Ever since she’d arrived from Megatropolis with a vanload of Youthful Permutations, I’d gotten the vibe that Dana Dorman—the megaheroine known as Domina—had the hots for me. I suppose I’d gotten that vibe from the several times she’d overtly hit on me; her rather crude suggestions in front of the others were frankly embarrassing, and revealed how ill-equipped and lacking in social skills some megaheroes can be. I’d had to make it clear to her over and over that she simply wasn’t my type—she was way too aggressive. But I tried not to be rude to her; after all, she was living in the communal residence of the Holistic-Humanist Congregation of Cass City, just two doors down West Forest from where I lived, with the other Y+Thems exiled in Detroit—along with my younger half-sister, Avie.
So, I was a bit suspicious when she came down from the residence one afternoon while I working in the church’s food pantry. I was volunteering my time for the church’s Eats on Feets program, a community service for shut-ins. I was attempting to follow a recipe for clam chowder I’d copied from the Union Stripe restaurant where I worked, and making a mess of it since I had never attempted a hundred and twenty quarts at one time before. I figured Dana was just hanging around to pester me, since I was a captive audience—and being on her home turf, I couldn’t very well ask her to leave.
“So, did you and your Lover-Boy do it while you were in Ann Arbor?” she asked.
“Dana, don’t you have anything better to do?” I replied.
“Not really,” said Dana. “I’m just killing time until I have to go into work tonight.”
She wasn’t dressed for her part-time job at the Bottleneck & Tie-Up Bar, a nearby lesbian biker hangout, where she was a bouncer. For that, she just wore the usual attire of Domina—a studded leather G-string, leather brassiere, and red gloves and boots. Instead, she had on casual jeans with holes in the knees and a sleeveless T-shirt that hung off her shoulder, revealing a black bra strap. Her Mohawk was neatly spiked, and she was made up with scowling eye shadow and mascara like she usually wore, but the only leather accoutrements she had on were thick, studded wristbands and a studded choker around her neck. She also wore safety-pin earrings that looked painful—for her, this was a girly look.
“So, how ‘bout it?” she insisted. “Did you do it with the former Megaton Man or what?”
Dana’s black fingernails clutched the edge of the table and swung her legs freely, the undone shoelaces of her Doc Martens flailing and occasionally ringing against the stainless steel table legs as she awaited my answer. I couldn’t believe she was truly interested in my love life, but I didn’t have much choice but to answer.
“I told you, we only held hands in the park,” I replied. “That was before I had to shield Trent and Simon from a couple missiles launched by Arms of Krupp assassins.” I rubbed my back where I’d been struck; it had taken more than a week before it had stopped feeling sore. “But I needn’t have worried about protecting them—the Partyers from Mars had a force field thrown around them the whole time, in case of attack. They want to keep Trent alive long enough to extract the Mutanium Particle lodged in his metabolism.”
“Mutanium Particle?” asked Dana. “What’s that?”
“Haven’t you been listening? It’s the active ingredient in the Cosmic Cue-Ball,” I said. “It’s what Megaton Man swallowed, causing him to lose his megapowers. Now he’s just mild-mannered civilian Trent Phloog, living in Ann Arbor with the former See-Thru Girl and the child they had out of wedlock, in the house where I used to be their fifth-wheel roommate.”
“Oh, yeah—I was there when he swallowed that thing,” said Dana.
“You were there?” I asked, stirring a pan of boiled potatoes into the chowder, which was finally beginning to burble over the flame of the stove. By all accounts, every megahero in New York had gathered in Central Park anticipating the landing of the Partyers’ saucer, the mysterious George Has a Gun, a diminutive vehicle now cloaked with invisibility and parked behind Trent and Stella’s Ann Street house.
“Sure—I remember the whole scene in Central Park: the Partyers from Mars landing; Megaton Man and a bunch of his old enemies showing up; a crazy white sphere flying around leaving a trail of ephemeral, colored shapes. I even caught a glimpse of the See-Thru Girl from a distance across the green—as pregnant as a house, but still a babe. That’s the only time I ever saw her in person—she was a looker even in that condition.”
“Were all the Youthful Permutations there?” I asked. I had never thought to ask them.
“No, I wasn’t even a megahero yet, or even exactly sure I was a lesbian,” said Dana. “I was a late-seventies art school dropout, just kicking around town—I happened to be in the neighborhood. You wouldn’t have recognized me; I had a full head of hair—long, too. I almost passed for straight, which I still thought I was and was trying to be. It was only after that that I answered a want-ad in The Vintage Vortex: ‘Are you a weirdo? Are you uncomfortable in your own skin? Are you hounded by society? Are you tired of living a lie? Then you just might be what we’re looking for—join our school for Youthful Permutation and become an X+Them!” What a scam. But it did help me come out and find the real me—an ass-kicking, punked-out leather dominatrix. I guess I owe that phony ‘Professor Rex’ Rigid that much.”
“You were there when Megaton Man swallowed the Cosmic Cue-Ball, and mushroomed into Gigaton Man, and battled Bad Guy in Central Park?” I demanded. Reportedly the epic battle completely flattened Manhattan in the course of a few hours—yet afterward, the whole city miraculously regenerated spontaneously. I was hoping eager to hear Dana’s eye-witness account. “How did anyone survive?”
“I couldn’t tell you much,” Dana replied. “It was all kind of traumatic. I’d kind of been flirting with this girl I’d run into in the crowd called the Hooded Harridan. She told me I had beautiful eyes and I was kind of taken with her buff body and skimpy outfit, which was little more than a bikini under a ‘Red Riding Hood’ cape. We were hitting it off when all hell broke loose and everyone had to run for their lives. I lost track of her until after I’d crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, but there she was, huddled behind a monument in the little park not far from the bridge; we were both a bit shaken up—she wasn’t the kind of megahero whose powers were much use in a fight scene once skyscrapers started toppling—and we both needed a drink to calm down. So, we went into a gay bar we both knew and ended up talking for hours and hours, and realized we were really into each other. Then we went back to her place. By the time we came up for air, things had returned to normal—and I was a confirmed lesbian who knew I wanted to become a megahero. I came across the want ad for the X+Thems the very next day.”
How New York City—Megatropolis—had spontaneously regenerated after the epic megahero-megavillain battle between Megaton Man and Bad Guy was one of the profound mysteries of our time—I was sure it was tied to the Multimensional Theory my Grandma Seedy and others alluded to. But Dana’s personal transformation—if not exaggerated for my benefit—was just as startling.
“You mean to say that was the very day you decided to become Domina?”
“It’s a long story, and not as simple as that, but yeah, more or less,” said Dana. “It had been building up in me for a long time—conversions like mine don’t happen all at once. It was more a process of finally accepting myself. But the events of that afternoon seemed to have affected a lot of people in various ways—it was a turning point in a lot of people’s lives.”
It sure had been a turning point for Trent Phloog, who thereafter was a civilian completely devoid of megapowers. Megaton Man no more, he decided to follow Stella back to Ann Arbor where he became, and still was, a part of my life.
“You still didn’t tell me,” said Dana. “Why do the Partyers from Mars want their little Mutanium Particle back?”
“That’s what the Thirteenth Scientist used to split reality apart in the first place, before World War II,” I explained. “In one of the universes that resulted, a group of scientists created the Original Golden Age Megaton Man—America’s Nuclear-Powered Hero. In the other, another group of scientists created Major Meltdown and Magma—also America’s Nuclear-Powered Heroes.”
“Which one are you related to again?” asked Dana.
“Isn’t it obvious?” I said. “I’m Ms. Megaton Man—I get my megapowers from the Megaton side of the street, so to speak. Although in the opposite universe, my Grandma Seedy was one of the Meltdown scientists, and my mama in that dimension was a megahero called the Mod Puma—so maybe I get some of my innate crime-fighting drive from that side of the family, too. Although I’ve yet to fight any crime, strictly speaking.”
“Do you think if the Partyers were to get their Mutanium Particle back, the two universes could fuse back together?” asked Dana. “That could cause no end of chaos.”
“They’re already fusing back together,” I said. “Haven’t you noticed? Megaton Man and the See-Thru Girl are from different dimensions—they hooked up and had a baby, Simon Phloog. Although Stella herself says that’s impossible, at least according to prevailing Multimensional Theory. She’s done research on it; she’ll probably continue studying Theoretical Metaphysics in grad school. According to the orthodox view, she tells me, realities can only split and subdivide, and can keep on doing so forever. But recombining is some sort of unlawful transgression that would violate cosmic law or something. But I think she’s in denial—the evidence is overwhelming, I’m afraid. The process is already well underway.”
“I’d prefer reality to keep splitting apart,” said Dana. “The more diversity, the better, I say. Lord help me if they ever were to fuse back together. I’ve always feared that in some other reality, a confused Dana Dorman is still trying to pass for straight. That was the old me—and she can have it as far as I’m concerned. It would be too fucked up if I had to live that life again.”
“I’m not sure what’s supposed to happen when realities fuse back together,” I confessed. “There doesn’t seem to be just once kind of result. Take Mervyn Goldfarb, the megavillain I watched blow up right in front of my eyes. He seems to be back—at least his counterpart from another dimension has found his way to this one. Maybe this is all some kind of cosmic experiment gone haywire. If Multimensional Theory can’t account for it, we’re all flying blind. None of the leading thinkers in the field even seem to be thinking about it.”
“Why doesn’t Stella make that her research topic?” said Dana. “Grad schools love all that esoteric, egg-headed mumbo-jumbo.”
“It doesn’t seem to be in her nature to question dogma,” I said. “Maybe you should suggest it to her.”
“Would you introduce me?” said Dana eagerly. “Stella Starlight, the See-Thru Girl—boy, would I like to get into her panties.”
“Just when I thought you were serious,” I said. “You can’t stop thinking with your crotch. You’re worse than me.”
“I’m taking you seriously,” I said. “There’s no conflict—I can be craven and high-minded at the same time.”
“She’s got a kid, remember?” I said. “And I have no reason to believe she’s into women.”
“I could persuade her,” said Dana. “About her research topic—and her sexuality. Sometimes it’s only after a woman gets all the breeding out of her system that she realizes who she really is. From what you’ve told me about her and your Lover-Boy, she’s through with men. Still, it’s too bad she’s got that kid—I can’t stand being around kids. Kiddo’s little brat is driving me nuts.”
Beatrice “Kiddo” Bryson, another of the Youthful Permutations, lived upstairs with Dana in the Holistic-Humanist Congregation residence; she’d gotten knocked up by a rejuvenated Original Golden Age Megaton. The result had been Benjamin Franklin Phloog, another megapowered tyke like Simon, and technically, another distant relative of mine. Luckily, the awesomely-powered Kiddo was more than up to the task of motherhood.
“I don’t think Stella’s likely to give up her child any more than Kiddo would be,” I said.
“I don’t suppose Kiddo would,” said Dana. “Poor thing—being abused by that lecherous Original Golden Age Megaton, who was old enough to be her grandfather, and still carrying a torch for him.” She suddenly clenched a fist. “I could have killed him after that seduction scene—I tried to. Lucky for him he was sucked into a gaping inter-dimensional rift; he’d better never return from whatever limbo he’s lost in.”
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“I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen, since I personally control all time and space,” I said. Although, if my Grandma Seedy could suddenly pop back into reality, there was no reason Farley Phloog, the Original Golden Age Megaton Man might not be able to, to say nothing of Clyde Phloog, the Silver Age Megaton Man, my real father whom nobody had seen since the seventies…
“So, will you do it?” demanded Dana.
“Do what?” I said. “Bring the Silver Age Megaton Man back to this reality but keep the Original Golden Age Megaton Man out? What do I look like, the Time Turntable?”
“No, I mean Stella Starlight—do you think you could introduce me?”
“I told you, I don’t think she goes that way.”
“How do you know? Did you ever ask her? From what you’ve described, she’s extremely repressed. I’ll bet her ability to ‘turn naked with but a thought’ is some kind of passive-aggressive overreaction to the innate Meltdown megapowers she shares with her half-brother, that creep Chuck Roast, my former team leader. As I know only too well, the Human Meltdown knows no restraint—remember him trying to rape your sister? Anyway, I could set her straight—or queer, as it were—about her sexuality, her research topic, losing the kid…”
“You’ve really put some thought into this,” I said. I’d forgotten Dana had worked so closely with Stella’s loutish brother; it probably overdue for her to meet Stella.
“I’ve made a special study of female megaheroes,” said Dana. “They’re the only kind that interest me. I could write a book.”
I let Dana prattle on about the famous megaheroes she’d met or seen in New York while I washed the cutting board and other utensils and cleaned up the pantry—all the while occasionally stirring the army-sized pot of clam chowder. She probably could write a book, and it was flattering for me as a fledgling megahero to be allowed into her world, albeit vicariously, and wonder where Ms. Megaton Man might fit in. She was certainly trying a different tack with me, showing a softer side by hanging around and engaging in girl talk instead of overtly pestering me. I didn’t believe for one minute she’d ever tried to pass for straight, or was confused for a single moment about her sexuality—she seemed like the type who knew what she was since before she could walk. But I had to give her kudos for laying on the manipulative bullshit—if that’s all it was—so thick. Maybe she was even trying to make me a bit jealous, with all this talk about Stella, because it was a subject she returned to again and again.
“I think you should marry this Trent and raise that little Son of Megaton Man of his,” she suddenly suggested. “That would leave Stella wide open for me. I’d start by giving her a really short haircut…c’mon, whaddya say?”
“I’m pretty sure Trent and I are cousins,” I said. “I’m not sure that would be legal in Michigan.”
“Who would ever find out?” said Dana. “You’ve never even met your supposed biological father, the Silver Age Megaton Man. It’s all a bunch of far-fetched speculation, near as I can tell. And the state would have no record of it. The Partyers from Mars can take their Mutanium Particle back to their sector of the galaxy, and Megaton Man and Ms. Megaton Man and the Son of Megaton Man could all live happily ever after together. And it would free up the Earth Mother for me.”
“Dana, I had no idea you had this sentimental streak in you,” I said. “You’re a romantic after all.”
“No, just horny,” said Dana. “So, are we going to fool around, or what? That chowder looks about done, and I have an hour before work.”
“There it is,” I said. “I knew you hadn’t changed. I told you, you’re not my type. To be honest with you, I’m not sure I even like girls anymore—or sex anybody. All I could manage after taking that projectile, all I could manage was crawling into bed with Trent and cuddling. Seriously, I don’t know how you can manage having a libido and beating up bad guys. Sex just complicates things and leads to unintended consequences anyway. Spending so much time in this church has given me ideas—maybe I should just become a celibate monk or something.”
“Maybe that’s what I need,” said Dana. “Some megahero action. I’m too cooped here, hiding out in Detroit.”
“What exactly are your megapowers, anyway?” I asked.
An idea suddenly struck me.
Besides working out and being remarkably athletic,” Dana struggled to explain, “I’m not sure I have any megapowers to speak of. I’ve never been cut or bruised—I’m pretty tough. And damned near bullet proof—I’ve withstood the Devastation Chamber, although not at the intensity you or Kiddo endured. I wouldn’t want an exploding projectile fired at me, for instance. Why do you ask?”
“I need somebody to help me to break into Megatonic University,” I said. I explained how I hadn’t gotten very far in the mysterious underground complex under Arbor State’s main campus, where I’d chased Mervyn Goldfarb’s doppelganger.
“Why? What’s going on down there?”
“That’s just it,” I said. “I don’t know. But Mervyn Goldfarb—whom I watched explode—is still alive and at work on something down there. I don’t think even goofy Dr. Joe knows what all is going on down there—it’s certainly grown beyond the days when he was developing the Silver Age and Bronze Age Megaton Men down there. And he sure seemed uncomfortable when I speculated that the Mervyn I saw might be a double from another dimension, a counterpart of the one I saw die. Maybe Megatonic University is what’s fusing the split universes back together—or maybe they’re working to split it apart again.”
I had also spotted Wilton Ashe down in the bowels of Megatonic University—Dana had not yet met Wilton or my friend Audrey Tomita. But whatever he was working on down there, he was being awfully secretive about it—I’m sure he spotted Ms. Megaton Man from the far end of a tunnel and successfully avoided me. In fact, since returning from Ann Arbor, I hadn’t been able to locate him anywhere on Detroit’s Warren Woodward campus, where he worked as a teaching assistant—not even during his supposed office hours. And even got the sense that his partner Audrey was avoiding me—we had taken to sitting together in the front of the class we were both taking, but since my sighting of Wilton she always slipped into class late and sat in the back, then slipped out before I could collar her. Among other things, I was dying to know how they were connected to Mervyn Goldfarb and every other mystery in Ann Arbor.
“I could use a Youthful Permutation or two to help me break into Megatonic University,” I said. “The onboard computer database in my visor is all screwed up; my buttons and cape got all confused down there. I think ICHHL hacked me. I could use a hand—it’s got to be a team effort.”
“Break into Megatonic University?” said Jasper Johnson, who strolled into the church pantry wielding a clipboard. “Why? What do you hope to find? I’ve heard rumors about that place—I would trespass on a hyper-protected government facility like without a doggone good reason.” With an elongated neck, Rubber Brother peered into the cooking vat of clam chowder. “Hmm, smells good,” he said. “Just about done.”
I turned off the stove and put on oven mitts as I explained to Jasper how I suspected Megatonic University was connected to fusing the split universes back together, ICHHL and the Partyers from Mars hovering around the Phloog-Starlight house on Ann Street, and other mysteries—such as the present whereabouts of my real father. “Dana, you’re going to have move,” I said. “I need to set the clam chowder where you’re sitting to cool off for about an hour.”
“Here, let me do that,” said Dana, hopping off the stainless steel table. Jasper and I both moved out of the way. With her bare arms around the giant smoldering kettle she removed the stew from the stove, turned, and set it where she had been sitting. In the moment it had taken to make the move, the pot had stopped steaming.
Jasper reached out and touched it with a rubbery arm. “Completely cold!” he announced. He turned to me. “Here, touch it. Not with the oven mitt—with your bare hand.”
I took off the mitt and touched the aluminum pot; it was ice cold, like it had never been on the stove.
“Oowee, you are tough,” I said to Dana. “Not only would Ms. Megaton Man have had a chore lifting that pot by herself, but I’d also have scorched my fingers.”
“Guess that’s why I never had any trouble with Chuck Roast,” said Dana, referring to the former leader of the Y+Thems with a penchant for preying on younger women. “The Human Meltdown knew better than to mess with me.”
“So, how about it? Are you guys in?” I demanded. “Are you up for a little spelunking below Ann Arbor? It’s likely to get hot, so Domina will come in handy, and there are a lot of meandering tunnels, so I could use Rubber Brother.”
“Not me,” said Dana. “At least not tonight. I have to go to work.”
“At the bar?” I asked. “You’re not dressed for it.”
“Not the Bottleneck & Tie-Up,” said Dana. “As if dressing for them takes any time. In fact I’ll be wearing even less—tonight is my professional debut as an artist’s model. That little magenta-haired girlfriend of yours, Nancy, got me the gig over at the Self-Important Art School.”
A bolt of jealously shot through me. It had been weeks since I’d even thought about Nancy, but the thought of her and Dana getting chummy rankled, even though I’d posed for her privately myself, and knew being a nude model wasn’t an erotic situation.
“It wouldn’t be tonight anyway,” I said. “I work at Union Stripe restaurant myself.” Although I’d rather have dropped into that art class just to make sure nothing was going on between Nancy and Dana.
“Megatonic University is nothing to be monkeyed with,” said Jasper. “I’ve heard stories over the years about people going in and never coming back. You’d be wise to plan carefully. You can count Rubber Brother in, of course—assuming I can suppress my innate claustrophobia and aversion to tight space. But I think you need to enlist someone else. A specialist in investigations.”
“Who?” I asked. “Tempy? Kiddo? Soren?” I immediately thought of the other Youthful Permutations who resided with Dana at the church. “Although we’d want to keep the operation small.”
“I wouldn’t count them out,” said Jasper. “But no, I had someone else in mind.”
“Do I know them?” I asked.
“Kind of,” said Jasper.
“Donna!” said Dana, smiling and winking at Jasper. “I agree—she’d be perfect. But for heaven’s sake, keep the gorilla out of it—and that ridiculous bubbling cerebellum in the bell-crater.”
Dana and Jasper apparently were on the same wavelength, but I was mystified. “What are you talking about? Donna Blank is a social worker who volunteers community service here at the church. What good would she be, cracking Megatonic University?”
“Oh, there’s a lot more to Donna than meets the eye,” said Jasper.
“You mean she’s a costumed crime-fighter too?” I said. “I thought there was something odd about her. Who is she? What is she?”
“You know how some people are about their private lives,” said Jasper, scribbling down an address on the pad on his clipboard. “I’m sure Donna Blank would rather reveal her secret identity. Here’s the address of her office in Royal Oak,” he said, tearing the corner of the paper off and tucking it into my apron. “When she gets the chance, Ms. Megaton Man should run up there some night this week and introduce herself. After that, the four of us can get together and plan our little intervention at Megatonic University.”
Dana excused herself and dashed upstairs to get ready for her modeling session, and Jasper continued on his rounds around the Holistic-Humanist Congregation building. I washed up the pans and utensils and put the cold pot of chowder in the pantry’s walk-in cooler—which probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do, considering my tender back. Then, I took off my apron, pulling out the piece of paper Jasper had scribbled on before casting it into the hamper with the soiled towels for the laundry service Eats on Feets contracted.
Other than providing much-needed therapy resulting from a schizophrenic split universe, I wondered what in the world a social worker could do to help break into a heavily-fortified underground laboratory complex.
“And who’s the gorilla?” I wondered.