“Uh, Tim,” Denise said, a few days after the holiday. “Don’t freak out, okay? But I was showing Mom the two videos you did with Minerva, and… You should probably pull them up.”
I did a quick search to pull up the videos, expecting to be pixelated or blobbed again, and got a very different kind of surprise.
“Son of a bitch! They replaced me! They totally replaced me!”
Image and video manipulation had been perfected thirty years ago, leading to a brief golden age of hoaxes and propaganda, until they started putting detection routines in every wearable and browser by default.
The detection had gotten so good, most hoaxers didn’t even bother anymore, but this fake was amazing, even Jeeves hadn’t been able to detect it.
“This is incredible, and it had to be expensive,” I said. “They must have used an AI for this or hired a real actor to imitate me. But my gestures look perfect, and they even changed my voice a little.
“Denise, I didn’t even know the corps could do this, much less do it to me! And if they can fake me this well, what else have they been faking, and for how long?”
“Somebody must have decided the revenue generated by Minerva’s merch would be more than they spent on this, but they still spent a fortune,” Denise said. “Tim, if they went to this much trouble to replace you, it means you really are on DMA radar, and somebody really is grooming you for black box work.”
“But this wasn’t fake when you watched it live, right? My face still looked like my face when you saw it?”
“Yes,” Denise said. “I’m sure there will be a thousand conspiracy guys talking about this tomorrow, but most people will have been so focused on Minerva, they probably won’t even notice. And nobody believes conspiracy nuts anymore.”
“I didn’t used to, but I guess I’ll have to start believing in conspiracies myself, now that I’m in one.”
* * *
I found Minerva’s marketing guy, Kyle Cavuto, working in a temporary office in VBC Tower, sticking close to Minerva while she rode this new wave of viral popularity. Or maybe he had other reasons.
I wasn’t expecting to find him there at 9 p.m., but there he was with his jacket off, looking casual and frankly disheveled, in his white shirt and loose tie, although he was still wearing his little glasses.
“Did you have me replaced?” I accused him as I came through the door.
“No,” Kyle said, as if he had been expecting my visit. “This whole thing works way better with your real face, so somebody must have intercepted it, somebody way more important than me.”
“Any idea who it was?”
“Somebody at HDI has a real grudge against you or has a really strong motive to hide you. Hard to say which one of those things would be worse for you, if we got it confirmed.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“Try to look on the bright side. Being a celebrity superhero is a serious pain in the ass, and it is not worth the money. Ask Minerva. Ask Sonny Mao. Ask them what they would pay to not be famous anymore and try to see this as somebody doing you a favor.”
“I guess,” I grumbled, as Kyle invited me to sit down.
“Why are you here so late?” I asked.
“I’d like to say it’s because I’m in a city I don’t know with nothing better to do, but honestly, I do the same thing at home. I’m a workaholic with no family and no life. My mom and dad both drank themselves to death, so I figure working twelve hours a day is keeping me out of trouble.”
“Sorry,” I said. “My dad drank, too.”
“I’m glad you came by, so I could at least get a chance to thank you,” Kyle said, loosening his tie a little more. “It’s a damn shame you have a media block; you’re a natural. I just need to teach you how to pretend to break the rules on a stream without actually breaking any.”
“But it’s working? Her sales are up, and this is gonna keep PR off her back?”:
“It’s working so well, I’m about to get a bonus for the first time in years, even if my boss constantly sounds like he’s gritting his teeth, every time he congratulates me.”
“Why would he be gritting his teeth? I thought the suits would be thrilled.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Any other hero, they would be. But they keep a tight rein on Minerva. I think they’re afraid of her, afraid of her turning into another Captain Cobalt.”
I leaned forward in my chair, “I keep hearing that. What does it mean?”
“Captain Cobalt got too popular, to the point where he was hard to control. You should see the declassified files on him - a hundred examples of the Captain defying orders, turning down assignments. I swear he did pretty much whatever he wanted in the last ten years of his life.
“Minerva doesn’t have his charisma or his stubborn streak, but they’re not taking any chances. Every time I try to raise her profile, they shut me down and shuffle her to another team.”
And something about the way he said it, the way he seemed to be taking it personally prompted me to ask, “This is not just a job for you, is it? You really love her.”
Kyle covered smoothly, almost well enough to throw me off. “The whole country loves her today.”
“But not like you do.”
Kyle looked up from his terminal and glared at me. “Kovak, what the hell? Close the damn door! Are you trying to get me fired?”
“No,” I said, sitting back down. “But you don’t talk about her like she’s just a client.”
“She’s the strongest superhero on Earth, of course she’s not just a client.”
“You know that’s not what I mean.”
“Kovak, what the hell are you doing?”
“How long have you worked for her?”
“Five years.”
“But it’s not just work, is it?”
Kyle took his tie off and pushed his keyboard away, leaning back a little like he had finally decided to trust me.
“Minerva and I are the same age, so I kind of felt like we were growing up together. Yes, I’ve watched her ever since I was a teenager, and yes, I had a crush on her, like every other boy in the damn country.
“You want a confession? Fine. I watched her grow up and I always thought, something in her eyes, she always seemed a little frightened, a little overwhelmed by the world she was in, and yeah, she seemed lonely. Always a little extra distance between her and her teammates, always a little hesitation when somebody stood too close or reached out to her.
“She looked like she needed someone, and I used to dream that, maybe that someone could be me. Every boy gets a schoolboy crush, and she was mine, so when I got a chance to take over her account and work for her directly, I took it.
“And for most of these five years, I have been an abject failure. Every time I come up with a good idea, some vice president yanks it out from under me, and sends me back to take more shots of her looking stiff and angry next to whoever the latest bimbo in a cape is. They even had her do a TV movie in that ridiculous retro costume. The focus group hated it, but they did it anyway. I swear they do this stuff just to humiliate her.
“The last idea that worked was sending her to meet a bunch of mixed martial arts people. It was a huge hit, and she loved them. It was the perfect symbolic appearance for her, the world’s strongest superhero learning new moves and taking hits from badass human women. Those photos actually worked because she was smiling for real, smiling because she actually liked and respected those women, and everybody could tell. But they pulled it after one episode, citing some bullshit safety concern.
“That was my whole life, coming up with ideas for her and getting shot down, until you came along, and snuck a huge hit under their radar. Which is the only reason I’m telling you this. Yes, I love her. And yes, maybe I love her a little more than I’m supposed to. But for god’s sake, keep that to yourself, and I hope it’s not as obvious to anyone else as it is to you.”
“I’m not trying to antagonize you, and I am not gonna give you up. I’m just saying, if you’ve had a crush on her all this time, you should at least ask her out.”
Kyle laughed. “You want me to ask a literal goddess on a date?”
A slow smile spread across my face. "Yeah, I really do. Because you were right. What you saw in her eyes all those years, you were right. She really is lonely, and she really is hurting, and she really does need someone like you, even if she only gives you one night.”
“Look,” I said, “you’re not really her type, and a corporate suit would not be my choice for boyfriend material, but if you can get her to dinner, and let her see how much you care about her, she might just give you the night of your life.”
Kyle blinked at me like a deer in the headlights. This must be how I looked at Lydia that first night, when she offered to make all my dreams come true.
“Even if I had a chance,” he said, “that woman would break every bone in my body. It wouldn’t even be sex; she would just throw me around like a rag doll!”
“Maybe not,” I said. “You have to keep this quiet, but we’ve been working on some techniques to help her control her strength. I’m just saying, if she thought you were worth it, she has a way to be a woman with you, just like a normal person.”
He frowned and cocked his head. “Kovak, if you’re fucking with me…”
"I’m not. I know why you think that; I’d be suspicious, too, but I promise this is for real."
"You don’t even know me, why are you doing this?"
“Because I do know you. Before I got my powers, I was exactly like you, stuck in a lonely apartment dreaming about things I could never have.
“But now that I’m here, now that I’m actually meeting all these people I used to watch on TV? They really are just people, with a few extra layers on top. Yeah, they have to be super careful about who they trust, but she already knows she can trust you! I told her what you did for us, so you really do have a shot here!
“If you can ignore all the goddess bullshit and talk to her like a person, she’s gonna respond like a person! She’s not great at it, but she’s getting better. Just be patient, and keep talking, but resist the urge to fanboy on her. Just ask her questions and let her open up. You’ve got friends in common, and you’re both stuck in the same system. Just talk about that.”
Kyle was still frowning, so I continued. “Now that I’m on the other side of this, now that I’ve seen what these heroes are like when you get to know them, I want to help somebody else do what I wanted to do. If I can help a good man achieve something he thinks is impossible, I’m gonna do it, just to see a nice guy win.
“And even if she says no, you can look in the mirror for the rest of your life and know that you walked right up to your dream girl and took your best shot. I want you to do it because when I had my chance with mine, I fucked it up. I fucked it up and walked away, and now I may never get another chance. Walk in there and be brave, man. Be braver than I was.”
I got up and headed for the door. “And whatever happens, we never talked. This works better if she doesn’t know I helped you. But if she does say yes, call me, and I’ll help you hide this from corporate. Good luck!”
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