Nuklear Age

by Clevinger, Brian

  “That does it!”

  Shiro pulled his helmet down to hide from the ensuing devastation that was sure to follow.

  “DWARF-A—” KLONG “...What?!”

  Norman had magnetized Angus’ Iron: Battlesuit to his tungsten leg so the Dwarven Warrior couldn’t budge. “Settle down. I was just messing with you.” He released the magnetic vice grip and Angus fell onto his armored arse again.

  “Bah. Kilts ain’t nothin to be jokin’ around about. Ye laddies today don’t have respect. Back in my day—”

  “Waiting is now,” Shiro interrupted. “Essence of time, like the hour glass that fading. Eleven o’clock.”

  “Hm,” Norman said. He inspected his Magno: Watch. His face twisted in disappointment. “Man, this thing hasn’t worked right ever since that Chrono-Dork fooled with it before Nukie’s party.”

  Angus checked his Iron: Watch. “Aye, its eleven. We needs to get a move on if we’re meetin’ Atomik Laddie an’ Rachel at the maall, it’s on the other side o’ town.”

  “Letting those who is us now to be rolling!” Shiro declared.

  “What are ye talkin’ about? We walked here.”

  “Hai,” he answered with a proud bow.

  “Ye could at least make sense when ye ain’t makin’ sense!”

  __________

  A huge iron door slid to one side, cutting a blade of light deep into the darkness. The wound opened wide until it boomed to a stop. Two shadows invaded the rectangle of light that had been thrown against the dusty floor. One slender, moving like liquid; the other seemingly carved from marble. They stepped through the doorway, the smaller figure reaching straight out to one side, her hand resting on a panel set against the inner wall. Tiny positive sounding beeps echoed through the immense structure. The beeps terminated and the great door rushed shut with an impact reverberating through the complex. The blackness persisted for a second or two before a collection of lamps some twenty feet overhead flickered into illuminated life. Only the areas around Evil: Projects in various stages of design, production, and testing were well lit. The intervening distance between them was like the dark of space.

  Nihel surveyed the Evil: Lair’s contents with several sweeps of his cold gray eyes. “Fascinating.” He walked into the vast warehouse like an archaeologist entering a perfectly preserved ancient city.

  “Yez, well. I do what I can.”

  “Then you do it quite well,” Nihel said while walking deeper into the catacombs.

  “I’m sorry if the decor izn’t to your liking. I am a villain, you know. I have certain standardz I’m suppozed to adhere to for the sake of appearances,” Dr. Menace apologized while following him inside.

  “I know how that is,” he said while surveying the various Evil: Equipment scattered throughout the Evil: Lair.

  “But why, not that I’m complaining of courze, why did you chooze to vizit thiz area of the city firzt?”

  Nihel turned to face Dr. Menace as he walked among her creations. “Simple. It is well documented in the Great Disk that your Metroville is the greatest civic accomplishment of your people. I was curious to see its wonders first hand. I decided to begin in the most decrepit area possible and then work my way up to its population and business centers. Any suggestions?”

  “I’d say the mall, but you should be quick about it. It’z hell to go there once all the annoying little high zchool bratz start running around.”

  “The mall. Yes. That’s such a perfect slice of your bland Earthim consumer culture. I wouldn’t think you much of a frequenter of one, though.”

  Dr. Menace grinned. “The closezt RadioHutt iz there. It iz an anarchizt’s bezt friend.”

  “And here I thought you wished to change the world. Instead, I find a mere anarchist?”

  “Deztroy the prezent society and anarchy reignz. The people, lozt, alone, afraid, they will want a strong, charizmatic leader to tell them what to do. If a temporary anarchy servez to further my inevitable domination, then so be it. I will not shy away.”

  “Ruthless.” He approached the remains of the Evil: Negaflux Super Charging Chamber. Dr. Menace hadn’t removed it after Superion’s rampage a month previous.

  Nihel crossed his arms and scrutinized the remains of the bulky device and its exposed innards with a piercing stare. What parts remained intact suddenly disassembled themselves. The machine unraveled into its component pieces which then hung in mid-air like some kind of technical diagram brought to life.

  “Hm,” Nihel said. “This is, or rather was, some sort of Intrinsity Transformer, yes? It could imbue a subject with a vast array of powers based on the theory of Intrinsic Negation Field Force Manipulation.” He examined a few parts more closely.

  “Temporarily at any rate.”

  “Yez, but how did you...?”

  The pieces reassembled themselves into the fractured whole once more. “I take it, by the unfortunate state of the device, that you were not able to compensate for the extreme psychological trauma engendered by the process.”

  “Correct.”

  “And also, due to your overall stable demeanor, it was not you who served as the test subject.”

  “Correct again. But how did you know?”

  “Not all civilizations welcomed the message of peace and learning that the Galactic Council carried between the stars,” Nihel said. “Similar devices were constructed to form an invincible army to be unleashed against the Core Worlds of the Council, especially Zurai. Unfortunately, they met with results similar to yours, only more widespread. They destroyed their own planet before they could ever wage their war against Zurai. The army, though insane to the last soldier, was functionally invincible even while floating uselessly in space. That is, until their powers ran dry without any more sessions in their Transformers. A Council ship investigating the planetary explosion found a prototype of the device, remains of documents concerning the invasion and other evidence on a colony or moon or some such. Devices such as this one have been forbidden within Council boundaries, as is understandable.”

  “I see. And juzt how do you know all thiz?”

  “Well, Arel and I built the things of course.”

  “Ah.”

  Nihel’s eyes seemed to glaze with nostalgia. “Scourge of the Territories, we were.” His gaze returned to the inside-out machine. “It is remarkable that you could build one. According to the Great Disk, the limited level of available technologies and your world’s rudimentary understanding of Intrinsity should’ve made it practically impossible for you to construct this.”

  “I had to invent mozt of the theory az I went along. But I am still uncertain of the nature of thiz dizk you keep referring to. What you told me about it on our walk here seems contradictory. For inztance, the dizk seems to contain incredible information about human hiztory up until our modern era, but you claim that it is an ancient relic.”

  “Yes. The ‘copyright date’ indicates it was made nearly eleven years ago when compared to the current date broadcast by your behemoth media structure as I entered Earthim space.”

  “Exactly,” Dr. Menace said. “Yet you claim that thiz dizk waz found many thouzands of yearz ago on a small planet called Zurai on the other side of the galaxy. A planet inhabited by an intelligent yet primitive race of people conztantly at war with one another over petty concernz zuch az land and ideology.”

  “Yes. And from that Disk, the ancient people of Zurai learned your language, your history, and eventually your technology. They supposed it a message from their gods. A message showing them what would happen if they continued their petty, self-serving, and ultimately self-destructive ways. Plagues, famine, endless war, strife, a society drowning in its own empty accumulation of meaningless objects and material wealth while starving the mind and soul into a gray apathy to distract themselves from the ever-present threat of utter annihilation that they brought upon themselves from their own fear and hatred of one another.”

  “And so they uzed our way of life as a counter-
example of everything a society should be. With a jumpztart on technology and moralz, they swept acrozz their world, and then the stars, with a mezzage of harmony.” She shook her head. “It sounds too good to be true.”

  “And yet it is true. To this day, every sentient being within the Galactic Territories is taught at least a rudimentary understanding of the Disk, its language, history, perhaps some literature and philosophy. But always, always they teach the horrors it reveals about a race of people making every mistake along the road of their cultural development. Some call it fright tactics, but it’s kept peace throughout the Council for thousands of years. Outside of the occasional bout of civil unrest, or attempted invasion, or twisted soul such as I, of course. It served the people of Zurai and the Eastern half of the Milky Way much as your own so-called myths served your Earthim societies.”

  “The only difference being that you liztened.”

  “Yes.”

  Dr. Menace shook her head. “Still, I do not underztand. If the human race were to send such a mezzage acrozz the cozmos, we would not be capable of such a feat for centuriez, perhapz another millennia, hopefully one involving lezz hype. So why would a human society from the future send extenzive documentation of the prezent Earth to an alien civilization tenz of thouzandz of yearz in the pazt on the other side of the galaxy?”

  Nihel shrugged while examining yet another piece of Evil: Equipment. “You Earthim are an odd lot. Maybe your future selves wished to warn other civilizations of the horrors they would likely face and took preventative measures in the hopes of maturing their enemies beyond the primal need for empty ambitions and self-defeating competition ages before ever encountering them. Maybe this era of your own history proved to most apt at providing examples of what not to do.”

  “Soundz far-fetched, but I suppoze that could be it.”

  Nihel let out a laugh, like he had uncovered some secret folly that amused him.

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, moving on to a model of the Evil: Negaflux Earth Movers that were supposed to relocate Antarctica to tropical waters and flood every coastal city in the world if not for the bungling interference of that blasted Nuklear Dolt. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I suppose the news is still new to my mind. But it’s impossible.”

  “I admit that it waz stretching thingz, but I wouldn’t say it iz impozzible for future humans to send an object across time and space. Ezpecially given that I am talking to an alien.”

  “No, it’s not that.” He looked at the Defusionizer Cannon. “Interesting.”

  She sat at her Evil: Computer and leaned one arm on the console. Her fingers idly played with a few keys. “That iz my Nega Cannon,” she explained. “It uzes my theoriez of Negaflux fieldz to inject a target with counter-productive Intrinzity and then stabilizez the rezulting matrix.”

  The cannon was torn apart, its myriad pieces suspended as Nihel walked around them with intent stares given to several vital areas. “Causing the subject to be in a sort of suspended animation? Indefinitely, it would seem.”

  “Yez, until another blazt neutralizez the effectz of the firzt. I uzed it to capture my rogue, though it waz originally intended to strike down my archnemeziz Nuklear Man by nullifying hiz powerz from the inzide.”

  “Ah,” he answered only half-listening. “Did you know that with only a few alterations, this device could be engineered to utterly obliterate anything it fired upon? Simply increase the degree to which the target’s Intrinsity is canceled until you reach the critical point and its erased from reality instead of merely frozen in place. Amazing.”

  “Yez, well. That izn’t terribly moral. I am evil, not cruel.”

  “I’ve seen warships with less destructive force,” Nihel said. “Honestly. And yet this tiny weapon could destroy them all, given a suitable power source. The energy input is really the only limitation to this weapon’s destructive potential.”

  “But back to the matter at hand, why would it be impozzible for future humanz to send the dizk?”

  “Oh, it’s quite simple,” he reassembled the cannon in an instant. “I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but at this point I don’t see that it’ll really matter. You see, this galaxy will be destroyed long before these Earthim of the future have the chance to exist. So they’ll never send it.”

  “Why iz thiz?” her hand casually made for a button on her Evil: Computer Console. Stand still for me, my stranger. No sudden movements.

  “Well, you see,” he answered. “We have found Arel.” He smiled triumphantly. “We found him. And once he is back in our fold, we will do as we were designed.”

  “Arel?”

  “Yes. Arel.”

  “What iz an Arel?”

  He smiled. “Power. More to the point, the power to give us power.”

  “I do not underztand.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to. Suffice it to say that, celestial politics being what they are, there are those of us who are trapped with a fate that we cannot escape. Or rather, that we are not meant to escape.

  “There are two basic kinds of power in the universe. Power over reality and power over destiny. What you would identify as gods have the former, whereas you mortals have the latter. That’s the only distinction between us. That’s it. It’s something cruel you know, to be given so much physical power and yet be unable to exercise even an iota of it of your own free will.

  “It’s one thing if you’re at least given the choice. Power or free will? Odin had the choice, and he damned us all with his ambitions and the madness it infected him with. He chose and sealed all our fates!” Nihel had become livid, every sentence was punctuated by sharp, quick gestures. “But at least he made a choice! It’s quite another thing when even that, the most basic and fundamental choice—power or free will—is made for you! Can you imagine grasping the reins of the universe, shaking the very loom of the fabrics of reality and not being able to do a damn thing with it!”

  Dr. Menace tried to answer.

  “No! You do not! You have no idea what you’ve been given. We do.” He panted. “We do.” Eyes closed, a long breath in and out of his nose. Nihel spoke again. “Most of us accept their fate as just that. Fate. A few deny it. Odin, for instance, has been driven mad in his quest for knowledge, his vain attempt to find some great cosmic loop hole. But there are those of us, namely Arel, his patron, and myself, who fight it. You see, it’s all rather simple. He is Arel, the true name of fire. Why he hadn’t thought of it sooner...well, he must’ve. Probably just endured his tortures to bide his time until Arel could become manifest when no one was watching. When Fate assumed its course had been irreversibly set. Yes. Arel is living flame. In a purely material sense, his power is difficult to comprehend.”

  Dr. Menace, feeling that her guest had wound down enough to allow her to interrupt, did. “How so?”

  “He is fueled by every fire in the galaxy. One star would have been an incredible source, a being of legends. But all of them? To have your very essence surging with the eternal power of every star of a galaxy? Could you even begin to understand the sheer scope of it?” His eyes were far away, his voice dripping with respect and awe. “But no lesser power could fulfill his destiny. Nothing less could destroy the galaxy and overthrow Fate. And it is this, this which is Arel’s true power. And it is without limit.”

  “And juzt where did you find thiz Arel of yourz?”

  “Here, among you Erthim. Ironic, that the one thing which will tear the galaxy into cosmic ribbons is found on the one world which united it in the first place.” He let out another laugh. “And to think that you Earthim have been utterly ignorant of your roles as both the mother and the destroyer of a mighty civilization that spans the stars you only dream of.” A bitter laugh. “Fate is truly mad.”

  Keep him talking. Juzt a moment longer while the senzors lock on. “I find it difficult to believe that a being of that much power could be on Earth for any amount of time without it being dizcovered or expl
oited in zome way.”

  “You needn’t look far, Dr. Menace, for Arel has been with your people for some time now. You may even know of him. I witnessed his visage on several of your media broadcasts during my brief examination of your culture while in transit. He wears my emblem upon his chest.”

  She knew before he had finished speaking. “Nuklear Man,” she gasped. “That’s Nuklear Man’s symbol.”

  “The thorn in your side, eh? This becomes more and more interwoven, almost as though someone is behind it all,” the last bit more to himself than Menace. “At any rate, it is a shame you didn’t get to use your Nega Cannon against him. Perhaps it would not be taking my lieutenants so long to collect him.”

  Nuklear Man, some mysterious disk containing incredible amounts of information concerning Earth, Arel, this Nihel, the electron-orbited N zymbol, ten years ago...Nuklear Man. “Wait. Can you,” her fingers fumbled in the air for a second. “Can you show me what it lookz like? The dizk. Surely you’ve zeen it.”

  “Of course. Its contents have been the basis of Zurai’s culture for millennia.” He summoned up the expansive and mostly uncleaned warehouse’s supply of dust and coalesced the tiny particles into a rotating three dimensional model. It looked something like two dinner plates placed together so their bottoms faced out. “Would you prefer color?”

  “No. That won’t be necezzary,” she said in a whisper. “That iz one of Überdyne’z Social Readjuztment Devices.”

  “Oh?”

  “They were librariez of information about specific societies. We would give them to severe amnesiacz who would participate with the interactive holographic interface until they remembered their pazt. It had a dictionary, several sets of encyclopedia, scientific articles, hiztory, philozophy. The idea waz that the patient would become so immerzed in the pazt that it might unlock memoriez of when the information waz firzt learned and from thoze beginningz, one could start to piece together one’z forgotten life.”