Good question, he almost said aloud. He looked into his lap and dusted off a few patches of moss and post-it-notes. He caught sight of his History Paper in his own hand of all places! He set the C+ paper on Dr. volcano’s desk and asked, “Why?”
__________
Nuklear Man sputtered. He bashed his fists against the ground as he lay on his back in spasms of pain. The breath-holding epic raged into a battle of mind over matter, and Nuklear Man’s arsenal wasn’t much to talk about.
A pair of attractive college girls—because there are no other kind in this universe—on their way to class paused in front of the thrashing Hero. “Isn’t that the epileptic guy Teri, Cheri, Kari, and Mary told us they saw Mighty Metallic Magno Man helping at the beach the other day?”
The second attractive college girl looked him over briefly with a mask of pity. “Yeah.”
“Mighty Metallic Magno Man sure is dreamy.”
They cooed in unison and continued their trek through campus.
__________
“Well, Mr. Atomik Lad,” Dr. Volcano began as he idly thumbed through the paper. “It was an excellent paper. I can tell you put a great deal of effort into it. But there was one overriding problem with the entire piece.”
Atomik Lad’s eyebrows hopped up. “Oh?”
“Quite simply, it’s impossible.”
“Oh,” his eyebrows relaxed.
“I must admit, I admire your idealism, but there’s no way your system could work.”
“But it all makes sense. Redistribute the wealth, provide universal shelter and food and—”
“But it’s impossible. Right from the start, it’s flawed. Redistribution of wealth? Do you think anyone that rich would give it all up for no better reason than to better the world? After all the cheating and fraud they committed to get it fair and square?”
“But it’s only money, it doesn’t actually mean anything. It’d be for the good of mankind!”
“Fortunes aren’t built on moral actions, Mr. Atomik Lad. This is a world of competitors, not cooperators. It’s not your system that’s flawed so much as the nature of humanity. That’s why you got a C+ and not an F. It’s not your fault people are assholes.”
Atomik Lad stared without emotion at his paper laying on Dr. Volcano’s desk.
__________
Nuklear Man lay motionless. No special effects, no twitching, nothing. “Holding my breath sucks,” he told the sky above him. He waited 2.7 seconds for something to happen. “Oh, nuts to this.” He floated to a stand and scanned his surroundings. “I’m keen. I’m ‘gnarly’,” he said while making that little quotation mark motion with his fingers. “I’m hip and these kids know it. I’ll mingle for a bit.”
__________
The remote controlled Fubar doll of pure evil tapped a constant stream of commands through the Danger: Supercomputer while Katkat watched it from the floor.
“Excellent,” Dr. Menace said from her Evil: Lair located miles away. “All of their files shall be mine and I’ll have direct access ztraight into the inner workings of their precious base! Chaoz shall befall their every action!”
“Mreower?” Katkat asked Pookaboo.
“Blasted feline!” the Venomous Villainess spat. “No matter. Using my remote Fubar doll of immeasurable evil, I have nearly finished hacking into their computer files. All that now remains iz for me to initiate the final keystroke and victory will be mine!”
Katkat hopped up onto the keyboard and knocked Pookaboo to the ground. Every byte of Dr. Menace’s treacherous program was replaced with a series of random, meaningless keystrokes.
“Drat!” she cursed while frantically operating Pookaboo’s remote controls to no avail. “What? My drone izn’t rezponding!”
The Fubar doll lay on its side on the Danger: Floor. Its little legs pumped back and forth uselessly. Dr. Menace let out a bloodcurdling scream at her large computer display. It showed a view of the Silo turned on its side.
“Why must I be zurrounded by such incompetence?” she howled while hitting her Evil: Computer Console. She took a deep breath, pulled her shining black hair from her face, and chewed on one willowy finger. “You win thiz battle, foul feline, but not the war! Plan D will reach its fruition!” Lightning flashed to punctuate her adamancy, but it did so somewhere along an uninhabited stretch of Zimbabwe’s northern border, so the effect was lost on all but the most omniscient of observers.
__________
Nuklear Man stuck out like a dinosaur at a wine tasting. Naturally, he didn’t notice. He was too busy winking at the passing university ladies while dashing in front of them with a Heroic pose and flashing that “Hi there” smile that was supposed to make him look debonair and coy but actually had the effect of making him look like a perfectly ordinary stalker. The end result was a lot of stumbling and a few slaps in the face. “Must be part of the dating ritual nowadays. Oh, these crazy college kids!” he reasoned.
__________
Atomik Lad opened the door out of the History Department and embraced the wondrous multi-faceted Beauty of Nature and Other Arbitrarily Capitalized Concepts. He Looked down at his Paper and huffed. “Aww, bite me,” he told Reality. He glanced at his watch while brushing aside a wavy lock of hair. While I’m out, it couldn’t hurt to drop by Rachel’s for a little lunch. The thought erased any notion of Nuklear Man from his mind.
__________
The Hero was observing a group of humans. He did this stealthily so as not to arouse their suspicions. The group was in fact a small faction of students from one of the less inane fraternities—making it very inane indeed—standing outside of their frat house. Their discussion had ranged from beer, to excessive drinking of beer, to when “Stoner” would be back with more beer in order to engage in more excessive drinking of beer. That is, until Nuklear Man began his covert operation. It was a unique approach to the clandestine arts: be so mind numbingly obvious that no one would notice.
“Who’s that dude floating up there?” one frat guy asked, pointing to Nuklear Man, who was hovering directly over a completely flat and otherwise empty field across from the frat house. The meadow was barren of anything even approximating cover.
Nuklear Man, being a self-taught master sniper, waved at them.
“Wah?” another from the group of frat boys inquired.
“Beer, beer beer, beer,” the third interpreted.
“Ohhhh. He looks kinda like beer to me.”
“Beer doesn’t float.”
“Wah?”
Nuklear Man made several mental notes about his quarry. A: they wore primitive capes by tying sweaters around their necks and B: they were pretty boys. So naturally, C: they were young heroes in need of a mentor. And finally, D: he was that mentor.
“Never mind. The dude’s gone now.”
“Wah? No beer? That sucks.”
“Hello, fellow school-chums!” Nuklear Man heartily bellowed while stepping out from behind a bush to the group’s left. Thanks to his Nuklear Speed, the Hero had rushed to the nearest Gorge clothing store, “borrowed” the fashions his test subjects were displaying, and put them on in mid-flight on the way back. The whole trip took less than one second. He could now blend into their natural environment and be accepted into the community for further study. He would then take over the world. How that last part was supposed to work out was still a bit sketchy, but thinking about it now would only slow him down!
“Wah?” they said.
“Er,” Nuklear Man explained. Ha! That was close, but thanks to my good ol’ Nuklear Brain Power, disaster was adverted.
“Dude?” one said to Nuklear Man. “You gonna come outta those bushes?”
“Wah?”
“Dammit. Beer beer beer, beer.”
“Ohhh. Maybe he’s pukin’ in the bushes. From lack of beer.”
“No, my hearty and loyal classmates. I was merely, um, checking the bushes. Yes, you see. Perfectly natural. I’m a, um, a bush inspector.”
The frat trio st
ared at him with blank visages for several seconds before breaking into laughter. “Dude. That. Is so. Awesome!” they said at last.
“You rock, man!”
“Wah?”
“Beer, beer beer, beer liquor.”
“Ohh. That is so. Awesome! I wish I thoughta that.”
“This dude is like a genius or something.”
“Yes, well, we can’t all be Nuklear—” his eyes flashed in horror. “That is, I meant, um. You know, Nuke. Lear.” Whew. Nuklear Brain Power 2, Weakling Humans 0.
“This dude rocks, man!”
“Hey, what house are you from, dude?”
“Oh. Um. Yeah. I’m from, the uh, just down the, over by the building with windows and roof. With cars sometimes. Next to a road?”
“Wah?”
“Beer beer.”
“Ohhh. I think he’s not drunk enough to talk good.”
“Naw, dude. What house are you from? You know, the letters.”
The Hero racked his brain for every iota of knowledge he possessed that pertained to the Greek alphabet. Coming up with nothing at all, he faked it. “I Phelta Thi?”
“Oh, yeah. Sure.”
“Didn’t they have that, like, party uh, before?”
“Wah?”
Truly, the Hero was a mental titan among these trolls. Nuklear Man beamed pride from his intellectual triumph. Unfortunately, due to the unique nature of the Hero’s relationship with energy, this beaming of pride produced a focused and entirely unconscious Beaming of Plazma that destroyed every car in the frat house’s parking lot due to a lot of chain reaction explosions.
Hm, maybe they didn’t notice, he thought as debris rained down upon them. Best just to play it off. “So. How about that university sanctioned sports team? That particular rival establishment of learning doesn’t stand a chance on the field and/or court when next we face them in a match,” Nuklear Man said through a nervous smile while trying to pretend he hadn’t just obliterated a dozen BMWs. Small bits of flaming wreckage skittered around their feet.
“Wah?” the frat kid turned to the inferno that was their parking lot. “I had beer in my car.” He seemed to quadruple in size.
“We all had beer in our cars,” another growled. “How else are we supposed to make the five minute drive from here to campus? Sober? While driving? I think not.”
“Eheh. Well, that probably explains why they all exploded. Well, that and my random Plazma Beam, but I think, overall, when we look at the evidence, that played a relatively minor part in all this.”
“Get him!” A mob of frat boys stormed from the flame-licked house like the invasion of Normandy.
Nuklear Man proudly held them at bay while screaming “Eeek!” like a small frightened girl and flying away as fast as his Nuklear Power could carry him. He breached the atmosphere in a matter of seconds.
They may have uncovered my little bush inspector ruse, but I’ll be back. And this time, I’ll have the benefit of my impenetrable cunning! I’ll just give ‘em a few years to cool down. But then, they better be on the lookout! He soared back to the Silo as a beam of golden energy.
__________
Atomik Lad sat hunched hunched on the steps outside Wayne Hall. He stared half-numbly at his History Paper while waiting for Rachel to show up.
“Something wrong, Sparky?” Rachel asked as she stepped from the clean glass doors of her dorm.
Atomik Lad immediately sat up at the sound of her voice and the back of his mind hoped that his damn spandex hadn’t given anything away. “I seem to vaguely remember something that had troubled me at some indeterminate point in the distant past.” She smiled as she neared him. “But it seems to have gone. Hungry?”
“Foooood,” she said in a zombie-like monotone.
“I like a girl with an appetite,” he said as she dragged him down the stairs.
“I see,” she said with a leer.
Atomik Lad instantly flushed. “Er. It’s just the spandex. Really. I mean, not that you, I. Um.” He was sweating profusely at this point.
She stopped them, looked him square in the eyes and pronounced him. “Silly boy.” Again, she took to dragging him by the sleeve to the nearest food place. “Now c’mon, I’m starving.”
“Me too.”
__________
Nuklear Man zoomed down the Silo and smashed through his Danger: Nukie’s Room door, leaving a circular hole through the middle of it. The rim glowed white from Nuklear Man’s intensely hot Plazma Aura.
The Nukebots sighed. “Why, why were we programmed to perceive stupidity?” Nukebot Alpha inquired.
Nukebot Beta shrugged.
Pookaboo, after uselessly puttering around the floor on its side, finally managed to stand upright after a complex procedure involving a stool the details of which are not fit for print. “Finally!” Dr. Menace exclaimed. She hunched in front of her giant, overly complex computer display once more. Pookaboo obeyed her every joystick command.
Nuklear Man peeked through the new hole in his door. “Lousy Sparky. Always breakin’ my stuff and blamin’ it on me.” His eyes darted back and forth. “When not being here.”
“Atomik Lad did not break your door, Nuklear Man,” Danger: Computer Lady informed him.
“Oh, what do you know, omniscient computer thingie? Never you mind these mortal matters, oh mysterious voice from the heavens!”
“I’m not from the heavens, I’m from speakers arranged in key acoustic points in every room of the Silo in order to maintain—”
“Oh please! Do not smite me, Great One! I will make a mighty Danger: Sacrifice in your honor!” He eyed the Danger: Nukebots hungrily. “A mighty Danger: Sacrifice indeed.”
“What iz that boob prattling on about?” the Venomous Villainess hissed into her computer display. Pookaboo, the inhumanly evil Fubar doll, observed Nuklear Man from behind the Danger: Couch as he continued to rave.
Danger: Computer Lady, with the help of an introduction into the history of electronics, a video presentation describing the theory behind basic computer operations, a discourse on the world’s religions, several commentaries concerning the existence of God, an in-depth discussion of the Book of Job, philosophical discussions concerning the nature of good and evil, and a puppet show presented by the Nukebots featuring such colorful characters as Digital Danny, Nietzsche, Moses, Buddha, Alan Turing, Nikola Tesla, and Charles Babbage, instructed Nuklear Man on the finer points of why Danger: Computer Lady was not a deity. At the end of this epic of education, Nuklear Man blinked dumbly at the players.
“So.” He ventured, “Danger: Computer Lady is not a god?”
“Yes,” she, the Nukebots, and Dr. Menace answered simultaneously.
“Therefore,” Nuklear Man said for the first time. “God is a computer!”
The Nukebots collapsed, Pookaboo fell over backwards, Dr. Menace flopped from her Evil: Chair, and Danger: Computer Lady would have toppled had she the capacity to do so.
__________
Rachel and Atomik Lad sat at a table in the crowded Campus Center, a home for fast food franchises to overcharge students for something resembling food. They stuffed their faces between bits of conversation.
Rachel wiped her hands with her thoroughly-used napkin and flipped through Atomik Lad’s History Paper. She made an effort to swallow the last of her meal before commenting, “Redistribution of wealth to the masses, using advanced communications technologies for a true democracy, a practically invisible government. This is awfully ambitious, John.”
“Dr. Volcano said the same thing.”
“It’s also next to impossible, you know.”
Atomik Lad sighed. “He wasn’t as optimistic on that point.”
“People are just too, I don’t know. Stupid, greedy, and paranoid for this kind of thing.”
“All they have to do is cooperate. Is that such a hard thing to do? Serving everyone’s best interest is often in the best interest of the individual. There’s such a thing as enlightened self-intere
st, after all. That’s basically what I was trying to propose. Under this system, artists would be free from labor to do their real work, people would become doctors or lawyers, not for money, but for the love and passion of helping people. Politics wouldn’t be corrupt because there’d be no money for them to steal and very little power for them to abuse. Companies wouldn’t waste time cheating the competition and choking airwaves with pointless and expensive advertisements that mean nothing and waste all our time. Those resources could be better spent researching and discovering new technologies by combining their efforts instead of trying to outdo one another. The arts and sciences would flourish, humankind could reach for the stars!”
“It’s noble, but it won’t happen.”
Atomik Lad sunk in his chair.
“I’m sorry.”
“I know. It’s just that everyone I know – Norman, Nuke, the Minimum Wage guys, Dr. Genius, even little Angus – we’re all doing everything we can to help all of y—everyone. It’s not that bad, really, I guess. I mean sure, sometimes I wish I was just some normal shmoe, but you don’t have to be overpowered to make the world a better place.”
Rachel crossed her arms and gave Atomik Lad The Look.
“Er?”
“‘Normal shmoes’ huh?”
“You know what I mean.”
The Look dissolved. “Yes. But, Sparky. You can’t expect such selfless action from billions of normal people who would rather cut you off in traffic and nearly cause a wreck than, heaven forbid, slightly inconvenience themselves and slow down just a little to let one more car in front of them. I think they like the competition of it all.”
“But we’re not in competition with one another. This is like a sinking ship, we’re all in this together.”
“Maybe, but someone’s got to be at the front of the line to the lifeboats.”
__________
Issue 27 – A Cult Above the Rest
Atomik Lad walked Rachel to her Megaeconomics class. The trip was taking longer than one would expect because he wanted to leave her presence about as much as she wanted to attend the hellish class of arcane theories that made no sense to anyone.
Nuklear Age Page 26