I’d been haranguing Avie for twenty minutes with my theory about the Multimensions, and my suspicions concerning Reverend Enoch, while she went through her workout in the basement of our apartment.

“So what, now you think Reverend Enoch is some kind of inter-dimensional policeman, sent to this reality to stop any more crossing over?” she said.

“I don’t know what he’s here for,” I confessed. “But knows way too much about the Multimensions. Besides, why has he been so willing to house megaheroes in his church residence?”

“Maybe he’s just a generous soul. There are people like that, you know. That’s who we’d like to be our pastors.”

“How does he know I visited the Forbidden Future? You didn’t tell him.”

“Maybe he just took a wild guess,” said Avie. “How does everybody seem to know when I’ve gotten laid? Most likely ‘cause I just can’t hide it. Maybe there’s something different about you now—now that you’re no longer a time-travel virgin. That doesn’t make Rev Enoch an angel or a demon, as you’re making him out to be. Besides, what action can one pastor take? Maybe he’s just a benign presence, like he said; he’s just here to keep an eye on things.”

“I don’t assume he’s alone,” I said. “There would have to be others. Maybe Grandma Seedy is one of them. Maybe all of ICHHL—you know how they’re always orbiting in that killer satellite. Jasper even called it the eye in the sky. They’re like Watcher Angels. What do they call them in Gnosticism? Archons?”

Avie had been bench pressing a barbell; now she set it down and sat up. “Just listen to yourself. That visit to the Forbidden Future has really messed you up. You’re practically one of those conspiracy theorists now. At the rate you’re going, you’ll be writing Stella’s doctoral dissertation for her, and you’re not even through with your own bachelor’s degree. You’re coming unglued. In just a week, you’ll be graduating from college. Don’t you have some finals to take your mind off this?”

I did have some finals but Avie knew I was already overprepared.

“Here, sit down,” she said. I sat on the bench next to her; she put her arm around me. “It’s just nerves, stress, butterflies. That’s all. You’re grasping at straws to explain all the strange things that have been happening to you. And I can’t blame you I’ve seen a lot of them, right alongside you. But you’re still Ms. Megaton Man, America’s Nuclear-Powered Hero, and my personal hero. There’s no one higher up the hierarchy than you.”

“I don’t know about that,” I said.

“You’re experiencing some mild adjustment disorder,” said Avie. “It’ll wear off.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I’m only beginning to see how reality works. There are alternate realities, we know that. I’ve seen them, I’ve traveled to them—at least one of them. And there are people who can experience them without technology. These hack writers, for example, who go on inspiration. Visionary religious kooks. Crazy people. Probably all your actor friends, too, Avie. And maybe even Chas. They may not all be able to explain what they see; they may not understand it or be able to articulate it like an artist or a writer. But they sense these alternate realities. We all do.”

“Don’t forget dreams,” said Avie. “People see all kinds of crazy things in their dreams they can’t account for.”

“And there are beings who can travel to these alternate realities any time they want, I’m convinced,” I said, “without any turntables or portals. I’m pretty sure Joshua bar-Joseph can do it, and so can Michele Selket. And I wouldn’t be surprised if Reverend Enoch…”

“But there are also people who can blow their minds smoking too much dope,” Avie reminded me. “It could just be brain chemistry, something malfunctioning in their minds. It could all be in somebody’s head.”

“Everything’s in your head,” I said. “The question is: What separates what you can imagine and what you can sense, if what’s in your imagination might actually exist in an alternate reality?”

“Not everything a person can imagine has be real somewhere,” said Avie. “There has to be for sheer make-believe, pretend, fibs, lies. Not everything the mind can invent has to actually exist in some alternate reality. If every thought we have is just some stray transmission from another dimension, then we’d just be Multimensional Transceivers, not human beings. Besides, what are artists for, if all they’re doing is transcribing some prosaic alternate reality? That doesn’t sound very creative to me. There have to be at least a few geniuses, or I don’t want to be in the arts.”

“Maybe some people are just more gifted, attuned,” I said. “I can’t act or sing; I’m not creative at all. I can’t even draw a straight line. I only barely can play the clarinet.”

“Have you tried visiting another reality yourself, just by whaddyacallit, astral teleportation?”

“Heavens, no!” I said. “I’d be terrified. And I’m especially not going to try it after seeing a tyrannosaurus saunter down West Forest Avenue.”

“You’re afraid you could do it,” said Avie. “You better watch out. They’ll recruit Ms. Megaton Man into the ranks of Watcher Angels.”

“I’m afraid if I could just beam myself to other dimensions, I wouldn’t come back.”

“Have you tried channeling some other world, just creatively, by writing a story?”

“I told you, I don’t have any talent,” I said. “I couldn’t think of the lousiest Herschel the Hybridian story that wasn’t trite and clichéd. I’m not creative like you, Avie. Or Chas. Or even Nancy. You guys just look at the world different.”

“Oh, fudge,” said Avie. “From what you’re saying, it’s not a question of talent. If these Multimensions all exist, and all of them only a vibration away from this one, and if certain people are able to perceive them through technology, or magic, or mysticism, or imagination or whatever you might call it—well, it has to be a latent ability all humans possess, wouldn’t you say?”

“Now you’re agreeing with me,” I said. “How come our arguments always turn out like this?”

“I’m not agreeing; this is just a Socratic dialogue,” said Avie. “Maybe you should try visiting one of these alternate realities without the Time Turntable or Dimensional Portal, just by just sitting and meditating. How will you prove it to yourself, if you’ve tried?”

“I told you, I don’t want to get eaten by a dinosaur.”

“I just mean sitting down and imagining a story,” said Avie. “But imagine it so deeply, every detail, that it seems to come alive…”

“Now, you’re just talking crazy,” I said.

“By the way, there was a message for you, earlier” said Avie. “Upstairs on the answering machine. From Gene.”

“Gene?” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

***

I phoned Gene Griffin. “When does Ms. Megaton Man have a night off?” he said. “I want to take you out to dinner, to celebrate your graduation.”

“Tonight would be good,” I said. My heart was thumping. I hadn’t heard from Gene in months, had been too busy with school to even think of him. But hearing his voice again immediately reminded me of his cock, and how much pleasure it had brought to a lonely college girl.

“You don’t have any studying to do for your finals, do you?” he said, like a concerned mentor. “I don’t want you messing up your graduation on my account.”

“Nope, I’m good,” I said, swallowing hard. Yep, I was definitely picturing his cock. I told him my new address, two blocks east of where we had sucked and screwed all night long. It had been my fondest memory of my old attic garret near the church.

I had lied about studying; I did have a term paper for U.S. Labor History to proofread. But I could put it off until morning, retype it, and drop it off in the teacher’s mailbox by noon, and still make the three p.m. deadline easily. Or so I told myself. Usually I was days early with assignments; procrastination wasn’t like me. Cutting it this close was living dangerously, for me.

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He swung by the apartment in his unmarked, white van, sans his partner in crime, Allan Jordan. It was lightly raining and I jumped into the passenger side as soon as he pulled up. I was startled to see his handsome, black features again, his strong, muscular, perfectly proportioned physique. I was a bit embarrassed, too, that over the phone the image his voice conjured for me was only what was between his legs. The rest of him had only been vaguely-remembered impressions from a darkened room. Now, in the streetlights, he was clear and distinct again.

“So, what would you like to do? Go someplace to eat?” he said.

“I just want to go back to your place and order take out,” I said.

“Okay,” he said, slightly taken aback by my abrupt response. “But I’ll have to blindfold you. It’s a top-secret espionage hideout.”

“Really? Sounds like fun.” I put forward my wrists. “Can you tie me up and throw me in the back seat, too?”

His eyes widened, horrified. “Whoa, you are really are about to graduate college, aren’t you? And not a moment too soon; you’re off the deep end, girl.”

I leaned forward and gave him a long, slow kiss.

He relaxed, put the van in drive, and pulled into traffic. “I was just kidding about the blindfold. Just don’t tell anybody where I live.”

He asked me about school, and I told him all about my year in Detroit at the Arbor State Extension, and how it was all coming to an end in less than a week. In a few minutes, we were parked in front of a modernist high-rise northeast of downtown, right next to Greektown. “I know this place,” I said. “We studied it in one of my architecture classes last fall. What’s it called?”

“Lafayette Park.”

“That’s it. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was the architect.” It was a complex buildings woven through a green space that formed a set piece in the midst of a town with lots of underappreciated buildings. We walked through the light rain, me in his arms, until we got under the cantilevered awning. We entered the glassed-in lobby and whisked up sleek elevators to his studio apartment on the seventeenth floor. Suddenly, we were looking at a postcard vista of Windsor, Ontario, across the Detroit River through floor-to-ceiling plate-glass windows.

The apartment itself was tastefully appointed midcentury modern, with only the current issue of Architectural Digest laying slightly askew on the coffee table.

“This is beautiful,” I said.

“Thanks, I keep a decorator busy,” said Gene.

“Really? He must be gay and have really good taste.”

He laughed/ “No, I do it myself,” he confessed. “After a long day of investigating, I just need some order.”

To be honest, I had expected a run-down building in the Cass Corridor, surrounded by a chain link fence, with a sign in the window of a fist holding a gun that read, “Don’t beware of Dog, Beware of Owner.”

Before we even sat down, he was ordering Greek food from a phone next to the black leather couch. “It’ll be here in about an hour,” he announced. “Hope you’re not starving. I could have ordered on the car phone, and saved a few minutes…”

“I’m not hungry,” I said. “And keep the lights low; I don’t want reflections in the window to spoil the view.”

“Whatever you say, Missy.”

I stood in front of him and held my arms straight out from my sides.

“Now take my clothes off,” I said.

“Wait, I want to hear about what you’ve been up to,” he said. “Here, sit down…”

“Strip me,” I said. “I can talk while you slowly peel off my clothes.” I wasn’t dressed up; only jeans, a tank top, and a hoody, the things I had on when he called. I didn’t even have my Ms. Megaton Man uniform on underneath.

He did as I asked, and I talked all the while. I told him about my visit to the Forbidden Future, and meeting Winnie Wertz, and, oh, yeah, the new Troy+Thems headquarters.

I was naked from head to foot, standing right in front of the window. If someone had a telescope, they could see me from Canada.

Gene shed his clothing. I continued to talk, about my theory of the Multimensions, about my suspicions of Reverend Enoch.

We moved to the shower. Gene lathered me from head to toe, and then himself. He paid special attention to my crack. I hoped that meant he was going to lick me there later.

Sure enough, face down on the waterbed, he did just that. I continued talking. About the Megaton Mice, Kozmik Kat, the Time Turntable. He made me come, and it still didn’t break my train of thought. He turned me over, entered me from the front; we rolled over, and I was on top of him.

I must have talked the whole time—about fantastic popular fiction, what I’d learned about contemporary art, my theory of how the Megaton and Meltdown Universes were reintegrating. I paused only to gasp and come a few more times.

The buzzer rang. Gene still hadn’t come, but his erection dutifully subsided as he rose, put on a robe, and went over to the intercom by the door. It was the food; he buzzed them up, waited by the ajar door, took the food, tipped the delivery person. Still I was talking, all the while idly fingering myself in the bed. Were there Archons, Watcher Angels, special guardians who monitored the Multimensions? He set the food on the coffee table and returned to bed, his erection reappearing on cue. He slid back into me; we rolled over in one motion; I rode him another half an hour. I came a couple more times.

I lay in his arms, our bodies both sweating, still talking. “You want to eat?” he interrupted me. “I’m starving.”

“You haven’t even come yet,” I said.

“Oh, don’t worry about me,” he said.

“What, are you into some eastern Tantric thing where you don’t come for five hours?”

He shrugged. “Something like that. I just like to take my time. You’re not in a hurry, are you?”

We moved to the sofa and ate rice pilaf and lamb. I wasn’t in a hurry. Still I kept talking.

After we washed it down with wine coolers, he did me on the sofa, bending me over, penetrating from behind. “Do my ass now,” I said.

He did, and still I kept talking.

“Do you think my fear of crossing dimensions by astral teleportation is somehow Freudian?” I asked. “I mean, is it a crutch to use technologies like the turntable or the portal to travel through time and space?”

He must have thought it was a rhetorical question, because he didn’t answer.

Finally, he turned me over and ejaculated all over my torso, belly, and neck. “Jesus Christ,” I said. “What a load.” I rubbed it into my skin before he reach for a box of tissues.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “I hope you don’t find it demeaning. I have this primal desire to mark my territory.”

“I’m going to develop and eating disorder,” I said. “My self-esteem is shattered. I’m destined to become a crack whore, now.”

As I dried, my skin became crumbly. Gene was visibly concerned his sperm would flake off and he’d have to run the sweeper. “Come on, let’s shower again,” I said.

***

All tolled, I made him come twice, and I must have come eight or ten or a dozen times myself; frankly, I lost count. We fell into a snooze. Before I knew it, predawn light was glowing behind the Windsor skyline.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I must have gabbed all night long.”

“No problem,” he said. “This night was all about you. I’m just sorry I’ve been out of touch.”

He looked at my body in the early morning light, ran his smooth hands over my torso. “You’re like a Greek goddess,” he said. “You could be carved in marble, or cast in bronze.”

“I’m sorry,” repeated. “Because I talked the whole time.”

“You have a lot you’re processing,” said Gene.

“But I know what you like most,” I said. “Although I couldn’t very well talk with my mouth full.”

“Some other time,” said Gene. “We don’t have to the entire Kama Sutra in one night.”

“No, but I want to taste you.”

“Clarissa, I’m not nineteen anymore. Really, you don’t have to…”

I pulled him to his feet, knelt before him. By the time I swallowed his third load, the glare of the morning sunrise was beating in through the plate glass.

“So, do you think Reverend Enoch’s an Archon?” I asked him. I was looking up at him, wiping saliva from my chin.

“I don’t know,” said Gene, who seemed a little wobbly on his feet. “Could you hand me my robe?” He wrapped himself in it, walked over, leaned against the back of the leather sofa. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if Allan is. I mean, if there are beings policing the perimeters of the…what did you call it?”

“The Multimension,” I said.

“I don’t know,” said Gene. “I’m a practical guy, myself. I mean, I believe you, that you’ve traveled through time. But all this crossing over…I’m not so sure. I don’t have the kind of mind that can accept all these alternate realities. Maybe Megaton Man and the Human Meltdown—and their ancestors—have always just existed in the same reality; they just never ran into each other before. One calls his home Megatropolis, the other one lived in New York. We all live in own realities, don’t we? We just never notice what’s happening around us.”

“But Megatropolis and New York are the same place,” I said.

“If you say so. I never went much further east than Newark, myself. Strictly Chicago, Detroit, Pontiac; Gary, Indiana; and Milwaukee.”

I put on my tank top. I still had on my watch.

“I better be going,” I said. “Does this place have a roof?”

***

I flew back to West Forest Avenue, the first time I’d flown without my Ms. Megaton Man uniform on, in just my civvies. The early morning rush hour hadn’t even begun; the city lay below me, quietly murmuring to life: the freeways, the skyscrapers, the traffic beginning to move along side streets.

It was a bright, clear, cloudless sky, and I supposed people would be disconcerted if they were to look straight up and see a floating black woman. But I took my time.

I studied the layout of the medical center east of Woodward Avenue; I could make out Chas’s apartment building, and the Union Stripe Café practically across the street. Further north, I noted the University-Cultural Center, with the Detroit Museum of Fine Arts and the main branch of the public library sitting across nine-lane Woodward, piles of stoic, neoclassical stone, with the Arbor State Extension next to the museum. I circled around the Warren Woodward campus and back down to my apartment, landing softly on the tarred roof. I climbed down the rail ladder to the back porch, and entered the back door. Avie was inside, eating breakfast at the kitchen table.

“Where were you?” she said. “You weren’t out on an adventure, were you? At least you could at least have taken the Wondrous Warhound along as your sidekick.”

I held upon my hoodie to show my tank top. “I’m not even wearing my costume, see?”

Kozmik Kat was at the table, too, sipping a bowl of milk and reading The Detroit Day sports section. He looked up to glance at me. “She’s right; her nipples are hard. Must be that cool Canada breeze.” He went back to his paper. “Man, the Saberteeth have no pitching this year. How hard is it to toss around a mushball?”

I went to my room and started typing my revised history paper.

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