THE MILLIONS OF ME
by
DANIEL MASTERSON
Copyright © 2015 Daniel Masterson
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Table of Contents
Act I
Act II
Act III
About the Author
Discover more from Daniel J Masterson
Act I
They call me Milo, and it’s short for a name that won’t mean anything to you. As for this story? You won’t believe a word of it, I promise you that.
It’s a joke, really. We’ve been with you since the dawn of civilization, since monkeys became men. We’ve been titans and primordial spirits, we’ve been gods, champions, and monsters. We’ve been prophets and saints, healers and war criminals, inventors and killers. Hell, twenty years ago you cheered for us like we were sporting legends.
You know so many of our names, but you’ll probably never know who we really are. Like I said, you won’t believe a word of this. We’re all just stories these days. I’m not gonna give you our entire history or anything like that, because we’ll be here forever. But I can give you a slice of life, let you see what we became after the Nevermind pulled his vanishing trick and made us all disappear from your heads. Now we occupy that same fantastical rung of human imagination as do ghosts, UFOs, and elaborate government conspiracies.
All of which I’ve encountered, by the way. Goes to show.
Can’t say I miss the limelight, though. All that pressure, all that expectation. I prefer to just do my job. Dressing up like a loon and spouting corny phrases was fun and all, but it was always kinda childish. I think the world’s grown up a bit since then.
Hah, right. If you believe that you’ll believe anything. Maybe I just meant I’m getting old. Just listen to the story, yeah? It starts with me running the regular wetwork for the Bureau back in Chicago, maybe five years ago now…
Milo 1
It began as a routine job, another ruckus caused by unauthorized superhuman activity. There’s an official code for it in Bureau parlance. Everyday stuff, really.
The Bureau said that this guy Foolsfire and his little band were sympathizers to the Ultramen, a group of superhumans who rejected the system and the government, and worked without oversight as our kind used to do in the days before the Nevermind. There are still a lot of rogue supers around, of both the heroic and the villainous sort. Registered superhumans, on the other hand, work for society like any other human, as firefighters, builders, heavy lifters – you name it. Others like me work for the government, on missions only those of our kind can handle.
All too often, those missions involve taking down rogue elements. Times have changed. It’s really not a time for vigilantes and supervillains any more. The world has problems enough. For the most part, good or bad, no one even knows we’re here, and those nails that do stand out get hammered down.
So this band had set up shop in a derelict warehouse in Bedford Park. I was making my way from the city dressed in the getup I used to wear back then – an urban combat suit, grey and black, with the emblem of the Bureau on my chest. It wasn’t an undercover mission, I wanted them to know the power I represented. You’d be amazed how often that saves you a fight altogether. On my back I used to have a second emblem, a white triangle with red corners. That was my old logo, back in the day. I had a few weapons with me – a couple of knives and a trusty Glock 22. I had a license to kill, and everything I needed to carry it out. Not my first option, but I know from long experience that there’s no room for idealism when dealing with freaks like us.
I’d taken up a perch across the street, and through the windows of the depot I could see a mezzanine walkway, a nice spot for a stakeout. My vision blue-shifted.
Milo 2
A flash of light, and there I was. From my balcony perch, the warehouse floor stretched below me. There were dozens of them moving down there, what looked to be a gang of armed men, but only one man stood out to me: he was dressed in the typical flamboyant style of rogue superhumans. He’d gone for a sorcerer’s look, all wrapped up like some Arabian mystic in bright swaddling robes of blue and green, his head shaved bald. They told me he was a psychic, operating under the name Foolsfire, but that’s about all the intel they could give me. The rest was for me to figure out as I went.
I wasn’t too worried. He hadn’t sniffed me out from where I was, so I figured he wasn’t all that powerful. Psychic types tend to be tricksy, though. But you know what? So am I.
My objective was down there on the warehouse floor, wrapped in tarpaulin. It was the size of a small car, so it was no grab-n-run operation. I was going to have take these guys out.
So there I was, looking at the situation, and I couldn’t help it. I was smiling. I’m too used to winning, for me there’s no game over, no threat. I don’t have to worry about controlling my power, or about responsibilities and rights, not like they had to the olden days. I just get to have fun. When things go right, nobody dies. Sometimes they do.
Without moving, I reached for the ever-present itch in my brain, and thought just the right thought to scratch it. My vision swam blue.
Below me I heard a dull thump, like thunder in a tiny box.
Milo 3
I was still up there on the balcony somewhere, watching everything that unfolded, but I was also down on the factory floor. A perfect copy of myself at the moment of my creation. That’s my main party trick, in a nutshell, but I’ve got a lot of mileage out of it over the years.
I walked confidently across the warehouse floor, towards the two-dozen strong detail of armed thugs.
Foolsfire turned. He was a short-stack, and scrawny to boot. And young, I realized – maybe in his mid-twenties at a push. I should’ve known. By the time they get old, the idealists have usually grown into ruthless fanatics, but crime scene reports said Foolsfire is the kind of villain who only kills when he has to.
I don’t take much delight in killing, either, but back then it was in my remit, and sometimes there’s not much you can do about it. Foolsfire seemed to be measuring me. We were maybe ten meters away from each other when I stopped, and I felt a pang of guilt. He really was just a kid.
‘Turn away, hero,’ Foolsfire said to me. His voice was accented, something mystical and foreign, but I’m willing to bet it was an affectation. Same for his shaved head, probably figured it made him look like his mind rays were just too much for his follicles to handle.
Call me jaded, I guess. Seen it all before. The kids just play to the clichés, these days, like the most messed-up sense of nostalgia you can imagine. Most aren’t even old enough to have been there when those cliché were relevant, if they ever were.
‘This is no business of the Bureau,’ he added. He made of sound like off. Sounded kinda Mexican, actually. I made a show of tilting to the left to peer around him, raising an eyebrow, peeping curiously at the tarpaulin shape behind him.
‘Dunno,’ I said, returning to normal. ‘That looks kinda Bureauish, don’t you think? I could maybe see that as the Bureau’s business? Yeah?’
Foolsfire smiled. I realized he was actually going to indulge me.
‘Perhaps they would be interesting. Do you know what it is?’ He smiled like he just scored a point, and I just about held off on rolling my eyes. God help me, I thought. But then came the clincher: ‘It’s a piece of the COG,’ he said. And that I wasn’t expecting. This was a bit more heavy duty than the Bureau let on.
‘I would know your name,’ Foolsfire said.
Kinda funny, really. To me that meant he was switched on, clever enough to use his little gentlemanly act to pick up some clue as to what my power might be. Throughout our little golden age a while back, we were all about announcing them to the world through our names. Even had mottos. Mine was, embarrassingly, ‘United We Stand’. I’m not embarrassed to have a motto. Everyone should have a motto. Nah, it’s embarrassing because for half my life I barely understood what mine meant. Anyway.
‘No, you wouldn’t,’ I said, and shrugged. ‘You’ll learn it in maybe five minutes, when you’re beaten and ready to hand yourself in. Maybe then I’ll tell you.’
Suddenly, the lights go out. I blink once or twice stupidly, as if it’ll help. Then something splits my skull from behind.
By now it’s instinctive to reach for that itch in my brain on the precipice of death. So I do.
And I think to myself, and to Foolsfire, in case he’s listening. See you on the other side.
Milo 4
I watch as the injured me collapses to the ground, and with a sound like cracking bone, he explodes into blue light before he hits the floor. By the time the glow dissipates, there’s nothing left of him. He didn’t quite die, just made a backup and erased himself. That makes sense, right? The computer analogy always helps.
So the lights seem fine again. I can’t quite figure out what’s happened, but I’m guessing it’s one of Foolsfire’s skills. Some sort of low-level illusion, perhaps. The man who split my skull is just a flunky, a baseline human trying to work out why I’m standing here when I just got my head caved in.
That tells me he still thinks I’m a teleport, which is exactly why he’s still staring at me when another dull thump reverberates behind him. That thump is a sudden explosion of blue, dust-like energy, which expands outwards before reversing direction and coalescing, in an eye-blink, into another Milo. This Milo clubs the flunky in the back of the head with the pommel of his knife before the guy can even turn around.
I turn to Foolsfire, just as the mystic shrieks ‘Kill him!’ and all the dozens of men in the room descend on the two of us. Except a whole bunch of those dull thumps sound, and suddenly there’s dozens of me, too. I see the brief flash of panic cross Foolsfire’s face, but he masters himself quickly.
‘An interesting trick,’ he says, because apparently he picked his lines up from Supervillains 101, and follows up with: ‘Now let me show you mine.’
Definitely Mexican.
Okay. Well. At this stage things could’ve been going better. The problem being that the room is suddenly full of Foolsfire, dozens of him just as there are dozens of me and dozens of his henchmen. Should be interesting, I thought.
The Foolsfire closest me lunges at the same time as one of his henchmen. Experience and gut instinct tell me to ignore Foolsfire altogether, and this proves correct; he feints an attack at me as the flunky lunges, nightstick firing towards my right thigh. I step out of the attack and bring my knife driving down into the thug’s spine as he overbalances. But then Foolsfire is on me again, and he strikes with a short staff I somehow didn’t even realize he was holding. The impact fires stars into my vision, and I lose my balance, tumbling to the floor.
I don’t let him get a follow-up. I create another me, up on the balcony, and give myself up, dissolving in blue light.
Milo 5
Seven of us are gathered on the balcony. The thing about being able to copy myself is that I can always rely on my other selves to have arrived at the same plan, sooner or later. We watch the battle unfold below, as Foolsfire pulls the same trick on a dozen versions of me; a feint, allowing the gangsters an opening, followed by an attack of his own. Sometimes he’s successful, and versions of me get maimed or beaten, and explode into light. Other times we fight back, and we on the balcony notice that where we counter Foolsfire, his copies ripple and fold.
So we figure they’re illusions. But then, how can he hurt us, we wonder?
One of us arrives at the answer a little sooner than the others; he’s probably been watching a different scuffle.
‘It’s not just visual. He can simulate pain, as well. Fool us into thinking we’re being hurt, fool our sense of balance…’
‘Neat trick.’
‘But he’s not powerful enough to pull the blindness trick on all of us.’
‘He’ll focus on one of us.’
We look at each other.
‘The primary,’ we all say.
Milo 6
Blue light, and I’m here. I stay back, hanging near the door as the battle unfolds around me. Some of Foolsfire’s illusions ripple as I attack them, others land hits on me. Most of the henchmen are dead or out for the count, leaving the heavy lifting to the illusionist.
We’re not so different in our way, I suppose. He’s hit on the same model of illusion as I have duplication: creating yourself is just plain easier than creating anything else. At this point, I’m still trying to work out whether the real Foolsfire is even in the room. It’s tricky, and I know that better than anyone.
There’s this sudden, wet sound as a fist slams into me, piercing straight through the flesh like a spear. It’s somewhere in my left lung, I think. I don’t know, I went kind of numb at the time. My concentration broken, I watched my other incarnations explode into nothing by the dozen.
‘Standing back, letting all your clones do the work,’ this new hostile says. ‘You couldn’t have made it more obvious if you tried.’ His voice has a hollow sound.
The illusion on the man wobbles, and he transforms from just another henchman into something else entirely. I couldn’t even tell what he was at first glance. A second longer and I see he’s either wearing his bones like they’re a suit of armor, or he’s got bones where his skin ought to be. Either way, he’s covered in it, head to toe, halfway between a knight and chitinous insect. I’m took a guess that the fist that rested in me was that same material in a sharpened form. Kinda hurt. Thankfully shock dulled the pain, turning it from the shooting agony of toothache to that bone-twisting feel more like getting a tooth pulled.
So the hole in me is the size of, well, a fist, and somehow that fist feels like it’s growing inside me. I know I’m not long for the world, but the funniest part is that I don’t care. I’m not going to die here. I’m just going to stop. You lose. Continue?
I force the words out, though my breath feels half full of blood.
‘Clones?’ I echo, with a weak smile. ‘What clones?’
His eyes, recessed within his outer skull, narrow as they measure me, and that expanding feeling inside me gets stronger. My face contorts in agony, but even so, I hiss out one more word:
‘Moron.’
BAM! Blue light and blue dust, bone and muscle and skin and cloth and I appear beside me. A perfect me, healthy and whole. Boneman stares at the other me for a moment, stupefied as his brain tries to shift paradigm, calculate exactly how wrong he was on a scale of Whoops to I’m Dead.
My vision goes fuzzy, but my work is done.
Milo 7
The wounded me explodes into atoms, and the bone guy’s hand remains in place in mid air. I see now that his hand is not only sharpened, but bone spines have extended outwards from it. Those things must’ve been tearing my insides up a treat.
‘You know, that really hurt,’ I say, rubbing my torso like I’ve got bellyache. I’m just trying to be polite, make a little conversation. Talking with your killer is always a little weird, but it’s even freakier for them. ‘Call it the down side of being born from a dying man,’ I add. ‘Didn’t feel myself die, though. I never do. Wonder what it’s like? Hell, I suppose this body will find out sooner or later.’
Boneman finally lowers his hand. A shift in attitude tells me he’s almost acknowledged his defeat already, like he’s about to tell me ‘good game, well played’.
‘So where’s the real you?’ he says in his hollow voice. ‘A block away?’
‘You’re still struggling with this, aren’t you?’
I manifest again, over and over again, until the warehouse is once more full of my copies. The copies who only unmade themselves in the first place to throw our enemies off for a moment longer.
I smile.
‘There are copies of me right across this city, and a few outside it. There are fifty-seven of them in this room alone. I’m all of them. I’m none of them. There’s only one me, and here we are.’
‘But one of you must be…real?’
‘Why just one? You play at bones, I’ll show it in a way you understand. This’ll hurt like hell, but I’ll forgive myself. I always do.’
I take the process slow, this time. I reach into that feeling in my brain, find it, and twist it. Light flares in the spot where I’ll be, exploding outwards in blue dust. It suddenly reverses direction like it’s being sucked back to its point of origin, but I slow it right down. The dust coalesces into a roughly human shape, and a skeleton starts to construct itself from inside the cloud. Organs fill the gaps, and muscles, ligaments and blood vessels begin to weave themselves into the structure. The flesh appears, layering itself over muscle. I stand there naked, new eyelids closed over gaping sockets. The clothes and equipment come last, a copy of my own gear. The whole process is excruciating, but like I say, he’ll forgive me. I don’t even have to explain myself.
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