Flying back and forth from Detroit to Troy had been relatively easy for me, even in winter, because it was north and south, but Detroit to Ann Arbor was a different story. Arbor State University was due west, and often I’d often run into strong westerly winds, and in frigid temperatures it was even worse. My uniform offered thermal protection for most of my body, but the V-neck on my torso went down to the bottom of my sternum, leaving the center of my chest, neck, and face exposed to the wind. In late February, with highs in the twenties and lows below zero, I would really feel it.

I tried several things to counter this, like wearing a hoodie over my uniform. But that made navigation more difficult at higher speeds. So, I just counted on adrenaline from keeping me from getting frostbite. Or, I just put off errands to my home campus for as long as I could, like picking up my cap and gown.

By mid-April, however, things were warming up. I had flown back from Gene’s apartment to midtown in my civvies without any problem. It was only a couple miles, and I took my time, going barely faster than floating. But it was the first time I’d flown at all not dressed as Ms. Megaton Man.

So when I next flew out to Ann Arbor, I tried something different: just wearing my civvies—faded jeans, grey hoodie, and dirty white tennis shoes—with my uniform tucked into my backpack. The only megaheroic gear I had on was my visor and cape. I found that I could fly nearly as fast if I wanted, and there was an added bonus: without the primary colors, I was less conspicuous. Pedestrians and people in cars seldom noticed me, and if they happened to glance upward, they mistook me for a small airplane, or a bird of some kind.

But I didn’t want to break the sound barrier this trip. I wanted to savor the landscape, particularly as I came over Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor. This was the last time, after all, I’d be an undergraduate of Arbor State University; in about ten days, I’d be a graduate. I was getting a little misty-eyed, I won’t deny it, gazing down at the Law Quadrangle, South Quadrangle, the stadium where we would walk…

I spotted Stella’s blonde hair down below in the Diag. She hadn’t gotten back to me about celebrating after the ceremony, but she’d always talked about big plans back at the Ann Street house. A hundred feet in the air, I ordered my red cape into my pack; it duly decoupled from my clavicles; I folded my visor and tucked it in as well, zipping it up as I made my descent.

It was only after I landed that I realized I had made a big mistake.

Stella must have been lost in thought, not paying attention to her surroundings, and was startled to look up and suddenly see me. “Clarissa, where’d you come from?” she said, startled. She was toting her own book bag and clearly in a hurry to get to her remaining classes.

“I’m glad I ran into you,” I said. “I have to pick up my cap and gown, and was wondering about our plans for afterward…”

“What’s wrong with you?” she snapped. “It’s broad daylight, in the middle of campus….” She looked around to see if any of the other students thronging the Diag had noticed. Fortunately, their attentions were similarly taken elsewhere. She whispered, hissing, “Do you think I want to attract attention by meeting with a megahero?”

Keep in mind this was the same woman who, as the See-Thru Girl on her first tour of the campus, was so unselfconscious of her body she was ready to tear off her Megatropolis Quartet tank top and change into an Abyssinian Wolves T-shirt, right on Michigan Street, until I pulled her inside the McNichols Arcade so she wouldn’t cause a topless scene.

I said, “I thought the prohibition against megaheroes was only around your house, around Simon. I didn’t think you were hung up about just casually meeting one on the street…”

“I’d rather not be seen with any costumed characters at all,” replied Stella, continuing her walk. “Simon’s in nursery school now, and his fellow students have parents…”

“Gosh, I sure don’t want to be the subject of parental gossip,” I said, as I hurried to keep up with her. “You’ll notice, I’m not wearing a costume…”

“What do you want?” she said. She put on a pair of sunglasses as if trying to disappear.

“It wasn’t that urgent or anything,” I said apologetically. “You and I had always talked about a big celebration back at the house, even after I moved out. I figure with your relatives and my family…”

“I don’t know,” said Stella. “I suppose we can still walk together in the stadium, for old time’s sake, but…I was kind of wanting to keep the celebration low key. Just friends and family, you know?”

“That doesn’t include me?”

Stella stopped, took off her sunglasses, and looked at me. “It’s nothing personal, Clarissa. I’ll always be grateful to you for helping me make the transition to Arbor State. I don’t know if I could have done it without you, or at least as smoothly. But people change, you know? We’ve grown apart, that’s all. It’s natural.”

“Yeah, but one last hurrah,” I said. “I just thought that…”

Stella put on her sunglasses again. “I have to get to class,” she said, and turned and hustled off.

***

The basement of Border Worlds Used and Slightly New Bookstore, down where they sold textbooks and school supplies at other times of the year, was completely given over to graduation essentials—caps, gowns, fifty kinds of tassels and swag you drape over yourself if you’re in law, or medicine, or cum laude or whatnot, as well as diploma frames, Abyssinian Wolves shot glasses, “My Kid Went to Arbor State and All I Got Was X-Amount $$$ in Student Loans to Pay Off” T-shirts, and so on.

They had my paraphernalia all in a bag, prepaid, set aside. They gave it to me and I trod back up the steps. Somehow, it was anti-climactic and I felt more than a little heartbroken that it was all coming to an end on a sour note…

“There you are,” said Trent, grinning. “I’d thought you’d try to sneak in and out of here without saying hello.” He was shelving books on the first floor, in the Classical Studies section.

“Oh, hey,” I said, clutching my bag. “Just picking up my stuff.”

“Aren’t you excited to be graduating? It’s a big deal. You should be really proud.”

“I guess I owe you an apology,” I said. “I wasn’t very nice when you visited me in Detroit a few weeks ago.”

“Oh, never mind,” said Trent. “You were perfectly within your rights to tell me off. I’ve just been, I dunno, feeling kind of left out, with you and Stella graduating, and the Troy+Thems forming, and the Silver Age Megaton Man returning to this dimension. I mean, I feel like I’m just sitting on the sidelines. I’ve been a civilian for three years, and what do I have to show for it?”

“You have a lot to be proud of,” I said. “You have a wonderful little boy. It’s not that I wouldn’t mind seeing you more often, it’s just that—I’d have for Simon to grow up feeling abandoned, like I did.”

“I understand, and you’re right,” said Trent. “Anyway, we’re going to see you Saturday, aren’t we? I mean, after the walk in the stadium. You’re coming back to the house, right? I mean, of course you are—it’s going to be huge.”

“Are you kidding?” I said. “I just ran into Stella, and she’s talking about keeping things small…”

“She doesn’t have a choice in the matter,” said Trent. “Neither do I, quite frankly. You’re mother’s been calling—she’s a force of nature, planning the catering, a barbecue, the whole thing. Stella thought she talked her out of it, but then your other mother called…”

“Alice Too? The Mod Puma?”

“…and the other Alice picked up right where your mama left off. Stella might be able to talk down one Alice James, but two of them…”

I laughed. “I can’t believe she thought she could make any headway with one of them.”

“And everyone’s going to be there—Stella’s mom and dad, your family, the Troy+Thems. And one of the Alices already contacted your student friends. Simon can’t wait to decorate the back yard with ‘Class of ‘84’ balloons.”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

“Are you sure? Stella seemed pretty adamant just now.”

“She’s got some last-minute crap with her department,” said Trent. “You know how she sweats the small stuff. By the weekend, believe me, it’ll all be forgotten, and she’ll lighten up.”

“Well, I guess I’ll be seeing you, then.” I kissed Trent on the cheek and turned to leave.

“Wait, you’re forgetting something,” said Trent.

“What?” I turned. He was holding a small, white box in the palm of his hand.

“It’s from Clyde, the Silver Age Megaton Man,” said Trent. “You’re biological father. He ordered it before he left.”

“I know who Clyde is,” I said. “But what is it?”

“Open it.”

I took the box and slid off the lid. Inside was another box, of glossy cherry wood and glass. I flipped open the lid.

Inside was a class ring with the Arbor State University logo with the letters “BA” and the date 1984 flanking a big, blue opal set in gold. There was a little carving of an Abyssinian wolf on one side and the Alberti Memorial Tower, our campus landmark, on the other

“Kick…ass!” I said.

Inside the band was an inscription in script lettering:

Clarissa James

America’s Nuclear-Powered Hero

It fit my ring finger perfectly. I started crying.

***

I wore that ring to the last of my final exams, to my remaining shifts at the Union Stripe Café, and to clarinet practice Thursday night with the First Holistic-Humanist Congregation of Cass City. I slept with it, showered with it. If it shot laser beams, I couldn’t have guarded it more carefully, or treasured it. I showed it to Audrey and Wilton and Nancy and Hadleigh and Chas. Avie was positively sick of it within seventy-two hours.

On the fifty-yard line of the Big Yard, as they call the Abyssinian Wolves Stadium. Trent was right; whatever had been bugging Stella had passed, and she was in euphoric spirits. How could she not be, surrounded by seventeen thousand kids graduating from one of the most prestigious schools in the country, like they’d been held in prison for four years?

The scheduled commencement speaker was supposed to be a retired network news anchorman, a living legend in broadcast journalism. But he came down with a sore throat or something, and canceled at the last moment. Both Stella and I were surprised to see our very own friend and Pulitzer prize-winning controversial columnist Pamela Jointly address the throng.

For a moment, Stella was the same, wide-eyed, enthusiastic airhead I’d met on campus nearly four years earlier. “Isn’t this perfect?” she shrieked. “The speaker’s our close, personal friend! Pammy’s famous!”

“Yes,” I muttered, although I was drowned out by the din. “It would have been even better if she hadn’t slept with Daddy and broken up my parents’ marriage.”

“What?” said Stella, trying to hear me. But the address had already begun.

“Congratulations,” Pammy proclaimed to the exultant and restless crowd. “You’ve survived four years at one of the most rigorous and prestigious schools—not only in the Midwest, but in the nation and the world. Not only that, but in a few cases, you’ve actually acquired an education…”

The gathered throng laughed and cheered.

“Not to bring you down, as we used to say in my student days here,” Pammy continued, with much knowing laughter from the crowd, “but now that you are ready to take on the world, you should probably know the truth: Our older generation plans to completely cop out and leave you holding the bag. I’m here to tell you, you are inheriting a bundle of problems we haven’t thus far, as a society, had the strength, courage, or leadership to resolve. Would you like an inventory? I was hoping you’d ask.”

The university administration and dignitaries on the dais, originally in a festive mood, were the first to succumb to a palpable, stony silence.

“First, our industries and infrastructure have rusted and decayed to the point that we can no longer compete in the global marketplace. The world has caught up to us, America. And our own pioneering talents for innovation have fled us. Instead, we cheapen our products, inflate our prices, and the wealthy make money on the interest they loan to one another, rather than produce real goods anybody wants, including ourselves.”

The formerly rambunctious crowd waiting to throw their mortarboards into the air visibly settled down now, becoming increasingly sober and somber.

“Second, our education system is bankrupt, producing a functionally illiterate workforce unable to think critically and completely unprepared for the technical demands of the twenty-first century, as well as a citizenry whose only civic purpose could possibly be to sheepishly follow commercial media owned by moguls interested only in increasing their own profits, not enabling and furthering democratic debate.”

An uneasy silence settled upon the throng that was positively eerie. I never imagined a hundred and ten thousand people could produce a silence so deafening.

“Third, our social contract and safety net have broken down, failing even to provide for bodily needs let alone spiritual, intellectual, and cultural sustenance. Phrases such as equal opportunity and social justice ring hollow, awaiting not only meaning but action to fill the conceptual void.”

I could hear people nervously clearing their throats from half a football field away.

“Finally, our politics is completely screwed. Our two-party system is so divided, and produces politicians, judges, and administrators so feckless and ineffectual that our electorate becomes only more disaffected, while our problems only grow exponentially worse by the day.”

I could hear myself sucking in wind through my teeth.

“But those are just the minor headaches we are leaving you,” Pammy continued. “The real problems—what I like to call the Megachallenges facing our world today—are much more urgent. If civilization doesn’t solve these problems, it’s not going to matter whether you ever pay off your student loans. These Megachallenges—four in number, like the fabled Horsemen of the Apocalypse, are as follows:

“World population. This can no longer be described quaintly as an explosion, but only as a full-blown crisis. Our species has been so successful at routing disease, famine, and natural disaster, and so unsuccessful at curbing our rampaging desire to reproduce like it was going out of style, that civilization has had to invent new, exotic forms of artificial death, such as mechanized war and highway fatalities. Even so, advertiser continue to sell us useless frivolities with sex appeal, all the while subliminally conditioning our minds to think with our groins, with the inevitable consequence being that our numbers have long since increased past the carrying capacity of the planet.”

“Jesus Christ,” I muttered. “They’re not going to invite Pammy back to speak here anytime soon.”

“Then there’s pollution,” Pammy continued, “another quaint term we’ve grown all too comfortable with. I don’t need to tell you our own water, air, and food supply have been corrupted beyond recognition, not only with heavy metals, pesticides, and other toxins, but our natural environment hasn’t been recognizably natural for some decades. Rather, it has become a overdeveloped habitat fit for only the most invasive and pestilent species—cockroaches, rats, and pigeons.”

Pigeons are going to object to being on that list, I thought.

“The depletion of our world’s natural resources logically follows,” said Pammy. “Our generation is consuming more of our finite supplies of energy, materials, and food than any previous generation in human history, and at a faster and more wanton and wasteful rate than prior generations could have imagined. Thus far, our feeble efforts to recycle and repurpose these scant and precious resources have amounted to little more than an adhesive bandage applied to a gaping wound, encouraging more ravenous consumption and resulting only in the further, wasteful expenditure of energy and resources, with little tangible benefit. Soon, we will have exhausted the planet for the sake of continents and oceans littered with disposable consumer goods and an increasingly obese and unhealthy herd of humans.

“Finally, there is the specter of nuclear proliferation and the total annihilation of the planet,” said Pammy. “I don’t need to tell an Arbor State graduating class, since a few of you are smart enough to create a thermonuclear warhead in your kitchen sink.” This got a few nervous laughs, presumably from the engineers and physicists. “But the dangers are growing by the hour—not only of mutually assured destruction—in case some nation on Earth were to be foolish enough to launch World War Three—but of accidental destruction caused by random actors. Clearly, giving every human being on Earth the ability to wipe out creation because of some perceived grievance, deep-seated mental illness, or bad hair day is not a wise course for our planet.”

Pammy took a breath and launched into her conclusion.

“However, as I look out at the graduating class of my Alma Mater in 1984, I see reason for hope. For one thing, you’ve survived an arduous and grueling four or more years in one piece. You’ve made it through an even longer and more imperfect education system than should be asked of any generation of young adults. And, you seem to have kept a few of your brain cells intact.”

This drew a raucous and sustained cheer from the crowd.

“I don’t feel at all sanguine about leaving you holding the bag, but you’re the only show in town. Therefore, I congratulate you again on your dubious accomplishment. To paraphrase a wise sage, ‘Go get ‘em, Abyssinian Wolves!’”

The crowd erupted. From their hiding places under graduation gowns, ten thousand cheap champagne bottles appeared and went off in unison like ten thousand rifle shots. Mortarboards decorated with propellers and toy satellite dishes flew into the air. Stella and I got doused with cheap liquor even though we hadn’t brought any ourselves. Groundskeepers along the sidelines frowned at the prospect of resodding the field place over the summer.

***

I couldn’t tell you how it happened, but Stella was tipsy by the time we’d exited the stadium and was hanging onto my shoulder for dear life. Somehow, she must have managed to ingest half a gallon of airborne alcohol while screaming at the top of her lungs. By the time we made it out to the parking lot, she was profusely apologizing for any past offenses and proclaiming her eternal devotion to me as a friend. This was awkward to say the least, but preferable to the bitchiness she’d displayed just days earlier. In the euphoria of the moment, I was best friends with the See-Thru Girl once more.

> Historical Note: An actual commencement address given by CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite at the University of Michigan on April 28, 1984, of which some of the above is a parody, is just as bleak or bleaker. The original speech ©2020 The Regents of the University of Michigan and is parodied here without permission.

All characters, character names, likenesses, words and pictures on this page are ™ and © Don Simpson 2020, all rights reserved.