Blackjack Villain

by Ben Bequer

  Retcon had shot himself, one frame at a time, the frames scattered through time. He had dropped frames in television shows from all around the world, during his lifetime. The man had access to every past version of himself across the stream of time. So he had recorded himself throughout the years, knowing that Haha, with the algorithm he had provided him, would be able to piece it together. It was a brilliant method to send a message, probably a thousand times more complicated than any law enforcement agency in the whole planet could even begin to conceive.

  The problem was that Retcon was not careful as to where he stood for each frame, and that he was much older and younger in varying frames.

  His location could easily be modified, but it had to be done frame by frame, and even the background could be masked. Mr. Haha had done that first, and, to his credit, it had taken him only a few minutes.

  The second problem was more severe and disturbing to watch when he showed me the first minute or so of it. There were charts he used which changed in quality in some of the older frames. Mr. Haha wasn’t afraid of the challenge though, and soon showed a bit of artistic flair, creating a program that redrew Dr. Retcon frame-by-frame based on the later, more recent frames. He started explaining the process to me, and though I admitted I couldn’t care less about color, saturation or luminosity, the robot told me his entire tale on how he was processing each frame. It seemed to make him work faster, so I pretended to listen while I worked on my arrows.

  “Ready everyone?” Mr. Haha reversed it one last time, and let it play.

  Finally, the Doctor spoke.

  “Hello boys. Sorry for this whole confusing message,” he gesticulated wildly at the screen. “Trust me when I tell you I have my reasons.”

  “First of all, Influx.” His tone turned somber. “I can’t believe it either. I’m not certain I even know what to say. Except that I’m sorry, so sorry for her death. I had known her for many years, and she was a dear friend. I owe her more than I can say.”

  He paused and caught himself, genuinely overcome with grief.

  “I frankly didn’t know he was still himself. Shivvers, that is. Most of the folks from back then, well...they’re broken down old men, if they’re anything anymore. Most are dead. Only a few of us are still ourselves. I didn’t know Shivvers was still dangerous. And that’s my mistake. Sending you there, like that, it was my fault. And I apologize to you all for that.”

  “He isn’t fucking kidding, yo.” Cool whispered.

  “Influx was so young, so full of spirit. So necessary for what I had planned. Well, it’s I’m not sure what to say anymore. She’ll be missed.”

  Retcon paused for a moment, looking to the distance, lost in thought, then a wistful smile on his face.

  “She’ll be missed,” he repeated and continued. “But this thing we have to do, it can’t wait. We can’t sit here and mourn a lost soldier. We don’t have time.

  “I have the a copy of the book, thanks to Mr. Haha and as you now surmise, this whole enterprise has something to do with the legendary inventor Nikola Tesla. The book is the second half of a tome I have in my roving lair. You know the one, Blackjack,” Retcon said with a grin and a wink. “It’s the missing key to all the troubles that ail us, and now that it is in my possession, all the answers are becoming clear to me.”

  I stared at Mr. Haha in surprise. When the hell had he had the time to scan the book and send it to Retcon?

  “I don’t know how much you know about him, so forgive me if this all seems like a boring old history lesson. He was the greatest man I ever knew, and I owe everything to him. Soon we all will. Ironic, no? Penniless at death, so maligned in life, and now, seventy years after his passing, it’s his wisdom that shall make all the difference?

  He laughed a second.

  “I can’t stop thinking about that. Anyway, I don’t have that much time to talk so I’ll get to the point.

  “The next thing I need is a model...a working model of Nikola’s that the U.S. Government didn’t find when he died. What does it look like exactly? No one knows, except that it would be small and fully functional. Nikola liked to make smaller practical models then grow them in size, and this project my friends would have been monumental in size if completed, which, sadly, it never was. But I know for certain of the existence of a model.

  “They searched the New Yorker Hotel, where he had been living for over a decade before his death, and his personal safes. They searched two large storage facilities. They searched and searched and they didn’t find diddly squat.

  “It’s interesting because all these effects were sequestered on order of J. Edgar Hoover himself, declaring the case to be Most Secret. They spent days photographing and microfilming everything and it took years for Tesla’s possessions to be released to his family, and the embassy of what was at the time still Yugoslavia. What the Americans handed over is now in the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade, in present day Serbia.

  “Now if you know MY history,” he said, a smile coming over his face, “you’ll know I got into some trouble in Belgrade about fifteen years ago.

  Retcon paused as if he could actually see me through the camera that very second. He was speaking directly to me, answering my question from the rock garden.

  “I went looking for what I need you to get for me, and believe me, it’s not there. It’s not there...so I was thinking it might’ve gotten snatched by that sonofabitch Hoover, and I went and checked there too. Checked all of Hoover’s old archival locations and found nothing. He never found it. I know for certain. Then I realized where it was. I realized that Nikola had to have hidden it somewhere safe. Somewhere he knew no one would think of, but somewhere close to him.

  “The hotel,” Dr. Zundergrub said.

  “The New Yorker Hotel,” Retcon echoed, with a smile. “He hid it there somewhere and I’ve tried to narrow it down for you...”

  The screen panned back some to reveal the charts, which were actually plans of the hotel. Haha’s interpolation meant we didn’t have to make sense of a jumble of different styles of charts, from chalk-drawn to a 3d holo presentation. It was the holo that we saw.

  “I’ve acquired plans of the hotel throughout the years and done some comparison between all the notable modifications that have occurred, including major renovations in ‘44, ‘75, ‘94, and most recently in 2000 and 2006. I want to draw your attention here, to this basement level and show you a comparison.”

  The holo spun around and brought us below ground. Mr. Haha was good, he had even provided for street activity in the form of cars and pedestrians to add some realism to the rendering. We flew into the lobby and through to a service elevator with gold doors near the rear of the building and down to the second basement.

  “This area right here, it was closed the year after Nikola died, in 1944, and if you look at architectural schematics at the time, it was a locker room area near the coal-fired steam boilers and generators. Well the whole system was upgraded in the 60s, though as you can see in this image from 2008, the old power plant, oddly enough a Direct Current plant, still remained unusable but as a museum piece. They gave the damned thing a medal, if you can believe it.”

  Retcon giggled. “It’s ironic because of the famous fight between Tesla and his sometimes adversary Edison over the current wars. Tesla invented Alternating Current, while Edison was famous for his Direct Current model.”

  “But I’m more concerned with this hollow area that’s right here. In ‘44 they sealed up the old locker room, and if J. Edgar Hoover and his boys didn’t find it, it has to be here. It has to be.”

  The video ended abruptly and the many monitors in the room went black.

  “And that’s it,” Mr. Haha said.

  “Hey, he was in the middle of saying something.” Cool Hand protested.

  “In fact he was. He was telling me to stop the tape and preserve the rest for after this mission.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I believe-”

  “Well this
is bullshit, rabbit man,” Cool exploded. “Why not tell us everything? What the fuck?”

  “If you allow me to-”

  “No way, rabbit man. No way. I’m up to here with the secrecy bullshit. Influx is dead, man. One of us is dead. I know you’re a fucking robot, but the rest of us are flesh and blood.”

  “You make a point,” Zundergrub agreed. “In as florid a fashion as always.”

  “I am merely following his instructions, not-”

  “You with us, or with him?”

  “With you, of course.”

  “Then show us everything,” I shot in.

  Mr. Haha looked at us all, one at a time, before starting the video again. As the rabbit-headed robot had told us, what followed were specific instructions from Retcon on how to deliver the previous message, and what conditions to show us the last two messages. It surprised us all to find that he didn’t include mention of Zundergrub when he was telling Haha what surviving members were necessary for the mission to continue. Apparently Haha, Cool and I were the only crucial ones. The doctor raised an eyebrow.

  When Retcon continued he was standing there, grinning, counting down.

  “I am going make this one shorter. It’s going take Mr. Haha an age to make this all into a watchable form and-”

  Haha paused the video. “Retcon makes a mistake here, underestimating the capacity of my botnets. I was able to-”

  “Just show the video, Haha.” Zundergrub snapped.

  There was a fast forward flash and we got things mid-sentence. “...a lot of bother. Ok, so either you got it or you didn’t. If it’s not there, no worries my friends. I have a few other places to look for it and Mr. Haha will forward to the videos I have prepared-”

  Again Haha paused it. “Do you want to see those videos?”

  “Not for now,” I answered. “The one where we succeed.”

  “Assuming we even go on this bullshit quest,” Cool added, finishing his sandwich and unwrapping another that he pulled out of his pack.

  Retcon continued. “If you’ve got it, secure it on the rocket. I’ll do the rest in due time. Job well done and thank you.”

  “Wait,” Zundergrub interrupted. “Why doesn’t he send us a more personalized message after, why everything now, with the contingencies already planned for?”

  It was a good point. The previous message made mention of Influx, so he had produced it in the few hours since her death.

  “I can’t account for that,” Haha said. “I have no inside information, my friends. Though I am actively trying to break into all the secure databases onboard this rocket ship and at every known and rumored Dr. Retcon location to no avail.”

  “Finish it.” Cool Hand was hard to understand as he was mid-chew. “Next he’ll have us steal the Mona Lisa so he can finish his bullshit collection of art. Fast forward through the shit and get us to the next job.”

  “Will do,” Haha said, playing the video.

  “The next task you are but observers,” Retcon said. “All you must to do is watch and learn. When you come back, everything will make more sense, everything will become clear to you.”

  Dr. Retcon took a moment to light a cigar and took a few puffs.

  “This wasn’t discovered until about two years ago by the European Space Agency; a strange emanation of energy on the far side of the Callisto, one of the Ganymedian moons of Jupiter. It was so slight, that they are only now initiating protocols to further investigate it. I mean, why make such a fuss over something that’s been observed and studied since Galileo first discovered it over four-hundred years ago? That’s why we’re going to all this trouble, someone has to. I can’t say more right now. The Rocket Flyer is programmed with a round-trip route and all you have to do is engage is sit back and enjoy the show.”

  * * *

  After the meeting, I went to my tiny room and sat on the bunk, thinking about the money we were supposed to be making. I had no way of verifying if I even had the money. Guess I had to trust Sandy to watch out for me. In theory, I was doing this for the green, but I was starting to agree with Cool Hand that all this wasn’t worth it. Not only did we have a band of roving supers ready to come after us at a moment’s notice, but we had also bungled everything up to now, causing the life of one hero and the life of one of our group as well.

  I kept replaying that image of Pulsewave falling over the edge and of Influx’s pleading eyes and I was as helpless to do something about it now as I was back then. It was clear and simple, both deaths were on me. I had used an explosive weapon with too much power against Atmo and Pulse, in part reacting out of anger at Atmosphero. Misplaced anger that had caused a life. It had been a different emotion, lust, that had led to Influx’ death. We were in mid-playful banter, eager to finish the mission without keeping our minds on what we were doing. If we had been ready and wary, maybe Shivver’s would have attacked me instead, maybe we would have been more ready for him.

  Then I thought of my first time out, the bank robbery I had tried to stop, in a foolish attempt to become a hero. I had screwed that one up as well.

  But there was nothing to do now. What I had told Cool applied to me. If I ran off now, I was a marked man.

  It’s not like the alternative was much easier, this next mission was going to be a monster.

  The New Yorker Hotel lay in the midst of Manhattan, a few blocks from the Lincoln tunnel. I wasn’t familiar with the city, but I didn’t need to ask Cool Hand to estimate that New York probably had at least a dozen idle supers strong enough to face us. At any time there could be a few dozen Class-A or B guys sitting around waiting for the call to come in through the police scanners so they could beat up some unsuspecting villain. The Superb Seven had their press conference in Washington, D.C. a day ago, and if they were close, they could respond within minutes.

  I found a computer and did some online research on the location of the New Yorker and things only got worse. There were no open fields nearby to land Retcon’s Rocket Flyer, a basketball court a few blocks away. So we had to land on some rooftop and my research wasn’t finding any place nearby that was serviceable.

  Frustrated, and spent, I left my room and went down to my temporary lab. I figured I’d tinker for a while, get my mind off everything.

  * * *

  Dr. Zundergrub came to see me as I was finishing up the last of my arrows; a fancy gas arrow that I had envisioned from some of the extra chemicals the lab had lying around. The quiet bastard snuck right next to me and stood there, watching me work. I was oblivious to his stealth, and kept working on the arrow until he shifted slightly making me jump in surprise.

  “Forgive me,” he said.

  “You part Indian?” I said, a bit miffed.

  “Wholly Indian,” he smiled. “What are you making?”

  I wanted to smack him across his smug, Indian face, but after a moment to compose myself, I handed him the arrow.

  “It’s a gas arrow.”

  He studied it closely. At its tip was a lightweight metal appendage, which didn’t seem like much more than a small plastic casing. Zundergrub checked the weight and smiled.

  “Impressive. Some sort of lachrymatory agent?”

  “CN gas,” I told him. “Basically, it’s mace. With some minor modifications.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’ve added a binding agent so it reduces the dissipation of the phenyl chloride. I made two of them. Figure I’ll open with them, when we run into the Superb Seven, or any large group of supers.”

  He put down the arrow. “You think it will be effective against them?”

  “Only a couple of the Superb Seven wear head gear or helmets. Against the rest it should work pretty well. You ever been maced?”

  Zundergrub smiled, “Yes.”

  “Then you know it’s not a lot of fun. I imagine we’ll be mostly making a run for it once we have the Tesla item.”

  “I agree. It’s not in our best interest to get into a long drawn out fight in the midst of New York City. D
o you know the city well?”

  I shook my head. “Not really. I was doing some research on where to land nearby-“

  “There is only one reasonable place to land this contraption. Right across the street, atop the fast food restaurant.”

  “I don’t think we’ll fit, Zee.” I said, reflexively calling him by the nickname Cool Hand and Influx had given him. Zundergrub didn’t seem to mind. “That building has two larger ones on either side and it’s kind of narrow.”

  “I’ve done the measurements and we should fit without trouble. It has the benefit of being close, for when we have to depart, and it is only one story off the ground and immediately across the street.”

  I wheeled over to a computer and using an online mapping program that had a 360 degree view feature, found the location. I scanned the fast food joint across the street, and the one story structure straddled two larger ones. It was tight.

  “How much clearance would we have?”

  “According to my calculations, we would have over thirty-six inches on either side. More than enough for Mr. Haha to land us.”

  “That’s cutting it close.”

  “I couldn’t find a closer alternative.”

  I looked at the overhead street map beside the 360 view and he was right. The area was fully developed, and the only other alternative was to land atop a farther building, much higher off the ground, but then we’d have to factor in the extra travel time.

  Using the mouse, I swung around the view to reveal a sign, right in front of our landing spot which read “NYPD Security Camera in area.”

  “We’d have to disable that,” I said.

  “Not a problem for me.”

  “Then I guess that’s where we land.”

  I moved around a bit more and saw the 34th Street Penn Station subway entrance half a block from the New Yorker Hotel, heading towards Madison Square Garden.

  “So close to the Garden,” he said sighing.