FRANKLIN COMISU, FMR. DIRECTOR, CIA
The superheroes failed America on 9/11. To suggest otherwise is tantamount to treason, in my book. That’s what I think, and that’s what the families of 2,977 casualties of those terrorists think, too. People look up to them and they failed us. They can talk all they want about the lack of communication between agencies, but there were so-called superheroes who sit on the moon and watch the whole planet. Why didn’t they see anything? There are so-called superheroes with the power to sit in Los Angeles and read the mind of a street kid in Morocco. Why didn’t any of them see anything?
JASON KITMORE / KR
(old interview from 2005 book-signing appearance)
Is that what people really want? For the Revolutionaries to spend their time reading everyone’s email? To have Psychic Navigator read the mind of everyone on the planet to see if they’re thinking bad thoughts? That’s the worst kind of police state.
FRANKLIN COMISU, FMR. DIRECTOR, CIA
My father served in World War 2. In those days, the heroes of the world protected the world from its evils. Yes, the Holocaust still happened, and yes, millions of Jews were killed, but there weren’t any heroes in those days who could do what someone like Psychic Navigator or Radio Mind can do now. The point is that heroes like Eagle ’42, Striped Star, Tricolour, Private Ghost, Sibearia, Vitesse, and the women of Midnight Tank fought side by side with the Allied soldiers. Hell, the Axis had their own superheroes who fought side by side with them. A villain like Baron Black … as evil and despicable as he was … had a sense of honor that most of today’s heroes couldn’t match. Think on that. ROMULUS has become a non-factor in the world, but it was only two to three decades ago that they were the biggest terrorist organization in the world. From World War 2 straight through the Cold War, ROMULUS was our number one terrorist threat and they had class. Or, well, maybe class is the wrong word, but a purpose that was something more than mass panic and killing as many innocents as possible. I’d rather work against Baron Black than with most of today’s alleged heroes because heroes like Kid Rapscallion — a confirmed drug addict, I will remind you — are only in it for themselves.
JASON KITMORE / KR
(clip from RED Network, 2004)
Certainly, no one said anything to me. And why would they, yeah? I lived on the other side of the country! Even if — and I’m not saying this is true, mind you, I’m just using a hypothetical here — even if you’re stupid enough to think a cape should have stopped 9/11, which hero are you talking about? The heroes in the cities where the planes crashed? How were they supposed to know about who got on those planes? So let’s blame the heroes in the cities where the planes launched from, yeah? Well, how the hell were they supposed to know about what happened to those planes when they left their city?
FRANKLIN COMISU, FMR. DIRECTOR, CIA
Where were the heroes on 9/11? Where were they? All we get are excuses, not answers.
KIRA ERDRICH, AMERICAN NEWS CHANNEL
I can tell you where Kid Rapscallion was — knee deep in a cocaine-fueled orgy with Duplication Girl in his personal suite at the top of the Grand Vegas. That’s how his day started, and we all know how it ended.
JASON KITMORE / KR
(clip from RED Network, 2004)
Where were the heroes? On 9/11, the Revolutionaries were halfway to Mars, stopping a Loshow K invasion. Except for Striped Star, of course, who was busy stopping Lord Pluto from bringing Hell to Earth. By herself. Senator’s Sun tried to help at the Pentagon but was ordered away and then went and had a heart attack. Yeah, and instead of telling any of them, “Thank you,” our chicken(bleep) Congress went and passed the Vigilante Act.
(off-screen interviewer asks, “And where were you? Is is true, as Kira Erdrich alleges, that you were engaged—?”
(Bleep) Kira (bleeping) Erdrich. She wouldn’t have a career if it wasn’t for me. Was I doing cocaine and having sex with Deege on 9/11? None of your damn business. But I’ll say this — I was a 19-year old kid, then. What 19 year kid wouldn’t want to be snorting coke and having sex with Duplication Girl, if they could? Kira likes to make a big deal about my drug use, but as I have explained — as doctors have explained — snorting five lines of cocaine was no different for me than the average person having a Bud Light after work. Kira, and everyone else in the damn moral police, like to act like I was doing something wrong. Well, just because Kira can’t do coke and be fine doesn’t mean I can’t, you know? It’s not like she can scale the Space Needle, either, and I did that without breaking a sweat.
2
Duplication Girl watches herself from across the room. Besides herself, there are 19 versions of her spread around the room. Jason had come home late last night, worked up and anxious over the continued reports that Mr. Monster was in town and looking for revenge over Kid Rapscallion defeating him back in June, in Los Angeles.
That was the fight that made Kid Rapscallion something more than a sidekick, both to himself and to the public. She knows the truth of that fight, that Kid Rapscallion was the last of five heroes to do battle with Mr. Monster that day, but she also knows that Jason was spectacular. She had never met him before then, their paths just never seeming to cross for one reason or another, but after he and Monster spent seven hours battling all over Los Angeles, with the final blows struck in the Colosseum, it was her who decided to teleport him up to the Fort to rest and recover.
And do coke.
And have sex.
If any of the senior members of the Revolutionaries had been around that day, none of the drugs or the sex would have happened, but she was all alone in the Fort doing monitor duty and feeling rebellious. The Revos had been nice enough to take her in after rescuing her from the EGG creeps who built her in tubes and vats and chemicals, but that had been a year ago and they still didn’t let her out much.
From a distance, Kid Rapscallion was perfect: dashing in his red, black, and white suit, handsome out of it, young but already a veteran of the superhero life … she’d had a crush on him for months, using the Fort’s computer to research him and stay on top of his activities. She knew, for instance, that he had briefly dated Belle Flower, and that they had broken up because she didn’t engage in premarital sex.
Or even premarital making out.
Belle was one of those new heroes the older heroes loved because she was so damn perfect, and so Duplication Girl modified herself to be what Belle wasn’t. It was all the kinds of things a teenager does when she’s in love with an incomplete picture of a person, but then, that’s what a crush is, isn’t it?
Love based on a partial image of truth, filled in with large portions of fantasy.
She was felling rebellious and she could tell Kid Rapscallion was feeling rebellious and so when the opportunity presented itself, she brought him aboard the Fort, ran him through the Revos’ super healing computers, and while he was half-drugged and recuperation, asked him, “What do you want?”
“I want to snort coke off your tits,” he’d said before passing out.
When he awoke, she was waiting for him with white powder on her breasts.
3
The fun of that first week has long since passed.
Duplication Girl reminds herself, as Jason calls for a 20th duplicate while buried in the 17th, that their first encounter was in June and now it’s in September. In three months, she’s gone from being in love with someone she didn’t really know to out of love with someone she knows all too well.
She rubs her nose, absently snorting any loose grain of cocaine powder that she might have missed. She knows she is an addict and knows she needs help, because her physiology, while unique in the world, does not metabolize cocaine like Jason’s does. She wants to leave, but where will she go? The words she said when leaving the Fort were harsh and not easily forgotten or forgiven, and she has no money of her own to spend so leaving Jason isn't an option, either.
EGG would take her back, of course, but just because she’
s become something of a drug addict doesn’t mean—
“Another one!”
“I … I can’t,” she says, and her nose begins to bleed.
4
Jason wants breakfast but he wants to get away from Duplication Girl (all of them), so he calls room service, orders enough scrambled eggs and sausage for four people, and tells them to deliver his food to an empty room.
“Which room?”
“I’ll wait until you find me one,” he snaps, rubbing his eyes.
“Room 752, sir.”
“On my way,” he says. “Send someone with a keycard to let me in. Don’t make me wait in the fucking hallway.”
“Yes, sir.”
He hangs up the desk phone and turns around to look at the mess. One of the duplicates has put on a robe and is busy rubbing her eyes. He notices several of the duplicates are rubbing their eyes this morning and he can’t remember what he and/or they possibly could have done to make his eyes itchy.
“I want breakfast, too,” she says.
“Me, too,” another one grumbles.
“Then order some,” he snaps, heading to his closet to grab shorts, a Striped Star t-shirt (because he knows it will annoy Deege), and his domino mask to use as ID, then leaves the mass of duplicated, strung out flesh behind him.
5
When she wakes up, Jason is gone. The bedroom is a mess of bodies, fluids, and powders. She counts the duplicates and there are only seven in the room.
“Where are the others?” she asks.
“What do you care?” one of the duplicates says. She thinks it’s number 4, but she can’t be certain. She feels hungover and strung out and taxed beyond her limits.
DG is angry. “Where are the others?” she repeats.
“There’s more of us inside of you,” another one says. “Let us out.”
“What? No. Fuck off and get back inside me.”
The duplicates look at each other.
One of them says, “Get the others.”
Another adds, “We are never going back inside you.”
6
After breakfast, Jason falls asleep without turning on the television.
As far as he’s concerned, it’s a normal morning.
The biggest concern in his mind when he passes out is whether he should dump Duplication Girl or not.
7
Nancy Cathall doesn’t answer her phone. She checks to see who’s calling every time it rings, but it’s always work and not Jason, so she lets it go to voicemail. She listens to the voicemails, and realizes she’ll have to come up with some kind of excuse to not write about what it’s like being on a cruise ship when 9/11 hits. Jason will help her create a cover story, she thinks. Maybe they can say that Integration brainwashed her or something.
Just before 10:30, the North Tower (Tower One) collapses.
This is horrific on a level Nancy cannot imagine, and she can see and hear the panic and confusion in the eyes and voices of all the reporters. She understands, at some deep level, that she is not a reporter because she does not want to leave this room and find stories to tell to help the public understand what is transpiring.
All Nancy wants to do is lay here in bed and absorb.
There is a knock at the door and after discerning through the peephole that it is a member of hotel security, she opens it just as far as the chain will allow. “Yes?” she asks a handsome man in his early 20s.
“Have you seen the news, ma’am?” he asks. “We’re checking to make sure everyone has heard the news.” He coughs nervously. “About New York, ma’am.”
“Yes,” she says. “It’s horrible. I’ve seen it. I … you’re going room to room?”
The young man shakes his head. He has black hair and piercing, black eyes, and a physique that makes her think he’s an athlete, which makes her think of Lazlo, which makes her think …
“Excuse me,” she asks, “but do I know you?”
“You’re Nancy Cathall,” he says. “I’m Andres Campos, ma’am. I used to play baseball with Lazlo. I’m sorry what he did to you.”
“Um … if this is all …”
“It’s not,” he says, shaking his head. “You really need to let me in,” he whispers.
“I don’t think.”
“Fine,” he says. “I won’t give you a choice, then.”
Nancy tries to shut the door, but Andres sticks his foot in the way. She looks down to his foot and then back to his face. Between her face and his, he holds up a 20-sided die.
Every number on its 20 faces is an 8.
“Unlike Kid Rapscallion,” he whispers from the other side of the die, “I won’t make you blow me to get this story.”
8
“Villains need reporters, too,” Andres says.
Nancy has opened the curtains and blinds and thrown her covers back up over her bed. She is wearing pajama bottoms and a Mr. PiBB t-shirt, and has her hair tied back in a messy ponytail. The small hotel notepad is on the table before her, and Andres sits opposite from her. The mute button has been hit on the TV, but images from New York play on without sound.
“This isn’t a Bond movie,” he smiles nervously, “so I’m not going to tell you all our plans, but I think a working relationship between you and me will be good for both of us.”
“There’s been rumors of a new group of villains in town,” Nancy says, pen poised over the notepad. “You call yourselves the 20-Sided Dice.”
Andres nods. “Not the best of names but when the guy paying the bills wants you to call yourselves the 20-Sided Dice, or 20SD for short, you do it. It’s better than Ickysomething that he wanted to call us originally.”
“So there’s 20 of you?”
“Thirteen, now,” he says. “Maybe fourteen. We’re recruiting and keeping things small.”
“How does your organization —?”
“Forget that,” he says, wiping her question aside. He’s got the #8 die in his hands and is playing with it nervously. The sound of it rolling back and forth on the table is driving Nancy nuts, but she doesn’t tell him to stop. If she can come back with a story of a new super villain group, her bosses will forgive her for not having a story about the 9/11 cruise.
Maybe.
“Listen,” Andres says, “I heard something, something I wasn’t supposed to hear.”
“And?”
Andres points to the TV behind him as pictures of the two fallen towers roll past.
9
“One of the women, #10, and no I don’t know her name,” Andres explains, “says she was selected to go to Los Angeles and pick up a package that was going to be on United Airlines Flight 11.”
“Was it related to the terror attack?”
Andres takes a few breaths and shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he says, “but I do know the person #10 was going to contact was Middle Eastern.”
“I’m going to need to talk to #10.”
Andres purses his lips, pulls out his flip phone, and shows Nancy a picture of a woman with three bullet holes in her face.
10
“Nancy, where the hell have you been?” one of her producers says on the phone. “Can you do a live remote? The cruise ship says there’s—”
“I’m not on the ship,” she says.
“But—”
“I’ve got something better,” she says. “A story I’m following.”
“It’s better than reactions to 9/11?”
“It’s connected to 9/11,” Nancy says confidently. “I need a complete list of passengers of everyone on board Flight 11, including their age, their ethnicity, and their profession. Put Rosa and Xanthus on it. I’m chasing something but I’ll be in by 5 tonight.”
“You want airtime?”
Nancy looks to Andres. “Have you told anyone else about this?”
He shakes his head, “No.”
“Let’s sit on it for a few days,” Nancy tells the producer, “but what you can do is clear off space of a shelf for the awards we’re go
nna win.”
11
“Kid, pick up the phone, Kid. It’s Nancy. Pick up the phone, damn it, this is important. Jesus, where the hell are you? Oh, are you in New York? Yeah, you’re probably on your way to New York. Well, look, call me when you can. I’ve got a line on something related to New York that you need to know about.”
12
It’s after 1 PM when Jason wakes up, after 2 when he makes his way to the shower, and almost 3 when he leaves this room and heads up to his own suite.
The Duplication Girls have all gone back inside the original, who’s passed out on his bed. He thinks about waking her but figures she needs the sleep.
Also, he doesn’t want to deal with her right now. He’s been a shit to her and he knows it, but there’s just something about being with a hot woman with access to alien cocaine who can make copies of herself that he finds impossible to walk away from and impossible to fully embrace. This isn’t a relationship that he wants to last forever. He thought maybe it was. He says, “I love you” to her on occasion, but he thinks what he meant a month ago he doesn’t mean now.
He’s angry with her for lying to him about the effect cocaine has on her because it means she can’t keep up with him in that area. Maybe he should try feeding more to the duplicates and less to the center? Would that work?
“Ugh,” he says, thinking that’s for later. Like, when he can find a scientist who can answer that for him.
His cellphone rings and he absently looks at it, planning to ignore whomever it is that’s calling, but the caller ID brings a name he wasn’t expecting, and it’s the one name he always stops everything for:
Used to Be: The Kid Rapscallion Story Page 10