The Invincibles

by Michael McNichols

  Abruptly, his ears caught a cry for help from across the country in Sunda City. Well, he couldn’t ignore an emergency and that blank page would still be waiting for him when he got back. He had no choice but to spring into action. He jumped up and dove out the window into the sky. Minutes later, he arrived in the Pacific Northwest to smack around Armor Lord, who’d taken an electronics company hostage to repair his futuristic weapons.

  Returning home, Hyperman dropped back down onto his couch and grabbed up his laptop to write. Inspiration still refused to spark into a roaring flame. He shifted about uneasily on his seat for a bit, and his hyper-senses meandered far south. Down in Saint Talisman, explosions rang out at an oil platform just off the city’s coast in the Gulf of Mexico. He blasted down there to get everyone to safety and put the fires out. Just as he was about to sit back down at home again, his hyper-vision showed a green-gilled, shark-mouthed Atlantean leading a tidal wave toward the city of Longport just up the coast. Hyperman met him with a powerful uppercut to the jaw. The tidal wave crashed back into the ocean, and the undersea terrorist sank down beneath the watery depths. Sea Devil’s submarine, which had already been in pursuit, then caught him in a net and dragged him off to a barnacle-walled prison. With his hyper-hearing, Hyperman heard Sea Devil thanking him for the help.

  Before returning home, Hyperman flew across the world, scanning and listening for trouble. Nothing seemed to require his particular attention. Other superheroes working alongside law enforcement were easily handling all the petty theft and super-crime he sighted.

  He thought about checking in with Nightshadow on Lethe’s murder the other night. The news had come as a shock, though Night had filled him in the best he could. To think, Hyperman had been right there! Maybe only minutes before the murder. But he hadn’t seen anyone. He hadn’t known anything was going on. He couldn’t blame himself though. Even he made mistakes, and despite his abilities, he might not have been able to do much to help anyway. Whoever had done this quite clearly had skills that might have frustrated even his hyper-powers.

  Night and S.I.L.E.N.T. were tracking down the murderer and would call him in once they had something. He sorely wanted to help, but he was no detective. He could scan for the most up-to-the-minute data and tell if someone was lying due to their pulse and heart rate, but lacked the instincts to pick apart just the right details and put everything together to solve a case. However, Night was on it. He’d get results. So, for the meantime, Hyperman had to wait and stop whatever other crises occurred.

  He also had a novel to write. He thought doing so would impress Lindsey. Plus, he’d always wanted to challenge himself by writing one. Obviously, in terms of quantity, he could out-produce anyone. When it came to quality though, he found himself on the same playing field as everybody else, which he admittedly hated.

  Reluctantly, Hyperman dumped himself back down in front of his computer, not even bothering to change out of his superhero outfit. The blank white page stared at him, demanding to be filled. He gazed back into that white abyss and sighed. After drumming his fingers against his thigh, he had an idea. He tried writing about all the super-heroic feats he’d just performed, but had trouble describing everything. His hyper-vision saw the world in all spectrums of light, magnetic fields, and auras, even piercing down to subatomic levels if he wanted. However, he couldn’t condense any of that into words for a common person to understand. Instead, it all sounded like poetic gibberish a teenager on LSD doodled in his school notebooks.

  Shaking his head, he erased every word. How did Lindsey make writing look so easy? She could blitz out twenty pages like it was nothing. If only those cultists could see him now. Would they still think he was God Almighty? Well, yes, they probably would. They’d just say every shitty line of his prose was lyrically divine and rapturous.

  He pitied those poor kids from a few weeks ago, pulling their pathetic little stunt on the rooftop with the globe. Now they were locked up, medicated, and maybe even sedated, while everyone else in the city was out enjoying the holiday. He wondered if he’d tried hard enough to talk sense into them and if he could still do something more. He and Nightshadow had failed those reaper children and had yet to find any more of them. He didn’t want to fail these kids too.

  Yet, here he was, complaining to himself about not being able to write when those kids were really suffering. So what if he wasn’t good at one thing? He had so much more to offer, and those kids needed him.

  The novel could wait for when he had a great, wonderful idea that deserved his time and attention. However, he couldn’t just sit and stare at a blank page when he could be helping someone. Besides, he was just making himself more and more frustrated, trying to force out a novel that just wasn’t happening. It’d come to him when it was ready, if it ever did. If it didn’t, that was no great loss. Right now though, he could be making a difference in a few young lives and that was a far better investment of his time. Thus, he leaped out the window and soared across the city, streaking silver and blue for everyone to see.

  ***

  Lovedorf Behavioral Healthcare Center loomed like a purplish-black bruise on the New Daedalus skyline. On the twelfth floor in her room, the girl cultist fidgeted about on her bed, fiddling with a Rubik’s Cube. She wore a red woolen sweater and baggy blue jeans. Her thick dark hair swept down from her head and shrouded her pale, nimble face. While thinner from her hospital stay and with her features having become noticeably pale, even without makeup, she looked beguiling.

  Dull white paint coated the walls of her room. A curtain hung down, hiding the empty bed across from hers and dividing the room. On the wall, a marker board hung, dictating which nurses were on shift for this floor and what anti-psychotics the girl was taking. Hyperman levitated up to her window. He’d already checked on the other two cultists, but they were kept in isolated wards and seemed far too drugged up to talk. Hopefully, there’d come a far better time for them to chat. That left only the girl.

  He tapped on the window, and she looked up. The Rubik’s Cube spilled out of her hands. She scrambled out of bed and collapsed down to the floor, bowing her head and folding her hands together in prayer.

  “Savior!” she cried.

  Hyperman rolled his eyes and motioned for her to open the window. She stared, wide-eyed, gape-mouthed, and, apparently, paralyzed. Sighing, he forced the window open with a slight push and glided in. When his boots touched down, she gasped.

  “Lord of the Sky and Universe!” she said, averting her gaze. “I’m unworthy!”

  “Please, can…can you just look at me?” Hyperman asked.

  Hesitantly, she peered up.

  “See?” he said. “You’re not bursting into flames. You’re not going mad or blind. You can look at me just like anyone else. I’m no better or different.”

  Slowly, she nodded. “Then…then you’ve forgiven me, oh Heaven-In-One?”

  “You don’t need my forgiveness, and call me Hyperman, please.”

  “Yes, Lord Hyperman.”

  He sighed, feeling a hyper-headache coming on.

  “Have a seat,” he said. “Please?”

  Unsurprisingly, she obeyed, nestling down onto her bed and folding her hands into her lap. She gazed up at him, looking both attentive and fawning. His hyper-vision showed her brain soaking up serotonin, giving her a feeling of religious ecstasy merely due to his presence. She was high off her beliefs! Well, he’d figured having this talk would be hard.

  He scooped the Rubik’s Cube up off the floor and, without thinking about it, solved it. After he set it down on a table, he dragged a chair over from the corner. He sat down on it backwards and draped his arms over the back of the chair. He looked at the girl.

  “We need to talk,” he said.

  ***

  “Stacy,” Hyperman said, “I’ve been keeping tabs on you. Your parents are worried. You lost your job at the shoe store, and you dropped out of school when you’re only a few credits short of graduating with that art histo
ry degree. It’s all because of this cult you fell in with. Because of…because of me.”

  “If you desire, I’ll finish school and get another job,” she said. “I’ll do whatever’s necessary to better serve you, Lord.”

  Wearily, Hyperman sighed. “I want you to want to get your life back on track. I don’t need you or anyone else worshiping me and I certainly don’t command it. Truth be told, it makes me uncomfortable.”

  “It does?” Stacy asked in a weak, squirrely voice.

  “Stacy, I’ve met all kinds of gods, angels, aliens, and supermen. None of them deserve worship. They’re people like you or anyone else, only different. They’re more advanced or evolved or talented or luckier or maybe even smarter. It comes down to things like genetics, skill, technology, discipline, practice, and so on. Some of it is beyond your current understanding, but that’s all right. It doesn’t make what they do miracles though. It doesn’t make them divine.”

  “You are though! You’re good at everything!”

  Hyperman shook his head. “Now that just isn’t true. Before I came here, I was trying to write a novel and failing at it. I couldn’t come up with a single sentence I liked.”

  “Why do you need to write anything?” she asked.

  “Because I wanted to have an actual challenge. And you know something? I’m a terrible writer, but that’s all right. In a way, it’s refreshing to know I have some limitations. But don’t say that only applies to something like writing where my hyper-powers don’t really factor in. I don’t even always save the day with my great hyper-powers. Did you hear about the children the Death Reaper took? Horrible, wasn’t it? I couldn’t save them and that will always haunt me.”

  “You…you must have allowed that to happen. I’m sure you had your reasons, and it will lead to some greater good in the end.”

  “No, a maniac with no super-powers at all outsmarted me! I let people down, and the price was terrible. See? I’m not perfect. Nobody is, superhero or not. I and every other superhero on the planet have lives we go back to when we’re not saving the world. We have friends, families, and bills to pay. Deep down, we’re as ordinary as anyone else. We simply pitch in to help whenever we can. Our powers don’t make us better than anyone else. If anything, you and all the so-called normal people are far more important. After all, you’re the ones we’re always trying to save!”

  “That might all be true, but that’s just what you know in this incarnation! Not even you can process the entirety of sacred knowledge in the flesh and blood you currently wear. Your true self guides you though. You follow your divine instincts, even if you don’t realize it.”

  Hyperman closed his eyes and listened to all the doctors and nurses in the hospital, analyzing their patients’ worries and knowing just the right advice and medications to give them. They seemed to know just how to handle the mentally ill, but they’d had years of training. He normally only dealt with the mentally ill when they went on a rampage and needed to be punched out. However, he definitely couldn’t do that to Stacy. She required a more subtle and understanding approach, one with which his hyper-powers couldn’t help him much.

  “Please listen to me, Stacy,” he slowly said. “I’m not the lord or creator of the universe or anything like that! I don’t judge anyone. I don’t choose who lives or dies or goes to heaven or hell! I try to save everyone!”

  “Yes,” she replied. “According to scripture, you try to save everyone in this life and that, in turn, saves their souls.”

  “Scripture?”

  Stacy nodded. “We have gospels, testaments, and holy books about you. They fill up whole libraries.”

  “Really?” Hyperman rubbed his chin. “I’m curious. What exactly do your beliefs say about me?”

  Stacy gulped. “You…you actually have no idea?”

  “This is my earthly form, remember? I don’t know everything I should and need help filling in all the details. So humor me, will you?”

  “Well, we believe that you…you are the afterlife. Heaven, Valhalla, the Elysian Fields, Paradise. They’re all contained within you. Everything and everyone you save becomes a part of that eternity. Peoples, worlds, and entire civilizations! Your powers come from all the souls you hold within. The more people you save, the more powerful you become.”

  “That’s…that’s interesting, I suppose,” Hyperman said quietly. “Do I have more than one group of followers?”

  Stacy took a breath. “Yes. Every group has their own interpretations of scripture. Some think they have to put themselves in danger because they need you to save them, and others forbid that. They think interfering with your divine mission is a sin. A few believe they have to help you in their own way by doing charity work or becoming cops and firemen, getting into politics, or with art or whatever. And…and some even think they have to become superheroes themselves. There are also those who become criminals and super-villains. They think you need someone to save everyone else from.”

  Hyperman’s stomach twisted in on itself as he tried remembering the faces of all those he’d saved and fought over the decades. He wondered if they were who they’d seemed to be. How could he ever know?

  “What about other superheroes?” he asked. “Are any of them considered gods too?”

  Stacy bit her lip. “I personally don’t think they are. I believe they’re special people trying to follow your example and helping out. I’ve met other people who think they are gods, though, or in some kind of pantheon with you. Or they think other superheroes are angels or even devils that have to be stopped. A lot of groups have their own ideas and not even everyone in a group agrees on everything. And, yeah, a lot of groups tend to overreact or get extreme and…and do stupid things. Like I did, I guess.”

  Hyperman bowed his head. How many of his friends had been targeted by maniacs because of these warped and twisted cultists? How much pain and misery had he indirectly caused them?

  “How long have you people been around?” he asked aloud. “How could I never have heard of you before?”

  “Were you looking?” Stacy replied.

  “Of course not! I’d have never thought that anyone would ever worship me! I’m not a savior! What you say can’t be true! None of it! It would mean…it would mean that I’m more different from everyone than I even thought! Not just regular people, but other superheroes too! It’d mean that I’m really all alone!”

  Without thinking, while he spoke, he picked up his chair and ripped it apart, grinding some of its pieces to sawdust in his hands.

  ***

  Hyperman paused and listened. In a room down the corridor, a schizophrenic man screamed and needed to be strapped down. He’d drawn the staff’s attention and the noise he made had masked Hyperman’s little tantrum. Slowly, Hyperman breathed in and out, and got a handle on himself.

  “You’ll have to forgive me,” he told Stacy. “I…I wasn’t thinking clearly. I’m…I’m sure you understand. I’ll clean up and get a new chair though. You…you know I’d never hurt you, right?”

  “Of course,” she quietly chirped, but had clamped up into a tight, shaking little ball on her bed.

  The sight of her like that hurt Hyperman like a Diatomite-x knife to the gut. He couldn’t blame her for being afraid though. She was absolutely right to be horrified at seeing someone with godlike power (her god in fact!) losing it for even a second. His shame kept him from looking her in the eye. He couldn’t lose control like that! Not even slightly! Someone could get hurt! He had no excuse! None!

  Finally, he forced himself to peer up at Stacy.

  “Where can I find the rest of your people?” he softly asked.

  ***

  She told him where to find the temple she attended and the others she knew of in the city’s suburbs. At hyper-speed, he swooped down through them, finding the phone numbers and addresses of several other places of worship in their offices and those led to even more. The trail continued all across the country. Faster than an eye-blink, Hyperman flashed t
hrough their temples, rifling through all their offices and computers, picking through their trash, and reading their entire libraries. He had to find out everything he could about these people. Nobody even noticed him. He moved too quickly. The temples’ attendants simply thought he was a cool, forceful breeze.

  The temples came in all shapes and sizes. There were sleek new office buildings, old churches and schools, farmhouses, tavern basements, and even forest caverns. People of all ethnicities and from various walks of life worshipped there. Their ranks included teachers, farmers, lawyers, judges, scientists, doctors, painters, policemen, businessmen, actors, and comic book artists. The various groups went by a plethora of names. The Church of Hyperman, the Disciples of Hyperman, the Hypermanians, the Hyper-Lords, Children of Hyperman, and more. Most temples actually posed as legitimate businesses dealing in the sciences or even as religious organizations that studied astrology.

  High in the sky above America, Hyperman spent a few hours, squinting with his hyper-vision and watching different worship services across the Midwest. Hearing prayers and songs asking for his blessing and deliverance deeply unsettled him, but he forced himself to keep watching, He wanted to know what they were all up to.