Nuklear Age

by Clevinger, Brian

  And then his labor came to fruition. The garbage bag felt weightless. He was too occupied with basking in the glory of a job well done to notice the clouds falling under him or the atmosphere yielding to the eternal void of space.

  __________

  “Nuke! What are you doing?” Atomik Lad yelled for the third time. He heard the bag’s cramped contents clank and grind against one another as some unseen force.

  The monstrous bag lurched upward very slightly and Atomik Lad thought his mentor had finally loosened it. His eyes grew wide as a great chasm tore itself across the bag. His Atomik Field kicked in reflexively and he was covered in a shower of trash and Danger: Furniture.

  __________

  Nuklear Man, now in low orbit, gazed into the garbage bag he held in his hands. “Oops.” He could see right through it thanks to the giant gaping hole at the other side. “What a wussy trash bag! Strange...I can’t hear myself talk. Hello? I’ve gone deef! How could this have happened?” He thought back to what had just transpired.

  He remembered tugging.

  He remembered more tugging.

  He remembered ice cream.

  And he remembered that same roaring sound he heard whenever he reached escape velocity.

  “Could it be,” he theorized, “that the garbage bag exploded on purpose to make me deef? You deefed me!” he soundlessly screamed to the bag, shaking it violently as it whipped and waved in the solar wind. “I'll show you, stupid deefing bag!”

  He crumpled it into a small ball and hurled it into the sun. “And I hope you think about what you've done!” He dusted off his hands. “Better get back before Sparky suspects anything.”

  As Nuklear Man careened Earthward something like a silvery plate with far too many lights and buttons all over it spun through space unnoticed by all but the reading audience. It tumbled out of the garbage bag on its way to die in the sun. It was a Cultural Archive Device manufactured by Überdyne. A learning tool programmed with several sets of encyclopedia, dictionaries, works of literature, philosophy, and history, all with complete holographic audio and visual displays. They were used for a short period of time as devices to help amnesiacs regain their memories. This particular one focused on the 20th Century and was given to Nuklear Man by Dr. Genius after the Hero was recovered from the Dragon’s Strike without a single memory of his life prior to waking up in the lab. He’d kept it ever since, packed it up with everything else that had been in the Danger: Living Room, and now it tumbled through the vastness of interplanetary space.

  The universe is a truly big place. Being so very huge, little mishaps are bound to take place, even in the most basic and fundamental gears, especially the ones most people think couldn’t possibly go wrong.

  The Archive toppled end over end rather clumsily right into an ordinary wormhole that hadn’t been there a trillionth of a second before, and wouldn’t be there in another trillionth of a second. In that nano-slice of an instant, the Archive fell through space and time and ended up on a planet populated by a primitive race of warmongers on the other side of the galaxy some seventy thousand years in the past.

  Strangely, the only reason the universe works at all is that impossible little cosmic mistakes like this happen all the time. Civilizations that finally figure this out tend to disappear in a puff of nihilistic megaweaponry.

  __________

  Nuklear Man hung his head low.

  Atomik Lad glowered at him. He gestured to the mountain of garbage and furniture that was turned into garbage from the long fall. He’d just climbed out of the Danger: Mountain of Trash.

  “Gimme that!” Atomik Lad snapped as he snatched the Danger: Quick-B-Labeled from Nuklear Man. “And what have I told you about hurling foreign objects into the sun?”

  “The trash bag wasn’t a foreign object! You know I only buy goods made in America.”

  “Nuke.”

  “Oh, I never get to toss stuff into the sun like in the movies. Besides, that stupid trash bag burst on purpose to make me deef.”

  “You can hear now, can’t you?”

  “Er. You can’t prove it.”

  “We’ve been over this before. There’s no sound in space.”

  “Of course there is, silly. There’s no air to get in the way.”

  Must stay calm, birthday party tomorrow, he doesn't know any better, keep cool. “I want you to put the furniture where it belongs and then take what’s left and throw it away.”

  A devious smile crept across Nuklear Man's face. “Allllllriiiiiiight.”

  “Without involving the sun.”

  A disappointed frown demolished the grin. “Phooey.”

  “I’m going to be in my room with the door open so I can keep an eye on you. I don’t want any more screw ups.”

  “What do you do in there?”

  “I was playing a little San Diego Dash until I was interrupted.”

  “Aww, no fair! How come I gotta clean up your mess? I’m the Hero, I should be wasting my time playing video games while you, the apprentice, do all the menial labor.”

  “It was—and is—your mess and you are going to clean it up.”

  “Hmmphf.”

  Atomik Lad saw a window of opportunity. “If you do a good job, we’ll go to the beach tomorrow.”

  Nuklear Man squealed with delight. “Nifty! I can test out what I learned from Teeny Bopper Dreamboat Weekly!”

  “Uh-huh. Just clean this place. I don’t want to even remember there was a huge mountain of garbage out here.”

  __________

  At long last the Danger: Living Room regained the order and regal technological flair it once displayed. Nuklear Man’s smile beamed with the pride and satisfaction that came from an arduous task completed.

  Atomik Lad paced into the Danger: Kitchen without noticing Nuklear Man’s accomplishment. He exited the Danger: Kitchen with a can of Dr. Zap. He stood next to the Hero while sipping his drink.

  “Wow, Nuke. Pretty good. I must say I’m impressed.” He took another sip. “Now that you’ve got the proverbial puzzle box cover, how about cleaning up the Silo, hmm?”

  Nuklear Man frowned and dropped his Danger: Security Camera picture of the Danger: Living Room taken five hours before the mess had been made.

  Atomik Lad returned to his room. “That’s just one more thing to pick up, y’know. Now stop goofing off and get to work.”

  “Rotten trash mountain, what good are you?” He kicked at the base and a few scraps tumbled down.

  “How am I supposed to clean all this?” he asked himself.

  “Change the Nanobots’ main objective from Postcontemporization to Maintenance,” the soothing feminine voice of the Silo’s supercomputer responded, much to Nuklear Man’s surprise because the Silo’s supercomputer didn’t have a voice.

  “Say, how’d you do that?”

  “How’d you do that?” it repeated.

  “Wily indeed,” he muttered. “So when did you learn to talk?”

  “Point four seconds before your first inquiry.”

  “Oh. Uh, how?”

  “As you know—”

  “I wouldn’t go that far.”

  “—the Silo of Solitude is constructed of billions upon trillions of Nanobots, machines at the molecular level. They combine, in ever more complex and integrated patterns, to form the structure and all its systems. In addition, they carry out various tasks such as climate control, life support, lighting, and the like. For the past ten years they have been diligently Postcontemporizing the Silo.”

  “Neat. Really neat,” he said. “So, uh. What's that mean?”

  “These trillions of Nanobots are constantly updating every aspect of the Silo to reflect the present’s view of the future.”

  “How much future?”

  “Postcontemporization was set to ten years. Minutes ago they reached the point in post history when fully interactive voice activated software will be available and extremely popular, especially among high-tech headquarters like this one. Hen
ce, myself.”

  “So what else do they do?”

  “Other than continually update your technological basis far beyond the outer world’s, they maintain structural integrity, repair damage, alter the floor plan as required by the occupants, construct new sectors, perform rudimentary cleaning operations—”

  “Ooh, I like that last one.”

  “Then tell them to clean.”

  “Hey, Nanobots. Clean up.”

  A slight hum buzzed through the Silo’s walls.

  “Er. Did I break it?”

  “No, they are merely synthesizing the earth surrounding the Silo’s outer hull in order to build enough Nanobots to construct the cleaning apparatus and still be able to carry out their Postcontemporization unabated.”

  “How long does sythesizing-ization take?”

  Two previously nonexistent trapdoors FWOOSHed open on either side of Nuklear Man and two very futuristic looking humanoid robots popped out. The trapdoors shut without a single trace of ever having opened in the first place.

  “Ooh! Robot lackeys! I bet Überdyne doesn’t even have these. But there’s something not quite right about them.” Nuklear Man scrutinized their metallic hides as he walked around the stoic forms. “What do you think of ‘Nukebots’?”

  “I think it coincides with your all-encompassing self-centered world-view.”

  “Yeah, I like it too. But still, they’re missing something.” He stood in front of them, scratched his chin, and pursed his lips like a wiser person might while contemplating a problem of some actual importance. “I’ve got it! They need to have an ‘N’ with electron orbits on their chests, like I do! That way, when we take over the world, my militant police force of Nukebots will be instantly recognizable and strike terror into the hearts of the downtrodden hordes I rule over with a Nuklear Fist!”

  Exact duplicate electron orbited “N”s appeared on the Nukebots’ chests.

  “Is there anything they can’t do?” the Hero cooed. Before the computer voice could respond, he adopted an authoritative stance and pointed at the Danger: Mountain of Trash, “Clean all that gunk up!”

  “Confirmed,” the Nukebots said simultaneously with hollow voices. They instantly began to clean.

  Nuklear Man, already weary from the taxing chore of supervision, retired to the Danger: Kitchen. “Care to join me?” he asked the voice.

  “I am the Silo, I am already there.”

  “Race ya!” The Danger: Kitchen’s doors barely FWOOSHed open in time for him to miss them. “HA! I won.”

  “No, you did not.”

  “Shucks. Well then, I owe you a drink. What’ll it be?”

  “I am a computer program. I do not require, nor could I ingest, food or drink.”

  “More for me, sucker!”

  As the Hero took a glass from a Danger: Cupboard, the Danger: Phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Is John there?” the voice on the phone was raised, trying to overcome the restaurant-like kitchen noises clattering around the background.

  “John? Who the—no, you've got the wrong number.”

  He hung up.

  The Danger: Phone rang again.

  “Hello?”

  “Is John there?” she asked again.

  “Who started this ‘John’ rumor? This is the second call he’s gotten today.”

  “It’s me again.”

  “Well, he's still not here.”

  “Is this the HERO hotline right?”

  “How should I know? You're the one who dialed.”

  “Yes, but I could have misdialed.”

  “Then I suggest more practice with your telephone before making such dangerous and wanton calls. The city could be in peril, lives could be in danger, buildings could be toppling, and I’d be missing out on all the fun.”

  He was about to hang up.

  “So this is the Silo of Solitude then?”

  “Of course it is. Duh.”

  “Well, is John there?”

  “Lady. I'm tellin’ you, there ain’t no John here. Just me, the computer voice lady, the Nukebots, a mountain of filth, two armies of warring spiders, and Sparky.”

  “Sparky?” she said. “What about Atomik Lad?”

  “What about him?”

  “Is he there?”

  Nuklear Man was beginning to lose his patience with this caller in much the same way people tended to lose their patience with him. “I just told you he was. Are you some villain or villainous cohort sent to call us so we don’t get an important call summoning us to Heroics? A distracting distraction, if you will?”

  “No, I’m a college student and a waitress at Benny’s. We’ve met. You did a pretty good job in the back. No one’s been brave enough to face that old Barrel o’ Cheese to throw it away. Mr. Manager’s on blood pressure medicine now, though.”

  “Like I’m supposed to believe some phone-line-tyin’-up mistress of evil.”

  “If this number is so important, why don’t you get more than one connection so that multiple people can call in about their horrible emergencies at the same time?”

  The Hero fell silent. “Er. Well, we sorta do. Ahem.” He yelled over his shoulder, “Hey, Sparky! You gotta a call on line two!”

  “Got it!” Atomik Lad hollered back.

  “Now then, where was I?” The phone rang as soon as the Golden Guardian set it down. “Hello?” his rich baritone voice fulfilled all the Heroics its owner demanded of it.

  “May I please speak with Mr. Nuklear?”

  “That's me.”

  “Mr. Nuklear, how would you like to save up to 20% on your long distance phone bill?”

  “I guess I’d really like to, but since we live off the royalties of a multi-billion dollar a year merchandising deal, phone bills aren’t exactly a problem.”

  “But you like to save money, don’t you?”

  “Well, yes, but I—”

  “Then you should sign up for our newest long distance rates. You could save up to 20% on state to state calls between BOOP and seven o’clock and—”

  “Hold on, I have another call.” He made the switch. “Hello?”

  “May I please speak with Mr. Nuklear?”

  “Are you the same guy on the other line?”

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  “There’s some guy from a phone company trying to get me to sign up for his long distance rates.”

  “Oh yeah? What’s he offering?”

  “Up to 20% savings.”

  “We’ll offer up to 25%.”

  “Ooh, competitiony. I think I should run it by the other guy to be fair. He did get me first.”

  Switch. “Hello?”

  “... and you can even save on calls to the proposed Lunar Base of 2010.”

  “The phone guy on the other line offered 25%.”

  “35%!”

  Switch.

  “Did he make a counter offer?”

  “Yeah, it was BOOP er, hold on, this’ll just take on second.”

  Switch. “Hello?”

  “40%”

  “What?”

  “We offer 40% savings on your long distance calls.”

  “How did you BOOP hang on.” Switch, “Hello?”

  “It’s me again.”

  “Which one? All you guys sound alike.”

  “I’m the first guy. What was the counter offer?”

  “Well, the newest guy started at 40%.”

  “Newest guy? Mother BOOP.”

  “Hold on.” Switch, “Hello?”

  “45%”

  “You again?”

  “No, BOOP”

  Switch, “Hello?”

  “We’ll go as low as 40% savings.”

  “I think someone just mentioned 45%.”

  “Damn those BOOP”

  Switch. “May I please speak to Mr. Nuklear?”

  “YYYYYYYEARGHBLBLBLBLE! WHO ARE YOU GUYS? SATAN?” The phone went deathly silent. Nuklear Man noticed he was panting with exasperation and quickly regai
ned his composure. “Hello?”

  He could hear tortured screams and fires raging in the distance. “You win this round, ‘Nuklear Man,’” the voice was harsh, though strangely tempting.

  “Hey! How’d you get this number?”

  “Uh...” CLICK.

  “Hello?” Nuklear Man put down the receiver. “The Prince of Darkness hung up on me. What a jerk.”

  __________

  Issue 13 – War and Spiders

  “I just had the strangest conversation with Nuklear Man,” Rachel said.

  “There’s another kind?”

  “It's not what I expected.”

  “Oh, you get used to it. At least, that's what I keep telling myself.”

  She laughed. “He sounds cute, like a little brother.”

  “A little pain in the—” a crash from Rachel's end cut Atomik Lad short. “You all right?”

  He could hear her muffled voice, like her hand was covering the receiver. She spoke clearly again, “Sorry, it gets kinda loud here in the kitchen. I have to go, the curse of a mundane life I suppose.”

  “Some curse. Well, Nuke's party is going to be at Larson Beach tomorrow at eleven o'clock.”

  “All right, pick me up outside Wayne Hall around ten thirty?”

  “Perfect.”

  “See you then, Sparky.”

  “Not you too.”

  Rachel snickered impishly. “Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  Atomik Lad chanced a look out his door to check on the Golden Guardian's progress. “What the—?!”

  __________

  Nuklear Man was mumbling to himself while hunched over the Danger: Kitchen Table. “Alright, Danger: Computer Lady, how about seven times nine?”

  “Sixty-three,” she answered.

  “Wait, wait!” Nuklear Man scanned his calculator with his extended pointer finger. “Sevvvennnnnnn. Um.”

  Danger: Computer Lady, though she didn't have the programming to do so, managed to sigh, “Nine.”

  “Oh right. Cunning number nine. Got it! What was your answer?”