“Oh, great,” said Preston Percy, snuffing out his unfiltered cigarette under the toe of his shoe on the pavement of the driveway. “Don’t tell me America just lost her New Nuclear-Powered Hero!”
The secret agent walked out onto the lawn where Mama and Avie were propping up Clarissa Too.
“Can you still fly?” he asked.
“I can barely walk,” said Clarissa Too. “I feel like I did before I got my Megapowers, like in my Civilian reality.”
“Try lifting that stack of firewood,” said Preston, pointing to the short stack of timber against the garage. “Wait; that’s no good. It’s not heavy enough. Try lifting the car.”
“Are you nuts?” said Clarissa Too. “I need to sit down.”
“What’s the problem?” I asked.
“I’ll tell you what the problem is,” said Preston. “We just lost Ms. Megaton Man, the Presidential Megahero. What am I going to tell the President-Elect? We have a whole slate of events scheduled for her next week.”
“I haven’t lost anything,” said Clarissa Too. “I just need to walk it off.” She took a couple steps. “Ouch! No, I was right; I need to sit down.”
Mama and Avie helped her over to the picnic table.
“What do you think happened?” I asked.
“Isn’t it obvious?” said Preston. “This boob here had to go and swallow the Cosmic Cue-Ball and lose his powers,” he said, pointing at Trent.
“Now wait a minute,” said Trent.
“That was bad enough, losing Megaton Man as America’s Nuclear-Powered Hero,” said Preston. “Clarissa Too here got her powers from the Cosmic Cue-Ball, isn’t that right? I wasn’t there …”
“Yes, but what’s your point?” I asked.
“When she gave Trent a goodbye kiss, her Cosmic Cue-Ball powers went right back into the Cosmic Cue-Ball!”
“That’s absurd,” said Trent. “When I swallowed the Cosmic Cue-Ball, it dissolved in my metabolism.”
“And it still must be swimming around in there,” said Preston. “Clearly it absorbed Ms. Megaton Man Too’s powers back into itself, just as it absorbed your Megapowers, Megaton Man.”
“I don’t see how that’s possible,” I said. “I kissed Trent plenty of times—and plenty more besides”—I forgot for the moment that Mama, Stella, and Simon were all standing right there—“and it never affected my powers.”
“Because your Ms. Megaton Man Megapowers didn’t come from the Cosmic Cue-Ball,” Preston pointed out. “They came from heredity, and were triggered by exposure to the Mega-Soldier Syrup.”
I thought about this for a moment and realized Preston might be right. In this reality, my father had been Clyde Phloog, the Silver Age Megaton Man. In Clarissa Too’s Civilian reality, Clyde Pflug had never been a Megahero.
“We’ll have to have Dr. Joe test her out for sure,” said Preston, “but I’m almost certain he’ll confirm my speculation. Believe me, I’ve been around this Megahero mad science stuff long enough to know a plot reversal when I see one. Man, what am I going to tell the President-Elect?”
***
Avie drove us back to Detroit, and Mama drove Clarissa Too back to Troy. Later, when Dr. Joe flew in the next day from the West Coast to visit the Troy+Thems headquarters and run a battery of tests on Clarissa Too, he confirmed Preston Percy’s suspicions: Ms. Megaton Man Too was no more.
On Saturday, Preston was waiting for me in my apartment after my clarinet practice with the First Holistic-Humanist Congregation of Cass City Wind Ensemble. Avie had made him coffee and he was sitting on the sofa.
“We have no other choice,” he announced, rising to his feet. “Clarissa James, you have to become Ms. Megaton Man again.”
“Are you out of your mind?” I asked. “I’ve got finals coming up—both for my own coursework and as teaching assistant. Besides, I haven’t been Ms. Megaton Man since the summer; that was months ago.”
“Clarissa Too can help you with grading papers,” said Preston. “She’s got nothing else to do now, since she lost her Megapowers.”
“She doesn’t know the material,” I pointed out. “She’s taking an entirely different schedule of classes back in her Civilian reality. I don’t even know if she’s majoring in Urban Social Policy and Public Planning.”
“She’s smart, and she’s a quick study,” said Preston. “Just like you. She’ll catch on quick. I already got her copies of all the textbooks.”
“It’s your own fault for inviting her to Thanksgiving,” I pointed. “You know, she asked me if it would be all right if she started dating Gene Griffin—the nerve of that girl.”
“She wanted to come,” said Preston. “Besides, what other family does she have in this reality?”
“And she and Gene seem to have hit off on those nightly West Forest Knight Rangers patrols,” Avie pointed out.
“Let me get this straight,” I said. “You want me to take over her life and for her to take over mine.”
“More or less,” said Preston. “You know, we only sent for her to help you out.”
“How’s that?” I demanded.
“You were exposed, your secret identity was on the verge of becoming public knowledge,” said Preston. “Because of your own lackadaisical approach to your Megahero career, I might point out. Jasper sent for Clarissa Too in her Civilian reality to come here so your secret could be restored.”
“How did that help me out?”
“You got to keep going to school unmolested,” Preston replied.
“Yes, but now you’re asking me to leave school and become a full-time Megahero for the next President of the United States—while another girl gets my grad-school education. I never signed up for that.”
“The country simply cannot due without it’s Nuclear-Powered Hero,” said Preston. “Where’s your sense of patriotism?”
“You mean the racist, homophobic, xenophobic, backward country that embraced the Silver Age Megaton Man—until they found out he was shtupping a black chick? Look for my patriotism up my ass. Besides, you’re forgetting one very important thing.”
“What’s that, pray tell?”
I pointed to my shorn scalp. “I no longer have burgundy hair.”
“No problem,” said Tempy, who immediately appeared out of nowhere. “I kept your locks and made a wig.” He pulled a nicely shaped head of hair from a hat box.
“I’m not wearing that,” I said. “It’ll blow right off, assuming I can even still fly. Besides, Kav, I thought I told you to burn that shit.”
“I did what you asked,” said Tempy, somewhat indignantly.
“That’s my hair,” said Clarissa Too, who walked in from the hallway with the help of a cane. Her hair was short now, identical to mine. “I’m not going to be needing it now; it’s all yours.”
“Jasper devised a special adhesive he says will work up to five hundred miles per hour,” said Preston. “And it dissolves when you shampoo it in the shower.”
“Don’t worry,” said Avie. “We’ll make it work. Clarissa Too will live here with me while you’re either in Troy, or Megatropolis, or wherever. I promise I’ll even stop being the Wondrous Warhound, so you won’t have to worry about me while you’re away. America needs you.”
“This is a conspiracy,” I said.
“Call it what you want,” said Preston. “You don’t have a lot of choice. This request isn’t coming from the President-Elect—he doesn’t even know about this situation, yet, thank God.”
“Then who’s it from?”
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“The head of the Ivy Covered Halls of Higher Learning,” said Preston gravely. “Your grandmother, Dr. Mercedith Robeson-James.”
***
Next thing I knew, right after church service on Sunday, I was packed off on a commercial jet to Washington, D.C., my burgundy wig in a hat box in my lap the whole way. “Don’t lose that,” Preston had told me at the airport. I didn’t bring my Ms. Megaton Man uniform with me, however; Preston said Grandma Seedy was already manufacturing several back-ups from the same Quarantinium-Quelluminum fabric, even though the material is virtually indestructible.
When I arrived at Washington National Airport, I was met by a chauffeur who whisked me by limousine to a large, monumental neoclassical building on the Potomac River, not far from the Jefferson Memorial. Formerly, it had served as the headquarters of the Capitol Syndicate, a group of Megaheroes including the Original Golden Age Megaton Man, a distant relative of mine. It was stately and sprawling—reminiscent of the Arthur Rackham Memorial building, the Arbor State extension in Detroit where I finished my undergraduate degree, only quite a bit larger in scale. Now it housed the quasi-governmental agency known as the Ivy-Covered Halls of Higher Learning; I wondered how a handful of Megaheroes could utilize such a vast space. Maybe during a World War II, they were planning to build an army.
Grandma Seedy met me on the steps leading up to the stately columns of ICHHL headquarters. She put her arm around me and led me up the steps.
“How was your flight?” she asked.
“It was fine, Grandma,” I said.
“Probably wise not to try to fly here under your own power,” she said.
“I’m sure I’d be rusty,” I said.
Inside the guarded doors, we entered a vast, empty marble space. It was easily the biggest architectural interior I had ever seen, let alone been inside. Our steps clacked on the polished floors, echoing off the walls and colonnade that held up the cast iron and glass ceiling maybe a hundred or more feet above.
We passed several colossal statues in the towering hall. One I immediately recognized as Farley Phloog, the Original Golden Age Megaton Man. The others included a Megahero dresses as a dinosaur named Pteranoman and his sidekick, Stego the Dino Boy; Falconhawk and his sidekick Baldy (a bald eagle); Lady Liberty (basically the Statue of Liberty showing a bit more leg, and wielding her torch as if she were about to club somebody); and a mostly naked man in scaled swimming trunks names the Amphibious Antediluvian, who didn’t appear to be a founding member of the group but rather the most recent addition. Collectively, they were known as the Capitol Syndicate; I dimly recalled coming across some microfilmed newspaper articles on them at Arbor State. They operated around World War II but seem to have disbanded in the early 1950s.
The statues reminded me of the Hall of Fallen Devengers I’d seen a while ago in the Doomsday Factory in New Jersey. Those statues had been more numerous, since the Doomsday Revengers had continued over the years with several line-up changes; they also seemed to have been made of some cheaper material like plaster or polystyrene, whereas these colossi were sculpted from the finest marble.
“Were these the Megaheroes you worked with during World War II, Grandma?” I asked as we kept walking.
“Ironically, no,” said Seedy, who didn’t pause to gaze up at the statues, but just kept walking. “I worked with Major Meltdown and Magma, of course, since I had a hand in their creation, and the Doomsday Revengers. I never heard of any of these folks before ICHHL headquarters was moved into this building. The only one I know anything about is the swimmer fellow, although I knew him as the Submersible Mer-Man; boy, he sure gave Major Meltdown and Magma a hard time. Luckily, the Archon of Adrift Atlantopia hasn’t plagued our surface-dwelling civilization in recent decades.”
I was marveled that such a grandiose mausoleum had been built in the nation’s capital just to house a handful of Megaheroes who for all intents and purposes died out, while the legions of Doomsday Revengers, D-Vengers, and finally Devengers over the years had to make do with an inconspicuous, ramshackle warehouse in Bayonne New Jersey.
“Grandma, this has to be the best kept secret in Washington, D.C.,” I said. “Why isn’t this building in any of the tourist books?”
My grandmother, however, gave the air of someone too busy to notice her monumental surroundings.
“Isn’t it?” she said. “I don’t see why it wouldn’t be. It’s not open to the public, of course, but I don’t know how sightseers could miss it. We are off the beaten track of the National Mall, I suppose.”
We got to one end of the building where her tiny but well-appointed office was located. She had a fine mahogany desk with a large Palladian window with a view of the Jefferson Memorial and the surrounding park and grounds. There was a new Ms. Megaton Man uniform on a mannequin next to the American flag behind her desk.
She motioned me to sit in a leather-upholstered chair in front of her desk while she assumed the swivel armchair behind it. I sat down with the hatbox on my lap.
“Grandma, I gotta be honest with you,” I said. “I’m not sure I’m cut out for this role.” I related my experience in New York, where Rex Rigid’s restoration of the Megatropolis Quartet Headquarters—the Quantum Tower—had displaced hundreds of people from another dimension. I made a few other observations as well. “I just don’t Megaheroes do any good in the world,” I concluded. “I think we’ve only fucked things up more.”
“I agree,” said Grandma Seedy. “Remember, I was one of the team of scientists who created the first generation of Megaheroes back in 1940. We’ve been trying to put genie back into the bottle ever since, with little luck.”
“Then there’s the fact that I haven’t actively used my powers since the Fourth of July,” I said. “Now it’s nearly December. I don’t know how useful I’ll be after a five-month layoff.”
“Don’t worry,” said Grandma Seedy. “We’ll start you off with light duty—photo ops, softball press interviews, that sort of thing. The kind of thing Clarissa Too was doing.”
“But what if Big, Blue Bulky Guy goes on a rampage or something? Or there’s another killer robot outbreak?”
“Big, Blue Bulky Guy is a good guy now,” Seedy reminded me. “Mervyn Goldfarb is finishing up his PhD at Fitzrandolph University, where I taught briefly, in fact. I don’t know him real well, but he actually seems quite soft-spoken and mild-mannered.”
“You know what I mean,” I said. “What if there’s a real emergency, and the next President of the United States needs America’s Nuclear-Powered Hero? I’m practically a phony.”
“You’re the original Ms. Megaton Man, as far as this reality’s concerned,” said Seedy. “Besides, you’ll have help—don’t forget, you’re an auxiliary member of no less than three Megahero teams: the Troy+Thems, the Megatropolis Quartet, and since you’ll be filling in for your departed father, the Doomsday Revengers. They’ll have your back.”
“Isn’t there some way Clarissa Too’s powers can be restored?” I asked. “She was so much better suited for the role, temperamentally, than I ever was. She was having such a blast. All I ever used my Megapowers for was to fuck around—oops, I mean—oh, you know what I mean.”
My grandmother ignored my faux pas. “Dr. Joe is looking into it,” said Seedy. “Perhaps he can devise some formula, but the challenge is that being a Megahero just doesn’t seem to be in her Civilian genes the way it was in yours. I don’t know; I’m not an expert on the Megaton side of things. I was on the Meltdown team.”
She pointed to the Ms. Megaton Man uniform hanging on the mannequin.
“Rex Rigid developed this material,” she said. “I think I’ve told you the story. It was for Major Meltdown and his sidekick, Magma, later Junior Meltdown and then Young Meltdown. Those two boys burned through a lot of costumes before Rex accidentally came up with Quarantinium-Quelluminum. Even so, we had to make new costumes for them every six weeks. Yours should last a good deal longer, as long as you don’t fly into a volcano, although you may start to go through them at a steady pace. I had my team at the Doomsday Factory manufacture one for Washington and one for New York, with more on the way—I’ve had to delegate to my seamstresses because things have been too busy here, what the transition of administrations. With the uniform you have back in Detroit and the one Clarissa Too won’t be needing anymore back in Troy, you should be well-supplied for the time being. You want to try it on? I’m sure it will fit—my team does the best work.”
***
I set the hatbox on the desk and went into the powder room adjacent to Grandma Seedy’s office and slipped out of my civilian clothing while Seedy removed the uniform from the mannequin. She handed the primary-colored garb to me inside. I was expecting perhaps that my weight gain would make the uniform too tight, especially following Thanksgiving, but her team of seamstresses had made allowances and it fit snugly. I looked in the mirror; something wasn’t quite right. It was the short hair.
I came out and presented myself. “How do I look?”
“Great,” said Seedy. “But don’t forget that.” She pointed to the hatbox.
“Oh, yeah.” I took out the burgundy wig made from Clarissa Too’s hair and fitted it over my scalp. “Where’s that adhesive Rubber Brother said he’d devise?”
“No need for that this weekend,” said Seedy. “We won’t have you do any heavy lifting. We won’t even be meeting the President-Elect on this visit. But I do have one media interview scheduled for you this afternoon.”
“Sure,” I said.
Seedy pushed a button on the intercom on her desk. “Send the young lady in, please.”
I figured if the reporter was starting at the other end of the building, it could be awhile. I said, “Grandma, I’m going to miss sitting around reading all the time, and learning stuff. My grad school coursework and teaching is really quite fascinating, you know.”
“Avie told you and Clarissa Too have some sort of psychic link,” said Seedy. “I suppose everything she learns will come to you overnight in your dreams.”
“You got me there,” I said. “You’ve thought of everything.”
The door to Grandma Seedy’s office opened, and in marched petite Virginia Vega, replete with a Warren Woodward University Warhounds hoody.
“Hi, Ms. James,” said Virginia. “I mean, Ms. Megaton Man!” She gave me an ostentatious wink. “Fancy meeting you here!”
“What are you doing here, Virginia?” I asked. “And of course, I’m only guessing that’s your name, since we’ve obviously never met before.” I winked back.
“You guessed right—Virginia Vega,” she said. “My family’s originally from D.C., and I’m visiting relatives for Thanksgiving, didn’t I mention it? Somebody named Preston Percy suggested I drop by here and interview you for The Cass-End before I fly back to Detroit tomorrow.”
“The least he could do, after killing your story,” I said. “Since I’m not your teacher or anything, I guess there’s no problem with you interviewing America’s First Black Female Nuclear-Powered Hero for your student newspaper.”
“I’ll leave you two alone,” said Grandma Seedy. She had some other business to attend to, so we had her office to ourselves.
***
We had a nice interview, Virginia and I, although I mostly discussed Clarissa Too’s exploits at second hand, and had to resort to a few white lies and several more winks, I was glad she’d finally get her big exclusive. In fact, we happened to be on the same flight back to Detroit that evening, although in keeping with secret identity protocol, we had to pretend we didn’t know each other.
I suspected my trip to D.C. was all an elaborate ruse, not only for Grandma Seedy to counsel me to see if I was on board with becoming Ms. Megaton Man again, but also to see if my new uniform fit, after putting on a few pounds. I had a million more questions to ask Grandma Seedy—about the splitting and reunification of the dimensions, the origin of the first generation of Megaheroes, and other stuff only she would know.
In any case, that slate of events Preston Percy referenced mysteriously evaporated, and I found myself being whisked by limo back to the airport with my hatbox and also my new uniform. For the time being, I was on my way back to Detroit, to help Clarissa Too grade finals, to join the Troy+Thems, and to generally sit and wait until the inauguration of the next President of the United States in January, 1985.
Or so I thought.
End of Volume IV