Soon I Will Be Invincible

by Austin Grossman

  This was the one I built first, and the one I came back to. Before the space station, before the blimp, before anything, I was younger and hungry for recognition, with just a handful of minions and my first billion dollars in a Swiss account. We set down by helicopter, flattening the wet grass. As the rotors spun down, I stepped out into the warm, moist air dressed in full regalia, cape and helmet. A group of young technicians scrambled out afterward, toppling crates of equipment out onto the forest floor.

  At the first encampment, robots began digging out the foundations of my fortress, the centerpiece of my great empire of crime. The first holes we dug filled with water, and the jungle got in everywhere it could. But slowly the towers rose, far from the shipping lanes, in a tiny footprint where the satellites never crossed overhead. Tropical birds circled among the girders.

  Walking there now under the shattered ceiling, the moment comes flooding back, all the romance of one’s first truly historic crime. One never forgets it.

  The centrifuges whirled day and night, performing the slow alchemy of genetic modification. The sharp tang of the preservative chemicals; the coolness and hush of the sterile chamber; the daily ritual of decontamination. Keyboards clattering in the early mornings, test after test, ranks of green CRT screens displaying collated data.

  The laboratory never ceased to be a place of mystery for me. Science blurred into religion, into necromancy. I worked long into the night, feeling at times as if the whole of the Earth had fallen away outside, leaving only the darkness, the work, the endless questing into the past. Then the first stirrings of life.

  They beat me that time, too. But I came back.

  The doomsday device is spread out on the laboratory floor, ten thousand square feet of world-threatening ingenuity. It isn’t my largest outing (unless you include the Moon), but surely my grandest (especially if you include the Moon).

  Dollface’s work is the heart of it. The little fat man shines his gravity ray, only barely strong enough to pin a G-man to the floor, or loft a few bars of gold out of a vault. But Laserator’s lens catches, magnifies, and focuses it upward—240,000 miles upward. The bulkiest part of the apparatus is the power source, a new version of my old zeta generator. I lack Dollface’s gift for concision, but I feel I give things my own flair—arching buttresses, arcing bolts of electricity, tubes and flashing lights. It doesn’t have to look like that, but it works, and I like it. At least you can see what everything does.

  The Moon is full tonight, very full, and the tides are unusually strong. As the Moon grows heavier, it distorts the Earth’s orbit ever so gently. This is where the math comes in, the equations Baron Ether worked out decades ago to prevent the stress from tearing the planet apart or any similar nonsense. The net result is that I control the motion of this planet everyone is standing on.

  As has been shown (cf. Kleinfeld, 1928), tiny adjustments in the Earth’s position in the solar system can have far-reaching climatic effects—it won’t take long for Earth’s leaders to get the message. It’s Kleinfeld’s math, but it took Doctor Impossible to put into practice. Doctor and Emperor-elect, I should say.

  But—and I stress this—it’s not enough. You can be as smart as you want to be, you can be the smartest man in the world, but if you try something like this, a Special Forces reject is still going to rappel over the wall and punch you in the stomach. And then you’re going to be the smartest man on the floor sucking wind. You need to prepare for this stage—I know that now. Hence my return to Baron Ether’s humble home.

  “Yes, I made her. Didn’t you ever suspect?” He’s lost in the past, making some point I can’t follow.

  “Baron…” I try to interrupt, but Baron Ether’s mind wanders as he potters around in the dark corners of his study in the old dark house in New Haven. I try not to fidget. The top of my helmet nearly grazes an enormous mobile depicting an antiquated conception of our solar system. A reminder that the planets are still moving, and time is running out on my plan.

  “She was my finest creation. Those emerald eyes…Oh, the methods are lost now. You can’t get pure ingredients anymore. She was built to explode, you know. Just not on Titan.”

  “Baron. You know what happens now. There’s going to be a fight, and I need protection. I need power.”

  “Powers. Of course you would. A bit late now to fall into a vat, you know, something nicely irradiated.”

  “Yes, a bit.” I try not to snap at the Baron, but I’m feeling inexplicably tense.

  “There was a magic ring somewhere, don’t you know. Prophecy, if I can just think of it. I’m sure I can find the reference….” He makes a shuffling motion in the direction of one of the bookshelves, but I cut him off.

  “God damn it, Baron!”

  He freezes. No one talks to Baron Ether like this, I guess, especially not pissant upstarts who weren’t even alive for the bulk of his career. Who’d never known the days before the Super Squadron. Outside, I can hear children yelling and playing kickball out in the street.

  “We’re better than this. In two days, the Champions are going to show up and smash everything I’ve built, my priceless scientific inventions, just like they’ve done to you. How many times is it going to happen? How long are we going to be under their thumbs?”

  I wait for him to reach for his cane, to press the ruby stud or the diamond, but instead he answers me.

  “Yes, of course. Living like this…one forgets.” The Baron’s accent is unplaceable. Not quite Germanic. Somewhere in the Balkans, perhaps. His eyes are lost in the darkness, in the unfathomable past. “I had my reasons once, too, you know. They cast me out. All because of my work. The galvanic principle…But I returned.”

  His right hand, the insect one, clenches. “I showed them their master.”

  For an instant, I can see the anger that once cowed the world, and it’s frightening, even to me. Wherever Baron Ether came from, it was probably a lot worse than the suburban Midwest. He falls silent again.

  “Baron?” I venture. “Is there anything else? Something you’ve got left over. Even a death ray would help.”

  He seems to emerge from his reverie. “Yes. Yes, a letter came for you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He wheels himself over to where I’m standing and closes the window. “It was on the table one morning. I don’t know how you people keep getting in. I think the Mechanist must be a bit out of date.”

  He shows me the envelope. The outside simply reads “Doctor Impossible.” I hesitate, but the Baron has already opened it. Inside, there is simply a card with a precise latitude and longitude, and a name: Nelson Gerard.

  A sudden hope—maybe the Pharaoh is coming out of retirement! Maybe he heard I’m back in the game, and wants in on the action. He might be useful in the crunch, properly directed. Doctor Impossible and the Pharaoh. Back-to-back in the arena, we’d been a force to be reckoned with. I’m surprised at how much I’ve missed him—maybe I’ll even give him Egypt once we’ve conquered the world. It would be good to have company for a change.

  But it isn’t his handwriting. Underneath the numbers is written another message:

  Good luck.

  L.

  Doctor Impossible and the Pharaoh, together again, in an arena fight to beat the world. Could it happen?

  I never managed to piece together all the rest of the Pharaoh’s story. CoreFire’s search records helped, and Baron Ether filled in the rest. Ambling down through Mexico, he’d fetched up at a surf shack in Costa Rica. An invulnerable man can afford to take his time, sleeping rough and hitchhiking. When the Pharaoh went missing, no one came looking for him. The Pharaoh’s Return? The Revenge of the Pharaoh? No one cared. No one gave a damn.

  The coordinates in the note are precise, but once I get close, it’s obvious where he died, even from a thousand feet up. The sea is frozen solid out to a hundred yards from shore, spreading out from a cave in a cliff face.

  I still don’t understand it. Superfights rarely go to the
death, very rarely—even Feral holds to that line. This one had, and unleashed something strange.

  As I get closer, the temperature drops; inside the cave, it is the Arctic. When I find the Pharaoh, he is sitting on a chair of ice, his flesh blue-white. The hammer has cracked, fused—the explosion must have been lethally intense, but the air was unnaturally cold, well below freezing, chilled by the magic emanating from the weapon he still holds. Even I can smell the power in it.

  He used to have these cheesy sayings, things like “By Ra!” or “Isis preserve us!” like he was really an Egyptian king, who just happened to speak English. His hieroglyphics looked like they’d been copied off a cereal box or a King Tut T-shirt. And he used to sing that Steve Martin song under his breath during a fight, call out “He’s an Egyptian!” at the wrong moment, and I’d crack up just when I was defusing a bomb or breaking a particularly tricky lock. And that idiotic headdress, like a giant papier-mâché television antenna.

  It must be the hammer. Cracks show on it now—whatever kept him alive all these years finally failed him at the critical moment. But here he sits, sole monarch of a strange and fanciful realm, enthroned at last. His flesh is ice-cold.

  Now I know why I’m here. The hammer is still glowing faintly. Gently, I slide it from his frozen hand. I’ve seen what this hammer can do, and I’ve got a use for it. Someone’s going to pay for what happened here, oh yes. I’m starting to have a tiny suspicion who that is. I return to the island, my doomsday device complete.

  The heroes are on their way here in a supersonic jet, and I’m staking everything on a magic hammer. The Pharaoh would have enjoyed that, but frankly, it ticks me off just a little.

  Professionally speaking, it’s no way to work, staking one’s plan on an object that occasionally whispers secrets no rational person can accept. Truthfully, it goes against everything I stand for.

  My world is a sphere of rock that circles an orb of nuclear fire, and science and I are setting our backs against it, and it will move. That much is clear. In my island fortress, I keep an elephant tusk, 32,000 years old, incised with a few scratches marking the phases of the Moon, made by the hand of a Paleolithic supergenius, the progenitor of that universe and my distant forebear. He, or she, knew something of what I am about to do. Maybe she dreamed of it.

  And so even if I’m forced to admit that science isn’t all there is, I don’t like it. Every couple of years, another one gets unearthed, one of the old things that’s come down to us out of the forgotten past. A gem or a rod, or a magic shoe. Out of Troy or Atlantis or Lemuria, or the dark forest between here and Grandmother’s, something that doesn’t play by the rules.

  I don’t know if finding Durandal or Aladdin’s lamp makes those stories true, or if the stories just attached themselves to the objects. The objects themselves get handed on so many times that they lose their significance, become just tools. Once upon a time, they meant royalty or holiness to somebody, a priest or hero of ancient times, but after all this time, they’re just an old joke. But the power—that stays around.

  All I can conclude is that the deep past is a strange place. These things are found and lost again, and when you find one, your life changes forever, like the Pharaoh’s did.

  I think again about Mister Mystic’s laugh, and what the Baron said, before I left, as the shadows lengthened in his suburban kitchen and SUVs wound home through the darkening streets. Years ago, a boy found an ancient magic hammer and learned the word that would change him into something invincible, a king or emperor. A pharaoh. A nonsense story, a fairy tale, but now I hold it in my hands.

  It was dark by the time he finished. At the end, the Baron whispered the word itself in my ear.

  “It won’t work,” I said.

  “Maybe not. But it might do something.”

  I put my foot on his windowsill, but he stopped me again.

  “Doctor Impossible?” His voice was scarcely more than a croak.

  “What is it?”

  “Do it, boy. Beat them hollow.”

  Now the superheroes are coming over the horizon. My instruments picked them up an hour ago. Drumming my fingers on the golden railing of a balcony, the highest tower of my fortress, I watch. They’re flying in a V formation, low across a tropical sea as smooth as glass.

  Two hours ago, I hijacked four major communications satellites to issue my proclamation of universal sovereignty. In effect, I conquered the world. Wearing my old robes, sitting on a refurbished throne, it might have been the glory days. No one could see the blast marks on the wall just outside of camera range. Now I just need to make my proclamation stick.

  The mirror array seems to be working. The signal loss is as near zero as it’s possible to be. Once I had it in my hands, it was easy to copy, but only Laserator’s work could have reflected so truly, golden, perfect. He got a rotten deal.

  Overhead, the Moon is full. I had to wait until it passed directly overhead. The Moon itself is a kind of mirror, a very dull one. I peer into the reflector, and two and three-fifths seconds later, my image reaches the Moon, enormously magnified. Then I put the laughing fat man in his place, Dollface’s tiny creation. At a touch, his eyes will light up and his chin will move up and down, and the Moon will grow heavier. At my direction, the Earth will be pulled gently off of its course, nudged outward from the Sun. The math is hard, but it’s just math; Baron Ether did it years ago. As the Earth grows colder, my power becomes apparent, and the nations submit.

  This isn’t the first plan I’ve had, or the tenth. I would have been in Brooklyn with Lily if things had worked out. And I know how this must look—the hidden fortress, the helmet, the cape, the army of robots. I’m smart—ungodly so, to tell the truth—and the question still surfaces. When they ask me, I don’t know what I’ll say. What could I have been thinking? How did I end up on the side of the monsters?

  Camera twelve shows them touching down, Damsel and Elphin descending to touch the ground as softly as angels in a Renaissance painting. The others emerge from the landing vehicle, Blackwolf performing a neat little combat roll out of the cockpit. He wears a full-body stealth costume, grays and blacks, and it’s like the Peterson class reunion none of us went to. I brace myself for Lily to follow him out, but she doesn’t.

  Damsel gives them a pep talk before they split up. The parabolic microphones catch a little of it.

  “You’re all professionals. You’re all heroes. I know we don’t have CoreFire, but you know what? Doctor Impossible is just a scientist. These guys always lose it in the end.”

  At least now I know what they think of me. “Lose it in the end”? Nice. At the control console, I grin at her and shake my head. He who laughs last laughs longest, and I happen to have a really good laugh.

  They split up to take me on, but the cameras track them—Rainbow Triumph heads off into the jungle, while Damsel and Elphin take to the air. Blackwolf skulks off through the wreckage of my airstrip, and the cyborg heads in the other direction. Mister Mystic walks into shadow and just fades away. Something shimmers on camera nine; then it’s gone. A secret weapon?

  I start pressing buttons and the console lights up, flashing mostly red, with spots of green. They couldn’t destroy everything last time, and I’ve had about forty-eight hours to walk around making repairs—traps, robots, sensors.

  It won’t stop all of them, but it doesn’t have to. I finger the hammer, heavy and satisfying in my hand. I want to say the word and test it, but I don’t know how much of its power is left. I had a little time to inspect it—it’s damaged but not dead. Some of what the Pharaoh had is still in there, whether it’s the power of Ra or Mickey Mouse; it used to work for him, so maybe it will work for me.

  It’s time to go and face them. To prepare them, as we say in the trade, a proper reception. Welcome to my island, assholes.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  AND NOW FOR THOSE MEDDLING CHILDREN

  “Um, did we win?”

  My dear “Champions.” Welcome. By the ti
me you hear this, I will have taken over the world. Please do not be alarmed.

  This is not a good sign. I hear speaker hiss, and Doctor Impossible’s now-familiar voice comes to us with plenty of reverb. It’s a recording.

  My ears are ringing. I think a shrapnel fragment must have bounced off one of my cranial plates. My artificial skin has that fried feeling like after a grenade detonates nearby, but I can’t remember when that was. My left knee joint is frozen. I’m leaning against a metal wall in a room somewhere, and I’m trying to put the whole situation together again, but I’m dazed and my RAM is patchy. I’m having a cyborg moment.

  There’s a diagnosis and repair routine that I do, which they drilled me on every day during rehabilitation. I’m not a technician—there’s no way I’m going to understand my body—so they gave me a long checklist. It starts with the head. The hard drives check themselves; I just have to check the tubing and the cameras and whatnot, which means getting inside.

  On reflex, I turn to the wall to hide how the faceplate swings out, and you can see how deeply the metal impinges into my skull. There’s a cavity where the fan is, the size of a golf ball, and you don’t want to think about what came out to make room for it.

  “Yeah. Lucky he was totally unprepared.” Rainbow’s voice.

  “Is Fatale awake yet?” Blackwolf’s.

  “Still booting up.” Rainbow again, dull-voiced.

  “I heard that,” I say. “What happened?”

  I must be the last one to wake up. Seven separate cells, ringing the perimeter of a circular room cut into the rock. About fifteen feet of rock separates each cell. The last one—intended for Lily, presumably—is empty. At least we can see one another. There’s a public-address system, over which Doctor Impossible is making an interminable victory speech. It’s too far away to smash.