Wonder Heroes 4.0

by Ahlquist, Steve

  Harlan walked across the room, and grabbed the crimson gauntlet from the table. He attached it, Lego-style, to the top of the golden Wonder Gauntlet on his right arm. Streaks of red, orange and pink swirled through Harlan’s armor. Harlan kicked the ultramarine Wonder Hero over onto his back, so that he could look Matt in the face while he died.

  “Hey Matt,” said Harlan, leaning in close, “You remember, nine months ago, when our positions were reversed?”

  Matt said nothing.

  “Payback’s a bitch, isn’t it?”

  Harlan Flicker fired the combined energies of the four Wonder Gauntlets into Matthew O’Dette, atomizing him instantly. There was nothing, not even a cloud of debris, to mark where Matt had died. Harlan looked at the hexagonal table, and an instant later, Matt’s Wonder Gauntlet materialized there.

  Elation filled Harlan as he reached out and picked up the ultramarine Wonder Gauntlet, considering his next move.

  “Maybe you could wear that one on your leg,” said a voice, “Too bad Danielle Walker’s gone MIA, or you could have collected the entire set.”

  Harlan’s heart skipped a beat as he tried to control his fear. He had never expected to hear that voice again. “I have an idea where she might be,” said Harlan carefully. He looked up and saw Wonder Hero Gold standing in the room with him.

  “I know you know where she is, Harlan,” said Wonder Hero Gold, “and I know where she is, too.”

  “You can’t be inside my mind, Theodore,” said Harlan, with a hint of pleading in his voice. “I erased you. I killed you.”

  Theodore dismissed his Wonder Helmet and scratched his head absently. “Yeah, about that.”

  The room shifted, and Harlan found himself back in his quarters, in front of the computer console. Theodore had traveled with him. “You’re not real Harlan. You’re a computer virus, nothing more.”

  “No,” said Harlan, “I’m Harlan Flicker! Back from the dead! I killed you! I killed all the Wonder Heroes!”

  “It was a trick, Harlan,” said Theodore. “I programmed the collaborative circuits in the Wonder Gauntlets to feed you back your own fantasies of power and murder. I needed you distracted.”

  Tears came to Harlan’s eyes. “I erased you! It took months, but I did it! I came back from the dead!”

  Theodore nodded. “I needed you to think that, Harlan, but actually I was erasing you. Purging you from the Wonder Gauntlet and my mind.”

  “No, I did it. I won…”

  “Look at the chronometer, Harlan,” said Theodore shaking his head and not without some kindness.

  Harlan read the chronometer built into his gauntlet. The other gauntlets had disappeared, as though they were never there. He watched as the final moment required for the purging of all that was Theodore Studebaker to be erased, counted down and in that instant, Harlan understood. The countdown was not for Theodore, it was for him. All Harlan had seen and done since pressing that button on the console had been an elaborate drama, played out to distract him from reality.

  “But…” said the mnemonic ghost of Harlan Flicker, and then he was gone.

  Alone in his room, truly alone for the first time in over nine months, Theodore Studebaker sighed deeply, and fell to his knees, exhausted. Then the tears came, great hulking sobs of cathartic tears that doubled him over and caused him to curl up into a little ball on the floor of his quarters. Theodore’s nightmare was over, and he was finally, terribly, alone.

  Susan opened her eyes in bed and stared at the ceiling of her room, the dream she had just experienced fresh in her mind. It had seemed so vivid, so real...

  There was the sound of someone pounding on her door. She slipped out of bed and summoned her Wonder Armor sans helmet. From the other side of the door she could hear the muffled voice of Jay, but could not make out the words. Why wasn’t Jay using the coms, she wondered.

  At her command the door opened, revealing Wonder Hero Jet, fully armored. “I just had the worst dream,” said Jay, “Harlan Flicker came back from the dead and killed me.”

  Despite the absurdity of Jay’s statement, Susan had expected this. The comms chirped and Matt’s voice said, “Susan? Are you awake?”

  “Yes, Matt, and to answer your next question, I had the same dream.”

  There was a moment of silence and then Matt said, “Conference room?”

  As the Wonder Heroes filed into the conference room they noted Theodore was seated at the end of the table, wearing a yellow tee shirt and briefs, wrapped in a yellow robe. He looked tired and guilty but wore a serious look on his face.

  Kalomo was the last to arrive. Susan said nothing but it was obvious he had been crying. Susan saw Linnea, Kalomo’s fiancé, in the corridor outside the conference room, a look of concern on her face. Susan flashed her a tight, reassuring smile as the door closed.

  No one spoke, so Susan finally said, “I assume everyone had the same dream?”

  “You mean the one where Harlan Flicker came back from the dead and killed us?” asked Jay with undisguised sarcasm, “What the hell?”

  Matt Stood across the table from Theodore. “Computer,” he said, “locate Harlan Flicker.”

  “Harlan Flicker is dead.”

  “Who’s that?” asked Matt, pointing at Theodore.

  “Theodore Studebaker, Wonder Hero Gold.”

  “I can explain,” said Theodore, “nine months ago I put on the golden Wonder Gauntlet and it was broken, remember? It was repairing itself, using bits of me to repair itself, but the damage to the gauntlet went deep, very deep. Harlan Flicker, in the instant before he died, downloaded his consciousness into the gauntlet. For the last nine months he and I have been in a constant battle to take control of my thoughts, my body, and the power of Wonder Hero Gold.”

  Matt sat down, silently cursing himself for not seeing it sooner.

  Susan’s eyes widened with shock. “Oh my god,” said Susan, “You should have told us…”

  Theodore shook his head. “I couldn’t. Harlan wouldn’t let me do that. If he suspected anyone knew, even for an instant, he would have tried to kill them, and I wasn’t sure I could stop him.”

  “Who have I been hanging out with for the last nine months, Theodore?” asked Jay, “You are Harlan?”

  “Harlan,” said Theodore, “pretending to be me.”

  “This could be a trick,” said Jay, “Harlan might still be in there.”

  “It’s not a trick,” said Theodore, “the Wonder Computer can verify it. It monitored the process and helped me purge Harlan.”

  Matt immediately patched his gauntlet into the Wonder Computer and began pulling down the data. His eyes watered as he began to understand the full extent of what Theodore had been going through these past nine months.

  “Where is he now?” asked Kalomo, “Harlan, I mean.”

  “He’s gone,” said Theodore. “Earlier tonight, with your help, I finally purged the last of him from my mind and from the gauntlet.” Theodore accessed a panel on the side of his Wonder Gauntlet and opened a small compartment. “In fact,” said Theodore, removing a dull yellow porous stone from the gauntlet and putting it on the conference table, “here he is.”

  “That’s Harlan?” asked Jay, reaching for the stone, then thinking better of it and retracting his hand.

  “That’s the compacted impurities that the Wonder Gauntlet and I have been removing for the last nine months. It’s all that’s left of Harlan’s big grab for a second life.” Theodore smiled wanly.

  “I still don’t understand,” said Susan, “What about the dream? What was that all about?”

  “My mind was under psychic assault, Susan. To fully purge Harlan I needed more power than my frankly exhausted psyche could muster. The Wonder Computer engaged the cooperative systems we utilize for the Wonder Giant to link us together. With your help I was able to wrest back control of my own mind and eradicate Harlan for good.”

  No one knew what to say. The room w
as silent as everyone reevaluated everything they had gone through as a team since the day they were first chosen as Wonder Heroes.

  Theodore said, “Harlan was inside the gauntlet, rejecting every candidate until I came along. He chose me because I was a computer hacker, and he needed a mind like mine to hack through the Wonder Gauntlet’s security systems and even into the Wonder Computer’s systems. He didn’t want to just come back; he wanted to kill everyone here, but to do what he wanted, he had to kill me first. He set up a program to slowly purge those part of me he didn’t want.”

  “That’s awful,” said Susan, not knowing what else to say.

  “It wasn’t so bad,” said Theodore, “I early on figured out how to stop him, I just knew it was going to take a long time, maybe a year to do it. I partitioned the Wonder Gauntlet, and copied my mind into it. Then I pointed all of Harlan’s efforts at my duplicate mind, while I worked to shut him out of all of my higher functions.”

  “I understood about none of that,” said Jay.

  “I set up a fake me for Harlan to kill, so that the real me could kill Harlan,” said Theodore.

  “Oh,” said Jay, “Got it.”

  “The biggest problem was that I needed to give Harlan complete control over my body.” Theodore continued, “He didn’t want to be revealed, so he acted the way he thought I would act, and said what he thought I would say. He was constantly referring to the duplicate me for pointers.” Theodore looked at his hands and said. “If I ever stepped in to try to take control, Harlan would know he was being fooled, and then I would have had to really fight him for control, and the Wonder Computer gave less than stellar odds on the outcome of that move.”

  “So I bided my time and could only watch, quietly, as Harlan continued to alienate every one of you.” Theodore looked at Susan, “He didn’t want anyone to get close, because he was afraid that they might see through his deception. That’s why he planted the evidence that I hacked my way onto the list of Wonder Hero candidates.”

  Susan inhaled sharply.

  “I was on the list because Harlan put me there,” said Theodore, “He feared that a legitimate candidate might purge him from the gauntlet, so he scanned databases until he found someone with the requisite computer skills. Me.”

  The room was quiet. Any response seemed too small.

  “As Harlan thought he was moving closer to his goal,” said Theodore, “he started to act more like Harlan. In the end, he was hardly pretending to be me at all.”

  Susan closed her eyes. Overwhelmed with shame and a sense of failing her friend, she could not bring herself to look at Theodore.

  “Harlan formulated some terrible plan to kill you all,” continued Theodore, “It required reprogramming the Wonder Computer and taking control of the orbiting satellites, the Wonder Moons. Harlan set up a Wonder Computer access port in his, I mean my, quarters. Of course nothing he did had any real effect on the Wonder Computer. Tonight, when he decided to execute his plan, we fed him back his own power fantasies, until the final moment when he was completely purged.”

  Theodore reached out with his hand and flicked the porous stone that used to be Harlan Flicker across the table towards Matt. “It’s over now.”

  Matt picked up the small stone in his hand and regarded it a moment. With a thought he summoned the energies of his Wonder Gauntlet and vaporized it.

  “That’s it, then,” said Matt, “Harlan’s finally and irrevocably dead and gone.” Matt looked at Theodore with something Theodore had never seen there before. Respect. “Welcome to the team, Theodore.”

  Theodore smiled, as Jay clapped him on the back. “Good job, man.”

  Kalomo gave Theodore a thumb’s up.

  Theodore looked over at Susan, who smiled, but could not meet his eyes. She seemed shell shocked and emotionally exhausted.

  “Thanks everyone. I appreciate that. I really do, but there’s one more thing.” The moment felt frozen in time, like a baseball at the top of its arc, as everyone waited for Theodore’s next revelation. “I think I know where Danielle Walker is,” said Theodore, “and we might be able to rescue her.”

  The meeting broke up an hour later. The team decided to brief General Rumpole the next morning after a good night’s sleep, and retired to their quarters. Rescuing Danielle Walker was going to require at least some of the Wonder Heroes to be off world for perhaps as long as a week and that would require some planning.

  Susan lay in bed, staring at the ceiling for almost an hour before deciding that all efforts at sleep were useless. She rolled out of bed, grabbed a red robe and made her way to the roof of Wonder Base. It was just after four in the morning, and the sky was full of stars. When she was a little girl the stars had seemed so beautiful and distant, so full of wonder and possibility. Now they seemed ominous, each star a potential source of death and destruction for everything and everyone she loved. Up in the heavens was an infinity of stars, and an infinite amount of danger.

  She felt very alone.

  “Susan? If you’d rather be alone, I can leave.”

  Susan turned and saw Theodore standing on the roof. The elevator door had opened silently, as all the doors of Wonder Base did, and she had not heard him or known he was there until he spoke.

  “I couldn’t sleep either,” said Theodore.

  “No, it’s fine,” Susan said, “I was just thinking.”

  “It’s a beautiful night,” said Theodore, “I’ve always loved the stars.”

  “I was just thinking that,” lied Susan.

  “You know,” said Theodore, “this is the first time we’ve been able to talk since we got the gauntlets. I want you to know how sorry I am about Walter’s death. I couldn’t tell you before, and I know you loved him very much.”

  Susan nodded. “It must have been terrible for you, sharing a body with Harlan Flicker, not having control over what you could do or say…”

  Theodore gave up a weak smile. “It was bad,” he admitted, “but not as bad as you might think. From the very beginning I knew that I could beat him, I just knew it was going to take months to do it. The worst part was the time I lost. The friendships I never really made with Matt, Jay, Kalomo,” Theodore paused and looked Susan in the eyes, “and you.”

  Susan stepped towards Theodore and took his hand in hers. “I lied to you, Theodore.”

  Theodore said nothing.

  “When I told you about the stars,” Susan said, “I wasn’t thinking about how beautiful they were. I was thinking about how dangerous they were. How frightened I feel whenever I look at them.”

  Theodore’s eyes went wide. “Susan,” he said, his voice filled with wonder, “the stars are full of death and danger. That’s what makes them so beautiful. You never know what’s out there, and it never ends.” Theodore ran to the edge of the roof and teetered there as he regained his balance. Susan followed.

  “You know what I’ve never done?” said Theodore, turning towards Susan suddenly.

  “What?” asked Susan. Looking at Theodore now she saw again the man she had met all those months ago in the waiting room, the man who had somehow persuaded her to become a Wonder Hero.

  “I’ve never flown,” said Theodore, “alone I mean. Harlan’s always been there, hogging my mind.” Theodore raised his hands. “Look at that sky!”

  Susan smiled a real smile for the first time in weeks. “You should do it then,” she said, “Fly.”

  Theodore summoned his Wonder Armor in a sudden flash of golden energy. He leapt into the air and hovered over the edge of the roof, but turned and said to Susan, “Come with me.”

  “I thought you wanted to fly alone,” said Susan.

  Theodore shook his head. “Not exactly what I meant.”

  Her fear forgotten, in a flash of crimson energy Susan summoned her Wonder Armor and followed Theodore into a dangerous sky full of beautiful stars.

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