We entered the spaceship through the hole on its side. The inside of it was mostly empty space, except for a few large pieces of equipment. I could not even begin to guess at their purpose. Perhaps the ship had been stripped mostly clean over the years. Or, maybe the V’Loths simply traveled light. I had no idea and, frankly, didn’t care.
With Isaac still in his bird form, together we searched what little remained in the spaceship as carefully as we could. If the Omega weapon was hidden up here, we sure as heck did not recognize it as such.
We were running out of places to look in the cavern. I was beyond frustrated. Maybe Isaac was right—maybe the Omega weapon was not here. Maybe it didn’t exist at all, and the Sentinels had been lying to me. I certainly would not put it past them.
We exited the spaceship from the same hole we had entered it. I hovered in the air for a few moments, trying to think of something we might have missed. Isaac flapped in the air next to me. Suddenly, he let out a squawk. It sounded like a squawk of excitement. It just as easily could have been him saying “I really wanna poop on a car right now.” Just like I wasn’t an astrobiologist, I wasn’t an ornithologist either.
Isaac dove toward the cavern floor as if his eagle form was about to kill a mouse. Curious as to what he was making a fuss about, I too descended. By the time I landed near the neutronium spear, Isaac had already transformed into his normal self. He was on one knee next to the black obelisk.
“What kind of eagle was that?” I asked.
“Aetos Dios,” he said absentmindedly, preoccupied by whatever he was looking at. His finger traced a pattern on the floor next to the obelisk.
“In English. I’m not bilingual.”
He looked up. “Huh? Oh. It means Eagle of Zeus. And guess what my eagle eyes spotted from up above?”
“My impatience?” I was in no mood for guessing games.
“No. I saw an indentation in the rock floor next to the neutronium spear. It’s hard to see it with human eyes, but you can feel it. Come here. Give me your hand. See?” Isaac guided my hand up, across, and then down again, like it was the planchette on a Ouija board. I knew what a planchette was, but not how to find the Omega weapon. Marvelous.
Isaac was right—there was a big square indentation in the surface of the rock next to the neutronium spear. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it.
“So the floor is not as perfectly smooth as it looks,” I said. “I don’t get why you’re so excited.”
Isaac shook his head at me. “I think Mechano’s energy blast cooked your brains a little. The indentation on the floor is square, and seems to be the same size as the base of the spear. If the spear is as heavy as you say it is, it could’ve caused the indentation in the floor. It’s as if Avatar moved it from where it left this indentation to where it rests now.”
“So Avatar moved the spear. I still don’t get why you’re making a federal case out of it.”
“Don’t you see? If Avatar is the only person who can lift this thing, maybe he moved it because he hid something under it. Something like the Omega weapon.”
I was dubious. “You’re making a mighty big deal over Avatar moving the spear a couple of feet. Maybe he simply thought the cavern’s feng shui was better with the spear here.”
“Well, there’s one way to find out.” Isaac moved over to the spear and got on both knees in front of it. His body glowed slightly as it always did when he underwent a transformation. His body became translucent. He had assumed his ghost form, something I had seen him do many times before. He shoved his hand down toward the base of the neutronium spear. Part of his arm sank through the floor as if the floor was made of air instead of solid rock.
His face grew excited. “There’s a small cavity in the floor right underneath the spear. Something’s in here. I can’t touch it like this, of course, but I know it’s there. A solid feels different when my hand passes through it than empty space does.”
I was getting excited too. “Can you pull it out?”
Isaac retracted his arm. He was empty-handed. His body became solid again. “I can’t go solid while I’m phased through something.”
“What would happen if you tried?”
“Two solids trying to occupy the same space at the same time?” Isaac put his fists together, then spread them out while making an exploding sound. “A massive explosion would happen, flavored with bits of Isaac. You wouldn’t be around to enjoy the fireworks display as the blast would likely kill you too.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Yeah, oh.”
I was now as disappointed as I had been excited moments before. What had Avatar hidden under the neutronium spear if not the Omega weapon? If Isaac couldn’t phase it out, it might as well be on the far side of the moon for all the good it would do us under the impossibly heavy obelisk. If the Omega weapon really had been stashed under the obelisk, it was so close, and yet still so far away.
Isaac squatted down a bit with his legs straddling the spear. He wrapped his arms around it.
“What in the world are you doing?” I asked.
“Since the EZ Keep clerk isn’t handy, I’m making love to the neutronium spear,” he said. “What’s it look like I’m doing? Trying to pick this damned thing up, of course.” He heaved up. Well, he tried to. Despite Isaac straining against it, the spear didn’t move so much as a millimeter.
“Weren’t you listening before when I told you Avatar is the only one strong enough to move it?”
Isaac continued to strain. The cords stood out on his neck. After struggling vainly, he gave up. “The Hero Hags website says I have my powers because I’m half-demon,” he gasped. “It also says that naked you look like a human tripod. The fact urban legend says something, that doesn’t mean it’s true. I’ll try again, only I’ll kick the horsepower up some.” Isaac’s form shimmered again, becoming larger and more imposing. A huge, bare-chested, burly man with a black bull’s horned head took Isaac’s place. He had turned into the Minotaur, one of Isaac’s forms that had super strength.
I would have said that Isaac was full of bull if he really thought he could lift the obelisk even in his Minotaur form, but making puns did not seem terribly helpful. Since lighting a candle was more useful than cursing the darkness, I said “I’ll help,” as Isaac squatted down around the obelisk again. I extended my hands, latching onto the obelisk with my powers. “We’ll lift together on three.”
On the count of three, the muscles of Isaac’s Minotaur form rippled dramatically, like a bodybuilder doing a clean and press with a loaded barbell. He grunted and snorted like a bull fighting a matador as he heaved on the spear. I too tried to lift it with my powers, envisioning it as a thimble I was trying to pluck off someone’s thumb.
To be honest, my heart wasn’t entirely in the effort. I had already done a quick calculation of how much the spear weighed by taking how much a cubic inch of neutronium was said to weigh and doing a rough extrapolation from that based on how big the spear was. The answer had so many zeroes I thought we wouldn’t be able to lift the spear even if we had a few dozen Heroes here to help us.
It gave me no pleasure to see that I was right. Despite us straining to lift it, the neutronium spear did not budge even the tiniest bit. We did not come up with an answer to that classic paradox of what happens when an unstoppable force is met with an immovable object because, though we seemed to have found an immovable object, Isaac and I combined were hardly an unstoppable force.
Isaac gave up. He fell backward to the floor, transforming back into his human form as he sprawled there. His chest heaved; his face was red. I lowered my arms and also desisted. I sat down heavily on the hard floor. I felt the way Isaac looked.
“If Avatar hid his diary under this thing and not the Omega weapon, I’m going to be awfully pissed,” Isaac gasped.
“Not that we’re likely to find out.”
“I’ve lifted a locomotive in my Minotaur form, but the neutronium spear might as well have laughed at our combi
ned efforts. What was it Archimedes said? ‘Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.’ I defy that old fraud to move this thing. It goes to show that just because you’re dead and distinguished, it doesn’t mean you know what in the heck you’re talking about.”
I stood up so abruptly that I got light-headed.
I said, “Maybe you were right about Mechano having cooked my brain. Good God, I’m stupid.”
“And you’re just now realizing it? To what do those of us who’ve known it for a while owe this epiphany?”
“You’re stupid too for not having thought of it either,” I said. “We don’t need to be strong enough to pick the spear up. We just need to lever it over so we expose whatever is buried in the cavity underneath it.”
Isaac thought about that for a moment. Then he stood up and brushed his hands off. Still breathing hard, he looked disgusted. “As much as it pains me to admit it, you’re right—I am stupid for not having thought of it. As soon as I catch my breath, we’ll try again.”
I let out a long breath and ran a hand over my head. I was sweating, from both exertion and my Mechano-induced injuries.
“No, we won’t try again,” I said. “I need to try by myself. You’ll just be in the way.”
Isaac blinked. “Excuse me?”
“That sounded harsher than I meant it to. I just mean that I really have to let loose if I’m going to even come close to tipping the spear over. If I’m worrying about not crushing you in the process, I’m not going to be able to apply maximum pressure.”
Isaac frowned thoughtfully. “As much as it bothers me to admit twice you’re right, you are right again,” he finally concluded. “We both know you have a lot more raw power than I do. If one of us is going to pull this off, it’ll be you. Don’t mind me. I’ll just stand here, look pretty, and cheer you on.” Isaac pursed his lips. “If I’d known this would be my role in this craziness, I’d have brought some pom-poms along.”
“I’m just grateful you left your cheerleading skirt at home.”
“Don’t be jealous of my sexy bow legs.”
“All right,” I said, realizing I was procrastinating, “back up some and give me room.” As Isaac did so, I started to focus on what I needed to do. Part of my brain supplied me with how many newtons, or units of force, I needed to tip the neutronium spear over based on my earlier estimate of how much it weighed. The number was massive. I had never generated that much force before in my life. Nor did I think I could. The task seemed impossible.
Then again, what was it Nelson Mandela had said? “It always seems impossible until someone does it.” Easy for him to say. I was no transformative figure the way he was. If he were here, maybe a great man like him could come up with a way to get the job done.
Unfortunately, Mandela wasn’t here for me to foist the job off on. All I could do was my best.
I faced the neutronium spear head-on. I raised my personal force field to help protect my body from the external pressure I would soon exert on it. I gathered my will, picturing clearly in my mind what I wanted to do. I wanted to apply a narrow beam of pressure to the top of the spear, like using a pencil to tip over a liter of soda. Simultaneous with applying pressure to the obelisk, I would need to apply an equal amount of force to my body in the opposite direction. It was Newton’s Third Law of Motion in action: To every action, there was an equal and opposite reaction. Newton’s law was why rockets worked even in the vacuum of space—their rocket engines applied thrust, pushing the rocket in the opposite direction of the thrust even though there was no air to push off of. If I applied the tremendous amount of force I needed to the obelisk without simultaneously applying the exact same amount of force to my body in the opposite direction, I’d shove myself into the cavern wall behind me and be smeared like a bug on a windshield.
I took a deep, calming breath. I was as ready as I was going to be.
To help me concentrate, I extended my arms toward the neutronium spear. I unleashed the invisible beam of pressure I had visualized in my mind on the top of the spear. At the exact same time, I carefully exerted the same amount of force against the back of my personal shield.
Phew! I was not thrown backward through the cavern wall like a shot cannonball. So, I had at least done this part successfully. The obelisk still hadn’t budged an inch, of course, but this small success was heartening considering my disastrous track record recently. Baby steps.
Time to ramp the force up. I pushed harder and harder against the obelisk, while of course pushing equally hard against myself. It was like slowly turning a faucet handle and unleashing more and more water pressure. Soon, the faucet was all the way open. I was pushing as hard against the spear as I was capable.
From Isaac’s perspective, my struggle against the spear was no doubt soundless. From my perspective, things were anything but. My heart pounded so hard, it felt like it would burst right out of my chest. My head, already hurting from my encounter with Mechano, ached even more painfully, as if I had stuck it into an ever-tightening vise. My blood roared in my ears. My body started to shake, as if I stood in the epicenter of an earthquake. I pushed against the obelisk as hard as I thought I could, exerting more of my power against it than I had ever used on anything before. The amount of force I brought to bear on the neutronium spear would swat a jumbo jet out of the air like it was a paper airplane.
The obelisk did not move one iota. I could have been tickling the damned thing with a feather for all the good I was doing.
It was no use. I had failed. Again. You would think I would be used to it by now. I’d been getting lots of practice lately.
I was about to give up.
But then, I got mad. Being rejected by Neha, getting Hannah killed, not being able to find Antonio, not knowing how to deal with the Sentinels and then having to run from them when I finally found the balls to confront them, feeling overwhelmed by life in the big city . . . I was heartily sick of being a loser, of feeling like I was too small of a person to deal with the big issues I had to grapple with. Was I just some dumb hick from South Carolina who was incapable of rising to the occasion? Or, was I the Omega? How was I supposed to save the world if I couldn’t knock over a stupid rock?
No! No more failures. No more running away. No more being a loser. It would end today. One way or another.
I knew my body couldn’t take much more of this stress. My outstretched arms hurt, as if someone who got heavier by the second sat on top of them. They felt like they’d snap under the strain. It didn’t matter. Pain didn’t matter. The pressure and stress on my body didn’t matter. If I couldn’t best an inanimate object, what chance did I have against the Sentinels? I was going to either move this damned neutronium spear, or die trying. If the latter, maybe the Omega spirit would find a worthier host the next time. Good luck to him or her, plus my most heartfelt condolences. I hoped the next Omega knew better than to let his father and friends be killed.
I dug deeper. I hit reserves of strength that, frankly, I didn’t even know I had. The pressure against the obelisk increased. The pressure on my body increased as well. My head throbbed, feeling like it would explode. My ears popped with sharp stabs of pain. Wetness trickling out of them and down my neck. Isaac yelled something, wanting me to stop. I could only faintly hear him, like he was shouting down to me after I had fallen into a deep, dark well. I tasted blood. My nose bled, making it hard to breathe. It was just as well. My lungs were on fire anyway. Who cared? Not me. Everybody knew oxygen was overrated.
I had zoomed right past exhaustion, and rapidly approached collapse. My body cried uncle.
Screw you, I thought to my body. You’re not the boss of me. I kept going. I shut out the shrieks and complaints of my flesh. The Mountain, Isaac, everything around me, the entire universe seemed to fade out of existence. There was only me and the neutronium spear. My dark nemesis.
My power surged out of me at levels like I had never experienced before.
&nbs
p; Move, I demanded of my nemesis.
It didn’t. My jaw clenched so tight, I was vaguely aware of teeth cracking. Mine, I guess. Not the indestructible Mechano ones, presumably. He could go screw himself too. My too-eager-to-throw-in-the-towel, bitch-ass body and Mechano could have a go screw yourself orgy together. As long as they kept me out of it, I didn’t care.
Move!
My dark nemesis still didn’t. It was proving to be as stubborn as I was. Maybe it would be the new Omega.
Move!!! It had become a mantra. My vision blurred and darkened, like a computer screen that was about to die.
I couldn’t see it, but I felt it—the tiniest bit of movement in the neutronium spear. A slight tremor, like when the guy you’re arm wrestling is weakening.
Move!!!
Finally, incredibly, unexpectedly, it did. The neutronium spear slowly tipped out of the vertical like a falling domino. Once it was clear it was going to fall, I shut off my powers, relieving the skull-crushing pressure on my mind. I slumped to my knees, hunched over, feeling like a melted candle. I hadn’t realized that only my powers had been holding me up toward the end of my struggle.
Son of a bitch! I had pulled it off.
The neutronium spear hit the floor with a crash they might have heard back in Astor City. A crack split open in the rock floor from the point of impact all the way to the far wall. It was as if a giant had come along and pulled the floor apart like it was two halves of a grapefruit. The entire cavern shook, as if a monstrous earthquake had hit. The rock under and around us rumbled. I more felt the rumbles than heard them. Though not completely deaf, my ears weren’t working correctly. Isaac shouted something. I couldn’t figure out what between my defective ears and the rumbling.
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