The next morning I woke up with Avie standing over my lower bunk, soaking wet and wrapped in a towel, in a total panic.
“I was taking a shower down the hall,” she said, gasping for breath. “And who walked in but that Chuck fellow.”
“Stella’s half-brother?” I asked. “Chuck Roast? The Human Meltdown? The one you’d cast as America’s Nuclear-Powered Hero?” This was probably no time to rub it in.
“I don’t think so any more,” said Avie, almost crying. “He barged in on the ladies’ shower, dropped his towel—he’s drop-dead gorgeous, by the way—but then he claimed it was all a mistake.”
“He was putting the moves on you?” I asked. “Are you sure?”
I didn’t know what else to say. I wanted to think it was all a misunderstanding. Maybe Chuck had gotten the wrong idea; maybe his behavior had been completely innocent. What does a hunk like the Human Meltdown need my overly-curvy sister when he’s got leggy supermodel megahero wannabes lining up?
“C’mon,” said Avie. “The wrong shower? Did guys ever accidentally walk into the girls’ shower in South Quad?”
“Not unless it was on purpose,” I had to admit. “You’re sure he wasn’t just misreading the signals?”
“I didn’t flirt with him yesterday,” Avie protested. “I saw him for just as long as you did. Just now, he cornered me in the shower, I threatened to scream. Dana told us this guy was a creep.”
“But he’s so good looking,” I said. “And charming. Why would a guy like that …?”
“Because he’s on a power trip, like all men like that,” said Avie. “He thinks he can get away with it—knows he can get away with it. No wonder he’s having marriage troubles—he can’t keep his dick in his pants. He has a gorgeous cock, by the way.”
Avie and I agreed that was no excuse. We promised each other from now on to never go to and from the bathroom and showers in the morning without each other.
“Being a female megahero on one of these teams must be terrible,” said Avie. “Sexual harassment, no human resources department to complain to, no oversight. I can just imagine what Stella must have gone through on the Megatropolis Quartet, with all those creepy old predators. And what do you think of the Original Golden Age Megaton Man getting Kiddo pregnant? Dana claims it was a sexual assault; Kiddo has convinced herself she’s in love with him. And she’s, what?—only fifteen. I’ll bet there must be all kinds of incidents of sexual harassment on the ICHHL Blow Dryer—with all the puns and play-on-words to go with it.”
“But Preston’s gay,” I reminded her.
“He can still be a sexist harasser,” said Avie. “Even Kav feels persecuted by Preston. It’s all about power, not sexual attraction. Being a victim doesn’t preclude the vulnerable preying on the even more vulnerable.”<
I skipped my own shower; Avie and I both wanted to just get the hell out of there. We decided to get dressed and duck out of the Youthful Permutations headquarters early, before any of the other team members were up. We were out the door as civilians and crossing the Brooklyn Bridge as pedestrians, right alongside the New Yorkers who were heading into work.
By the time we set foot on Manhattan, Avie’s encounter with Chuck in the shower was all but forgotten—for the time being. We spent the day taking in all the sights. It was cold enough for a medium-heavy jacket but not as freezing the night before, so we walked everywhere. We had bagels and coffee for breakfast and rode the subway up and down the island all morning.
We saw the museums along Fifth Avenue, then Central Park—where the Partyers from Mars had their big landing, and Trent had swallowed the Cosmic Cue-Ball—and we visited the hole lower down on Fifth Avenue that once had been the Megatropolis Quartet Headquarters. Now, it was just a square, empty foundation collecting a few inches of rain water that puddled in the corners. The plaza was surrounded by clapboard fencing just as Stella described; we had to pry our way in just to get a peek.
Later, we ventured over to 42nd Street to see the library and Bryant Park, the Chrysler Building, Grand Central Station, and Tudor City, an early-twentieth-century complex of apartments and office space, not far from the United Nations. Sabersnag had written down the secret address of Club Tudor City, the bar supposedly haunted by Yarn Man and his cronies, or we might have never found it.
When we went in, the place was nearly deserted. There was just a skinny bartender at a long, well-stocked Art Deco bar. Bing Crosby was crooning on the juke box, and I suddenly realized where Bing had gotten his nickname—uh, duh. It placed him even more firmly in an older generation of megaheroes, a few of whom sat around on bar stools or in corner tables nursing drinks, or played darts badly. They looked like some of the non-descript characters from some of the more obscure coverless comics Avie and I read when we were kids, parodies of themselves.
We asked the bartender if Yarn Man was in. He told us he hadn’t seen him for several days, but he’d give him a message.
“He doesn’t drink when he’s in here, does he?” I asked.
“He doesn’t drink at all,” said the bartender. “Yarn Man’s a teetotaler now. Doctor told him the next sip could kill him, and that was enough.”
I felt a tear run down my cheek. I was beginning to miss the old, lonely mug.
Avie and I spent the evening at a Broadway show—The Wonder-Waif of Gramercy Park, starring that actress from that TV crime drama, What’s-Her-Name. We were on our own recognizance for the next couple days as well, covering the Brooklyn Museum, the Cloisters, and just about everything in between. We hardly saw any of the Y+Thems, and nothing of Chuck Roast, although we continued to bunk in the Navy Yard warehouse overnight.
Thursday morning, Kozmik Kat roused us out of bed. “Bing’s here!” he cried. “He’s upstairs, on the roof.” I had seldom seen Koz so happy; he was like a child on Christmas morning. “He’s prepping the Q-Mobile—you better bring a blanket ‘cause that thing’s not a convertible.”
I was happy, too, and wondering more than ever how I would feel when I saw him again.
Avie and I showered and got dressed—I put on my Ms. Megaton Man uniform underneath my civilian clothes just in case. I packed my cape, gloves, boots, and visor in my backpack and Avie took her shoulder bag and a blanket. We clambered up the stairs to the roof.
Bing was pulling the tarp off of the Q-Mobile; it was cold but sunshiny. He was happy to see us. “I got your message at Club Tudor City,” he said. “I thought I could show you the town.”
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“Not to spoil things, but we’ve already seen quite a lot,” said Avie.
“Not from the air,” said Bing. “Not in a ride in the Q-Mobile with Yarn Man as your personal tour guide!”
Even Koz overcame his reluctance and climbed in the first back seat—there were two back seats, like a mini-van—although he made sure to buckle himself in firmly. Bing, Avie, and I sat up front, Avie—wrapped in her blanket because it was a much colder day—between Bing and me. The dashboard and windshield looked just like some mid-fifties automobile with a steering wheel, radial dials, stick shift, side mirrors, and a pair of fuzzy dice hanging from the rear view mirror.
Bing turned on the ignition and the engine purred to life. Fanjets hidden in the underside of the Q-Mobile provided a cushion of air that made the car feel weightless. Now separated from the ground, the landing gear retracted into the vehicle’s undercarriage. Slowly, we began to lift off from the roof.
Bing steered the Q-Mobile straight for Manhattan, and we got to see the Island from the air this time—all the sights we’d seen Tuesday and Wednesday on foot, including the Battery, the Twin Towers, and Central Park. Except for it being too cold to be flying around in a vehicle without a top—Avie was glad to be wrapped in a blanket and nestled between Bing and I for warmth—the aerial view was breathtaking.
Avie had brought along her camera bag and extra rolls of film. She would have loved to take pictures and tried to, but it was too cumbersome to operate the camera with gloves and too cold to do without gloves, so we just stowed her camera bag in the glove compartment for the time being.
After the park, Bing went straight down Fifth Avenue, flying over the empty foundations of the former Megatropolis Quartet Headquarters, the building that had been vaporized by the combined nemeses of Megaton Man and the foursome while Yarn Man and Kozmik Kat were marooned in the Forbidden Future. Even though we had seen the site on foot the other day, from the air it didn’t appear at all as if a building had been demolished; rather, it appeared the foundations had just been poured, and construction had yet to begin.
We circled the empty foundations at the height of about five stories above street level. The puddles of rain water that had collected in the corners of the concrete basement appeared frozen into smooth skating rinks today, should any trespasser make the effort to climb down three or four stories below street level for the pleasure.
Bing hit the controls on the dashboard, and some extra vertical fanjets kicked in; from a hovering, stationary position we began a long, smooth, speedy ascent.
“Going up?” said Kozmik Kat. “All aboard—fifteenth floor, ladies’ wear; sixteenth floor, haberdashery…”
We reached a height equivalent to the tops of the neighboring buildings and then some, and slowed to a stop, again hovering stationary in space.
“Believe it or not,” said Bing, “this is about where the top of the MQHQ once was; I still can’t believe it’s gone.” He pointed to a viewscreen on the dashboard showing a computer-generated wireframe image of the absent building. “See? The Q-Mobile still has the MQHQ in its memory banks.” The vehicle slowly descended a few feet, imitating the rooftop landing it had probably made hundreds of times when the building still existed. “See? The onboard computer still remembers the exact coordinates; this is exactly where we would be making a perfect, pin-point landing back in the old days.”
We paused and looked around us at the far horizon in every direction; once, this would have been one of the highest points in midtown Manhattan a person could stand—if not on solid ground, then at least on a structure that once stood on solid ground—and look for miles around.
“I’d like to think—in some other reality—the ol’ MQHQ still exists,” said Bing, teary-eyed. “You know, me and Koz were stuck in the Forbidden Future when it was attacked. I like to think maybe we coulda helped protect it, you know? I still can’t believe it’s not here.”
Below us, we could feel the landing gear opening out on the underside of the Q-Mobile. Bing wasn’t touching any controls; the vehicle seemed to be following a preset landing protocol all by itself.
“Isn’t that cute?” said Bing. “The Q-Mobile thinks it’s home. Right now, we’d be sitting on a large landing pad shaped like the letter Q; it would automatically sense our landing, then lower Q-Mobile down into the control room below…”
“Uh, Bing,” said Koz. “You wanna make sure—”
Suddenly, the rotors of the fanjets cut off.
“—the darned thing doesn’t think we’ve actually landed.”
“What the fuck!” I exclaimed. “You didn’t shut the Q-Mobile off, did you?”
“I didn’t do anything,” said Yarn Man, his red mittens several inches above the steering wheel. “I’m not touching the controls!”
“You better start touching the controls,” said Koz, “because the Q-Mobile think it’s just found a parking spot on top of a skyscraper that doesn’t exist anymore!”
Needless to say, we immediately began plummeting toward a gaping hole forty stories below us on Fifth Avenue.
“Bing! No fooling! Turn the car back on!” shouted Koz.
Yarn Man twisted the key in the ignition. “I’m trying!” he shouted, but the engine refused to turn over. “I think I stalled it!”
“That’s just grand,” I said, unbuckling my seatbelt. I flew from my seat and circled down and around the Q-Mobile, which was in free fall. It was hard enough catching up to the blamed thing—it had already fallen precious stories—but I managed position myself below its underside. Catching the undercarriage with both hands, I pushed up, but already dropped half the distance to the ground, some twenty stories. It would have been a struggle to pick it up from a deadlift, let alone stop it with that much momentum, but I was able to slow it down. The problem was I couldn’t stabilize the vehicle—keep it horizontal—with just two hands; I feared it might tilt, spilling out its occupants, seatbelts notwithstanding.
Luckily Kozmik Kat was able to fly around to the underside as well, his furry frame substantial enough to steady the nose; together, we were able to keep the vehicle level while slowing its decent.
Were it not for the three or four stories of foundation recessed into the plaza on Fifth Avenue, we almost certainly would have smashed to pieces once we’d come to ground level. But with the extra depth beneath us, Koz and I were able to slow the Q-Mobile to a stop just inches about the concrete, and set the wheels gently down on a dry section where puddles of water hadn’t collected nor ice formed.
“Cheese and Crackers, Bing,” said the cat. “That’s some stupid stunt, just to show off for the girls.”
“I’m telling ya, I don’t know what happened,” said Yarn Man. “It’s like the Q-Mobile actually was convinced it had successfully landed on the top of the Quantum Tower!”
“But its sensors should have told it there was no building below us,” said Koz, looking up into the empty sky. “Or above us, now; they should have overridden the onboard computer. Why didn’t they?”
“All of a sudden you’re a technical expert, cat,” complained Bing. “You must be getting quite the education there in Ann Arbor.”
I circled around to the driver’s side. “Why did it cut off, Bing? Does it need gas?”
“I don’t know,” said Yarn Man. He tired the ignition again. This time, the engines turned over and the dashboard lights came back to life. “No, it’s got plenty of fuel—the computer seems to be rebooting, too.”
I was concerned for Avie. She was as white as a sheet, but I couldn’t tell if that was from the cold or nearly becoming a frozen wet spot on Fifth Avenue. She was somewhere between nauseous and ready to pee her pants and ecstatic. “That was awesome,” she said finally. “I think I’m ready to go back to Detroit now—where it’s safe.”
Bing double-checked all the dials on the dashboard and assured us the Q-Mobile was back to normal. Avie was still buckled in—otherwise, I don’t think she would have been eager to climb back into the vehicle; even Koz was wary.
“Do you trust this thing?” he asked me.
I answered by hopping back in next to Avie and buckling up. “What’s the worst that can happen?” If it konks out again, we know we carry it on our backs.”
Reluctantly, Koz climbed in, and after another brief check, Bing guided the Q-Mobile into a smooth, vertical takeoff. To be safe, he moved out of the airspace once occupied by the MQHQ as soon as we were out of the basement foundations. In not time, we were speeding up Fifth Avenue over the vehicular traffic of buses, taxis, and cars. Rising quickly, we were soon above the skyline and banking left toward the Hudson River.
I hadn’t been wearing my visor before, just my regular glasses. Now, I took my visor out of my backpack and put it on. I looked back at the empty space over the hollow foundations, wondering if my visor would generate an artificial image of the MQHQ, similar to the Q-Mobile’s dashboard. Instead, what I saw surprised me—not a wireframe computer image, but what seemed like a photographic ghost-image, one that existed in three dimensions as we flew past it. Maybe in some other dimension, the skyscraper Bing had called the Quantum Tower still stood—even if it no longer existed in this dimension.