Absurdly, Jason actually took the time to try to read and even review my work. I think he raised some churlish objection about Calabi-Yau manifolds. It was one of our last conversations, and in retrospect, perhaps I should have listened. That was probably the last time when I could really have done something differently. He’d done some calculations—feeble, but he’d worked on them—I might at least have looked. But I was intent on the moment of my triumph, and there was no way I’d let him undermine me. Not when Erica was involved.
“This is science, not one of your rugby scrums,” I snapped. The fool.
The day of the demonstration arrived. The hall was packed with milling students, faculty, and the media—the New York Times sent a reporter, as did Scientific American and Nature. The Department of Defense had sent half a dozen people. Jason was there, I suppose on the strength of our old friendship, resplendent in his ROTC uniform (years later, I found out he was a scholarship student). And Erica herself, right there in the front row, her gray eyes only on me.
Professor Burke gave a brief introduction on the theory of zeta power, while I sat at the control console in my white lab coat, playing my role of protégé to the hilt. Both of us were in the shadow of the enormous zeta apparatus. For once, I was the center of attention, and Jason sat in the audience, unrecognized. The lights dimmed. I activated the controls with a theatrical flourish, and a buzz arose in the hall as the three-spoked zeta attractor began to move.
I wish to make it clear that, positioned as I was to monitor the machinery, my back was to the crowd. I couldn’t possibly have prevented the accident. If the shielding proved inadequate, if Erica wandered into the path of the zeta particles, if human lives were at stake, I had no way of knowing.
And if Jason hadn’t been there, I’m sure someone else would have stepped in to save her. He just happened to be standing there, right in position to play the hero and push her out of the way. The zeta beam caught him full in the chest, and he was silhouetted in a shimmering golden haze of particles, penetrating his body, infusing him with the limitless power of zeta energy. They made a big deal of it, but really, it could have been anybody laying down his life like that. Me, Professor Burke, anybody. And then someone else would have gained the power of CoreFire. Someone else would have won her heart forever.
I have never asked him what it felt like, that thunder-crash moment when the zeta energy entered his body. The last thing I remember is Erica lying in his arms, their faces close together, tinted red in the glowing light of my parallel dimension.
It was the last time I saw Jason as Jason. He had been young and likable; now he could fly and lift a bus. His strength was matchless; he had bland, predictable good looks, and a bland, predictable mind. He was the perfect superhero; he even had heat vision. It was a short trip from Harvard to international stardom, propelled by forces I alone could have summoned.
And I? The one who made him what he was? His buddy, arguably, yes. His pal from way back. I was a foot note to the legend, the goofy lab assistant who happened to be at the controls. At best, the Zeta Beam Guy.
Imagine my surprise when, years later, CoreFire turned up on my doorstep. No one knew my identity as Doctor Impossible; so as far as I knew, there was no one who knew of the link between us.
He looked different but also the same. The accident hadn’t changed him much—even behind that stupid domino mask, there was no mistaking Jason Garner. He wore a brilliant white leotard and a gold cape. Blond hair and square jaw. The leotard was tight, outlining every curve of a musculature I can only call perfect. He could fly. He drifted through the air like a wisp of smoke, but he was, I knew, the most solid thing to be found on this Earth.
“Looks like I’ve come to the right place,” he observed to no one.
He walked through the grand entrance hall as if he owned it, footsteps echoing off the marble. He cocked an insouciant eye at the enormous Art Deco statuary—myself, triumphant, one foot resting atop a submissive globe. Yes, I’d had plans, dreams, just like anyone else. It was the first time my mind had run absolutely wild; everything I had ever scribbled in my old notebooks had sprung to malevolent life. In the lower caverns, I had found DNA traces of unprecedented antiquity. I was shattering paradigms monthly, my robots were getting better, and in the basement labs there were hints of greater things, other dimensions, interstellar travel. Thoughts so brilliant, it was criminal just to think them.
I was a supervillain, a supergenius, and I couldn’t see anyone stopping me. I was going to be another Alexander the Great, Fu Manchu, Professor Moriarty, all rolled into one. I issued my very first global threat, demanding obeisance. And in response, CoreFire arrived.
There I was in my control room, a glass and steel wonder built into a cliff side, overlooking a snowy Arctic landscape. I built it myself. I had given some little thought to defense. I knew, sooner or later, the authorities would get tired of just fighting me off and would come looking for me. I’d be ready.
But no one told me it was going to be like this. Bullets bounced off of him. He walked over trapdoors like solid steel floors. Robots shattered themselves on him. He punched through doors, melted walls with his eyes. His body absorbed radiation like a black hole, or reflected it. If anything, he seemed to get stronger as he went on. It was a blowout.
Did he know who I was? By the time he tore the doors off of my control room, I already had my mask and helmet on; there was no way he could have recognized me. My costume then was a powder blue one with red trim. Red utility belt, red helmet. Red fins on the forearms, and a long red cloak. On the chest, my old symbol, the imperial crest I had imagined for myself, a red planet ringed with gold. For an instant, there was something mortifying about his presence there, an uninvited guest in the room where I ate my lunches and dinners alone.
But when our eyes met, a moment confirmed what I had thought. He didn’t know me.
“Stand back, villain!”
That close, his physical presence was even more impressive. The zeta beam had done its work. My powers are good, but they aren’t my primary asset. CoreFire was an M-class being, and I’d never seen that before. Up close, he was unearthly, crystalline power in the depths of those eyes, waiting to explode outward. A smell in the air, ozone, a storm coming.
The truth is, my plans for this stage were a bit sketchy. I hadn’t figured on anybody getting that far, and, well, I did think the freeze ray was basically infallible. I never worked out a coherent vision for what would happen at this moment. Always so busy; just like I never got around to finishing that throne.
Three basic contingencies for this scenario. Unfortunately, he’d already walked through the first of them, the electrocution field, in essence a superhero bug zapper, without noticing it. My finger hovered over the button that would turn my command console into a rocket-propelled escape pod. In just about fifteen seconds, I could be a dot on the horizon, on my way to a cover identity in the Azores. But no, I thought. Let’s try this. I’ve got powers of my own. How bad could it be?
“Your reign of terror is over, Doctor Impossible. You’re coming with me.” It hadn’t been that much of a reign, actually. Maybe more of a stewardship.
The Impossiblaster was my last chance. It was the nastiest thing I could build that still fit in one hand, absolute small-arms hellfire. I held it on him for about five seconds as he walked toward me, the flames washing over him, and he didn’t flinch. I could feel the reflected heat of it.
“Nice try, Impossible!” Jesus. I waited until the overhead light came on, then threw it at him.
And then there was nothing to do but to put up my fists, which looked about a third the size of his. I have long fingers, meant for control knobs and test tubes, not striking things. I’m a scientist, I think I should remind you. But I had decided not to go quietly. I would see this through.
“Take that!”
We faced off a moment in silence, and then he reached for me. He put his hands on me, a scientist! I recall there was a brief p
ursuit around the command console. I may have flailed at him once or twice. I managed to inform him, before passing out entirely, that he hadn’t heard the last of Doctor Impossible.
I came to in the air, dangling by my cape as he flew me back to the authorities. Hanging limp, face averted, I pretended to be unconscious the whole five hours until we arrived in Ottawa. And I kept the mask on.
The trial was mercifully brief. Bank robbery, racketeering, blackmail, countless zoning and regulatory violations. But they didn’t discover my original name. My fingerprints are long gone, and even dental records can be faked. I didn’t stay inside long—they weren’t prepared for me, that time.
After that first outing, the game was afoot. The next time we met, he and I were old enemies—nemeses.
The thing of it is, I actually liked Erica, even afterward. Even after the headline HERO THWARTS WOULD-BE WORLD CONQUEROR appeared over her byline. She was a sharp writer, although her book of short stories never got much attention.
I didn’t see her much after that—she was swept away into the bright lights of the superhero world and the society pages. But I followed her work later on when it appeared in the Sun, all her Champions stories. Good work. She even broke the news of Lily’s origin.
And yes, I took her hostage a few times—just in the early days, to draw CoreFire out. It never failed to get him moving. I would snatch her off the street and roar off in a supersonic aircraft of my own design, then tie her to the columns in my laboratory as the doomsday machine powered up.
And if my eyes behind the mask seemed to gleam with a special, yearning intensity, waiting for her to look, to recognize me, I don’t think she took any notice. Something about my approach just failed to attract her attention.
In later years, true, we drifted apart. You can’t just take the same hostage every time. Not that my dating techniques grew any more sophisticated in the meantime. But she must be out there somewhere. I’m still waiting for that interview.
The Zeta Gem lies cool in my hand, the last piece of the puzzle. It looks like glass or a ruby, but I know how to build a machine that will tap its energy, enough to move the planet. I shake my head, still fuzzy from Mister Mystic’s routine, but it clears as I walk unseen back through the Yard and through the side streets down to the Charles River. In three days, I’m going to conquer the world, but I’ve lost my chance at him. CoreFire will go down in history as the man I couldn’t beat.
It’s hard not to feel a little sorry. Perhaps it’s only professional pride—I made him, after all, and I like my creations to last. And we did have a score to settle, he and I. The world thought it began in Nova Scotia, but it had a deeper subterranean history stretching so much further back. It’s even possible that he knew it, too—what if we were both pretending up in Nova Scotia, each for his own reasons, and then forever afterward?
We’ll never know. I was going to beat him, and on the day I beat him, I was going to take my mask off and stare into his face, and let him know that it was me all along. The whole world would have known Doctor Impossible beat CoreFire, but most of all, Jason Garner would have known that I beat him. To a pulp. But now he never will.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
SECRET ORIGINS
I knew this would happen. That this would end in some awful screwup, and that would be it for me and the Champions. New Champions. Whatever. I knew a hundred fancy uniforms wouldn’t make up the difference between them and me. I wonder if Doctor Impossible’s island is where I should be now; maybe he’d even take me as a henchman. Maybe Lily can tell me.
Damsel must know something’s going on. Blackwolf’s acting normal, just ignoring me, but I blush every time he walks into the room. You’d think being part machine would have some advantage in that area. Maybe if I really were a robot. Thank God Elphin manages to ignore it, or more likely is blissfully oblivious to anything unrelated to her weird fantasy life.
To make matters worse, Doctor Impossible is nowhere to be found. Every day we don’t find him is another day for him to figure out how to beat us. Every day we expect to hear him announce that our pitiful world is doomed, that the Earth will soon be his. He is doing something diabolical, somewhere; that much is certain. I wonder what it will be like to meet him.
The hunt for magical devices is in full swing, and the idea is to split into subteams, which comes as something of a relief. Blackwolf is in Los Angeles, Feral is handling Prague, and Stormcloud has come out of retirement to sit up at the Phantom Satellite. Lily’s seeing a villain friend. But no one’s thinking about those possibilities. They’re thinking about the Scepter of Elfland, a piece of fairy-tale logic escaped into our world. Damsel will go all the way to Angkor Wat this afternoon, but before she leaves she gives me the mission.
She is back in full ice queen persona for the briefing in the Crisis Room. She hands me a stack of printout. She knows. She must.
“I want you to search out every one of these magical artifacts. Confirm they’re in place and not tampered with, and warn the owners that Doctor Impossible is on the prowl for a power source. Can you do that?”
I nod, not really trusting myself to say anything, or even look her in the eye.
“Good. I’m sending Elphin along to look after you. You can have the ChampJet if you want.”
Great. I don’t ask where Mister Mystic is—apparently, no one’s ever supposed to ask what he’s doing. I just hope there’s somebody I can beat up at the end of this trip.
There’s no further comment. The Scepter of Elfland has been placed, diplomatically, at the close of my list, without comment, and I wonder about that. Am I being sent to face our worst foe? Maybe, but it’s like a secret between Damsel and me. I’m going to meet the woman who raised her after her mother left, and that’s an odd little intimacy, especially in light of recent events. For the millionth time, I wish I understood how superteams work, what the dynamic here is supposed to be. Am I supposed to end up fighting Damsel? Are we fighting already? And who’s winning?
The rest of the list turns out to be people on the magical fringe of superherodom, most of them in Manhattan itself and the outer boroughs. Apparently, magical superheroes don’t quite do it the way the rest of us do, and we get a tour of the least likely places you could think of to find a superhero. In fact, I have only Damsel’s word for it that the whole thing isn’t a joke or a hazing ritual. We interview a psychic healer in an inappropriately slinky dress, and in a corporate boardroom, a voice speaks out of a brazen mask. We meet an improbably muscled man wearing a bright red outfit, living in a garret, and a private investigator with hooves. All shake their heads—no sign of Doctor Impossible.
In Newark, I visit an actual magic shop, a dusty antique store that looks like an empty storefront from the outside. Inside, it’s bigger, and full of old clocks; tapestries; mannequins and dressmakers’ dummies; gowns and tuxedos and a ceremonial saber that might have been swung in the Crimean War. An old man comes out from behind a curtain in the back, just a piece of patterned fabric tacked across a door frame. I get the sense that it would be a very bad idea to make a deal with him. I flash my ID, and back out once he tells me everything is okay.
Regina herself turns out to live in Phoenix. It makes sense now that Damsel would choose someone else for this, but I can’t tell if sending me is punishment or a sign that she’s beginning to trust me. I have to admit I’m curious—Damsel’s family life has long been a subject of speculation.
I make the call to Phoenix myself to tell her we we’re coming. Her real name has always been a big secret, but this late in the game, they’re letting me in on some of the classified files, files that go all the way back to the Super Squadron.
She called herself Regina, and she fought crime until the early 1970s. She was the first of the Super Squadron to retire. A tall, dark woman with a commanding eye, she wore a crown and robes that gave her strength, and fought with a mystic scepter that cast a ruby ray that had power over evil minds, and could perform other feats, as well
.
Or so she claimed. She also claimed to be the surviving member of a band of children that had acquired monarchical power in the feudal government of a pseudomedieval civilization of a dimension populated by humans, elves, and talking animals. The difficulty arose because this was, in fact, the plot of a popular series of children’s books called Four Children in Elfland. It was as if she expected to be taken seriously as law enforcement on the strength of an acquaintance with Winnie-the-Pooh and Christopher Robin. She wouldn’t be the first major hero to succumb to mental instability later in life.
Not long after the Champions formed, she retired into her secret identity, which she had gone to great lengths to protect. Then she just disappeared from sight, as superheroes do, except for a controversial interview conducted in great secrecy and later published in The New Yorker. The Scepter of Elfland is still on the books, a class-A magical artifact.
I park the rental car in front of the house, which is in a quiet suburb of Phoenix. Elphin’s been chattering aimlessly since we flew in, about Titania and fights she’s been in and the weather here and about different kinds of trees, which she seems to pay a lot of attention to. Our training duel on the first day is a forgotten thing for her.
It’s the middle of the afternoon, and the lengthening shadows are just beginning to cross the roads. A couple of newspapers are lying around on the front lawn. But Regina said she’d be home, and there’s a car in the driveway.
Elphin looks around, puzzled. “Is she not a queen? I do not see her attendants.” I was afraid of this.
“Um, I was thinking you could wait in the car. To, you know, keep watch.” As a social being, Elphin is perfectly pleasant, but only as long as you’re not invested in the conversation going in a particular direction for very long.
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