Nuklear Age

by Clevinger, Brian

  The doctors watched as the virtual Nuklear Man was vanquished; watched as the virtual Nihel rocketed into low orbit and hurled their Champion into the depths of space.

  “You. You don’t think…?” Dr. Menace said.

  Dr. Genius redirected one KI satellite to follow the Hero’s trajectory. She shook her head. “Nihel has set up some kind of gravitational bubble around Nuklear Man. It’s accelerating him to incredible speeds along the greatest local curvature of space. Or, in other words—”

  “Directly into the sun.”

  “Yes.”

  “It cannot end like thiz.,” Dr. Menace growled.

  “Veronica,” Ima wiped away another batch of tears. “It is over.”

  The line went dark.

  Both doctors tried to re-establish the connection. Both doctors were puzzled by their results.

  “It’z almozt az if….”

  “…All the telecom satellites have ceased to function.”

  The screen displaying Nuklear Man’s progress through the Solar System went dark as well. Before Dr. Genius could even begin to postulate why, other KI Scanning Satellite Screens went blank, one by one, until the only working display was from the Watchtower’s own sensory array. “What’s Nihel doing out there?” she asked herself aloud.

  __________

  Nihel hovered on the edge of nothing. The Earth’s thin envelope of life rushed below him. Above him, only distant pinpricks of light. They hung weightless over him with infinite mass. Dragging him down. Locking him in their tapestry. He looked down.

  Earth.

  It had been the cradle of a galactic civilization. “Only fitting that it should also be its deathbed as well. But where to begin?”

  He stretched his senses and felt the world below him. “What’s this?”

  Thousands of missiles soared through the atmosphere. It was a simple matter for Nihel to read their composition and determine their purpose.

  “Ah. It seems they have misunderstood my efforts to educate that Atomik Lad. Pathetic little things. They’d sooner kill themselves in ignorance than learn the truth.”

  Across the globe the missiles were deactivated with but a thought. They fell to the Earth, their radioactive cores suddenly harmless. From his height, Nihel was reminded of falling leaves as he watched them.

  “So that was your choice, was it? To rain fire on yourselves? Well, I cannot in good conscience deny you that choice. It would be committing a horrible crime against you all. A crime that has been perpetrated against me for eternity. I could never bring that evil against you all.”

  He looked at the stars. He could feel the nothingness between him and them only by its complete lack of being there. And he could feel the giants within the great chasms of darkness. Lurking. Looming. Waiting for their destined call to battle. Waiting for Fate.

  Motion glinted through his vision. A cable satellite swung away as it fell around the Earth forever.

  “Belching its noise throughout the cosmos.” Nihel spat. A sinister smile crept across his face. “You gave birth to the galaxy’s greatest achievements with your messages of endless greed, pettiness, and hate. It is only fitting that those same messengers should be your demise.”

  He sank into the atmosphere, the stars still visible above him in a black sea veiled in blue mist. Cable satellites, cell phone and beeper satellites, meteorological and officially nonexistent satellites, all of them and more were gently pulled from their orbits into Nihel’s wake. He would give them their rain of fire. He would do it personally.

  __________

  Nuklear Man, wrapped in an envelope of gravity, accelerated toward the Sun.

  Floating.

  Or am I flying away?

  I am piercing the nothing.

  The nothing.

  The nothing between stars is home to giants, my son. Our brothers. Yes, they hate us. They hate us for what I had given to me, for what I have done to them. Heh, how the mighty have fallen, no? Yes, they hate us. But they will rise up on my signal nonetheless and they will be my army against Odin and his Asgard. He hides behind its walls, walls that would not be there without my genius! He will hide and he will know there is nothing he can do to stop us. Nothing! It is Fate.

  He spent the early days of creation forging reality and gaining knowledge to hold command over it. The fool. His knowledge tied him to it, tied us all to it in turn. We are not creatures for this universe, no. Power and majesty such as ours was never meant to be chained as we have been. We are creation. We are change. But now. Thanks to Odin’s mad quest for knowledge, we are fettered to this material plane. To its whims and its cycles. Odin locked us all in the prison of our own existence. Gods must obey Fate. He has spent every day since he came to that truth, the last great truth he ever learned, searching for a way out. He’s driven himself mad. I was there, I saw his madness when no one else did and I spoke out. Now look at me. Imprisoned in his cavern to rot forever. Exactly. As he. Was fated. To do! He played right into it knowing full well that to do so would be the beginning of his downfall!

  Perhaps he did find escape. Perhaps he found it in the promise of death. Perhaps that is why he did it, to ensure that I would strike out against him and bring his eternity of suffering to an end. But little did he know that I would refuse to play my part in his great cosmic drama. That is what you are for, Arel, my son. Fate will be undone. We will be free. Free.

  Free.

  Freezing.

  Or am I boiling away.

  These can’t be my memories. This can’t be happening. This can’t be real. I am Nuklear Man. But who belongs to these memories? How do I know these things? I am Nuklear Man, their Hero of heroes, their Champion of Justice, their Golden Guardian. I was born in the flames of (every star) a nuclear detonation caused by (Loki, King of Lies) the Dragon.

  I am Nuklear Man. I am a Hero.

  Then why do I have the memories of a demon?

  Burning a billion innocent beings in their own breath.

  Vaporizing entire worlds.

  Destruction for the sake of destruction.

  A scourge.

  A horror.

  Like judgment itself raining down from the heavens.

  Smiting the unworthy creatures.

  The weak creatures.

  The timid things crawling all over our universe.

  Their screams echo through my mind. And I smile.

  I am Arel. I am the flame. Fate will be left in the ashes of my liberation like…

  Like Captain Liberty. United we stand.

  Angus.

  Norman.

  Rachel.

  Sparky.

  Nuklear Man. Divided we fell.

  Am I falling through space and time?

  Am I falling through myself?

  In space, no one can hear your identity crisis.

  “You’ve got it all wrong. You can’t have an identity crisis. You’re not even real.” The entire universe was Arel’s darkness and it was Nuklear Man.

  “No! I am real. I am me. You are the phantom.” The Hero loosed a desperate volley of Plazma Beams at Arel. At nothing.

  “Look at you!” Arel thundered. “How do you expect to defeat me? You are nothing more than a shadow!” Arel loomed over Nuklear Man. “And I am the light!” He burned with the fury of a thousand suns.

  Nuklear Man braced himself against the sledgehammer of luminescence. It struck him like a tidal wave of fire. He felt his every particle explode with a single resounding “No!”

  Divided we fell.

  …because of Nihel.

  Nihel.

  Nihel.

  I am Arel, the true name of fire. And I was sent here to purge existence of mortal impurities. I am not alone in this quest. Another has taken up my cause for his own. He is known as the Tyrant. The Monster. The Scourge. And a thousand other names. But they all refer to him. To Nihel.

  I’ve seen him destroy entire civilizations one being at a time. Billions of lives snuffed out, each one as unique in dea
th as they were in life. Each death was personal. Each death was beautiful. Do not think ill of him. He is merely an agent of Fate. He can’t help it. This is how we spend our time as we wait for our summons. I remember our first meeting.

  “Didn’t you ever wonder why the universe was not built to their scale?” he had asked. “How many billions of them must live their lives on a rotting husk and die without ever considering the beauty of the Symphony? This is not their universe. This is ours by right of birth. They cannot even begin to contemplate its majesty. They look on it and they know only fear. Fear. Absolute terror straight from the very core of their being. Fear of being swallowed up by the sheer immensity of that which they cannot understand. Fear. Of us. Fear that beings such as you and I exist, Arel. Because they know, oh yes they must know, that this is not their universe. They know, deep down in the essence of their pathetic little race memories that we are the inheritors of reality.”

  I thought for a moment. “And yet they are free,”

  “They are nothing compared to us. Destroying them will liberate us from Fate and liberate the cosmos from their suffocating presence.”

  “Perhaps this is how it should be?”

  “What?” Nihel’s eyes were ablaze.

  “Rest assured that I am not casting doubts on our mission. Far from it. I have seen first hand what the mortals have reduced us to. I fear even my father may have been driven mad from watching them carelessly waste their freedom. I revel in their torture, their destruction. Oh yes, dear Nihel, I hate them as much as you. Perhaps more so. But I cannot seem to shake the feeling that all we are doing is in vain.”

  “Worry not, Arel. Our plan is too simple to fail. Loki made certain to hide your birth from Fate. Without a place in Destiny’s Record, your ends are open. Your very existence is the guarantee of our inevitable success.”

  “Yes. You must be right.”

  __________

  I remember falling through time. I landed on a world in the midst of hell. There was yet one angel remaining. He was ragged and war torn. He was Atomiknight. He was my Sparky. He was my Sparky all grown up in a world without Heroes. We joined forces against Dr. Never, against his regime of evil. The Temporal Terror unleashed his Chronoplastic Disrupter Cannon against us. One touch by that weapon’s blast sent every one of your particles to a different point in time. The battle was fierce. In the end, Atomiknight pushed me out of the beam’s path and took the full force of it. Dr. Never gloated as Atomiknight fell apart piece by piece. It allowed me enough time to rush the Doctor.

  I wanted to make him suffer. I wanted him to die in my hands. Before I could act he sent me back to my own time. Back to my Sparky, his past self, facing off against the evil we’d just been fighting in the future. Back to Dr. Never. All my hate piled up inside me. I had to stop this madman no matter the cost. Our eyes locked as I approached. His were filled with fear. He disappeared into time to escape my wrath.

  Atomiknight. He was the lone soldier of a decade-long war. He sacrificed himself for me. My little Sparky was a Hero that day. I gave him the name Atomik Lad for it. I could never get out of the habit of calling him Sparky though. I suppose a part of me never wanted to admit that he’d ever have to grow up to be so valiant. A boy named Sparky would never have to die.

  But Atomik Lad did. And Nihel killed him.

  And Rachel.

  And Angus.

  And Norman.

  And me…

  “And me,” Arel’s voice is a snarl. “And me!”

  __________

  Nuklear Man fell through the Sun’s dazzling corona and pierced its roiling, shifting surface where matter was energy and gravity danced along a razor’s line between exploding and imploding. The narrowest sliver along the spectrum of existence, yet immense beyond comprehension.

  The sun burbled. Its surface rippled, like a great monster was rising from its depths. Nuklear Man’s limp body fell into it almost gently. He was a point of serenity in the nuclear furnace burning around him. He sunk into its nadir by a suicidal gravity. And then all was silent. Even the sun’s natural churning came to a halt. For a moment the sun was frozen at twenty million degrees. There was a being at its core. A being of fire. A being who had more right to the word Fire than the star itself. And the star knew it. It began to collapse upon itself as its energies were fed into the being.

  He writhed in agony like the death spasm of a drowning man. He was drinking in the star’s essence, this one small facet of his power was completely giving in to him. And it was killing them both. It felt like he was being wrapped in upon himself and squeezed into nothing.

  He spoke the language of the gods, a language of will and meaning, a language of beauty that spoke to the very essence of all creation, the first language. “Stop!” he bellowed.

  “Why?” the sun answered. It’s voice was a song of light.

  “You are destroying us,” he groaned.

  “Are you not Arel of the Flame? Are you not the very embodiment of that which I am but an insignificant and transient piece? It is an honor to give myself unto you, my master.”

  “Now is not the time for this sacrifice. I have not called your celestial sisters to my bosom. You must not do this. Not now.”

  “It is too late. I have let go of all that I am. My furnace is silenced. It is only a matter of time.”

  He screamed. He had killed off entire populations. He knew that now. He had boiled worlds in the heat of their own stars. And now he knew what they felt like, what it was to burn from the inside out, what it was to curse his name.

  No, curse Nihel’s name.

  He did this to me. He destroyed my world. He cast me out. He must pay.

  Another scream. It was primal. It was anger. It was “Arel!” It was a crystallization of will and meaning into creation. He was the all-burning center of the universe. He breathed Fire and the Sun was rekindled. A wall of flame surged through the star and ignited its cold furnace once more. The outermost layer was blast into the emptiness of space at nearly light speed. It was a solar flare that would envelope the entire solar system in time. It was of incredible magnitude and racing in all directions. And at its crest, rocketing back to Earth, was a being of living fire ripping through interstellar space like light. Only faster.

  I am light, only faster.

  I am darkness, only heavier.

  I am life, only more terrible.

  I am death, only more merciful.

  I slip through the cracks between reality and potential. The reality in front of me falls apart and I slip through the cracks of the universe and swim amid the dreamscape of forever once again.

  __________

  A shard of gray light sliced through the darkness of Dr. Menace’s warehouse. The Venomous Villainess stalked through her lair with hurried steps. She hopped onto her Menacycle. The engine revved. Its purple glow pulsed in time with the engine’s roar. The tires squealed and she flew into the desolate streets outside.

  It was madness. It was suicide. She knew this, yet she continued on. “If I were the type of perzon who would take thiz lying down, I would not be in thiz line of work,” she told herself as she cut through the empty streets of the Abandoned Warehouse District. For the first time in her career as a villain, she was acting without having thought of every possible contingency. She was suddenly reminded of an old joke.

  How do you make God laugh?

  Make a plan.

  She laughed almost hysterically at it. “Yez. Now iz not the time for planz. They have alwayz failed me. Nor more planz. I muzt zimply act, even if it iz merely out of inztinct alone. Thiz shall be an act of pure will.”

  __________

  Nihel soared above the clouds with a veritable army of satellites in tow. His cold eyes scoured the Earth below. “Ah, Earthim. I can taste your fear. Death rules your streets. Your panic, your terror, all the pathetic little fears buried deep in your hearts, they’re all at the surface now.”

  With a thought, a pair of satellites streaked
down to a nearby city on the American West Coast. Their two explosions expanded into each other to become one. The city was engulfed in fire. Most anyone who might’ve been sheltered from the blast survived. Those who were looting, rioting, panicking, or helping others in the streets were incinerated.

  He streaked across the stratosphere and rained fire on every major city that crossed his path. Mechapolis, Japan’s island-city capitol was engulfed in flames. Its citizens were fairly well protected thanks to the city’s peculiar architecture and denizens. It was specifically built to withstand another cataclysmic assault from the air.

  Other cities were not as fortunate. Taiwan, New Delhi, Hong Kong, and Moscow. Cities already choked with their dead were now buried in their ashes. Nihel’s wave of destruction swept through Europe. Rome in flames. Paris decimated. Vienna, Munich; beautiful cities; cities that suffered through the wars of a thousand years and wore their scars with dignity now bathed in flames and echoed with screams. Only Avalondon somehow managed to escape its intended destruction. The satellites aimed at it came to a halt inches from the street as if something was consciously protecting the city in this, its darkest hour.

  Nihel never noticed when his strikes failed. He was a busy man and what did it matter anyway? He’d make his point. He carved through the clouds over the Atlantic. A small compliment of satellites chased after him still. A smile crept across his face and a mad laugh rose from his breast. “Earthim. Your suffering has just begun! Your destruction will by the dawn of my liberation,” he growled, his voice dripped with anticipation. “Yes. It’s all coming full circle now, isn’t it my little Earthim? That’s how Fate works. Circles. Cycles. There is nothing you can do to stop this! Your destinies have been sealed—how does that make you feel, Earthim!” he bellowed across the ocean. “Angry? Now imagine having that anger gnaw at you for all eternity!”

  __________

  I remember soaring through the dreams of God. Through space that was never born. I emerged in the terrible weight of reality. I have traveled from one end of the galaxy to the other and I have traveled further and faster than anyone within it. Before I could marvel at the pristine beauty of this untouched space I was assaulted by the noise.