Halfheroes

by Ian W. Sainsbury

  He took to visiting coffee shops in Boston at around nine in the morning. He had observed mothers going for coffee after the school run. They were often susceptible to the intelligent conversation and solicitous manner of an older man.

  A few months into this new sexual venture, a rare unproductive morning in a coffee shop heralded the most important moment of his life.

  He had been finishing his third latte. The only woman who met his requirements had looked him up and down before dismissing his advances with a scornful laugh. Burning with humiliation, Roger ordered another coffee and took his time drinking it, proving to the woman that he was unmoved by her lack of interest.

  He had reached for the book he kept in his briefcase and realised it was in the car. Now he had a latte to drink, the obnoxious woman was in his eye-line, and he had nothing to read. Intolerable. He picked up a newspaper from the next table. It was a lowbrow tabloid called the Worldly Enquirer. Things were going from bad to worse. Deciding to brazen it out, Roger opened the appalling rag so that the masthead faced the woman. Yes, he was reading the Worldly Enquirer. What of it?

  Then he saw the picture on page five and forgot the woman, the coffee, and the past three and a half decades as David Levenstern, chemistry teacher.

  It was a pencil drawing. Artistically, it had no merit whatever. But what it depicted shook Roger so profoundly that he had to put the Enquirer flat on the table, not trusting his fingers to grip the paper.

  He forced himself to read the accompanying story methodically, line by line.

  The headline was like many others he had seen when passing the magazine racks. Aliens, mutants, and the sexual deviancy of opticians and celebrities were the paper's stock-in-trade. On one memorable occasion, they had combined all their interests: MUTATED MEMBER OF CONGRESS CAUGHT IN MOTEL HAVING S&M SESSION WITH GREY ALIEN. The story Roger was reading now was small fry in comparison, which was why it had made the inside pages.

  I FOUND ALIEN MOTHERSHIP IN NEW MEXICO. Humdrum stuff for the Enquirer. The subject of the article, Dwayne Carlsson, went on a bender after finding his wife screwing the mailman. Driving his pickup into nearby White Sands, he wrapped it around the only tree within a three-mile radius, halfway up a mountain road. With night closing in and temperatures plummeting, Mr Carlsson elected to take his litre of cheap liquor for a stroll in the wilderness.

  Carlsson found a crack in the mountainside wide enough to squeeze through. Having done so, he fell, knocking himself unconscious. On waking, he used his cellphone's flashlight to illuminate his surroundings. At that point, he panicked, dropping his phone and scrambling up towards the only faint source of light. Once outside, he set out for his vehicle after studying his location so he could find his way back.

  Six hours later, a truck driver found him on the edge of the highway and took him to the nearest town. He had walked nine miles in the wrong direction. The police weren't interested in his story. Neither was the local newspaper. Only the Worldly Enquirer had taken him seriously, even going so far as suggesting that his wife might be a mutant.

  The whole story was puerile, laughable crap. The illustration based on Carlsson's description was anything but. It showed a cavernous space, at the centre of which was a pillar of rock which looked smooth, like a carved column. Jutting out from the column were four cylindrical objects. There was a more detailed sketch on the opposite page. The cylinders were, according to the caption, over six feet long and around four feet wide. They tapered at either end and were transparent. Inside, as Carlsson described it, was 'a bunch of jello.'

  Roger folded the newspaper with trembling fingers and tucked it under his arm. He walked out without even glancing at the frigid woman. He had forgotten she was there.

  Three days later, he arrived in El Paso airport and rented a car. He explored the only ten square miles of White Sands that matched Carlsson's account, based on the article and hours of research online. Roger didn't come empty-handed; he carried a specialist piece of equipment in the trunk of his rental SUV. It had cost him six thousand dollars he couldn't afford. The portable ground penetrating radar system looked like a lawnmower. Roger knew he'd only be able to use it at night. It would take some explaining if he were seen; a man nearer eighty than seventy pushing a lawnmower around White Sands in the early hours of the morning. He decided he'd feign academic eccentricity and hope for the best.

  Roger needn't have worried. He struck gold on the first night. Rolling the machine laboriously over a hillside, it emitted a low bing, and a green light flashed on the control panel.

  It wasn't long before sunrise, so Roger buried the old iPhone he had brought for that purpose and went back to his hotel.

  That day, he woke at least twice an hour. He got up at lunchtime, ate a desultory meal, and sat in the window seat of a diner, watching the sun move more slowly than seemed possible across the New Mexico sky.

  Finally, night came. A bag of lighting, a battery and camera equipment accompanied his climb. Roger followed his find my iPhone feature. It brought him within five hundred yards of his goal, and he spotted the pile of rocks he'd arranged on the previous night.

  He took twenty minutes to find the fissure Carlsson had described, and another ten to descend the slope his predecessor had slipped down. On reaching the bottom, he stepped on something that cracked loudly. He picked it up. Carlsson's phone. He arranged his lights, plugged them into the battery and turned them on.

  He faced the centre of the chamber, camera in hand. There, underneath the strange alabaster surface of White Sands, New Mexico, and for the first time since the woman in the Boston coffee shop, Roger Sullivan got a boner.

  37

  After that night in White Sands, New Mexico, Roger Sullivan was a changed man. Renewed, invigorated. He felt like he was in his twenties again. He went home and made plans.

  There were some savings in the bank, and a pension. He applied, and was accepted, for five credit cards.

  His photographs and video footage showed four cylinders in the White Sands cave. They were all identical to the one found in London in nineteen-sixty-nine. The slime inside them, unless Abos was unique, could grow into superhumans. Now that Abos was gone, it would be the scientific coup of the millennium. And Roger Sullivan would be the man who made it happen. He could go public if he played this right.

  He went to London. It took all his courage, and he grew an ugly white and grey beard before leaving. Logically, he knew he was being paranoid, but fear has little to do with logic.

  He was looking for Mike Ainsleigh, and Mike Ainsleigh proved easy to find.

  Enough time had passed since the Deterrent project for Roger to admit that Mike had been under-used by the scientific team. He was a gifted scientist with a precise mind and a rare ability to explore multiple hypotheses before suggesting one or two perspicacious solutions. Roger knew everyone on the team had often found an excuse to come in early, or stay late, and run a few ideas past Mike. Since Ainsleigh was shy to the extent of avoiding unnecessary human contact, it was easy enough to claim his ideas as one's own at team meetings. They had treated him as a glorified janitor, but he had more insight into the nature of Abos than the rest of them put together.

  Before leaving for the UK, Roger had searched online for Ainsleigh. He only had one lead, but it was a good one. He was on a roleplaying forum, along with a photo of a Dungeons & Dragons group in Bethnal Green. Mike's early obsession with The Beatles had given way to a passion for the game, an American import which never quite took off as dramatically in Britain. Already a Tolkien nut, Mike had found his spiritual home in the roll of a ten-sided die.

  They met in the Woodbine, a hot, malodorous café whose signature dish appeared to be something called an egg and mushroom bap. Roger ordered a latte which, to his surprise, was excellent.

  Mike didn't recognise him, but Roger knew Ainsleigh at once. The long hair, tied back in a ponytail, was grey now, the glasses rimless, but he still looked like an awkward kid.

  When
Roger confessed he wasn't there to sell his rare collection of Tolkien first editions, Mike dropped his chip butty. Roger slid the White Sands photograph onto the table between them. Mike took a quick look, turned away, then back again, scratched his nose, had a murmured conversation with himself, stammered a question.

  "Wh- wh- who are you?"

  "It's me, Mike. Roger Sullivan."

  "R-Roger?"

  "In the flesh."

  Mike looked at the proffered hand. His social graces hadn't improved.

  "Are they real?" He pointed a dirty fingernail at the cylinders in the photograph.

  "They are, yeah."

  "Can I see them?"

  Roger smiled.

  "Yep, Mike. You sure can."

  Mike Ainsleigh had forgotten nothing of what had happened during his decades at Station. And when he said nothing, he meant it. He could describe experiments from thirty years previously, down to the time, date, and the names of those present. He knew which drugs had been given to Abos, and how often, to increase the superbeing's susceptibility to suggestion. Mike had even helped record the instructions played to Abos while he slept.

  Best of all, as far as Roger was concerned, was that Mike felt no guilt about his involvement with the drugging and psychological programming of an intelligent being. It was as if he had no moral compass at all. Well, that wasn't quite true. He hated to see anyone inflict physical pain, even on an animal. But he didn't see a disconnect between his acceptance of Station's treatment of Abos and his instinct to protect others from harm. It was a huge ethical blind spot, and Roger was keen to exploit it. Mike was at his happiest being told what to do, and when Roger demanded he drop everything and come to America, he agreed. His only concern was leaving his Dungeons & Dragons group, but when Roger reminded him that the game had been invented in the States, he brightened considerably.

  The next part of Roger's plan was the most important, if he were to retain control of his discovery. Roger knew he couldn't go to the authorities, in any form, for fear of being ignored or, even worse, taken seriously. If they listened to his story and investigated the cavern, he would be cut out. He might stay centre stage for a while if he admitted his history with The Deterrent, but his government would be suspicious of a man who had helped another nation gain a superhero. No. He could be an American hero himself if he stuck to his plan.

  What he needed was money. A lot of money. A shit ton of money.

  And he knew where to get it.

  Titus Gorman was the richest man on Earth. Glob's founder was never seen at a White House dinner, rarely spoke at high-octane business gatherings. This was partly due to his semi-reclusive lifestyle, but that wasn't the whole picture. The main reason was ideological. No one trusted him. He was the cuckoo's egg invading the capitalist nest, and the few early interviews with him before he made his fortune revealed a fierce critic of the American way of life. He found the American Dream an appealing idea in theory, but claimed it was a catastrophic failure in practise.

  The earliest interview Roger found had a photograph of a young, intense Gorman in a room full of circuit boards and cannibalised computers. The piece in question—printed in The Man, a radical Californian art magazine—had been quoted many times after Gorman had achieved his incredible success.

  One section in particular diminished his chances of ever being asked to address industry conferences.

  Gorman: Well, the system is broken. It's plain to see, although no one wants to talk about it. America is supposed to be the land of opportunity, a fresh start away from the suffocating class system and feudal network of old Europe. But what have we done? Recreated the same inequities over here. Worse than that, we've made everything about money. The dream is that everyone, whoever they are, whatever their background, can achieve greatness. People tell their kids, work hard, and you might be president. But it's horseshit, and we know it. I'm not saying individuals don't escape poor backgrounds and become successful. It happens, for sure. But they are exceptions. Take two kids born on the same day, one in the worst neighbourhood in Detroit, with an absent father and a drug-addicted mother, the other to a rich family in New York, with Ivy League parents. Land of opportunity? For one of them, sure. The other one, statistically, will be lucky to reach thirty without a spell in prison. We've let it get away from us as a nation, and now everyone acts like it's too late to change.

  The Man: Isn't it?

  Gorman: No. It would take guts. A politician will never have the balls.

  The Man: To do what?

  Gorman: Start over. Level the playing field. Stop people inheriting wealth. If we wanted to, we could make sure every baby born in this country started life with the same amount in their bank account as everyone else. It's a simple enough algorithm to code into the banking system. That kid in New York would have the same as the kid in Detroit.

  He had been forced to apologise for that comment. Some American banks took it as a threat. He had laughed it off, saying he had no intention of hacking the US banking system that week. There had been rumours since that Gorman was a revolutionary, a communist, a socialist, a fascist, a lunatic, a deluded visionary. He stopped giving interviews, only facing the media when he had an announcement to make.

  Ultimately, his eccentric views were tolerated, because, as rich as he was, he was a private individual with no way of implementing any whacky ideas.

  Unless... unless he was backed up by four superbeings who could protect him from any threat of retaliation.

  Roger emailed Titus Gorman, claiming he had developed a metal compound that was not only lighter and cheaper than the components Glob currently used, but contained a new twist on built-in obsolescence. The material would biodegrade automatically after ten years and could be composted. The email, and the few details attached, were mostly nonsense, but Roger's background meant he could keep the idea plausible. He was banking on the fact that Gorman famously gave time to innovators and developers with fresh ideas.

  It worked. Roger was given a ten-minute slot with the man himself.

  Roger rehearsed that ten-minute pitch for weeks, worked on it harder than anything since he had left Station. He had photographs of the cylinders, and he had laptop footage from the cave. Most importantly, he had an old photograph of the Station team from 1970. When he slid that across the table to Gorman and watched the super-nerd hesitate before turning to his screen and running some searches, he knew he had him.

  He was forced to sweat it out for three days after the meeting, but Gorman called. He sent his private jet to Boston to pick him up. When Roger boarded, Titus himself met him at the top of the stairs.

  "Okay, Roger, you have my attention. Show me your superheroes."

  Roger had assumed it would take over a year to assemble the equipment to excavate the site, remove the cylinders, and set up a lab. He had failed to factor in the trillionaire effect. Titus Gorman put everything else aside and threw money at the project. Instead of moving the cylinders, he built the lab around them, then built his own headquarters around the lab.

  Work continued on the headquarters while Roger and Mike locked the door to the lab and got to work. Four vials of Titus Gorman's blood and two weeks later, they were playing psychological programming files to four seven-foot giants as they slept the sleep of the heavily sedated. The following month saw them gradually allowed longer periods of consciousness every day until they were ready.

  The day after Titus had seen his new employees for the first time, he called Roger to his new 'office,' a floating platform in the open-plan minimalist monstrosity he had built on the side of the mountain.

  "They're perfect," he said. "But something occurred to me when you described the history of The Deterrent."

  "Really?" Roger was irritated by Gorman's casual acceptance of the superbeings he had created for him. If he had genuinely made them solely for Gorman's purposes, he would have been angry, but he had bigger fish to fry, so said nothing.

  "Sit down, Roger."

&n
bsp; Roger sat down. And listened as Titus told him about the prison he'd built at the same time as his headquarters. He had researched The Deterrent; including every fact, story, or rumour about the children attributed to the British superhero. He'd concluded that halfheroes were the only threat to his plan and acted accordingly.

  Roger was impressed by how far Gorman would go to protect his stupid commie scheme, but smiled inwardly at what the tech genius had missed. The greatest threat to his plans was sitting opposite him.

  What Gorman said next really did surprise him.

  "The Deterrent was found in Britain, the four examples you have uncovered were in America. There must be others. I've been looking for them."

  "You've been looking?" Roger felt like an idiot for not considering the possibility.

  "I doubt the Protectors—" (Roger hated the name, but he knew he wouldn't have to suffer it for much longer) "—turned up only in the last half-century. I built an algorithmic search tool based on physical height, strength, unusual eye colour, superhuman abilities, plus a few other parameters.

  Of course you did, thought Roger.

  "I found a few possible matches in myth and legend, but two historical candidates were stronger still."

  "You think there are other cylinders."

  Gorman's smile was patronising.

  "I don't think, Roger, I know. Not cylinders, though. The dormant slime within. Robertson found the first one in the east of England. It had been a queen in Roman Britain - Boudicca, or Boadicea, depending on which accounts you read. Defeated the Ninth Legion and destroyed the Roman's capital. A tribe of early Britons defeating a Roman army? I don't think so. The second was in Egypt. A cat god. Too many unrelated sources with near-identical descriptions of a giant feline displaying incredible intelligence and godlike powers."

  Roger didn't say anything because he was fighting a minor panic attack and giving himself an internal talking to.