports, but I never had any luck at it. I knew I wasn’t made for tackle football, but I thought maybe I could do track and field or something. As it turns out, I’ve got exercise-induced asthma, so that was a bust too. Yeah, I was a seriously cool dude.

  Finally, in 1981, I found something I was good at. See, I’d never really been into video games. My friends played a little, but my folks didn’t have any money for a home console. And really, I was so bad at everything else I figured I was just going to be bad at that too. But it got to be a Saturday during the summer and I had literally nothing else to do. No chores, nobody to hang out with, and a jar full of quarters from mowing lawns. I figured something I was bad at would be more fun than nothing at all, so I grabbed my quarters and headed to the arcade.

  Do you remember the first time you saw a video game in an arcade? I

  mean, every kid has Nintendos and whatnot these days, but there is something really spellbinding about an arcade cabinet like this. When you play a game at home, which I do from time to time, it’s still kind of a subtle thing. You can hide it away and watch something else on TV. But an arcade cabinet is a statement. It’s a piece of furniture that can take you to a whole other world, and all it costs is a quarter.

  I stood behind a kid who was playing Pac-Man, and this was the first video game I ever really paid attention to. It was just a little blob running around the screen, chased by these little blobby ghosts. It was simple. And it was perfect. He dumped a few quarters in and was done, and then it was my turn. I put a quarter in, and I was lost in it.

  Three quarters in, and I was really cooking. Working my way through level after level. I didn’t notice how much time had gone by or how many eyes were on me. I just felt the buzzing in my fingers and the need to get to one more level. And one more level after that. My eyes were glued to the screen, and my fingers were moving with minds all their own. It was electric. If there was ever anyone “in the zone”, it was me right then.

  And then, as I completed another level, the game suddenly seemed to die. Everything went nuts; it was a crazy jumble of letters and numbers. I was embarrassed. I thought I’d broken something, you know? And I was even more embarrassed when I realized there were almost two dozen people standing around watching me, including the owner of the arcade. I was apologizing and trying to sneak away when the owner stopped me. Luckily, he knew what was going on better than I did.

  “Kid,” he said, “You didn’t break nothin’. You beat the game!”

  See, these cabinets had a pretty limited memory. You couldn’t just play on forever. You could program 255 levels, but once you hit 256, the algorithms break down and you hit what they call the kill screen. For me, time had gone by in a flash. But I’d actually been standing there for hours. The guy

  asked me if I could do it again, so the next day I came back and hit the kill screen for Dig Dug. That’s another 256 levels. And the man who owned the place made that my job.

  For that whole summer I made twenty bucks a day coming to the arcade and beating the games. I’d beat them, and then kids would throw their quarters in there and not even come close. These were kids who’d made fun of me before, and now they were in awe of me. It was one of the greatest summers of my whole life, and introduced me to my lifelong passion.

  It was another ten years before I realized there were records for this kind of thing. I guess since technology has improved, there’s been a big resurgence of the classics, you know? Now I’ve been interviewed by magazines and TV shows. I got in touch with Guinness and now I’m there for five different games, including Donkey Kong which is one heck of a hard game. And, you know, it’s not like my Enhancement effects my nine-to-five, everyday life. But it makes me special. Some people go their whole lives without being special at anything. And here I am.

  Now, I’m not a hero. Not even a little. But I go to conventions and events, and there are kids who recognize me and look up to me. Do you know how cool that is? They don’t look up to me because I am super exciting or have some amazing life. They look up to me because they aren’t going to grow up to be superheroes either. Heck, most people won’t. But I am proof positive that a kid who isn’t good at very much at all can grow up and be really proud of something. I can’t kick a ball or catch with a darn, but I can play these machines better than anyone else around. And that, my friend, makes me feel pretty super.

  March 2nd, 1997

  When I left the house this morning, it was below freezing and there was a bit of a delay when the crew had to scrape ice off the runway. When I landed, it was a balmy 65 degrees, and I had to figure out what to do with my coat. By noon, the thermometer hit 75 and I broke down and bought some shorts at the local mall. I’ve never been to Phoenix, Arizona before today. What I’ve come away realizing is that it is really damn hot.

  I take a short drive down to Scottsdale, and I’m struck by the odd mix I find here. There are the countless retirees that prefer the dry heat of Arizona to the humidity of Florida. Next to them are young families who have moved here for the business opportunities that are blossoming. Underneath all of that is a long established history covered by a glossy sheen. It’s like going to a fast food burger joint and ordering tacos.

  Something about all of this makes me very uncomfortable, but then I’m always uneasy in places where large groups of people retire. It’s likely that I’m just battling my own inherent fear of getting old, pushing me out of any place where people...congeal.

  However, if I’m ever going to retire, it’s hard to argue with retiring like Harvey Alvin. Harvey was an award-winning architect, designing sprawling estates
like the one he lives in now. It’s a home full of natural light and top-of-the-line finishings, with at least one fantastic view in each room. It’s then an even greater tragedy to see Harvey’s wife Lydia, wheelchair bound, parked in a small sun room.

  Lydia is being cared for by a nurse as I come in. I’m left in the living room for a few moments as Harvey speaks to the nurse. Lydia gives no look of recognition either to her husband or to the nurse. She is completely absent from this world.

  Harvey returns. He is a big man, with dark hair and thick shoulders. He looks fit, but his eyes speak of a distinct lack of sleep. As we sit in the well-appointed room, he puffs on a sweet-smelling cigar. “My only real vice.” he says.

  HARVEY: My wife...Lydia was a truly wonderful woman. She was so full of fire and passion. I met her at a poker game, you know. She made me lay down a solid straight because I thought she had the flush. But she was just

  bluffing like crazy. She didn’t have a goddamn thing, and I loved that.

  We got married just a few months after we met, and had our first child right after that. We were all about passion. Passion for life. Passion for our family and for each other. But nothing was the same after her sister died. Nothing. It took the heart right out of her. For all the awful things Jim Jones did, that’s what I hate the most. They took the woman I loved and they gutted her, they turned her into a hollow log.

  It’s Alzheimer’s. Early onset. If there’s a more cruel disease on the whole fucking planet, I don’t know about it. She should have had thirty...hell, maybe forty good years left. Instead, she’ll be gone in a year or two. And I think that it has to have something to do with all that stress and all that grief. It must.

  See, Lydia didn’t have a whole lot of family. Her folks died when she was nineteen, and she took care of her sister Maxine after that. Lydia and Maxine...they were as close as two people could ever be. But while Lydia was really down to earth, Maxine was always a bit...well, she was a bit of an odd duck. She was always trying to break out of what was normal, you know? She went off to college and got in with a weird crowd. Harmless, but it still spooked Lydia. That’s about the time I came in the picture and Maxine dropped out of it.

  Lydia was incredibly worried, but what were we going to do? Maxine was a grown woman. I figured she’d just met some guy and shacked up somewhere in the woods. It wasn’t until...well I guess it was ‘68 when we saw her again. She’d ended up in Indiana, of all places.

  Turns out she was doing ok. She wasn’t with anyone, and she didn’t have any kids, which was a good thing. The last thing Maxine needed was kids, you know? The only weird thing was that she’d gotten in with a church out there. I grew up Protestant, and I like a hymn once and awhile, but Lydia was completely against it. Born and bred atheists. But I just chalked it up to

  more of Maxine’s weirdness.

  Maxine kept in touch, but she wasn’t much of a presence in our lives for those years. Then, in ‘73, we got the call that she was moving out to California, not too far from where we were living. The church she was with, The People’s Temple, was moving into a space in San Francisco, and she wanted us to come move to the city too. Lydia missed her sister, and I was really looking to open up my own firm, so it seemed like it would be a pretty good fit for everyone. We found a place right outside the city and started seeing Maxine a lot more often.

  Like I said, Lydia was definitely not into church. But I missed it. I’d had a lot of nice memories of church from when I was a kid, and I thought it might be a nice thing to give our daughter, too. Lydia was kicking and screaming about it, but I convinced her just to give it a shot. I did. I brought us to the People’s Temple, and if there’s anything I regret in my life, it’s that.

  Here on the other side, it’s easy to see how crazy it all was. Hindsight is 20/20, you know? It’s easy to see how nuts Jim Jones was. It’s easy to see how big a racket the whole thing really was. But back then it really felt like something special. Not only did it feel good to be there, but it felt like the message was good too. I’d grown up in a world with all this irrational hate toward black people, and here was a pastor preaching about equal rights. It was refreshing! Nothing against churches here, but you don’t really expect to hear those kind of progressive ideas coming from the pulpit.

  And I wasn’t the only one who thought so. On any Sunday at the Temple you’d have politicians and celebrities there. Willie Brown was there, and Harvey Milk was, too. There were presidential candidates that spoke and everything. It was an event, you see? It was a real special thing, and you could feel that. Going there was like being on a drug...and that had nothing to do with Jim Jones.

  Have you ever heard of Terry Vance? No, I’m not surprised. Most

  people haven’t. I don’t even think it was his real name. Terry joined the church when it was still in Indiana, and he shot right up the ranks. He really became Jim Jones’ right hand. He was...maybe twenty? Maybe twice that? He had a face that completely defied age, and a voice so soft you could barely hear him. But being around him was enough to convince you to do anything he needed. You understand what I’m saying? There was something about him...he could make you feel things. He wouldn’t put ideas in your head, but he could make you feel any way he wanted. How does someone get inside your head and do that to you?

  The first time I attended the People’s Temple, I cried during the sermon. I wasn’t even sure why I was doing it, but everyone was crying. We were crying tears of joy beyond imagining and I knew I needed more of it. It was so addicting, and that was all Terry Vance. He was always there. Every sermon. Every meeting. He was like Jim Jones’ horrible shadow.

  We regularly attended the People’s Temple until 1977. And really, the only reason we stopped going was that Lydia got pregnant and we were spending more time at home. If that hadn’t happened...if that hadn’t happened I’m sure we would have ended up like all the others. But the longer we were away from it, the more I questioned what was really going on there. It took months, but it felt like the spell was finally breaking.

  I’m telling you, there were Sundays when Terry Vance would preach, and it was surreal and more than a little creepy. He’d say maybe a dozen words the whole time, and the rest of it was just silence. And there we were, laughing and crying and feeling this entire spectrum of emotions together. And once I was away from it, I realized how insane it was. We were in a cult! A cult in the middle of San Francisco. A cult with the mayor in attendance. How does that happen? Terry Vance. Terry Vance is how it happened.

  It was really early in the summer of ‘77 when Maxine told us she was pregnant. She wouldn’t say who the father was, but my eyes were open

  enough to see. If the father of that baby wasn’t Jim Jones, I’d be absolutely shocked. We tried everything we could to get her out of the church, but a few weeks later she and hundreds of others picked up and moved. Out of the state. Out of the country. Off to a commune that Jones had built in Guyana, there in South America. Jonestown, is what he called it. When she left, we never saw her again. Not alive, anyway.

  We went to the police, of course. Wrote letters to anyone we could think of. It was kidnapping, that’s what it really was. Those people there were not willing participants. You can’t be willing when you are being actively manipulated. No one can truly be a willing participant if they are around Terry Vance. No, those people weren’t in control of themselves at all, god help ‘em.

  We sent letters down there, and we were surprised to find that she actually sent a few back. She showed us pictures of her daughter, Frances, named after their mother. Lydia was literally worrying herself sick. She would have done anything to bring Maxine back from that place.

  Do you know the kinds of things that happened down in Jonestown? The place was horrible. Some women were raped. I can’t say that conclusively, but I know it. The men were, too. That son of a bitch Jim Jones hurt anyone he could get his hands on. And Terry Vance was with him every step of the way. Pulling the strings, drawing people i
n deeper and deeper. In the end they were hysterical. Psychotic. Logic had been left far, far behind.

  Have you ever heard of the white nights? Oh god, I can’t even...everyone in the compound would get together and they would...act out killing themselves. They’d all line up and take their cups and then they’d lie down and prepare to die. Vance would be there, giving them the emotions they needed. Sometimes they were told that it really was poison, even when it wasn’t. God, can you imagine? There were kids there. There were four hundred kids in there. And they were told...what? That it was a game? Or were they told the same thing as the adults?

  We got our last letter from Maxine in September of ‘78, saying that no, she wasn’t leaving, and no, she wasn’t going to give up Frances. She said she was happy. She said she was safe. Safe. When we heard about what happened, we got down there as fast we could.

  Everyone knows a little about what happened. Even if for most people, it’s just a dark joke. “Don’t drink the Kool-Aid” is what they say, isn’t it? They say it like it’s supposed to be funny. But...Jesus Christ. There were almost 1000 people down there. There were babies and kids and...yeah, don’t drink the Kool-Aid. It wasn’t even Kool-Aid, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that Jim Jones built a community, and then he and Terry Vance fed those people to it. And they were the only two who didn’t drink the Kool-Aid, which is a sick joke if I’ve ever heard one.

  They found Jim Jones in his office, where he’d eaten a bullet. As for Terry Vance, he was gone. The last mark he made there, and I saw this with my own eyes, was painted on the wall above Jim Jones’ body. Big red letters. “SEE YOU LATER! T.V.” and then a smiley face. That sick son of a bitch.