Dr. Psycho

Academy Demolished

2011-09-15T22:13:00.000-07:00

The Academy for Difficult Girls has lost its home at Yahoo yet again.

I don't know whether this was the work of that creepy little stalker who has been posting libels against me on various groups, or the mischief of some random clod, or just another meaningless glitch in Yahoo's system.

Don't suppose it matters -- Yahoo explains nothing, apologizes for nothing.

There is a backup group,

http://www.keepitnice.com/kinc/pg/groups/11774/academy-for-difficult-girls/

and when I have the time and energy and am not feeling so kicked in the teeth as I am right now, I will create, I suppose, Academy 5 at Yahoo.

In the meantime, my apologies for the interruption of service.

Speak Out With Your Geek Out

2011-09-13T09:41:00.000-07:00

http://www.speakoutwithyourgeekout.com/

My big geekiness is history, I have recently discovered.

I didn't list "history" among my interests until my wife pointed out to me that I had taught a middle-school class about the Cold War era [primarily by showing them "Dr. Strangelove" ("This is what we feared") and "2001" ("This is what we hoped for")], had written a series of alternate-history stories, was always surprising people with tidbits of historical trivia....

Poe's Lighthouse, as Completed on Earth-349

2011-08-27T11:06:00.000-07:00

Earth-349: Classic Illustrated
By Anton Psychopoulos, PhD.
Disclaimer #1: This story was inspired in part by a story in Superman #349,
but is not limited by that story or any other.
Disclaimer #2: This story makes use of copyrighted characters and titles
for satirical purposes, and is not intended to infringe or disparage those
copyrights, even those which, under a government not totally dominated by
corporate whoredom, would long since have lapsed.
Disclaimer #3: The first three “days” of the diary which makes up this story
were indeed writtten by Edgar Allan Poe, and constitute his last known attempt
at writing. Portions of this story were also inspired by other works of Mr.
Poe, but everything dated “Jan 4” and later is Dr. Psycho’s own creation.
Disclaimer #4: This story is also inspired in part by “Three Skeleton Cay”, an
episode of the radio series Suspense, but not, in the author’s opinion, in any
way that constitutes copyright infringement, much less plagiarism.
Disclaimer #5: This story is not recommended for readers under the age of 18
or the easily offended.

The Lighthouse
By Edgar Allan Poe

Jan 1 - 1796. This day - my first on the light-house - I make this
entry in my Diary, as agreed on with De Grät. As regularly as I can keep the
journal, I will - but there is no telling what may happen to a man all alone as
I am - I may get sick, or worse... So far well! The cutter had a narrow escape
- but why dwell on that, since I am here, all safe? My spirits are beginning to
revive already, at the mere thought of being - for once in my life at least -
thoroughly alone; for, of course, Neptune, large as he is, is not to be taken
into consideration as "society". Would to Heaven I had ever found in "society"
one half as much faith as in this poor dog: - in such case I and "society"
might never have parted - even for the year... What most surprises me, is the
difficulty De Grät had in getting me the appointment - and I a noble of the
realm ! It could not be that the Consistory had any doubt of my ability to
manage the light. One man had attended it before now - and got on quite as well
as the three that are usually put in. The duty is a mere nothing; and the
printed instructions are as plain as possible. It never would have done to let
Orndoff accompany me. I never should have made any way with my book as long as
he was within reach of me, with his intolerable gossip - not to mention that
everlasting mëerschaum. Besides, I wish to be alone... It is strange that I
never observed, until this moment, how dreary a sound that word has - "alone" !
I could half fancy there was some peculiarity in the echo of these cylindrical
walls - but oh, no! - this is all nonsense. I do believe I am going to get
nervous about my insulation. That will never do. I have not forgotten De Grät's
prophecy. Now for a scramble to the lantern and a good look around to "see what
I can see"... To see what I can see indeed ! - not very much. The swell is
subsiding a little, I think - but the cutter will have a rough passage home,
nevertheless. She will hardly get within sight of the Norland before noon
to-morrow - and yet it can hardly be more than 190 or 200 miles.

Jan 2. I have passed this day in a species of ecstasy that I find impossible to describe. My passion for solitude could scarcely have been more thoroughly gratified. I do not say satisfied; for I believe I should never be satiated with such delight as I have experienced to-day... The wind lulled about day-break, and by the afternoon the sea had gone down materially... Nothing to be seen, with the telescope even, but ocean and sky, with an occasional gull. Jan 3. A dead calm all day. Towards evening, the sea looked very much like glass. A few sea-weeds came in sight; but besides them absolutely nothing all day - not even the slightest speck of cloud... Occupied myself in exploring the light-house... It is a very lofty one - as I find to my cost when I have to ascend its interminable stairs - not quite 160 feet, I should say, from the low-water mark to the top of the lantern. From the bottom inside the shaft, however, the distance to the summit is 180 feet at least: - thus the floor is 20 feet below the surface of the sea, even at low-tide... It seems to me that the hollow interior at the bottom should have been filled in with solid masonry. Undoubtedly the whole would have been thus rendered more safe: - but what am I thinking about? A structure such as this is safe enough under any
circumstances. I should feel myself secure in it during the fiercest hurricane
that ever raged - and yet I have heard seamen say occasionally, with a wind at
South-West, the sea has been known to run higher here than any where with the
single exception of the Western opening of the Straits of Magellan. No mere
sea, though, could accomplish anything with this solid iron-riveted wall -
which, at 50 feet from high-water mark, is four feet thick, if one inch... The
basis on which the structure rests seems to me to be chalk...

Jan 4. The lighthouse was named Pannonner's Tower after its designer. The island itself is listed on charts as the Pfallstach. Yet this place where I am to spend the year of 1796 is universally known by another name, one which I can scarcely bring myself to think, much less write. There is a reason why the Consistory found it difficult to find a keeper for this lighthouse, and why I had difficulty in persuading them that I was a suitable candidate for the job.The last keeper of this light went mad. And the three who served as its crew before him....

Jan 5. A storm threatened, but passed the Pfallstach by. I climbed the tower and watched as the lightning flashed far out to sea, and said an occasional prayer for any ship that might be caught in it, and a more sincere one when I was sure that no arm of it would reach me. The storm was a magnificent entertainment, and I felt no fear once I knew it would draw no closer. The day and the evening passed without my experiencing any of the unwholesome fear which I felt the other day. I can now laugh at myself, for the way I could not even bring myself

Jan 6. I kept the old Christmas in joyous silence, luxuriating in being free not to speak a word, contrasting this happy day with the disagreeable evening I spent on the late December 25th, at a crowded inn at Norland with De Grät and Orndoff. The gratification I felt on the 2nd was even more intense and yet serene today, and I would laugh at my fears, as I did yesterday, except that my inner happiness is so great and sacred that mirth would seem out of place. The name

Jan 7. Three Skeleton Rock

Jan 8. In truth, I wrote nothing yesterday. I finally forced myself to
write that unspeakable name early this morning, after spending most of the
night in pacing round the lighthouse, and in climbing and descending the long
stairway, approaching my diary and then turning away. There was no longer any
point in refusing to write it, since the words floated in the air before me
whenever I closed my eyes, scrawled in burning golden letters in my own
handwriting. This place has been cursed with that name since the day three
years ago that the cutter approached the island to investigate the extinction
of the light....

Jan 9. The dawn seemed late in coming, but actually it was simply an overcast so complete as to blot out the Sun. A hole in the clouds near the horizon seemed to offer me a late dawn, but in truth I realized that it was much later than sunrise should be, even in this clime, that the Sun was much higher in the sky, and the patch of brightness was simply a rent in an otherwise impenetrable cloud cover. I will resume my recounting of the story of the previous keepers of this light. Perhaps putting it down on paper will allow me to stop dwelling upon it in my mind. At first glance, the skeletons seemed to lie where their owners had fallen, on the ground near the door to the lighthouse. Closer examination, however, found that the bones had been brought there and assembled into skeletons. Occasional bones were in the wrong place, as a physician among the rescuers observed: hand bones in the feet and vice versa, ribs and vertebrae out of order. Some bones were obviously from one man, yet included in another's skeleton. Every bone, however, had been meticulously cleaned of the smallest particle of soft tissue, scraped clean of even the periosteum, the membrane that covers all living bone, and drained of marrow without being cracked, only bored with small holes. And every bone bore the marks of tiny, sharp scraping tools, or perhaps of teeth.

Jan 10. A howling ice storm outside: sleet, hail, freezing rain -- a crust of ice on every surface. I bundle myself in what seems like every article of clothing I have with me, and still the chill seeps in. The weather is so thick that I have lit the lamp in daylight. The heat of the lamp is welcome -- more than welcome, it is rescue from the cold. The lamp-room is the only warm place in the lighthouse. Even there, I am warm only on the side the lamp shines on, and then I feel a heat that threatens to blister my unprotected skin. The three men had been reduced to skeletons, and every particle of food stored up for them had been eaten or carried away. A single man was chosen to mind the light
thereafter. The exterior door, which had been extensively damaged, was
replaced by one of iron plate that would have done a bank vault proud. It was
believed that the lighthouse was now quite impregnable, and indeed, the next
keeper of the light was quite unharmed when, in the third year of his tenure,
he was found by the cutter, huddled in the topmost place in the entire
lighthouse, quite mad. I am in the madman's final perch, too. There is a small
platform directly above the lamp, about four feet beneath the ceiling. If I
sit here with my notebook, this is the one place in the lighthouse which is
truly warm. The madman was taken away, and a new keeper sought for the light.
And here I am, and now I must face whatever it was that destroyed my
predecessors.

Jan 11. Still abominably cold. I spend most of the day in the
bottom of the ligthhouse, dry even though below sea level, huddled beside a
small cast iron stove. I have two pair of boots, and hang one of them by their
laces from a wire that hangs over the stove. when it is warm, I exchange my
boots, and revel in a few moments of warmth and the return of sensation to my
numbed toes. But my feet are cold again long before the hanging boots are
warm. I look forward to night, when I shall crouch again on that tiny topmost
platform and be truly warm. I am tempted to light the lamps now and be done
with it, but fear depleting the supply of spermaceti. Jan 12. I passed the
night on the little upper platform again. This time, I slept on a comfortable
pallet that I made there. The platform was still too short for me to lie at
full length, and I was occasionally troubled by the thought of the harm I would
come to should I roll off the platform and fall onto the lamps, but at least
the space is blessedly *warm*, the smell of burning oil a comforting incense
like unto the smell of old Maria's kitchen of my boyhood. At dawn, I espied a
dark mass on the horizon that I thought at first must be more sea-weed, but it
stood higher out of the water than that. It might have been a ship, but its
bulk was too great and its motion too leisurely for that. It has grown
steadily larger all morning. Neptune seems to be disturbed by something.

Jan 14. The time since I last wrote here has been a longer and more horrible 36 hours than I could ever have imagined a human being enduring, and they may yet get in.

The mass whose identity I could not fathom was both ship and sea-weed: the
hulks of two derelict ships, rotting and water-logged, embedded in a mass of
purplish-green plant life that seemed to both weigh it down and buoy it up, a
horrible amalgam of living and dead, nature and artifice, plant and animal.

Plant and animal mingled for the entire mass, and the water around it, was
swarming with innumerable rats.

How so many rats could have been gathered in one place, so far from land, I
cannot imagine. Even had the derelict ships been packed to the gunwales with
bread and bacon and cheese, they could hardly have nurtured a brood as vast as
this one. Perhaps the rats were summoned by some power from every passing ship

The fact that I could imagine such a diseased fancy as I wrote above shows how
much the coming of the rats has unsettled my mind. It is nonsense.

Nothing lived on the weed-mired hulks except rats, unless the occasional flash
of white that I saw among the animals represented another species. The rats
would surely not have suffered a cat to live among them.

I watched the agglomeration of ships and sargassum drift nearer, helpless to
forestall the proximity of the rats. The idea of the hideous mass coming near
offended me, but I did not think I was in any true danger until near sunset,
when I saw that the mass was indeed going to pass closer to my island than any
drift of sea-weed had before. I saw that the rats which swam in the sea nearby
to the floating island were even closer than the main mass itself, and I feared
that some of them might come ashore. The thought of my supplies being
plundered, and of the vile diseases that those rats might bring with them, made
me tremble in a way that no storm ever could.

I descended and made sure of the iron door, and even of the windows, though it
would have taken a hardy rat indeed, I was sure, to climb the sheer face of the
lighthouse to the fifty-foot height of the first window.

By the time I returned to the level of the lanterns, the rats had begun to
desert the hulks in a single immense wave of brown bodies, swimming not
aimlessly as the occasional outriding rats had done, but with a distinct and
eager purpose: to invade the island where lately three men had been reduced to
skeletons.

Jan 15. They are out there, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, perhaps
millions. They have climbed to the very pinnacle of the lighthouse, crowding
about the windows, scrabbling at every irregularity of its surface in hope of
scratching their way inside. Only the beam of the massed lanterns drives them
from the great windows, so that the lighthouse still fulfills its function,
even as I cower inside in dread of their horrible teeth, their filthy claws.

They carpet the ground, and I wonder if they do likewise with the lighthouse
itself, making the island one uniform mass of squirming brown fur. But not
quite uniform, for I have seen again and again those small flashes of white
that suggests some small minority of the rats carry an albino mutation. But is
it truly a rat? The flashes I have seen have all been consistent with the
white thing being larger than a rat: a cat, a dog, a stoat perhaps.

Small matter. It is the rats I must fear. They must not gain ingress.

Jan 16. The King Rat is at the window.

Jan 25. I have not been in a fit state to write here for some time. Indeed, I
was surprised to find the journal intact when this morning I ascended to the
tiny platform above the lanterns. But it is here, and I might as well continue
my narrative. I must find some means of maintaining the semblance of normalcy
and sanity, practice the routines of a normal person, that the crew of the
cutter not think there is anything amiss.

The rats broke in on what must have been the 18th. They burrowed fully twenty
feet through the chalk, coming up inside the iron-bound masonry walls and
swarming up through their initial tunnel, ascending the full height of the
lighthouse until they found me cowering in the madman’s perch.

I had spent every hour since the rats first came ashore in that little perch.
I suppose it was in some irrational belief that I would survive there, as the
madman had. I cannot imagine why I would think that: it would have been easy
enough for the rats to have scaled the inside walls and drop down onto the
platform, as in the end they did. But well before then, I had not been
thinking clearly. Not since the rats climbed all the way to the height of the
lantern-windows. And especially not since I had heard the voice of the King
Rat.

The rats swarmed up the sides of the lighthouse like a living carpet, like ivy
growing with impossible speed. They scrabbled at the iron door but could not
enter. They scrabbled at each of the windows. Eventually, they climbed all
the way to the great windows through which the lighthouse’s beacon shines, and
would have covered it entirely except that they cringed away from the heat and
brightness of the lanterns. All but the King Rat.

It was no fancy of mine that there had been a white shape among the rats, and
larger than them. It seemed to be a rat, but immensely larger than any of
them, the size of a large dog, and its fur was a perfect spotless white. Its
skin was almost as fair, but its eyes were of a red color that was not that of
an albino. They were a richer, deeper red, the red of burgundy, darker than
blood. And so were its claws, as though they had been painted.

The King Rat clung to the glass, staring in at me. It watched me for a long
interval, its eyes on me every second, not so much as flinching when the beacon
shone full into them. The beast’s mouth opened, revealing teeth of the same
red as its claws and eyes, and it spoke.

The words were not those of any language I knew, but still there was no
mistaking that this was not merely the cry of some animal, but the articulate
voice of a mind at least as great as a human one:

“Tekeli-li!”

It has taken me two days more to bring myself to write that word.

When the rats violated the lighthouse, they did not devour my stores, though
they did eat the flesh from poor Neptune’s bones once they had killed him.
They did not fling themselves upon me, but only gathered, in their hundreds,
upon the floor where I tend the lanterns. They scurried about in what must
have been, to a rat, the equivalent of rigid attention, waiting for the arrival
of the King Rat. He must have waited for his subjects to widen the burrow to
allow him passage.

When the King Rat had arrived, the rats finally scampered up the insides of the
windows, across the ceiling, and showered their bodies down upon me. I
screamed and batted at them, too terrified and horrified to notice that their
claws scratched me only when I scraped my flesh across their bodies, that they
did not bite me at all. I flailed about and finally fell off my little perch,
landing on my side before the turning beacon, feeling its searing heat along my
right arm. The King Rat moved closer

There is a reason the three were eaten, and the madman left inside the
lighthouse, while they exerted greater efforts to gain entry when they found me
inside. The four who came before me had a quality in common among them, and
even with poor Neptune. It was something that is sometimes of little
consequence, sometimes none, but on rare occasions is the only thing of any
importance.

I must learn to maintain my composure, and to avoid creating any suspicion when
the cutter comes in March to deliver the Spring’s supplies. If my manner is
serene and my conversation is calm, even though brusque, they will leave me in
peace, I expect.

I do not think my pregnancy will be so advanced as to be perceptible.

Afterword

If Edgar Allan Poe had died of the sudden illness which struck him
while he was writing “The Lighthouse”, he would still be remembered as one of
the most important writers of fiction and poetry that America ever produced,
but we can see in this story the beginnings of what was to be the most
productive period of his career, ended only by his enlistment in the
Confederate Army during Civil War II.

We can also see in it themes which Poe later developed further in “At
the Mountains of Madness” (1853), and “The First Men in the Moon” (1855),
culminating in the completed “Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym” (1860).

After the war, Poe wrote little except for Thirty Months (1873), a
rather lifeless wartime memoir, until he began Mark of the Warrior in 1878,
which he completed in 1885 and which was published posthumously in 1902, a work
which remains the definitive novel of the darkest time in the nation’s history.

In spite of the unflinching realism of Mark of the Warrior, however, it
is still for the equally macabre fantasies – “tales of mystery and
imagination”, as Poe put it – that Poe is best remembered today, and “The
Lighthouse” remains a much-reprinted example of them.

-- Benjamin Tuttle, Editor, Classic Illustrated

Note #1: This story and its Afterword reflect the career of Edgar Allan Poe on
Earth-349, where he was indeed a man. Presumably, the story was adapted for an
issue of Classics Illustrated, as published on Earth-349.

Note #2: Read more Earth-349 stories at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Earth-349

Note #3: Contact the author at dr_psycho1960@hotmail.com

Earth-349: Aquawoman

2011-07-29T08:20:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer #1 This story is set in a hypothetical parallel world within
the pre-Crisis DC Universe, based on a story in Superman #349, but not
limited by that story or any other.

Disclaimer #2 Some characters appearing in this story are based on
copyrighted characters owned by DC Comics, Inc., Marvel Comics and
others. Their use here is not intended to infringe or disparage those
copyrights.

Disclaimer #3 This story is not recommended for persons under 18 or the
easily offended, especially those who are uncomfortable with such topics
as transgender, transformation, polyfidelity and participatory democracy.

Gloriana Curry, known to the land-dwelling public as Aquawoman,
considered her reflection in her bedroom mirror. She liked the mirror
very much: oval, a meter and a half tall, an ormolu frame, salvaged from
the wreck of the Antilie (sank in a storm, July 23rd, 1911, near Bermuda).
She thought the reflection was...adequate: 421 moons old (32.2 years,
land-reckoning), blonde hair, fair skin (evenly colored but not very
smooth), tall and muscular (chest very broad, making her breasts look
smaller than they really were), belly firm enough that she could still
wear her unforgiving shirt of orichalcum scale mail. No scars, thanks
to the excellent Atlantean healing capacity. Her right hand was still a
little pale, and the wrist would probably always be slightly crooked
where it had grown from the stump of the one she’d lost, but it was no
longer so noticable that she felt the need for gloves. Absolutely
stunning legs, by the standards of either land people or Atlanteans (did
they look better bare, or in the green tights? Tights today).

She would do for a routine appearance as the Queen of Atlantis.
"Queen of Atlantis" was a very fanciful translation of her actual title.
A better one would be "First Speaker of the Executive Council of the
Poseidonis Reach". Her executive position was an elective one (though
it did involve wearing a crown and carrying a ceremonial trident), and
her territory did not by any means cover all of Atlantis. The city of
Poseidonis and its environs, plus its assorted vassal city-states and
allied settlements and nomadic tribes, accounted for only about half of
the population, and maybe a third of the inhabited area of the Atlantic
Ocean basin (the Reach was defined by tides and currents, not lines drawn
on the seafloor). Still, calling her a Queen did no harm, and calling
the Poseidonis Reach "Atlantis" harmed only those insufferable merfolk
in Tritonis, so what the hell?

Aquawoman thought of a Quaker fishing boat captain she knew, who
had recently been named Clerk of the Committee for Ministry and Oversight
of the Gulf Coast Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends of
Christ. She made a mental note that when next they met, she would
address him as "Archbishop of New Orleans."

It was not a ceremonial occasion, just a semi-formal birthday
party for the oldest member of the Council, so she would forgo the crown,
the trident, the walrus-hide mantle and the tedious riding of an Atlantic
Giant Seahorse. There would probably be a good crowd even so, because
people would be wanting to see the royal consorts.

With a final check of her tights for wrinkles, she swam out the
nearest window and down to the plaza, where her husbands and most of the
other guests were waiting.

It was rare enough for all five of her husbands to be gathered
together in one place. They all had their jobs and their private
interests, and if it didn't happen that one or more of them was away from
the city, he was likely to be occupied with some project elsewhere in
town. For once, though, she found them together: Turth, scion of a
Poseidonis family even older than her own. Malco, a legless merman from
Tritonis. Glibdup, a clawed and scaly gill-man from the chilly coastal
waters of Rhode Island. Blue-skinned Niaremus, an adventurer from
Earth-348. And perhaps the oddest of all --

"Hey, where's Todd?"

Nobody seemed to know. Turth said, "He was definitely going to
be here, but I haven't seen him all day."

A boy in an Army uniform, barely into puberty, swam into the
midst of the royal party, glancing uncomfortably around at the consorts
but remembering to salute the queen, and said, "Excuse me, Ma'am, but
the Black Manta is approaching from north by northeast, showing truce
lights."

Todd Arliss's family had been shipchandlers for over a century,
and had inherited a very substantial business at the age of 19. He had
insisted on selling the business and spending almost his entire fortune
on illegal experimental treatments intended to give him an Atlantean
metabolism, allowing him to live in the sea, go to Atlantis, and plight
his troth to Aquawoman.

He had been phenomenally lucky. He might have died, or become a
mindless Aquabeast, or worse yet from his point of view, been turned into
a too-exact duplicate of Aquawoman. Instead, he had wound up as the
curly-haired, round-cheeked amphibian the Atlanteans fondly called
Aquababy. Even then, there was no guarantee that the adventurer and
stateswoman would want anything to do with a somewhat-obsessive admirer.
But he'd proven to have many attractive qualities, and in the end had
been allowed to become her fifth companion.

He'd also proven very popular with the people of Atlantis, who
had made him something of a mascot. It had been very clever of the Ocean
Master to choose him as a hostage.

By the time Aquawoman had reached the dome that covered the city,
the Ocean Master's immense black submarine Black Manta was holding a position less
than fifty fathoms from the glass. It loomed there, resembling nothing
so much as an immense sperm whale's penis, with the Ocean Master himself
perched suggestively at its prow. Atlantean soldiers were arrayed in a
half-sphere before the vessel, spearguns ready.

Aquawoman swam up to the officer in charge. "Has he said yet
what he wants?"

"Yes, Ma'am. The crown of Queen Clea."

"He can't have it," she said automatically. The officer nodded
curtly.

Moments later the four husbands and most of the Council arrived.
Aquawoman told them what the Ocean Master wanted, and assured them that
she considered paying the ransom out of the question. Malco was dubious,
and tried gently to suggest that they at least consider it. The others
all disagreed strongly. Turth spoke smoothly to calm Malco, with a trace
of condescension. "We must not, of course, allow...that object...to fall
into such hands as those. The Ocean Master is bothersome enough as a
science pirate; giving him the power to truly master the world's oceans
would be disastrous. Nevertheless, for our beloved brother's sake...?"

Aquawoman nodded. "For Todd's sake, we should consider all our
options. And what better place to discuss the matter than in the
Nameless Vault?"

A generation before, Atlantean archaeologists had found an
ancient crown once worn by the Wizard-Kings, a hideous thing formed of
seven serpents. Everyone who saw it was troubled by the evil power
emanating from it, but the silver-haired Queen Clea had dared to place it
on her head. After that, she had displayed increasingly spectacular
magical powers -- and increasing megalomania and depravity.

The escalating crimes of Queen Clea, and the civil war that
eventually resulted, had nearly destroyed Poseidonis. Once she had been
neutralized and the crown secured, it had been stowed in the Nameless
Vault, along with other items deemed too dangerous to be used.

The Executive Council, Aquawoman and her husbands made a crowd
that did not easily fit down the narrow passageways that led below the
city to the Nameless Vault. The Vault itself lay in the deepest and
oldest of the Palace's sub-basements, in the natural caverns and chambers
hewn from living stone that had underlain the city when Atlantis was
still above the surface. Its door was of a kind of steel otherwise
unknown on Earth, possibly older than Earth itself. The lock was two
years old, from Stark Industries, and required three members of the
Council to authorize entry. The Vault-Keeper, a broad-chinned oldster in
a red robe, stood by watchfully as they unlocked the massive door.

As the door swung open, a perverse corner of Aquawoman's mind
reflected that the term "Nameless Vault" could also be translated as
simply "a secure undisclosed location".

The contents of the vault seemed deceptively ordinary. On one
table stood an insulated steel vial labelled simply "Virus". On a set
of shelves were several boxes of waterproof punchcards, marked
"Master PC". Presumably PC stood for "punchcard", but what made a
computer program so dangerous? A television set, looking to be about ten
years old, seemed laughably out of place until it moved, turning toward
the visitors as though it were alive. A sealed package offered no clue
of its contents, except for being marked "SRU". It seemed to Aquawoman
that the Vault badly needed a catalog.

At the very back of the Vault, on a pedestal as though in a
museum display -- or on a blasphemous altar -- a dreadful object waited.
Three snakes glared off to the left, three to the right, and the largest
looked forward, its eyes projecting a challenge.

Come wear me. Come, and have power over the sea and the land.
Come and be like Clea, only better, more perfect. Wear me, and be a real
queen, feared and loved by the whole world.

Not taking her eyes off the crown, Aquawoman said to her
companions, "This is what we're here for. Let's go."

The Ocean Master had his feet planted on the prow of the Black
Manta when Aquawoman returned. It was a strange, nonsensical position to
hold underwater, but landsman that he was, he doubtless thought it looked
dramatic and authoritative. He remained in position as Aquawoman swam
out to meet him. He saw that she did indeed have the Serpent Crown with
her.
She was wearing it.

The Ocean Master spoke through a hydrophone in his ornate helmet,
"The Queen of Atlantis will surrender the Serpent Crown to the Ocean
Master, and thereby acknowledge him her overlord and the true ruler of
all the Earth's oceans."

"Francis Marion Ormsby, if you think I'm going to let you leave
here with Clea's crown, you're a dumber sprat than you were when you
tried to pants me the first day we swam together!"

"I need the crown," the Ocean Master said coldly, not showing any
sign that her backhanded appeal to familial ties had touched him. "I
have to have it, Atlantean, in order to fulfill my destiny. Hand it
over, now, or I'll kill your precious Aquababy before your eyes."

She swam toward him, her eyes burning in a manner that suggested
red lightning might shoot from them at any moment, or perhaps from the
eyes of the serpents in her crown. The ancient and obscene power of the
object carried a weight of silent menace.

"Yes, you could do that, and it would wound my heart in ways I
doubt you can even understand. But with my surviving husbands to console
me, I'd manage to go on. I'd retain enough of my self-control to begin
the hunt for you right away, and you'd find that 71% of the planet's
surface area is not room enough to hide you from my vengeance."

He remained still for a long moment, his face unreadable in that
mask, and then he turned to his nearest henchman, a silver-blonde youth
in the ragged remnants of a U.S. Navy enlisted work uniform. "Let him
go."

Less than a minute later, Aquababy swam out through an airlock,
waved to the crowd as they cheered him, then swam toward his wife. The
so-called Ocean Master slipped into his vessel through a different
airlock, and the Black Manta began to turn slowly in place, preparing to
depart from the city. There was more loud cheering as the invaders fled.

Aquababy swam to his wife's side, but held back at the sight of
her wearing the crown. He was not an Atlantean, and had not even been
born yet when Queen Clea made it infamous, but he knew its reputation as
a corrupting influence. He was clearly wondering whether Aquawoman's
sacrifice had been worth his life.

Aquawoman pulled the crown from her head and crushed it between
her hands. The baked-clay replica crumbled to powder and dispersed in a
muddy cloud. To the people of Atlantis she called out, "The crown of
Clea is safely stored away, and that's where it will stay!" and then
kissed her husband very warmly and firmly.

They broke from the kiss and began swimming back toward the
palace side by side, surrounded by her other husbands and, more distantly,
by government officials and the adoring populace.

Aquawoman gave a long telepathic sigh. "I swear, I don't know
what it's going to take to make him put a stop to all this Ocean Master
nonsense. I may have to marry him."

Niaremus turned to Malco and raised one long eyebrow. "Marry
him? Isn't he her half-brother?"

"Step-brother. Former step-brother, since her father is divorced
from his mother."

"So I suppose a relationship between them would only be..."

"Palimpsest?"

Todd swam close to Aquawoman, bumping against her frequently in
an intimate gesture that would only be tolerated between lovers. "Have I
mentioned lately what a really magnificent woman you are?"

"I'm not sure how recently the last time was," she replied
lightly, "but feel free anytime it comes up."

"It's relevant right at the moment, hon. When I heard you
telling Ormsby, 'Go ahead, there's four more where he came from--"

"That's not what --"

He shushed her. "You said what you had to say. I have no
complaint. Quite the contrary. I love and admire you more for having
had the strength to say it. When you stood him down like that, I think
it was the first time I'd ever really seen you look like a queen."

Aquawoman made a dismissive gesture. "Me, a queen? I'm just a
nice girl with five husbands."

Earth-349: Spider-Woman

2011-07-24T09:46:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer 1: This story is inspired by a story in Superman #349, but is not limited by that story or any other.

Disclaimer 2: This story is based on characters copyright DC Comics, Inc., Marvel
Comics and others. It is written for entertainment only and is not intended to deny or disparage those copyrights.

Disclaimer 3: The inspiration of Tebra's delightful "Diablo Wars" series is gratefully
acknowledged.

Disclaimer 4: This story is not recommended for persons under 18, or the easily offended,
especially those who are uncomfortable with themes such as transgender, mind control,
male dominance and women's undergarments.

Spider-Woman clung to the wall and looked around the room. They were all awake now, eying one another warily. That was understandable – the last time she had met a stranger dressed in a spider costume, it had not been a pleasant experience.
The girl in a violet one-piece bathing suit and spiderweb-print domino mask, red hair flowing freely to the middle of her back, kept looking from one to another, more anxious than hostile, as though wishing someone would take charge of the situation.
The one who was once more trying the room's vault-like door had blonde hair showing at the top of a costume that otherwise covered her completely in a substance that resembled the glossy carapace of a black widow. The blackness was relieved only by a white spider-shape on her chest and abdomen, and white eyespots much like those on pider-Woman's own mask.
The fourth, in a mostly-red bodysuit and with black hair that looked impractically if not improbably long, just sat in her corner, seeming to move not at all, merely waiting for what came next.
The redhead was starting to babble, asking nonsensical questions, panic rising in her voice. The blonde turned from prying at the door with her fingertips and started to speak angrily to her.
"Hey, girls!" Spider-Woman yelled, cutting them both off. "Let's not everybody talk at once, okay? Room's too small!"
"Yeeeah, iddiz too schmall, ain't it?" the blonde sneered, mocking Spider-Woman's Queens accent.
"Quiet," the black-haired woman said softly, her own accent sounding vaguely Slavic. "She is right. Let us find out how much we all know."
Spider-Woman thanked her, then peeled off her mask, revealing her own brown hair, cropped very close except for a small forelock.
"I think I know what's going on. I think we're all four of us from different worlds, with different histories."
"That would explain your haircut, Tiger. I was thinking it made you look like you were from Mars."
"Not different planets. Different Earths.
"My name is April Parker, and I come from a world that some people have called Earth-349. People have visited our world from elsewhere, and some of us have visited other worlds, so maybe you will know that name."
The redhead nodded and April continued.
"Three years ago I was attending a scientific exposition at Osborn Laboratories, where they had been studying the peaceful use of atomic energy. I was bitten by a spider, became terribly ill, and when I recovered I had strange spider-like powers. I can only guess at this part, but I think the spider -- a brown recluse, most likely -- was exposed to radiation, and its venom was altered by the radiation in such a way as to give me these powers."
The blonde asked, "Three years ago?"
"Yes, in 1962."
"Huh. On my world, three years ago was 1972."
The redhead blurted, "A radioactive spider – ugh, it gives me the creeps."
"Irradiated, not radioactive," the other three said in unison.
The redhead shrugged, unabashed, and untied her own mask. It hadn't hidden much of her face anyway.
"Okay, whatever. I'm Mary Jane Watson, and I'm from Earth-348. I'm friends with the Human Torch, in the Justice Battalion, so I know all about Earth-349. I didn't know there was a Spider-Girl on your Earth, though."
"Spider-Woman," April corrected.
"Okay. Anyways, like about three years ago – in 1940 – I had the measles real bad, and I thought I was gonna die. There was this spider in a web up by the ceiling in my room, and one night it started to talk to me. It told me it was Anansi, one of the old gods my Auntie Mae used to tell me about, and he said he would heal me if I would serve him. So I said yes, and the next thing I knew, I woke up feeling like a million bucks, and I was clinging to the ceiling."
"And how do you serve Anansi?"
"Mostly by helping the war effort. Hitler isn't one of Anansi's favorite guys.
"Look, since we're taking off the masks and stuff, I hope you guys don't mind if I get comfortable."
She reached into her suit and pulled out a pair of foam rubber falsies, going suddenly from a C cup to an A.
"What the heck do you wear those things for?" the girl in the black costume asked.
"Part of my disguise. My buddy Peter Palmer – I guess he'd be my boyfriend except he's bent – told me to do it, to keep people from guessing who Spider-Girl really is."
The girl in black chuckled.
"Right, nobody will be looking at your face."
Mary Jane glared at the girl's shiny black D-cups.
"You'd know all about that, wouldn't you?"
April tried to raise the tone of the conversation.
"There's some sort of force at work between the worlds that causes things like this, that look like crazy coincidences."
She pointed at the woman in the mostly-red costume.
"Let's hear your story."
The black-haired woman stood up, revealing just how tall she was, and confirming the amazing length of her hair. She peeled her mask down, revealing a beautiful but not very animated face, and very large dark eyes.
"My name is Felicia Hardy. That's the name I have adopted, although I was raised as Arachne. I was born in a laboratory in a cave on Mount Wundagore, in Bulgaria. It is quite clear that neither of your worlds is mine."
"I'll say! On my world, there's no such country as Bulgaria. It's just a made-up place on the radio."
"And on mine, it's an historical name, out of the Middle Ages. But do go on."
"Yes. I was born there, one of some thirty children created by the scientists Drew Parker and Harrison Osbourne. They called us their X-Men, because we were crossed – 'x'-ed – between humans and other species. Leon was half-lion, Reynard was half-fox. And I was, as I said . . . Arachne."
She looked at the other girls, as though watching for signs of revulsion or disdain.
Two of them smiled reassuringly, while Mary Jane stared blankly, clearly not getting the reference.
"I grew up with my special abilities, my powers I suppose you could say. I was also the only one of the X-Men who could pass for human, at least when fully clothed. So three years ago in 1965, I went out into the world as a sort of ambassador for my family. Those who have shown me friendship call me Arachne. The newspapers call me the Tarantula."
The fourth girl, the one in the black-and-white suit, had been listening thoughtfully while the others told their stories. Without any obvious action on her part, the blackness covering her face flowed downward as though it were liquid, revealing a pretty face with a little too much jaw.
"I see what you mean, April, about weird coincidences. My Uncle Ben used to work at Wunder-Gore Labs, in the Osborne Building. And my name is -- well, I've been calling myself Gwen Stacey, but the name I was born with is Peter Parker."
Mary Jane gave a high-pitched giggle that could easily become annoying with repetition.
"I'm sorry, it's just that on my world, nobody would ever name a boy 'Peter Parker'. Where I come from, a 'peter-parker' is a guy who, erm, gets around the girls a lot."
Gwen blushed but continued.
"Well, I can't very well use that name anymore, anyway. But it's the name I grew up with. My Aunt May and Uncle Ben raised me. Three years ago they both got sick, and I joined the Air Force to make some money to support them."
"You joined the Air Corps? How old are you?"
"Seventeen. I was fourteen then. Why?"
"Never mind, I guess. Tell us more."
"Well, I was at this lab at Wentworth Field, assisting Major Jameson with a sample that a probe had brought back from the Moon –"
April surprised herself by being the one to interrupt this time.
"Your people have been to the Moon?"
"Just machines, so far. One of them brought back this really weird piece of black stuff. It seemed like it was almost alive, but we couldn't get it to do anything. Not until I was transferring it from one containment vessel to another and, well, dropped the jar and broke it.
"As soon as it touched my skin, it came to life, glommed onto me and covered me. It changed me, in a lot of ways, made me faster and stronger, and it turned me into, well, a girl."
She pressed her palms together and spread them. A spiderweb formed between her hands, rather like a cat's cradle.
"The costume – that's the way I think of it, as a suit of clothes, although it's eallyr a symbiotic life form – can spin webs, and it allows me to cling to walls. Since the Air Force doctors can't figure out how to get it off me, they made me a Captain, and now I'm what they call a 'special asset' of the Air Rangers, code name: the Spider."
"Wow. I wonder why it made you a girl?"
"I don't know. Maybe its own reproduction requires that it be passed on through the mother."
"Anyway," April said, "what's most important now is that we find out what we're all doing here."
"And which Earth 'here' is."
"True enough."
Gwen looked again at the door.
"That weird coincidence-causing force, whatever it is, might have brought us all together, but why would we be in this locked room, with a door that even our spider-strength can't open?"
April nodded.
"It seems to me more likely that someone has brought us here."
Arachne was waving her hands along the sides of her body, as though wafting air over herself.
"Do any of you smell that? There is some chemical being introduced to the air in here. A different one from the one that was fading as we woke up."
April sniffed.
"I don't notice it, but I have a sort of danger sense that started going off just before you spoke up."
Gwen said, "My suit is acting all creepy-crawly, like it should protect me from something, but it can't tell what."
"I think it is too late to worry," Arachne said distractedly.
"My spider-sense is calm now. Or is it just damped down by that stuff . . . ?"
Mary Jane wrung her hands.
"Oh, gee, this is like when Doctor Goblin caught me with that drugged perfume. I hated how I just did what he told me . . . ."
April shook her head,slapped her own cheek.
"Yes, like the Green Goblin's drugs, that's what this feels like . . . ."
"Must . . . fight . . . influence . . . ."
"Lady . . . your English grammar . . . slips when you're . . . excited . . . ."
After the four of them had sat passively for some twenty minutes, the gas was purged from the room. The sound of massive bolts being withdrawn came from the door, and it swung open, revealing a strange figure in a scaly green bodysuit and a hooded purple cloak.
The stranger entered the room, pushed back the hood, and smiled at the four spider-women.
"Norman!"
"Mr. Osborn!"
"Father!"
"Uncle Ben!"
The man laughed, seeing four sets of eyes turned on him with abject adoration, imprinting on the first male to come into their view.
"All of the above, and none, my girls. From now on, you shall all call me 'Master'."
"Yes, Master," they chorused eagerly, rushing forward to kneel at his feet.
So did the Green Goblin of Earth-349 acquire his four loyal Black Widows.

Himmione...?

2011-07-22T08:57:00.001-07:00

Oooooh, and I've been trying sooooo hard not to write any more Earth-349 stories and concentrate entirely on writing for money, and then....

http://bart-calendar.livejournal.com/2176312.html?view=22577720#t22577720

With thanks to Arthur D. Hlavaty: http://supergee.livejournal.com/2482336.html

The McCloud Challenge -- Accepted!

2011-04-13T17:02:00.000-07:00

I found an interesting item posted here http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2011/04/ha-ha-ha-not-funny#more-21080 pertaining to a challenge posted here: http://acephalous.typepad.com/acephalous/2011/04/every-quarter-i-present-my-students-with-five-panels-from-mccloud.html and took it up, with results that should be visible at this post.

Not particularly funny, but at least it messes with your expectations, and I think it's not bad for something done off the top of my head.

And generally speaking, I am always up for a chance to plug either Scott McCloud or Acephalous.

Earth-349: The Star-Spangled Kid

2011-04-11T20:59:00.001-07:00

Earth-349: The Star-Spangled Kid
by Anton Psychopoulos, Ph.D.

Disclaimer #1 This story is set in a hypothetical parallel world within
the pre-Crisis DC Universe, based on a story in Superman #349, but not
limited by that story or any other.

Disclaimer #2 Some characters appearing in this story are based on
copyrighted characters owned by DC Comics, Inc., Marvel Comics, Archie
Comics and others. Their use here is not intended to infringe or
disparage those copyrights.

Disclaimer #3 This story is not recommended for persons under 18 or the
easily offended, particularly those who are offended by themes such as
transgender, intergenerational dominant/submissive relationships and
alternative medicine.

"Tell me what you don't like about yourself," Doctor Fate invited.

Sylvester Pemberton made a vague gesture, taking in his massive chest,
brawny arms and treetrunk thighs.

"I'm not who I'm supposed to be. I'm not . . . me."

Sylvester Pemberton didn't, it was true, look like a "Sylvester Pemberton".
With his build, his curly red hair and his broken nose, he looked more like
one of the roughnecks who worked on the oil rigs surrounding the city of
Stella, Texas, than he did the man who owned most of them (to say nothing of
an automobile plant, assorted office buildings and a movie studio). He didn't
look like anyone's image of a multi-millionaire, not even a Texan one. He
also didn't look like his own image of himself, and that was what had brought
him to Doctor Fate's office.

"And what can I do to help you become . . . you?" Fate asked.

Nelson Fate, M.D., didn't, in his turn, look much like a student of the
mystic arts. He didn't wear robes, or a tunic, or a turban. He didn't even
wear a medallion or amulet with his conventional blue suit, just a yellow
necktie. He looked more like a youngish physician, which he was.

"I don't know. I guess that depends on what you can do. I mean, you
have a reputation as a miracle worker, but I don't want to presume that you
can just wave a pointer over me and turn me into Jayne Mansfield. I'd
settle for being able to live in my skin."

Fate nodded.

"I'm glad to hear you say that. I find that my patients tend to be more
satisfied if their expectations aren't too specific. Not necessarily too high
-- often I can give them more than they were hoping for -- but if, say, someone
has their heart set on a crock of gold, they wind up disappointed when I hand
them a shoebox full of stock certificates."

Pemberton nodded.

"At this point, I'd be satisfied with any outcome that leaves me feeling like
I'm not stuck for life in some sort of masquerade costume.

"I've tried to reconcile myself to being a man. I've tried to be good at it,
get all the pleasure I can out of being this big strong fast healthy stallion.
I've played sports, driven race cars and worked on them, loved women, built up
my business until it seemed silly to want to make any more money. I did all
those things well, and enjoyed them, but I was living someone else's life.

"So finally I decided that if I really, truly was a woman inside, I needed to
be a woman on the outside. But, well, you can imagine what the doctors told
me."

"Too tall, too broad, muscles and skeleton too massive."

"Even if they carved and stitched like Doctor Frankenstein, there's no way I
could ever pass for a woman, even an ugly woman."

He sighed heavily.

"Doctor, you're my only remaining hope. If you can turn me into a woman,
fine. If you can cut the woman's heart out of me and leave me feeling like a
man, fine. And if you can't . . . .

"Right now, my only alternative is to just . . . I guess you'd say move on to
my next incarnation."

Fate shook his head.

"As a Lutheran, I'd say nothing of the sort, but that's beside the point.
Let's see what I can do for you."

Fate turned towards one of the white enameled cabinets that lined the walls of
his consulting room, alternating with rude wooden masks and strange elaborate
hangings that reminded Pemberton of the famous Aztec calendar stone. Fate
began removing things from shelves, assembling them on the brushed-steel
counter.

"Um, Doctor, could I ask you -- how did you get involved with all of this
stuff? I mean, you used to be a regular doctor, right?"

"An M.D.?" Fate asked, not looking up from his preparations. "I still am, and
I still write plain old prescriptions when I need to.

"But how I started moving outside the mainstream? It was acupuncture."

He pointed over his shoulder to a chart on the wall which showed a human body
patterned in numbered dots and what looked like contour lines.

"Western medicine ignores acupuncture. Just pretends it isn't there. Then
one day, a colleague of mine tried to interest me in it, so I patiently
explained to her that acupuncture was an absurd superstition, that she was
wasting her time chasing after a worthless placebo. I showed her how the
points don't correspond to the layout of the nervous system, or the
musculoskeletal system, the blood vessels, the lymph nodes, nothing.
So obviously, any benefit gained from sticking needles in the points can
only be a placebo, right?

"She was stubborn. What a nuisance. Finally, I challenged her to join me
in conducting a double-blind clinical trial. I began the study with every
confidence I would prove that the so-called acupoints were nothing, that
you could jab a needle in at any random point and get the same results."

He turned back to Pemberton, his fingers carefully measuring an exact length
of red yarn, cutting it with a knife that looked like it was made of silver,
and winding the yarn carefully around some small object. He shrugged
sheepishly.

"And guess what? My findings showed quite convincingly that acupressure was
real and powerful. Live and learn."

Pemberton gave another look to the wall hangings, seeing them now as tools of
the trade rather than decorations, or props. He was especially puzzled by a
design of many ellipses, labelled in a rusty brown ink in some alphabet
Pemberton didn't know, annotated in English in pencil: "Raggador (Saturn) . . .
Munnopor (Jupiter) . . . Cyttorak (Mars) . . . Agamotto (Earth) . . . ."

An antiquarian would probably have screamed at the sight of a parchment
centuries old being scribbled on that way, but Fate clearly thought of it as
simply reference material.

"Next, I studied acupuncture from its practitioners, who were happy to tell me
all about the chi fluid flowing through its tubes to each organ of the body.
It all made sense, except that there is no such fluid, and there are no such
tubes. But if you treat a person for impaired chi flow, they get better, even
when it involves flow to an organ like the hara--"

He placed a cupped hand over his abdomen, between his navel and his pubis.

"--which also doesn't exist. It doesn't exist, but you can put your hand
there and feel it. Try it and see.

"From there, I guess you could call it a slippery slope. Homeopathy, remote
healing, voodoo, hoodoo, astral projection . . . . I seemed to have a knack
for these things, and modesty aside, I think I can do about as much in the way
of quote -- 'magic' -- unquote as anyone else between here and Las Vegas."

Pemberton was startled.

"Las Vegas is a center of magic? Real magic, not the stuff on stage?"

"Sorry. I keep forgetting what the mundanes know and what they don't. Never
mind about Vegas, okay?"

Pemberton said nothing, but filed the information away, along with Fate's
second slip in speaking of "mundanes". Doubtless those in the know had
ruder names for the rest of humanity.

Fate finished what he was doing and handed Pemberton a lightweight object
about a foot long.

"It, er, looks just like a Debi doll."

Fate laughed.

"It is. There's no crime in working with convenient materials. A
mass-produced item, new and unused, has very little psychic residue to
contaminate a spell. I often use new jars, books that have never been read,
knives that have never cut, and so forth. If you were to undress Debi there
and pry open the slit in her back, you'd find that lock of hair you gave me,
along with a few other things, including a mint-condition nickel from the year
of your birth. But please don't check. Just take my word for it."

Pemberton nodded.

"Wouldn't want to void the warranty."

He turned the doll in his hands.

"And this will . . . what, exactly? Turn me into a woman? Make me
stop wanting to be one?"

"What it will do, exactly, I can't say. What it will do in some fashion
is heal the division in your spirit. It may make your body conform with
your spirit, or it may set your woman's spirit at peace in some other way."

"'Set it at peace'? That sounds rather . . . ominous."

"I'm not going to lie to you, Mr. Pemberton: I can't say with
certainty what this treatment will do to you. It may very well cost
you something precious -- your manhood, your womanhood, or something
else entirely. Possibly your life, though I wouldn't be offering you
this if I didn't think the chances of that were quite small."

Pemberton set the doll down on the desk in front of him, looking at it
more warily now.

"And how do I use it?"

"First of all, keep it with you at all times. Ideally, carry it in
your hand or in your pocket. Cradle it in your lap. Sleep with it under
your pillow. You should experience some kind of results within 48 hours,
if you're going to. And if you don't, come back in and we can talk about
other treatment options."

Pemberton put on his suit jacket and slipped the doll into the inside
breast pocket. It made a noticable bulge, but not a conspicuous one.

"I haven't worn a shoulder holster in awhile, but I have one. I'll get
it out."

And that was it. Fate advised him to call as soon as any noticable
effects occurred, they shook hands and he left.

The day passed uneventfully, the Debi doll constantly by his side, and
he dutifully placed it under his pillow, the way he had with the china-headed
doll he'd found in the attic when he was five. In a gaudy pair of pajamas
he'd always liked, he went to bed, wondering what he might find in the morning.

In his dreams, he was lying in bed tossing and turning. Mostly it was
his own bed, but sometimes it was some other he'd once slept in, and other
times it was a bed he'd never seen before. Sometimes he was alone, but more
often he felt very crowded. He remembered only on scene among many when he
awoke.

A voice spoke softly in his left ear, speaking dream gibberish: "As
sure. Simmered at walls are jaunt."

A deeper voice in his right ear answered, "Are jaunt. 'Fess see
jewels."

Pemberton woke up sweaty and miserable, with an appalling headache and
soreness in every joint. He felt strained, stretched, hollow yet lead-heavy.
He noticed that he was drenched in sweat, and was wearing only the red and
white striped bottoms of his pajamas.

He didn't notice the shower running in his private bathroom until the
water was suddenly shut off. He sat on the bed, facing the bathroom door,
waiting to see what would emerge. He sat there waiting for long enough to
start feeling foolish, and then the door opened.

A young girl, no more than fourteen or fifteen, stepped out in a cloud
of steam. Pemberton's pajama tops, blue with a print of stars, hung on her
like a dress. Her hair was neatly wrapped in a towel, a trick Pemberton had
never mastered, back when he wore his hair long.

"Oh, you're up. Good."

Slim and petite, everything Pemberton had ever admired in a woman, the
girl moved gracefully around the bedroom, assessing its furnishings and
artwork critically.

"Take a shower, you reek."

Pemberton moved to obey, without even thinking about it. In the bathroom he
looked at the pink bar of soap sitting in the dish, then went down the hall to
one of the guest rooms. Its attached bathroom was stocked with unopened
travel-size bars of soap and bottles of shampoo. For some reason, Pemberton
felt a powerful urge to shower with Lifebuoy this morning.

When he came out of the shower, he found the girl talking with his
housekeeper, who nodded rapidly as she wrote down her instructions,
occasionally adding, "Si, si."

". . . make it a Ladyform Sportswoman, size 30A. And a Terpsichore
leotard, size 2, type K, the one with an attached cowl, in the Number Seven
print -- that's dark blue with stars. Terpsichore K-7, size two, got it?
Good. Okay, and then go down the street to Peak Sports and buy three pair of
Long John tights, size small, in red, six pair of whatever socks they have,
also in red, and a pair of Jackie Taylor All Star sneakers, size 5, the
ll-black kind. Not the regular black, the ones where the rubber is black,
too. That's important, the all-black ones, the, um . . . ."

"Monochrome," Pemberton supplied.

"Yeah, good, monochrome. Okay, see ya when you get back."

The woman nodded twice, saying "Si, don~a," and bobbed a rudimentary
curtsey as she left.

Pemberton looked at the empty doorway after his housekeeper was gone.

"She never curtseys to me."

The girl shrugged.

"Guess she just responds well to a confident authority."

Pemberton looked at his unleashed anima skeptically. She clearly
thought very highly of herself.

"Um, hello. Good morning."

"'Morning, Sylvester," the girl said brightly, rising up on tiptoes to
kiss him on the cheek.

"Er, what name should I call you?"

"Call up Tom Troy," she said briskly, naming the senior member of
Pemberton's family law firm, the lawyer he went to for the most personal
matters. "Tell him to find a birth certificate for a girl born thirteen to
fifteen years ago, who died before she was a year old and whose living
relatives, if any, don't live in Stella. I'll be Mary or Courtney or
whatever her name is. And have him write up a petition to name you as my
guardian."

She actually picked up up the phone and handed it to him. He dialed,
feeling a bit shell-shocked. He'd never liked know-it-all children, and under
normal circumstances he would have given a snip like this one a good talking-to
by now, or maybe even a spanking.

These weren't exactly normal circumstances, though. He made the call,
asking Troy to hold his questions for later.

He dressed, and found her in the kitchen, cooking up a dozen-egg
omelette while his bemused Japanese cook made waffles. He suddenly noticed
that he was ravenously hungry, feeling as though he had a girl-sized hollow
inside him. His clothes still fit, but he had to fight down an urge to find a
bathroom scale.

It was a good breakfast, a raucous good time, in fact. It felt good to
tear into waffles, slap butter onto biscuits, guzzle coffee and juice. The
girl made jokes about events from their shared childhood, told him her opinion
(sometimes surprising) of his friends and his employees. She seemed to have
all of his memories up until the night before, but definitely had her own
interpretations of things. Perhaps most startling was when she confided that
she thought Dr. Fate was "yummy".

She unwrapped her now-dry hair, revealing that it was a flawless
sweetcorn blonde, almost the same shade as a Debi doll's. That similarity
gave him an uneasy feeling that softened when he remembered that it was
also the color of his mother's hair.

The housekeeper returned with her arms loaded with shopping bags. The
girl took them into a guest room and emerged in a startling skintight
outfit in red white and blue.

"Well, Syl, what do you think?"

He chuckled.

"Well . . . you look like a superhero, more than anything else."

"Well, duh, that's because I am a superhero. I'm the Star-Spangled
Kid. You're going to be my sidekick Stripesy."

Pemberton shook his head, smiling.

"Look, that sounds like a lot of fun, but --"

"It's what we're going to do, Stripesy. Don't give me a hard time
about this."

Pemberton chuckled again, nervously.

"So, uh, what does a superhero do, anyway?"

"Fun stuff. Wear crazy clothes. Drive high-powered cars.

"Listen, you know how you were thinking about building a really hot custom
car? You should stop putting that off -- we're going to need a really fast,
reliable car. And you can trick it out with all sorts of James Blaise stuff --
bulletproof glass, smoke screen, caltrops and stuff. And stuff that just makes
sense, of course: a first aid kit, a police scanner."

In spite of himself, Pemberton felt a stirring inside. Building a really
spectacular car -- he'd dreamed of it for years. Yet he'd never followed
through. As with so many other things, he'd never been able to apply
himself wholeheartedly. Perhaps his new self could do it. Perhaps . . . .

"Another thing superheroes do: they hang out together. The Avengers have that
mansion in New York, and the Freedom Fighters have that armory in Coast City,
and they're both, like, party land.

"There are four or five other long underwear types in Stella: the Vigilante,
the Crimson Avenger, the Shining Sword, the Spider. Let's have them over to
Stellar Studios for dinner, and see what they think about getting together on
a regular basis. We could have the press in and charge all your rich friends
a thousand bucks a ticket for the Police Survivors' Fund, and afterwards it
can be just us super guys."

Pemberton nodded thoughtfully. The girl's -- the Kid's -- proposal wasn't
totally nonsensical.

"Well, if we were going to do this -- and I'm not saying we are -- that name
Stripesy seems kind of . . .limp. How about Stars and Stripes?"

"Stripesy," she said firmly.

Pemberton sighed.

"How come I can't seem to say no to you?"

The girl smiled, showing a hint of sympathy.

"Probably because I'm so much stronger than you. Remember, I was the woman
in you, your female side, your anima. Every man has that, but if it
hadn't been the strongest part of you, being a man would never have torn
you apart the way it did."

"And now I'm, what, the leftovers? A shell of a man?"

She shrugged.

"I guess you are what you make of yourself, Syl. Same as the rest of us.
Me, I'm busy making something of myself."

Pemberton was silent for awhile, turning the Kid's words over in his head.
He was about to say something when the housekeeper entered, announcing that
Mr. Troy had arrived with some papers to sign.

"We Hope To Grow a Whole President Eventually"

2011-04-08T08:10:00.000-07:00

According to Jack Cashill, the photo on the left is a fake, and the one in the center is genuine. In spite of its still having young Obama's knee in it.

http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/friday_genius_ten_obamas_knee_is_a_citizen_edition/

I say that the photo on the right, which I made in just over 30 minutes with a squirming three year old on my lap, is a better fake than Cashill's.

I leave it to you to decide who is right.

[UPDATE: Upon the recommendation of several people, I have now hidden my signature within my version of this photo to discourage its reuse by Cashill or other clowns.]

Earth-349: The Haunted Tank

2011-02-25T14:11:00.000-08:00

Earth-349: The Haunted Tank

by Anton Psychopoulos, Ph.D.

Disclaimer #1: This story is inspired by a story in Superman #349, but is not limited by that story or any other.

Disclaimer #2: This story makes use of copyrighted characters owned by DC Comics, Inc., and other publishers. It is written for amusement only and is not intended to infringe or disparage those copyrights.

Disclaimer #3: This story is not recommended for persons under 18 or the easily offended.

Through her screen of dirt-colored cheesecloth, "Jeb" Stuart scanned the dusty landscape, eyes tracking in neat five-degree arcs in a fashion so long-practiced that she often found herself using it to walk across Baghdad city streets on leave.

Heavily-accented English came up from below. "What's it look like, Jeb?"

Stuart dropped down, leaving the cheesecloth canopy erected, sinking into the (relative) safety of the tank's interior and forsaking the (relative) cool of her lookout position. Aside from her leather football helmet, she wore only red cotton bikini panties, but was still dripping with sweat. Her gunner, Cpl. Yasmeen Farad, who had asked the question, wore less than that: only a scarf wrapped around her hips to keep from sticking ot her leather seat.

"It looks as flat as Prince Reo's butt."

"And about the same color, right?" asked the third member of the crew, Sgt. Fatima Aoud. She wore nothing around her hips at all (insisting that coverings would lead only to infections), just a sturdy brassiere that kept her generous breasts from resting sweatily on her chest.

Stuart raised an eyebrow. "Why, how would I know?"

The three tankers laughed.

The Stuart tank had served Allied forces well in the Second World War, but was declared obsolete soon after. But less prosperous, less industrialized countries could not be so choosy, and so some twenty-odd years after war's end there were Stuarts in service, defnding the Federal Republic of Mesopotamia against the Asranian invaders.

And with American tanks had come American "technical advisors" to train Mesopotamian tank crews. And surely there could be no better training exercise than to take a tank to the front and put it to work.

Lt. Jessica Elizabeth Bowen had been married to George Stuart for a week before it occurred to her that she was now J.E.B. Stuart, or could be if she so chose. Being a self-described "tank girl" from an early age, she definitely did so choose. When she heard that the Mesopotamians were buying mothballed tanks and needed experienced tankers, preferably women, to train crews, she used every angle she could to get an assignment there.

A chance to renovate and command a classic tank, plus the opportunity to see and assist the young republic of Mesopotamia? She'd have done just about anything to get the job.

She might have wound up in a Pershing, or even one of the Panzers the U.S. had confiscated after the war, but damned if she didn't wind up with her own little Stuart.

Mesopotamia had emerged from World War II as the only republic in the Near East, surrounded by hostile, backward states like Syria, Hejaz and Asran. The Mesopotamians were committed to creating a modern, free society. Not a copy of the Western nations but something new, something they called an "Islamic republic". At first nobody was sure what that meant, but their commitment to democracy and human rights struck a chord with many Europeans and Americans, and the new nation in an ancient country had received continuing support from governments and private charities.

Islam placed limits on interaction between men and women. Interpretations varied, but the basics were quite clear. The surest way to avoid trouble was to segregate the sexes, and means were found to do this without sacrificing efficiency or wasting the talents of either men or women.

Two separate education systems were set up. Separate housing for unmarried men and women was built in cities. Men went to male doctors, women to female doctors. Women rode in yellow buses, men in gray ones. The legislature was composed entirely of men, the judiciary of women (a feature of the Iroquois constitution which had not found its way into that of the U.S.).

Originally, the Mesopotamian armed forces were entirely male, but the population of young men was so severely depleted by the long war with the Asranian invaders that a new dispensation had to be made. Now most of the air force were women, and the crews of two-thirds of the navy's ships. And all of the tank crews. It was a sensible arrangement; an air base or a ship could be crewed entirely by women, with no men around to offend their modesty, and the same for a tank company.

Jeb took off her helmet and mopped her brow. Holding the helmet, she looked it over. It was certainly getting plenty of wear out here; the gold was scuffed and patchy, and the leather had a couple of good gouges in it. No condition for the gold-leafed helmet from a tanker's dress uniform to get into (the late General Patton would have cried), but she wore it for luck, and hoped she would keep it with her for the rest of her time in Mesopotamia.

Officially, she was on "inactive reserve" status, in Mesopotamia on a student visa. She was drawing no U.S. Army pay, and accumulating no time-in-service or time-in-rank. Officially, she was wasting her time and hurting her career by taking a year off this way.

In practice, she and a couple of hundred other American officers had volunteered to be lent to the Federal Republic, in a program designed and approved (unofficially, of course) by President Robeson himself. When she returned to the U.S., she'd write a brief paper for the War College and, supposedly on the strength of this "scholarship", be given a commendation that would ensure her next promotion came promptly. Robeson's word, and his handshake, were a better guarantee than any official contract on that count.

She put the helmet back on and climbed back up to her perch.

The sky was a lifeless blue except for a patch of cloud off to the northeast. Jeb watched the horizon, keeping the cloud in the corner of her eye, hoping that the geenral would speak to her today.

After a few minutes, she noticed that the cloud had indeed taken on the familiar form vaguely suggesting the head, chest and arms of General Stuart, namesake of both the tank and herself. It had happened on her first patrol in Mesopotamia, and by now she was almost taking it for granted.

"Morning, General," she whispered. "See anything ahead for us?"

A soft voice spoke, not "in her head" as cliche would have it, but definitely not from the cloud, or from anywhere else she could tell.

<> the General said, <>

Some days the General would say something like, <>, or <>, but Jeb had learned that his more cryptic advice was often the most important.

"Thank you, General," she murmured as the cloud became merely drifting water vapor.

Below her, Jeb heard Yasmeen and Fatima speaking softly, assuming their Arabic would not be understood over the engine noise.

"Do you think she is mad?"

"Who can say? Is she not entitled to go a bit mad, having to stick her head up into the gray weather?"

Jeb snorted, amused. "Gray weather". Typical dry Mesopotamian humor, to call bullets and shellfire by such an innocuous name.

Okay, so the girls knew she talked to the General. She could live with that.

The tank lurched under her as though it had been kicked by Superwoman. She was tossed upward out of her seat, her helmet slapping against the canvas shade, then slammed down again.

Jeb dropped down into the tank, slamming the hatch.

"I think we ran over a mine," Yasmeen shouted as the tank stopped shaking and it became obvious that forward motion had stopped.

"Didn't think they had any anti-tank mines left," Fatima said as she rotated the turret, looking for a target.

Jeb shrugged. "Reo's boys are clever."

Something came rolling from the east. Fatima tracked on it, then relaxed when she saw it was a Mesopotamian jeep carrying four heavily-robed women. The tankers pulled their own abayas from under their seats and tossed them on, preparing to climb out and join their comrades in assessing the damage.

One robed figure climbed out and walked towards the tank, carrying something heavy. Jeb moved to raise the hatch, then froze. Something was wrong. Yasmeen felt it, too, and began swiveling the machine gun onto the robed figure, but it darted forward, getting too close for the gun to reach. Through a view slit, Jeb saw the intruder lift a cover from the basket, revealing a dozen antipersonnel mines, crudely wired together and attached to a detonator. It was a piece of garbage no self-respecting demolitionist would own up to, but it could easily destroy Jeb and her crew. It was probably similar to what had halted them.

The three in the jeep threw off their robes, revealing Asrani uniforms, and trained rifles on the tank.

Jeb looked at her crew.

"We can go out, or let them kill us in here."

"Cooking in a gasoline fire is a bad way to die, Jeb," Yasmeen said softly.

"Going with the Asrani might be worse," said Fatima.

Jeb shrugged.

"Let's live awhile longer. Something better might come along if we're alive to see it."

"Come out! Now!" the least-ragged Asrani called, in English. Most likely, it was their only common language; few Asrani spoke Arabic, and fewer Mesopotamians spoke Pursi.

Jeb pushed back the hatch and climbed into sight, tottering on her seat as she raised her hands.

"No covers!" the officer snapped. "Covers off first, no hiding weapons!"

"Bullshit," Jeb muttered, but complied, pulling her robe over her head and standing in just her helmet and panties for a moment before she began the delicate task of climbing off the tank, avoiding the hottest surfaces. On the ground, hands up, she watched her crew climb out, wearing only what they had in the tank. Yasmeen tembled, tears flowing, clutching the scarf around her waist, one arm over her breasts, but Fatima stood with arms raised, meeting the Asrani men's eyes better than Jeb could.

The officer grabbed Yasmeen's arms and pulled them over her head, laughing at her cry when the scarf fell away.

"Babylon whores," he sneered, moving on to Fatima. He snapped her bra but did not try to remove it yet. "You girls go to nice camp, have lots of big strong Asrani soldiers to protect you. You make lots of Asrani babies to make up for Asrani you murder."

He moved on to Jeb, knocking the helmet from her head.

"Blonde American whore. No babies for you. You, we take to Taharan, for the Shah. He want to add American soldier bitch to his collection, want one very badly. But his girls, he has them fixed. No royal bastards allowed."

Jeb thought of her crew in a rape camp, bred like animals at their captors' whim. She thought of her husband, and the children she wanted to have with him some day. She thought about how likely it would be, if she attacked this Asrani bastard, that they would all be killed, and how of the various fates they'd been offered today, a bullet was by far the most attractive.

"What, you mean little Prince Reo actually has seed in those little raisins between his legs?"

Calling the Shah "Prince Reo" (refusing to recognize his overthrow of his father, the old Shah) was almost as vile an insult as impugning their leader's manhood. The Asrani turned pale. Jeb was just bringing her knee up to his crotch when a gun spoke behind her.

Jeb flung herself to the ground, unthinking, tackling the Asrani officer. She tried to pin his arms, and found that they were limp; there was a red hole in his forehead. She groped for his sidearm, heard more shots, from a higher-pitched weapon, sat up with a pistol and found no living targets. Yasmeen, still weeping, held an Asrani Kalashnikov, standing over the dead men like some very modern symbolic nude.

They checked the men for signs of life, then pulled on their robes and went to work on the tank. The right tread was damaged, but they got it patched adequately to get them back to camp.

Just before they left, Fatima bent over the Asrani officer's body, studying his face.

"Leave it, Sergeant. Why do you want to look at that?"

Fatima said nothing, merely climbed into the tank. But half an hour later, she said, "Jeb, the first man was shot, and then Yasmeen grabbed a gun from one of the Asrani. She didn't shoot him."

Jeb felt a chill, but tried to shrug it off.

"So? Who did shoot him?"

"I don't know. But he was shot with a round from our machine gun. And none of us were in here."

"So what, so what, just shut up," Yasmeen snarled, barely controlling herself.

"Yes, Fatima," Jeb said wearily, "Say nothing more."

The Woman Who Received Many Blessings

2011-02-22T15:38:00.000-08:00

Once there was a woman who received many blessings in her life, so let us call her Deo Gratia. "D.G." is a suitable name for her.

D.G. received many blessings, but she was only allowed to keep two of them.

The first thing that happened to her was that she received the gift of life, and that is not a small thing.

She had a fiance who loved her and gave her two daughters. But first her fiance was taken from her, and then her girls.

She suffered for years from a terrible disease, but one day her doctor delivered two blessings: not only had her disease gone into remission, but her disease was one which, if it went away, it never came back.

This was an especial blessing because she was still young enough to have another child, now that she knew she would live long enough to raise it.

She had a boy, and then she learned that the disease which would never come back, had.

D.G. had another man, and he said he would marry her, but when it came down to it, he let her down.

She had a profession which brought her satisfaction and money, but there came a time when she could not work at her trade, so she worked at jobs which gave her too little satisfaction, and far too little money.

In the end, there were only two blessings which would not be taken from her:

First, her son. Even death would not separate them, because he would love his mother forever.

Second, all suffering eventually comes to an end.

She Said "Don't Retreat, Reload!"

2011-01-09T18:07:00.000-08:00

So he did.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/01/09/arizona.giffords.chairman/

Earth-349: The Last Story, Part 4

2010-12-31T20:35:00.000-08:00

By Anton Psychopoulos, Ph.D.

Disclaimer #1: This story is set on a hypothetical world within the pre-Crisis
DC Universe. The DC Universe is owned by DC Comics, Inc. This story also
makes use of characters and concepts owned by other publishers. The use of
these copyrighted elements is done only for the amusement of the author and his
readers, and is not intended to infringe or disparage those copyrights.

Disclaimer #2: This story is not recommended for persons under the age of 18,
or the easily offended, especially for those who are uncomfortable with themes
such as underage pregnancy and pantsing.

Synopsis of Parts 1, 2 and 3: Jonni Thunder commanded her pet Thunderbolt to
summon up the man she would have been if she had been born a boy.
Unfortunately, her male counterpart was a criminal. Also, being just as much a
“Thunder” as Jonni was, Johnny was able to command the mystic Thunderbolt. He
forced the Thunderbolt to use his powers to turn four of his friends into
counterparts of Jonni’s most famous teammates in the Justice Association of
America, and the super-criminals abducted their opposite numbers. With their
most powerful members out of action, the JAA decided to call upon their missing
comrades’ enemies to provide the power they needed, offering pardons and other
inducements. So far, the Atom has been rescued from Cyclotron by Hawkman and
Yellowjacket, Batwoman has been rescued from Nighthawk by *** and Blockbuster
(off camera), the Flash has been rescued from Johnny Quick by Dr. Alchemy and
the Martian Manhunter, and Green Lantern has been rescued from Eclipso by ****
and the Tattooed Lady (also off-camera). Superwoman remains a prisoner of her
own evil counterpart, and the evil Johnny Thunder has not yet been located.

Zatanna and Luthor stood on the roof of the Clinton Building, looking down at
the public square below. The other buildings facing on Weisinger Plaza were
far taller, and most of them didn’t have flat roofs.

Luthor wore a massive suit of powered armor, its body like an elongated egg,
with stumpy legs below and weirdly-proportioned arms that ended in mechanical
hands like those of a metal skeleton. The entire outfit was painted in green
and purple, amusingly reminiscent of the purple business suits and green
neckties he was fond of wearing.

They stood on the rooftop, watching while the red-suited villain gloated over
the captive Superwoman, who hung naked in the middle of a long frame that must
have been magical, since she was unable to tear its straps or break its frame.
They were still there because they knew full well that the pair of them could
never have defeated Superwoman. They were waiting, hoping that more members of
the Justice Association would show up before he tried to kill or rape the Woman
of Steel. Even then, they were not at all sure that the entire JAA would be
able to defeat someone with Superwoman’s powers, especially one who had no
scruples against killing them.

They both knew that what they really needed was another Kryptonian, but so far
as anyone knew, Kara Jor-El was the last child of Krypton.

The plaza was empty, the people having been driven away by Thunder’s arrival,
and the streets blocked off by the Metropolis police soon after.

The man standing over the bound Superwoman was a splendid male specimen, his
flawless muscular body well-displayed in a tight-fitting outfit that looked
like a 19th Century military uniform, executed in red silk with golden boots,
sash, gold-braided sleeves and a waist-length white cape piped in gold. A
broad golden lightning bolt slashed down the front bib of his double-breasted
tunic.

He gesticulated wildly in the air while he ranted at Superwoman, pacing back
and forth. Her red and blue uniform lay crumpled at her feet, and he kicked at
it as he passed by.

“We need to know what he is saying,” Luthor said tersely.

“I can give us both superhuman hearing, but it’s liable to be rather painful.”

“No need. This suit has a shotgun mike.”

He moved his fingers, almost as though he were typing on an invisible keyboard,
and a sneering voice emerged from his chest.

“—soon as my guys get here with their own prisoners, we’re gonna have us a
little press conference, let folks know that from now on America belongs to the
Thunder Squad, an’ the Justice Association is outta business!”

“That’s to our advantage, at least,” Luthor said with a nod. “We have time to
wait for the rest to show up.”

Zatanna grimaced.

“So Superwoman can hang there for as long as it takes for backup to arrive.
Just great.”

“She is not suffering any physical harm, and her dignity can scarcely be
further impaired.” His voice suggested rather strongly that he didn’t at all
mind seeing Superwoman humiliated.

Thunder pointed to the dangling straps to either side of Superwoman.

“And just to make sure everybody knows what that means, you and your pals are
gonna provide sorta a visual aid, on live TV.”

Superwoman said nothing in response. Her mouth was held open by a ring gag,
but she could have used the power commonly called “super-ventriloquism” to
speak clearly anyhow. Clearly she was not speaking so as not to give Thunder
the satisfaction.

“Let her go!” a commanding voice barked out from above the rooftop. Zatanna
and Luthor looked up to see a bare-chested man in star-spangled shorts who
seemed to be standing on empty air. He dove as though toward a swimming pool,
hands before him, slicing through the air faster than it seemed possible he
could fall, yet landed unharmed on his feet before Thunder.

The villain stepped up to the stranger, looking cocky and unafraid, seemingly
prepared to exchange threats and witticisms, then sucker-punched him, hard in
the belly. The stranger doubled over around the fist and then flew backward,
smashing through a shop window. He began to stagger out of the display window,
obviously shaken, and Thunder stood waiting for him, not leaving his captive’s
side. The stranger staggered towards him, saying in an unusual accent, “You
are facing a Myrmidon, Johnny Thunder. I will punish your hubris in usurping
the lightning bolt of Zeus!”

The man’s courage would have been inspiring, if it were not so obvious that he
was impossibly outclassed.

“Luthor, that idiot is going to get himself killed.”

“Let him.”

“No. We’re going to have to move, ready or not.

“Nwod ot eht azalp ylefas,” and a wind lifted them as though they were
weightless and swirled them down to the plaza almost as fast as they could have
fallen, yet set them down unharmed. Finding himself committed against his
will, Luthor raised the right arm of his suit and fired a green ray at
Thunder’s back.

The villain turned away from the bare-chested man, moving so quickly that all
Zatanna could see were the golden flashes of his braided cuffs as he crushed
the shoulder and hip joints of Luthor’s suit and then tore off his helmet – and
nearly his head with it.

“Johnny Thunder, I presume?” Luthor said coolly through bleeding lips.

“Captain Thunder, now,” the blond villain said.

“So, you actually turned yourself into one of your supermen, and the most
powerful. How typical.”

“Of course I made myself into the Superwoman guy. What am I, stupid, I should
trust someone else with this kind of power?”

Luthor tilted his head in a way that suggested he would shrug if he could.

“I am not known as being particularly stupid,” he said mildly, “and I would not
burden myself with that kind of power and be unable to set it aside when I am
done with it.”

“Oh, so you’re sayin’ I am stupid? Let’s see how stupid I look when I –“

Captain Thunder cocked back a fist but never brought it down on Luthor’s bald
skull. Its forward motion was prevented by a much smaller hand that clamped
around his wrist.

The hand belonged to a red-haired boy of about thirteen, who was dressed in a
costume identical to Superwoman’s, except that instead of wearing blue tights
under his red shorts, he was bare-legged.

The boy had planted both red-slippered feet on Captain Thunder’s back to
prevent him from punching through Luthor’s head. The blond villain was about
to swing his left hand to swat the boy away when a blond girl of about ten
grabbed it. She twisted his thumb back until he gasped with pain, allowing the
boy to get him into a full nelson.

The girl was dressed in a long-sleeved white bodysuit that left her legs bare,
along with blue boots, gloves and red cape. She undid Captain Thunder’s sash
and then began rolling down his pants. The indestructible fabric hampered his
efforts to kick at her.

Zatanna gave a sigh of relief, even as she moved in to lend her magic to the
struggle. Superwoman was indeed Krypton’s last child, but it appeared that
there were some grandchildren.

Superwoman, in such a situation, might have used her heat vision or super-
breath to drive off an attacker. Captain Thunder did neither, perhaps because
he hadn’t had much practice, perhaps because he didn’t have those powers. A
nimbus of tiny electric sparks began to form around his head, as he began to
mouth some word, but whatever he was doing was interrupted when a third super-
powerful child appeared, a tiny creature that looked to be about three years
old. Its gender was hard to determine, in a purple bodysuit with green cape
and cowl, a gaudy yellow-and-white sunburst on the chest.

The little one dove between Captain Thunder’s legs from behind, grasped his
dangling testicles and yanked backward, hard. The villain’s eyes crossed and
he slumped as though in a faint.

The older children took advantage of the distraction to truss up the villain
with his costume, and gag him with his sash. Then they went to free Superwoman.

The Woman of Steel quickly restored her costume and then hugged the smallest of
her rescuers to her bosom.

“Thank you, sweetie. Are you all right?”

“Nova, call me da Nova! It my see-kurt in-den-dy.”

Superwoman smiled ironically.

“Oh, yes, we wouldn’t want to spill any secrets, would we?”

She looked pointedly at the older children.

“Hey!” the boy said indignantly, “we just saved your-“

“Yes, that’s true, you saved me from great pain and suffering, possibly even
saved my life, and I’m grateful, and I’m very impressed. But we are going to
talk, later.”

Superwoman stiffened her fingers and sliced through the front of Luthor’s body
armor, then pried it open with her hands until he could climb out, dressed in a
purple coverall and green deck shoes.

The air abruptly began to shimmer above the Plaza, and within seconds a huge
object shaped like a top had materialized above the ground. A blond man in a
red-trimmed green uniform jumped out of it and went up to the group surrounding
Superwoman, hands raised in the hope of not alarming them. A small golden
object rather like a model spaceship circled his head in short, nervous
movements.

“I, uh, come in peace—“

Superwoman cut him off.

“You’re a rip hunter, aren’t you?” she said, pointing at the emblem, a stylized
tear crossed by nine stitches, on the left breast of his uniform. “Come to
stitch up damage to the time stream?”

“Uhhh, yes, Ma’am. Only this time, we’re just here to check out an Indian
Summer – uh, that means an undocumented –“

“An undocumented historical event that can’t be viewed on a chronoscope, yes.”

The young Time Patroller looked around.

“People have been arguing for centuries about what exactly happened on Miracle
Monday. I see the legends were right, at least, that it involved you, and also
the debut of—“

The man’s next words were blotted out by a weird booming noise from the
hovering vehicle, which was also rippling in the air again. Had he said “hung
fence”? “Young vents”? Nobody was sure afterward, and Superwoman declined to
talk about it.

The time traveller started almost guiltily, and began moving around the Plaza,
pointing at people and objects, calling orders to the little machine that
continued to fly about his head.

Zatanna, having finished creating magical restraints to replace the improvised
bonds the children had used, sidled up to Superwoman, looking toward the Woman
of Steel’s three young rescuers.

“Um, Kara, how old are you?”

“Twenty-nine.”

Overhearing this exchange, Luthor sneered, “Who says a teenaged unwed mother
can never amount to anything?”

The boy in the Superwoman costume was suddenly in front of Luthor, grabbing him
by the front of his coverall and shaking him savagely.

“Who the Hell asked you?”

Superwoman grabbed the boy by the cape and yanked him away from Luthor.

“Later,” she hissed.

An amplified voice suddenly boomed out from overhead.

“HEY, FOLKS, HOW ARE YOU DOING DOWN THERE?”

Overhead, another large and odd-looking vehicle hovered, this one looking like
nothing so much as an immense version of an Egyptian scarab brooch. It settled
quickly to the Plaza with a rush of air that didn‘t seem like enough to hold up
a vehicle that size. The side slid open and out came the Flash, the Martian
Manhunter, Hawkman, the Atom, Jonni Thunder (now dressed in a sweater and
skirt, with a green plaid beret) and Blue Beetle. The time traveler ran up to
them, peppering the JAA’ers with questions.

Zatanna and Superwoman bent over the bound Captain Thunder while Jonni
approached them. Zatanna addressed him sternly.

“All right, now, we’re going to take the gag off, and you are going to give
Jonni Thunder her voice back, and that is all you are going to say, got it?”

After a long pause, Captain Thunder slowly nodded. Superwoman removed the gag
and he sighed, “Thunderbolt, give the bitch her pipes back.” As soon as he had
finished, the gag went back in, with some force.

The Thunderbolt appeared instantly and extended a hand towards Jonni. A spark
flew toward her throat, much as though it were a static electricity discharge.

Jonni Thunder winced and cleared her throat. “Thank God,” she said hoarsely,
and gratefully took a cup of coffee from a tray Blue Beetle was carrying around.

Jonni looked down at herself.

“Okay, first, gimme my muscles back!”

Jonni’s body grew thicker and heavier. She flexed her arms, then her legs.
She grinned and smacked her fist into her palm. She looked down at her body
thoughtfully.

“Hmmmm…. Guess I’ll keep the tits.”

The Thunderbolt sighed like a static discharge.

“Thought you might.”

“Okay, now let’s see about erasin’ this jerk and all his works.”

The Thunderbolt raised a hand.

“No, Jonni, you don’t want to do that, either. See, the reason the Thunder
Squad didn’t just kill their counterparts right away is that every time you
change the world the way I did when I created them, it puts a strain on what I
can only call the fabric of reality itself. And in the last 24 hours, that
fabric has suffered some serious strain.”

“So we should, what, wait awhile before deletin’ ‘em?”

“Altering their histories after they’ve had time to firm up could cause even
more damage.

“Look, couldn’t you just put up with the existence of five more antisocial
nitwits with super-powers? Not as though you have never dealt with any of
those before.”

Superwoman put a hand on Jonni’s shoulder. “I think we should take the
Thunderbolt’s advice. He knows more about these things than any of us, and if
he thinks that is the safest way for us to go, we should listen.”

Jonni looked thoughtful, then shrugged. She was about to speak when suddenly
the ripple in the air around the hovering time machine grew much larger and
more violent. The time traveler looked up with alarm. A chocolate-colored
face poked out of the open hatch and called, “Booster! We can’t hold it any
longer!” She looked frightened.

The man on the ground turned, raising his arms, and called out, “Go! Leave me!”

Or was it “Don’t leave me!”? Nobody was sure about that, either, and Booster
declined to talk about it. In any event, the head vanished, the hatch closed,
and the top-shape vanished in a rippling that somehow looked very dangerous and
painful this time.

The Time Patroller stared at the empty air for a moment, then collapsed,
sobbing, his head in his hands.

“Lost!” he wailed. “Lost in an Indian Summer forty years long!”

Blue Beetle put her arms around the man and led him off to a restaurant’s
sidewalk table to sit him down. The little golden flying device continued to
circle them.

The Thunderbolt said sadly, “I was about to add that time travel, and travel
between parallel worlds, will also be very difficult for some time to come.
About forty years, evidently.”

Jonni Thunder cleared her throat.

“Well, if Superwoman and the Thunderbolt both think we should just leave things
be, I guess a dope like me shouldn’t try to be smarter than you.

“Kinda weird, though, to think that these clowns who didn’t even have any super-
powers day before yesterday are gonna be trouble for us just like the Joker and
stuff has always been, and it’ll be like they always were.

“Anyway, yeah…kinda weird.”

A muted rumbling that had been building in the distance for some time grew a
good deal louder. A stubby, round-nosed aircraft appeared just at rooftop
level and settled on five screaming jets next to the Blue Beetle’s vehicle.
Iron Maiden was first out, followed by Captain America and the Human Torch.
Moments later, Batwoman and Batgirl emerged also. They quickly determined that
the confrontation they had expected to join was already over, and that no-one
needed any help, and decided to simply join the crowd.

Batgirl stayed with the Avengers, but Batwoman went directly to Superwoman.

“You’re all right?”

“We all seem to be. Looks as though everyone is here except Green Lantern.”

“She’s a little busy, but I saw her for a moment. She and the baby are doing
fine, and Star Sapphire is with them.”

“So, he really is the father, then?”

“If I hadn’t been sure of it already, I would have been when I saw them
together.”

Jonni Thunder looked around the now-crowded plaza.

“Weird, how much has happened in just a day. This…this isn’t really even
Earth-349 anymore, is it? It’s more like…Earth-349A.”

“Don’t kid yourself,” the Thunderbolt said, shaking his electrical
head-equivalent. “The world changes all the time.”

“Oh, man, I hate it when you say stuff like that! It hurts my head to think
about it!”

“So don’t think about it. Most of the time you don’t need to think about any
of this stuff, like time having three dimensions, or… or a lot of other stuff.”

Jonni Thunder looked thoughtful for a moment, then shrugged and chirped, “Well,
the good guys won and all’s right with the world. How else could things have
ended up?”

The Thunderbolt laughed like crackling static.

[See more Earth-349 stories at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Earth-349]

[Contact the author at dr_psycho1960@hotmail.com]

Earth-349: The Last Story, Part 3

2010-12-31T20:34:00.000-08:00

Earth-349: The Justice Association of America
Part 3
By Anton Psychopoulos, Ph.D.

Disclaimer #1: This story is set on a hypothetical world within the pre-Crisis DC Universe. The DC Universe is owned by DC Comics, Inc. This story also makes use of characters and concepts owned by other publishers. The use of these copyrighted elements is done only for the amusement of the author and his readers, and is not intended to infringe or disparage those copyrights.
Disclaimer #2: This story is not recommended for persons under the age of 18, or the easily offended.
Synopsis: Jonni Thunder commanded her pet Thunderbolt to summon up the man she would have been if she had been born a boy. Unfortunately, her male counterpart was a criminal. Also, being just as much a “Thunder” as Jonni was, Johnny was able to command the mystic Thunderbolt. He forced the Thunderbolt to use his powers to turn four of his friends into counterparts of Jonni’s most famous teammates in the Justice Association of America, and the super-criminals abducted their opposite numbers. With their most powerful members out of action, the JAA decided to call upon their missing comrades’ enemies to provide the power they needed, offering pardons and other inducements. So far, the Atom has been rescued from Cyclotron and Batwoman has been rescued from Nighthawk. The fates of Green Lantern, the Flash and Superwoman remain unknown. The Martian Manhunter and Doctor Alchemy have volunteered to go to Hub city to rescue the Flash.
When the male Johnny Thunder had altered history to turn the members of his gang into the men he remembered, it had not greatly affected the world for most of them. They had been career criminals in both lives, and their somewhat different histories had only affected a few criminals, police officers, prosecutors and parole officers. The exception had been Johnny Chambers, now known as Johnny Quick.
Chambers had been a television newscaster, the most popular in the Hub City viewing area. When his life-history had been altered to conform with the male Johnny Thunder’s memory, the change had affected more than three million people. Reality itself was weakened in Hub City, in a way it hadn’t been anywhere else. A pervasive sense of malaise had settled over the city, turning it from one of the brightest metropolitan areas in the Midwest into a place of shadows and fear. The vague sense that there was something wrong with the city was turning into a general impression that everything was wrong, and people were starting to act accordingly. Where once the streets had been among the cleanest in the Midwest, now they were strewn with blowing litter like some European slum. Where once the inhabitants had walked the streets freely by night, they now huddled in their homes come dark, afraid of a lawlessness they had not actually seen, yet still expected.
The Martian Manhunter and Doctor Alchemy had arrived in an unmarked business jet owned by the Justice Association through a front group, Fairplay, Inc. Doctor Alchemy was dressed in civilian clothes and carried papers identifying him as “John Element”. The Manhunter had assumed the identity of Marcia Xavier, private investigator, one of her less often used guises. Under those names they had rented a car and driven deep into the city, stopped only once by a street patrol of mixed police officers and street hoodlums, led by the Flash’s old enemy, the Golden Glider. All had worn the red armband of the new regime.
The Hub City Opera House had crisp new posters, put up just the day before, advertising next week’s opening of the musical comedy More Fun, but the steps were dusty and begrimed as though it had been abandoned for years. Whichever was the case, the Opera House was now being used by Johnny Quick as his headquarters. Red banners with a stylized golden eagle shape at their center hung from between the Opera House’s pillars.
Two guards stood at opposite sides of the front steps, a slender man in a blue Arctic parka and a chubby woman in a white fireproof suit. Each held an odd-looking handgun. As the heroes watched, the two exchanged glances and made kissing movements with their lips.
“Captain Cold and Heat Wave,” Doctor Alchemy said softly. “Old enemies of the Flash’s.”
“They’re a couple?”
“Evidently.”
They drove past the Opera House and parked in an alley. Al Desmond pulled his Philosopher’s Stone from inside his jacket and passed it up and down his body, transforming John Element’s business suit into Doctor Alchemy’s hooded academic gown. Marcia Xavier relaxed her body and began to transform herself into the likeness of the Trickstress, a Hub City criminal who was not generally known to be in FBI custody.
“The Trickstress is about half a head shorter,” Doctor Alchemy observed. “And her, um, breasts are smaller.”
The Martian Manhunter shook her head, giving a good imitation of a Trickstress smile.
“This is the height I’m most comfortable at, and changing height is the hardest thing to do when I’m in a hurry, especially if I expect a fight. And breasts just a bit bigger are a great distraction from any flaws in the face or posture.”
They almost walked up to the Opera House that way, but at the last moment Dr. Alchemy remembered, and caused a pair of regulation Johnny Quick armbands to coalesce on their upper arms.
Apparently, Johnny Quick’s operation hadn’t gotten as far as ID cards. The Martian Manhunter plucked the password out of Captain Cold’s mind while he was ogling the Trickstress’s cleavage. Getting into the Opera House was as simple as that.
They had expected the main stage to have a board table or maybe even a throne. Instead, it bore a dense collection of electronic devices, at least one of which was emitting a high-pitched whine. At the center was a device that might have fit in at some futuristic gymnasium. The Flash, unmasked, was chained to it by her wrists and neck, her body a blur from the waist down as she ran. An electronic display indicated that her speed was ranging around “600”, but there was no obvious indication of what scale of measurement was being used.
“That’s the Cosmic Treadmill. It was the original source of the Flash’s powers.”
“Is he…draining her?”
“I think he’s trying to. It makes sense: if he can siphon off her speed powers to add to his own, he’ll become more powerful, and eliminate the Flash as a rival.”
The Flash’s frantic running was being supervised by a short but muscular man in a green outfit. From time to time he aimed the slim rod in his hand at her buttocks and hit her with another arc of electricity. The Flash seemed to be too exhausted to show much sign of pain, but the speed indicator would temporarily jump into the 700s.
“I suppose those are more from what the Flash calls her ‘Rogues’ Gallery’?”
His upper face out of sight under the hood, Doctor Alchemy rolled his eyes in annoyance.
“Actually, she doesn’t like that term, but yes, they’re all Hub City super criminals: the Thinker, the Elongated Man, Shade and Etaoin Shrdlu. The one with the fancy cattle prod is the Weather Wizard. Like Captain Cold and the Heat Wave, they have fought the Flash in the past, and doubtless they like the idea of having a new, criminal Flash on their side.”
The Thinker noticed the newcomers and with no visible pause to consider, pointed at them and barked, “Not Trickstress. Get them!”
The Manhunter leapt into the air, tucking and rolling the way the acrobatic Trickstress might have, though Doctor Alchemy could tell she was using her Martian telekinesis. She flew past the villains and straightened out in midair to drive her right foot into the control bar of the Cosmic Treadmill. No sparks flew and no parts came off, but the speed display went dark, and the high-pitched whine dropped rapidly in pitch.
The Weather Wizard extended his wand and hit the Manhunter with a much bigger bolt of lightning than he’d previously used on the Flash. The Elongated Man extended his arms to grab her, flinching away just in time to avoid being shocked. Etaoin Shrdlu dashed toward the wings, presumably in search of his linotype machine.
While the Manhunter was trying to regain her feet after her kick, the Thinker stepped forward in a way that seemed both too slow and too clumsy to be significant, put his palm lightly against her forehead and pushed gently. The Manhunter fell on her ass.
The Manhunter recovered quickly and moved at phenomenal speed, but not nearly fast enough, since a hostile person with powers equivalent to the Flash’s was in the same county.
To the people watching, Johnny Quick seemed to simply appear out of nowhere, standing almost where the Manhunter had been, his gloved fists on his hips, his famous grin looking much less reassuring than it once had on the evening news. His costume was red and yellow, but the yellow was closer to gold, the red darker, and the gold eagle emblem on his chest was downright sinister, since it had appeared on flags and armbands all over the city.
The transition was so sudden that Dr. Alchemy at first did not recognize that the blur of green and blue that shattered half a dozen seats to his left had anything to do with the Martian Manhunter disappearing from the stage. His awareness caught up slowly, first to the strange apparition in the audience, then the disappearance of the Manhunter from the stage, then the presence of Johnny Quick where the Manhunter had been.
Dr. Alchemy looked at the splintered seats and had a hard time understanding what he was seeing. The creature was olive-skinned and hairless, with a long low crested head that suggested a skull more equine than primate. Its chest was enormous, implying lungs made to breathe something thinner than the atmosphere of Earth, and was covered only by the crossed red straps of a harness that supported a long blue cape. The straps crossed between breasts that jutted out alarmingly, like warheads, though the creature’s body otherwise showed no sign of fat, and only very small, ribbonlike muscles.
He didn’t know that he was the first Earthman ever to see the Martian Manhunter in her true form.
The fight would have already ended by now, with both of the intruders killed by Johnny Quick before J’Onn J’Onzz hit the seats, except that her kick to the Cosmic Treadmill had freed the Flash. Although physically and emotionally exhausted by the abuse she had suffered at the hands of the Rogues, the Fastest Woman Alive still had enough energy to engage Johnny Quick in super-speed hand to hand combat, which meant that Johnny’s subordinates would have to deal with the other heroes.
People tend to expect combat between superhumans to be something glorious and dramatic, like a cross between a World War I dogfight and an operatic swordfight, but the reality is that whether the combatants have super-strength or invulnerability or super-speed, they tend to wrestle and claw at one another like battling insects. A fist, even one that can penetrate steel, is not much use against skin that can shrug off artillery shells, and when two super-speedsters are fighting, a kick or punch is less use against someone who can roll out of the way as rapidly as you can strike.
The battle between the Flash and Johnny Quick was no exception, and it was over in a fraction of a second. Friend and foe alike stared in astonishment as they saw the Flash and her imitator vanish into a red and yellow blur, and reappear strangely transformed, their costumes in tatters and their bodies covered with hundreds of fine scratches. The Flash lay on top of Johnny Quick, obviously winded by the struggle with her counterpart, but Johnny was bound with strips from his costume and was unconscious, not merely exhausted. She had even removed his mask and put it on herself, in token of her victory.
Before the villains on the stage could move to stop the Flash, she was in the audience, at the Martian Manhunter’s side. The Manhunter in good hands, Dr. Alchemy moved to shield them from the Rogues. Aiming the Philosopher’s Stone like a handgun, he turned the Weather Wizard’s wand into a plastic flower and the Thinker’s helmet into a straw sombrero, neutralized the Shade’s power over darkness by turning his suit and frock coat from black to white and adding optical whiteners, deleted the lubricating oils from Etaoin Shrdlu’s linotype machine and removed the elasticity from the Elongated Man’s stretchable costume. The latter tried frantically to extricate himself through the neckhole, but by the time he had emerged, clinging to his boxer shorts with one hand, all he could do was wave his free hand in surrender.
When all of the rogues had been bound and placed under the supervision of a squad of police vouched for by the Flash, the Manhunter turned on her JAA signal device and updated the Association on the situation in Hub City. She looked up from it to speak to the Flash and Dr. Alchemy, while beginning to resume her usual blue-skinned false form.
“I have some good news to share. Star Sapphire and the Tattooed Lady have just rescued Green Lantern from Eclipso.”
The Flash looked as though she wanted to ask a question. After a pause, the Manhunter nodded.
“Mother and child are both fine. It’s a girl.
“As for the current crisis, everyone who can get there quickly is asked to head for Metropolis to confront the last of Johnny Thunder’s agents. This one will be the counterpart of Superwoman, so folks are expecting quite a fight.”

[See more Earth-349 stories at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Earth-349]
[Contact the author at dr_psycho1960@hotmail.com]

Earth-349: The Last Story, Part 2

2010-12-31T20:33:00.000-08:00

By Anton Psychopoulos, Ph.D.

Hawkman and Yellowjacket both flew with artificial wings. Beyond that,
they had almost nothing in common. They had volunteered for this mission
because each of them, in his own way, loved the Atom very much, but that was
one of the ways they differed most of all.

Hawkman had arrived at Lilliput in so much of a hurry that he had not
had time to contact their pest control service and get their clearance to
land. One of Lilliput’s biggest purchases from the outside world in the 20th
Century had been shotguns which they could adapt to discourage raptor birds
that made their way through the gravitational anomaly that prevented most
intrusions from outside. Fortunately for him, the gunners recognized him and
waved when he approached, and he was easily able to retrieve Yellowjacket from
the electrical power substation where he was working off part of his sentence.

Hawkman had scooped up the tiny figure and tucked him into the center of his
wing harness, behind his chest emblem. He was accustomed to carrying a small
body there, from all the times the Atom had hitched a ride that way, but Henry
Pym was not used to riding that way, with a man’s sweaty bare chest against his
back and a stiff wind in his face, so he had a tendency to fidget. That was
especially uncomfortable since Pym’s work boots were a good deal harder than
the ones the Atom wore with her costume.

Hawkman briefed Yellowjacket as they flew from the South Pacific toward
Califia. According to what Jonni Thunder had told them, Johnny Thunder had
empowered a member of his gang, Alfred Kurtzberger, to be a counterpart of the
Atom, and Kurtzberger had said he needed access to a nuclear reactor. There’d
been a report of a costumed person calling himself Cyclotron seizing the Santa
Teresa Nuclear Plant, so that was where they were headed first.

While still over the Pacific, Hawkman’s hyper-acute distance vision spotted a
column of tanks and troop trucks moving along the Coast Highway. He swooped
down towards a Jeep that was flying a Brigadier’s flag, paused while he was
recognized and then clung to the running board to confer with the General.

“The state police have the neighborhood around the plant evacuated already,”
the General said briskly. “There have been civilian injuries but no deaths,
but only by chance – this guy is in Superwoman’s class, or close to it, and
he’s a lot less careful how he uses it. The guards at the facility shot him to
no effect, then evacuated. The police haven’t engaged him, just cleared
everyone away and set up a cordon. Their spotters say he’s tearing the plant
apart, so he has to be stopped right away. I have no objection if you want to
get there ahead of us, do whatever you can.”

Hawkman nodded once and took off. He knew it was a serious concession for the
General to authorize him to go ahead of them, possibly to have the situation be
already in hand by the time they arrived, and wanted to spare him needless
embarrassment.

As they flew over the police cordon and the park-like grounds of the facility,
Hawkman saw first the tall spire of the tetrahedral cooling tower, like a
pyramid elongated into an obelisk, and then the white dome of the reactor’s
containment shell. He also saw the wreckage of damaged buildings around the
reactor. He saw the raw gashes made by carelessly-tossed fragments of building
and furniture and equipment. The site bore the marks of gigantic strength,
carelessly used by an inexperienced hand. And in all probability, strength was
the least dangerous power this “Cyclotron” possessed.

He had already demolished several outbuildings, and built a long helical
incline around the containment structure. He was now working with frantic
speed and energy, using the strength in his bulging bare arms to crush and
shape more pipe and sheet metal into a long straight shape along the ground at
the end of the incline.

He wore a short-sleeved yellow shirt and blue shorts but was still
sweating under his blue half-cowl. Then Hawkman realized that the fin on his
cowl was not red, but glowing cherry-red. It was a radiator, shedding waste
heat from some powerful device, presumably the heavy pack on his back.

“It won’t work,” Hawkman called out from overhead as he swept down. He
had calculated his approach so that the words would coincide with his winged
shadow passing over him. The maneuver served as well to startle the prey of a
Hawkman as of a hawk.

The villain looked up, showing an expression that was likewise
reminiscent of a fieldmouse flinching at the cry of a stooping hawk, before he
straightened himself and put on a look of arrogant self-assurance.

“You don’t even know what I’m doing here, so how could you know whether
it will work?”

“We tried something like that on Laputa almost a hundred years ago,”
Hawkman replied as he came in for a landing before Cyclotron. “You want to
create a volume where the physical constants can be altered, and do something
within it that can’t be done in the normal universe. But the volume this
construction will create will be too big – it will be dangerously large, and
you’d need more power than even a commercial nuclear reactor can provide.”

“I don’t need the reactor to provide power, only materials. The
affected volume needs to be big enough that I can stand inside it—“

Hawkman turned pale when the madman said that.

“—and as for a power source, you’re looking at it. I didn’t pick the
name ‘Cyclotron’ out of a hat.”

“There are several reasons why I can’t let you do that, fellow,”
Hawkman began, bracing himself for a leap that he hoped he wouldn’t have to
make. He suspected that colliding with this small but burly man with
superhuman strength would be a lot like flying into a concrete wall, but a
literal flying tackle was still probably his best move.

But then the man began to shrink visibly, his bulging arms and thighs
going back to more normal proportions. He strained to stay upright, staggering
under the weight of the device on his back, then collapsed and lay flat on the
ground, his limbs moving uselessly for a few seconds, and then he appeared to
lose consciousness.

Yellowjacket flew up from the backpack, growing to visible size, while
Hawkman tried to turn Cyclotron over before he suffocated. He wound up having
to use his harness’s antigravity effect to lift the thing – it weighed about as
much as a small car.

“Okay, this fellow is out of action. We can turn him over to the Army
when they arrive. Our next priority is to locate the Atom – not to steal
contraband technology!”

He said that last with emphasis, as the normal-sized Yellowjacket pried
at a hatch on Cyclotron’s backpack.

“I just might have an idea on that subject, Hawkman,” Yellowjacket said
acidly as he worked. “Think about that name ‘Cyclotron’. What’s the slang
term for cyclotron?”

“A cyclotron isn’t the sort of thing that you think of as having a slang name,
unless you mean…”

Pym flipped open the hatch. Nestled among the tightly-packed cables
and pipes was a tiny figure that might have been mistaken for a doll.

“…Atom-Smasher.”

Pym got the Atom free from the machine, with some help from Hawkman.
At last, the hero held his friend in his hand, unconscious but seemingly
healthy. He was about to tuck her carefully into her usual place behind his
harness when the first Army vehicles arrived. He handed her over to a medic
while a Corporal approached with a walkie-talkie.

“There’s a call for you, Hawkman,” she explained. “Justice Association
business, apparently.”

He took the phone with a nod in place of a salute.

“Hawkman? Batgirl here. Congratulations on rescuing the Atom. If
Yellowjacket hasn’t flown off yet, remind him that he is still serving his
sentence in Lilliput until such time as the Atom or the King pardons him. Good
news from Gotham: Wonder Warrior and Blockbuster have rescued Batwoman from
Nighthawk. If you are up for it, your presence is requested in Metropolis to
confront the male Johnny Thunder.”

When he hung up, Hawkman headed for the tent marked with a red cross and was
surprised to find Yellowjacket helping the medic with the Atom. She was
conscious already, and seemed to be well.

He left them alone and stepped from the tent. Without ceremony, he rose into
the sky, his mouth wide open as though screaming while he accelerated upward.
A pair of tiny, almost invisible flaps rather like gill slits opened just under
his ribs, allowing air to flow through his lungs and out again without his
needing to exhale. The minute or so it would take him to pass through the
troposphere would charge his blood with enough oxygen to sustain him while he
flew, wrapped in his wings, on a suborbital trajectory across the continent.

[To Be Continued]

Earth-349: The Last Story, Part 1

2010-12-31T20:32:00.000-08:00

The car bounced over the rutted road, which had been carefully prepared
to give it the appearance of one that was seldom-travelled and had never been
of any great importance.

The driver of the car was rather similar to the road. She also went
out of her way to conceal herself beneath a very ordinary exterior. No-one,
sizing up the small, stocky woman with blotchy skin and her haircut as cheap as
it was short, would have given her a second glance. She was neither attractive
nor interesting nor alarming nor offensive. She drove up to what appeared
to be a very ordinary gate, held shut by a chain and padlock, and with a sign
on it warning any passersby that Broome Air Force Base was closed, but remained
Federal property, and warning of dire consequences for any trespassers. She
reached inside her jacket and pulled out what appeared to be a Middletown,
Pennsylvania, Police badge in a leather wallet. She pressed on the eagle’s
left wing and the gate swung open from what had appeared to be the hinge side,
leaving the locked chain undisturbed.

As the gate closed behind her, the driver began to change, her blotchy
dun-colored skin becoming a smooth poreless robin’s-egg blue, her hair becoming
glossy black with a dramatic white streak, her plump and squatty form becoming
tall and smoothly muscled, her drab brown suit becoming a form-fitting red
bodysuit with cobalt blue gloves, boots and trunks.

It would take a fellow Martian to really understand the powers of J’Onn
J’Onzz, let alone her mind. But at the headquarters of the Justice Association
of America, she did at least have a few friends who understood her at least a
little. The League’s formation had been a life-saver for the lonely exile.

The Martian Manhunter drove into a seemingly decrepit building and
parked her little blue Volkswagen next to a very elegant-looking Polish sports
car. There were no other cars in sight, but that was no indication of how many
would be at the meeting. Some members typically arrived under their own power,
after all, and some had vehicles that were too big to park in this building.
She went to an unmarked wooden door along the building’s east wall and fingered
her badge, which had morphed into an octagonal belt buckle. The door opened
outward soundlessly, revealing a set of elevator doors which after a moment
slid open to reveal an immaculate elevator car.

The elevator delivered her with quiet efficiency to an atrium that was
sufficiently large and well-lit that visitors did not feel oppressed by being
in a windowless space some four storeys underground. The Manhunter looked
around at the various members of the Justice Association who were already
present. She did not smile because it was not a Martian practice, but she
nodded pleasantly at those who smiled at her. Most did.

The Manhunter walked across the atrium, exchanging greetings with one
person or another. She hadn’t seen any of her particular friends, such as
Batwoman or the Atom, but she did spot Hawkman talking with three strangers who
appeared to have metallic skins. She joined the group, who seemed to be
discussing metallurgy or perhaps alchemy.

“When the statue is fully refurbished, the skin will be completely
replaced. Instead of ordinary copper, it will be sheathed in stainless
manganese bronze, and will never turn that ugly corroded green color again.”

“Nice,” the gray-colored woman said. “But will the torch still have
that red white and blue aviation beacon? I know it isn’t needed anymore,
thanks to radar, but-” She broke off and nodded towards the Manhunter.

Hawkman finally noticed the Martian. He greeted her and started to
make introductions, but the chirpy copper-colored one broke in with a loud
“Hi! I’m Penny, and these are Buffy and Buck!”

The pale silver gentleman smiled indulgently.

“What my obstreperous sister means is, we are Silver, Nickel and, er,
Copper.”

The Manhunter nodded. “I get it, you’re some of Wanda Magnus’s
kobolds. I understand Copper Penny and Silver Buck, but how does Nickel yield
Buffy?”

“Hold out your hand,” the nickel woman said, with a warmer smile than
her “brother”. The Manhunter complied, and in a moment a small coin fell into
her palm. It was one of the new five-cent pieces, replacing the familiar
portrait of President Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809) with that of President
Joseph Black Diamond (1909-1917). It had the current date, 1966, but instead
of “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA”, it was identified as a product of “MAGNUS
LABORATORIES”. She turned it over and finally remembered that the Mint had
also replaced the old three-honeybees design with a shaggy American bison –
popularly though inaccurately known as a “buffalo”. Beneath the animal,
instead of “FIVE CENTS”, it read, “PURE NICKEL”.

“Buffalo Nickel,” the Manhunter said, delighted, and held the coin out
to the metal creature.

“Keep it if you want,” Nickel said, “I’ve got plenty.”

She patted her rounded hip, her hand clanking against her flank.

J’Onzz felt a surprising wave of nausea but suppressed it and dropped
the coin into one of her suit’s many pockets.

J’Onzz was about to call out a greeting to Aquawoman when she heard a
commotion behind her, near the elevators. A lushly-upholstered blonde woman
dressed in diaphanous green draperies that were not well-suited to the weather
or to public occasions was standing among a knot of JAA members who were
variously puzzled, concerned and annoyed by the intruder. The woman held a
large white signboard on which she had clumsily written in grease-pencil, GUYS
YOU GOT TO HELP ME.

“Young lady,” Mister Terrific began sternly, but the Star-Spangled Kid
touched his arm and leaned past him to look into the woman’s face.

“Jonni?”

The woman nodded, beginning to weep silently.

Johanna Tetzlaff had been a moderately successful professional wrestler
under the name Jonni Detroit when she saved a child from a kidnapping attempt
and was invited to a testimonial dinner for “lifesaving heroes” which included
police, military veterans and assorted ordinary citizens like herself. She was
seated next to the Buddhist evangelist and alleged mystic Peter Cannon, also
known as the Thunderbolt, when he suffered a massive myocardial infarction and
died in the middle of receiving the pepper from Jonni. Their eyes met just as
he died, and for some minutes after he slumped to the table, she didn’t realize
he was dead, since she could hear his voice in her head. Later than night,
Cannon’s spirit for the first time manifested itself in the form of a “living
thunderbolt” that resembled a humanoid shape formed from sizzling blue
electricity.

Before long, Jonni had worked out a testy but functional relationship
with the Thunderbolt, and had begun a semi-professional career as what she
called a “sort-of superhero” under the name Jonni Thunder. After much
negotiation, the Thunderbolt agreed to use his powers to carry out any spoken
command she might give, although he tended to be lazy and would sometimes use
rather creative interpretations of her words to avoid extra work.

Jonni and her Thunderbolt had crashed the first JAA meeting and after
that she had become a kind of mascot, not exactly a member and never quite
taken seriously in spite of the Thunderbolt’s power, but always welcome.

Now, Jonni was in the midst of the assembled JAA, all of whom were more
or less distracted by her transformation from a short, muscular woman whose
face had always been more good-natured than handsome into a stereotypical
pneumatic pinup girl. That her usual slacks and plaid jacket had been replaced
with gauzy garments suited for displaying her new curves didn’t help them in
paying attention to the words she scrawled with increasing speed and sloppiness
on her whiteboard.

Pushing a curling lock of her newly-lengthened blonde hair out of her
eyes, Jonni explained that on a whim, she had asked the Thunderbolt to show her
what she might have been like if she’d been born a boy. The Thunderbolt had
conjured up a male “Johnny” Thunder, summoning him from a parallel world rather
than actually creating a person by magic, which would have taken more energy.

Alas, Jonni’s counterpart turned out to be enough like her to share the
potential for developing a link with the Thunderbolt, and enough unlike her to
be a rather ruthless sort of criminal. He had seized control of the
Thunderbolt, forcing him to agree to the same rules that had governed his
relationship with Jonni, and had neutralized Jonni by the simple expedient of
ordering the Thunderbolt to remove her voice. While he was engaged in
modifying Jonni, he’d also ordered the other modifications the JAA had noticed.

Jonni had finally escaped from her counterpart’s lair in the middle of the
previous night, and had made her way to JAA headquarters. The tale she told
them, first through her whiteboard and later through a teletype, was troubling:
the male Johnny had already had the Thunderbolt abduct the most powerful
members of the Justice Association and turned five members of his gang into
their male counterparts. Now, each of the heroines was being held prisoner by
her counterpart at various locations around the continent, for some purposed
which was unclear to Jonni but surely was not going to be good for them, or for
the rest of humanity.

“Sounds like a classic Type 2 case,” Wonder Warrior said with a confidence that
sounded all too obviously forced. “Split up into pairs and each group confront
one bad guy.”

“I doubt if pairs will do it,” Aquawoman observed grimly. “Not if we’re doing
this without Superwoman, or Green Lantern, or the Flash.”

“And not if we’re going up against bad guys who are the equivalents of all of
those, plus Batwoman and the Atom,” noted Captain America.

“And the Thunderbolt,” added Lamplighter.

“Yes, and the Thunderbolt,” Hawkman agreed.

“Well, then, let’s make it Plan 2B,” Wonder Warrior persisted. “B for Badguy.”

The barbarically-clad muscleman smacked his fist into his palm, warming to his
subject. “Each of our missing comrades has enemies who have power to rival
their own. Some of them are in prison, or we have some other sort of leverage
on them so we can get them to co-operate. Sometimes an enemy who understands
you is better than a friend.”

Some rolled their eyes at yet another of Wonder Warrior’s Myrmidon aphorisms,
but Hawkman nodded thoughtfully.

“It’s as good a plan as any, and clearly we do need to work fast. All right,
let’s get a couple of our lawyers on the phone to Federal and military prisons,
and get some Blackhawk planes on their way to the prisons right away. No sense
in waiting until we hear back first.”

Batgirl looked up from a teletype which was still spitting out a long scroll of
yellow paper.

“There’s Blockbuster and Poison Oak at Blackgate Prison, Luthor and Mother
Terra at Fort Superwoman . . . . Do we want to look at Arkham Asylum?”

“Only if we don’t have any choice,” Hawkman answered. “But out west there’s
Hector Hammond at the UCCC Medical School Hospital, he would probably be
usable.”

“I was going to check the West separately, start with the places closer to
here.”

“Carry on. Okay, people, do we have any volunteers for the teams?”

Hands went up, and voices called out.

“Remember, people, these are supposed to be the counterparts, the equivalent,
of our most powerful members. Don’t volunteer for a mission just because
someone is your friend, and don’t go asking to join in after a team has been
formed. We all know what happens when too many go on one mission, especially
when there’s a lot of firepower involved. Now, I’ll be going after the Atom
myself –“

There came a catcall from the back at this revelation. Hawkman and the Atom
had been the closest friends among the founding members of the Association, and
nobody was surprised that he was ignoring his own admonishment against wanting
to help a personal friend.

“—and I’ll be recruiting Yellowjacket. It’s okay, Batgirl, I know where he
is. Who else wants in on this one?”

In short order the teams were formed, a few volunteers were turned away or
persuaded to go on another mission, and the others were busying themselves with
arranging transportation for the chosen teams, making sure that medical
supplies and other vital equipment would be available, or else checking to see
what else besides the rescue missions needed doing. It was something often not
understood by the general public that the biggest difference between the
Justice Association and a more conventional police or military organization lay
in the speed with which it could act – at least when it had someone in charge
who could get the group’s members to co-operate.

[To be continued]

Earth-349: The Last Story, Prologue 3

2010-12-31T20:31:00.000-08:00

Natalie Richards looked up from her desk when she heard a knock at the door.
She stretched out an arm and opened it, and since Richards was still widely
known to the world as Doctor Fantastic, a former member of the Fantastic Four,
when she stretched out an arm it really stretched. The door, some ten yards
away, opened, and Jane Arbogast entered. She'd already removed and stowed her
Iron Maiden armor, and like Richards was wearing an AIM coverall, its beekeeper-
style cowl thrown back.

Richards had spent her entire life surrounded by scientists and intellectuals,
and she knew that social awkwardness was something of an occupational hazard,
but until her previous visit, Iron Maiden had always kept her armor on the
entire time, even the helmet. That had seemed a bit much, even to Richards.
Arbogast had been terribly nervous on her previous visit, but she seemed a good
deal more relaxed this time.

Richards finished what she was working on and rose from the desk just as
Arbogast got to within normal conversational distance. She rose and extended a
hand, and was glad to see that this time Arbogast took it without hesitation.

"Good to see you again, Richards. Is Palmer here?"

"Not yet, and I was expecting her half an hour ago. Oh, well, you know how she
is: she can arrive via telephone at any moment, so naturally she's always being
delayed at the last minute."

"So, let's see your Museum of Many Worlds, shall we?"

Richards smiled. She admired Iron Maiden's direct, down-to-business approach,
presumably honed by running the day-to-day operations of the worldwide company
owned by her reclusive boss, Tony Stark.

Richards led Arbogast down a corridor to a large double door. It was after six
on a Sunday night, so there were few staff members around. Richards punched a
six-digit code into the latch and opened it. Lights came on automatically all
through the cavernous space.

"This was a dining room for the staff until we built a smaller and more
pleasant one, but it's just about perfect for a museum."

Much of the space was still empty, but Arbogast could see that the museum's
collection was already impressive, and included entire airplanes and
automobiles, as well as display cases containing everything from furniture and
clothed mannequins to coins, stamps and newspapers. The smaller cases had many
drawers each, containing yet more artifacts from parallel worlds.

Richards went up to one case which displayed an assortment of newspapers and
magazines that displayed unfamiliar celebrities, unfamiliar fashions,
unfamiliar sports and even unfamiliar plants and animals. She opened one of
its drawers and lifted out a newspaper, a copy of the Pittsburgh Courier about
a year old. The biggest headline read, "PRESIDENT ROBESON MEETS WITH EMPEROR
SELASSIE". Smaller ones indicated that the Indianapolis Clowns had defeated
the Newark Eagles in the third game of the World Series, that Harry Belafonte
had received his sixth Academy Award for Best Director, and that Surgeon
General "Torchy" Brown had begun a new national campaign to wipe out syphilis.

"This is from Earth-319," Richards said, smiling. "The funny thing is, you
could read the entire paper without guessing what the biggest surprise would be
if you were to visit there."

Arbogast took the paper and carefully opened it.

"Something more interesting than the fact that the President's first name is
Paul rather than Kenneth, I take it."

Richards laughed.

Earth-349: The Last Story, Prologue 2

2010-12-31T20:29:00.000-08:00

Earth-349: The Martian Manhunter
by Anton Psychopoulos, Ph.D.

Disclaimer #1 This story is set in a hypothetical parallel world within
the pre-Crisis DC Universe, based on a story in Superman #349, but not
limited by that story or any other.

Disclaimer #2 Some characters appearing in this story are based on
copyrighted characters owned by DC Comics, Inc., Marvel Comics and
others. Their use here is not intended to infringe or disparage those
copyrights.

Disclaimer #3 This story is not recommended for persons under 18 or the
easily offended, especially those who are uncomfortable with such topics
as transgender, undocumented immigration and linotypism.

The police had Etaoin Shrdlu in custody, with eight finger cuffs
added to the handcuffs to ensure he didn't get a chance to work his
powers on any typewriter or telephone dial he might pass. The
typesetting machine Shrdlu had stolen (a priceless artifact, the
one Mark Twain had bankrupted himself trying to perfect) was
undamaged, in the custody of a curator from the Hub City Museum of
Science and Industry. The police already had the usual anonymous
statements from the Flash and from herself. She could spare a few
minutes.

The Martian Manhunter laid a blue-gloved hand on the Flash's shoulder.

"If you need me, I'll be up on the roof."

"Something you need to do?" the Scarlet Speedster asked, mildly
curious.

"Just going to look at the sky. Join me if you want."

After a minute, she did.

The sun was just below the horizon, the sky clear, dimming slowly.
Two stars were just visible, low in the west.

"Which one's Mars?" the Flash asked.

The Manhunter turned, her face betraying surprise.

"Mars is somewhere to the east, not visible yet to human eyes.
Those are Venus and Mercury."

"Oh. I just assumed --"

"Seeing Mars as a tiny orange dot just makes me feel more homesick,
Rose. But a double evening star makes me feel right at home."

"Oh, right. You can see this from Mars, can't you?"

"It's quite common. Of course, on Mars it's more likely to be
Earth and Venus. But this is nice."

The sky was darker now. Five or six stars were visible directly
overhead. The Manhunter pointed upward.

"Leaping J'emm, the one you call Orion, is also familiar.
Something to remind me that I'm not too far from home. A long way,
but a measurable distance."

The Flash placed a hand on the shoulder of the Manhunter's red
bodysuit.

"You'll get home, Joanie. It'll happen."

The Flash left moments later for another of her endless patrols of the city.
The Manhunter considered her options. The Middletown police were expecting
Detective Joan Jones to be on duty in about twelve hours. She could fly, which
would get her home at about three in the morning, exhausted (she was no
Superwoman). She could catch a commercial flight to Philadelphia and take a
cab from the airport, but that was a lot of money on a police officer's salary.

She finally decided to try her luck at Corkin AFB. Flying under her own power
to just outside the gates of the base, she landed behind a defunct gas station
and began to change.

At her mental command, her red bodysuit began to crease ad seam itself into the
blue uniform of a Captain in the U.S. Air Force. The technology that allowed
her to alter her suit had been derived from her race's innate ability to alter
their bodies. She'd tried to explain it once to Natalie Richards of the
Fantastic Four, but the concepts had been so alien to Terran science that she
hadn't made much progress.

The suit changed faster than the Manhunter's body, but she soon caught up. Her
robin's-egg blue skin changed to a peachy pink. Her close-cropped black hair
turned blonde, and grew out enough to need to be pinned up. Pins emerged from
her skin and migrated into place. Her tall and heroically muscular body shrank
to a more modest stature, with bigger breasts and hips. She'd tried to explain
principles of Martian biology to Dr. Nelson Fate once, but he also hadn't
understood much.

It would take a fellow Martian to really understand J'Onn J'Onzz.

She walked up to the guard post at the gate and produced the ID of Cpt. Jane
Jahns. The Captain was listed with the base's Intelligence office as on
detached service, mission usually classified, liable to show up at any time and
to be shown every courtesy. She had to persuade the base commander that she
didn't need a fighter jet and pilot commandeered for her, that a space on the
MATS flight to Olmstead at 2100 hours would be fine.

The alterations that reality underwent that night were minimal in most parts of
the country, including Middletown. None of the Manhunter's special martian
senses noticed anything. The disruption was more severe in New Devonshire, New
Troy, Califia and Wabash, and most especially bad in central Ohio, inand around
Hub City. There is no way of saying what effect the event might have had on
J'Onzz's Martian body and mind if she had still been in Hub City when it
happened.

Earth-349: The Last Story, Prologue 1

2010-12-31T20:28:00.000-08:00

Earth-349: The House of Mystery
Prologue to the Last Earth-349 Story
by Anton Psychopoulos, Ph.D.

Disclaimer #1 This story is set in a hypothetical parallel world within
the pre-Crisis DC Universe, based on a story in Superman #349, but not
limited by that story or any other.

Disclaimer #2 Some characters appearing in this story are based on
copyrighted characters owned by DC Comics, Inc., Marvel Comics and
others. Their use here is not intended to infringe or disparage those
copyrights.

Disclaimer #3 This story is not recommended for persons under 18 or the
easily offended, especially those who are uncomfortable with such topics
as transgender, transformation, wizardry and beer-drinking.

The immense winged shape descended from the sky, black on black, almost
silent. It released its passenger without quite touching the ground, softly
enough that the woman was able to stay on her feet as she landed.

She turned and looked up at the creature which had carried her to Coast City
and called out, "Cor kcab ot worc," and watched while the dark silhouette
shrank to tiny size, still hovering. The crow flew off, seeming none the worse
for having carried a human being over a thousand miles.

Zatanna brushed down her tailcoat, checked her stockings, pulled her top hat
from a vest pocket and restored it to normal size. She climbed the hill toward
the House of Mystery, admiring the way its slightly canted windows looked like
malevolent yellow eyes as they shone out at the world.

The group was called Vertigo, because it had met for its first year at the
eccentrically-designed Vertigo House in Boston. These days, meetings rotated
among various places of power around North America, ranging from the crypt in
an old cemetery to the inner sanctum of a very unusual church. Tonight, they
were meeting at the historic House of Mystery, at a gathering hosted by its
caretaker, a man who was said to be more than he appeared. But then, in a
group like Vertigo, that was said about just about everyone.

Tim Moone, otherwise known as the Enchanter, was the doorkeeper for this
month's meeting, Zatanna saw. He was wearing a very old green velvet coat
which had once been quite showy and which still had a vague air of distinction
about it.

"Hi, Zee."

"Tim. I like your jacket."

He grinned.

"Recognize it?"

"It does seem vaguely familiar...."

"Think of the Wizard of Oz."

"The book, the movie, or the man himself?"

Moone looked startled.

"You mean there really was...?"

He recovered quickly.

"Think of the movie, the scene in Kansas, where the Wizard is Professor Marvel,
the down-at-heels magician."
------
Zatanna moved closer and ran a hand over the jacket's sleeve.

"This is the jacket Frank Morgan wore?"

"Yep. More than that, though. For the Kansas scenes, the costumers bought
most of the clothes and props at second-hand stores, to get an authentic look,
make a strong contrast with the Oz scenes. They were especially happy with the
jacket, even before they found the tag inside."

He held the jacket open so that Zatanna could see, beneath the stencil mark
that identified it as property of MGM studios, a faded tag, still clearly
reading "LFB".

"L. Frank Baum?"

"The very one. Authenticated by his widow."

Zatanna felt a chill. This kind of synchronicity was magic in more senses than
one. It was no wonder that Moone was pleased with having acquired it.

While they had been talking, a new figure had approached. At first Zatanna
took the creature for some sort of demon with yellow skin and green hair, but
on closer inspection it was obviously a young woman in body paint and an ill-
fitting fright wig. Besides that, she work only striped shorts, sandals and a
red feather boa.

"Greetings, mortals," the stranger growled in what she clearly hoped was an
inhuman voice, and tried to sidle past the pair.

Moone sidestepped to prevent the woman's passing through.

"Excuse me, Miss. Do you have an invitation?"

She cocked a painted eyebrow at him.

"Bar not my way, O Tim the Enchanter. The Creeper goes where she has need to
be."

She raised both hands and made a threatening catlike gesture that made her bare
yellow breasts jiggle, but Moone was not distracted by either display.

"I'm sorry, I can't let you in if you're not a member or the guest of a member."

The creeper slumped in disappointment.

"I don't get it," she said in a normal voice. "The crooks in Gotham City all
buy my demon act, but you guys who meet spooks all the time never do."

"That's just it," Zatanna butted in. "People who meet real demons are the last
ones who'll be fooled by a phony."

The creeper turned on Zatanna, glaring.

"Beware, mortal -- um, I mean, I'm not a phony! I have superhuman strength and
reflexes. I've beaten Dr. Tzin-Tzin, and Hellgrammite! I --"

"All well and good," zatanna said impatiently, "but you're not one of us. Your
powers smell of technology, and your outfit smells of greasepaint. You go
meddling with real supernatural phenomena, and you might go home to find out
that the yellow doesn't wash off anymore."

The Creeper swallowed hard, and probably turned pale under the paint.

Zatanna made a sudden gesture and the young woman flinched.

"Don't worry. I wouldn't do something that nasty to you. But there are those
who would do much worse, for less provocation than your little bluff here
tonight. That being the case, I don't feel too guilty about sending you home
in -- etairporppa sserd!"

The Creeper looked down and saw that her paint and costume had vanished,
replaced by a schoolgirl uniform complete with white knee socks and a pleated
skirt in a poisonous yellow-green-red plaid. She screamed and ran down the
hill, her pigtails flying around her head.

The two real wizards shared a laugh as they watched the gatecrasher flee.

"I don't think she'll have the nerve to try anything like that again."

"She does, she'll be spending a couple of weeks at a really nasty boarding
school I know about."

Zatanna went inside and found the gathering had already reached its lively
stage. She obtained a mug of beer from a Sumerian priestess who made it
herself acording to the old recipe. Sipping it, she walked around, exchanging
greetings with people she knew or recognized.

A squatty dark-skinned man in slacks and a pullover was talking with Lydia
Tarrant, better known as the Tattooed Lady. Zatanna didn't recognize him until
he turned slightly and she saw the huge star sapphire clinging to his forehead.

"Well, something must be up," Star Sapphire insisted, "or she wouldn't be
late. It's totally not like her."

Tarrant shrugged. She was wearing the shortest, lowest-cut black dress Zatanna
had ever seen, showing off a great deal of her tattooed skin Her ever-changing
collection of purplish tattoos shifted and rustled as they adjusted to the
shrug.

"Maybe she changed her mind? She keeps saying she's not one of us. And
knowing I'd be here, well, I know she doesn't like the idea of this being
neutral ground where she couldn't try to bust me."

Star Sapphire shook his head.

"I finally convinced her that the stones weren't some kind of intergalactic
science. It took her years to admit it, but now that she believes that our
powers are supernatural, she -- Zatanna!"

"Sapphire, Lydia."

"Zatanna, you've worked with Green Lantern, you know she isn't the kind to
back out of something at the last minute. And she wouldn't be late for no
reason, either."

The small man was looking seriously worried. Zatanna didn't know what kind of
relationship the two of them had, but he was clearly taking Green Lantern's
tardiness seriously.

Zatanna gave a dubious shrug.

"I could try to locate her by magic...."

"No, don't bother. I have better connections with her than anyone else, and I
can't raise her."

Feeling sorry for the man but with nothing to offer him, Zatanna moved on. In
the next room, a group were peering into a crystal the size of a beachball. It
showed a landscape like a fantasy loosely inspired by ancient Egypt, but she
knew it was really the other way around: this was the otherdimensional realm of
the beings once worshipped as gods by the ancient Egyptians, and which had
influenced the development of Egyptian civilization.

A bearded man, flamboyant in riding breeches and a green silk shirt open to the
waist, was talking excitedly to the group looking into the crystal, making
extravagant gestures with both hands.

"So like, they told me they could send me back, but since I'd only just barely
survived the trip out, it'd probably kill me if I went back again as Mitzi
Merlin. So they put my mind in this body that'd been vacated by their Prince
Ra-Amon like, thousands of years before."

Zatanna stepped through the group to lay a hand on the Prince's arm.

"Hey, Prince, so glad to finally meet you in the flesh...the new flesh, that
is. You know, back when you were a woman and I was a man, I had the biggest
crush on you...."

The Prince shrugged off her hand without being obvious about it and raised both
hands in front of him in protest.

"Sorry, honey, but unlike you I didn't change teams -- I still like boys!"

It Doesn't Take Long

2010-12-31T08:17:00.000-08:00

...to get used to having someone around your home.

And then you don't, anymore, and it really hurts.

And you wait in patient hope of a reunion.

And you do what you can, meanwhile.

Playing Cat and Mouse (Over and Over In My Head)

2010-12-29T11:47:00.000-08:00

For several years I have been haunted1 by "Cat and Mouse"2, an episode of The Twilight Zone3 in which a woman invites a stray cat into her home and learns that he is a man who has lived for centuries cursed to spend every day as a cat.4
They become lovers, which is beneficial to her since she has hitherto been crippled by extreme shyness (she is the "mouse" of the title), and he makes it clear from the beginning that he is interested only in a very casual relationship. Even so, she is crushed when she learns he has had sex with a friend of hers. So much that she decides to drug him, and he wakes up the next day in a cat-carrier at a veterinary clinic, where she is arranging to have him "fixed".

1 No, that is not too strong a term.
2 Which never should have occupied so much space in my head, but there it is.
3 And not even the classic Rod Serling series, but the 1980s color revival.
4 At night, he can change voluntarily between cat and man.

So why does this story keep coming back into my mind? Specifically, why did it climb into my head when I woke up at 3:00 AM and prevent me from getting back to sleep before the alarm went at 4 and I had to get up?

What does it mean to me? Do I feel as though I am in danger of being emasculated -- sexually, or socially, or . . . what? I don't get it.

My sex life is actually pretty good right now, and I seem to have better control over my sexuality than before -- it's been quite awhile since I did anything stupid and destructive on account of listening to my dick.

Not having regular work bothers me a lot. That could be it. It certainly makes me feel weak and helpless and impotent, and it prevents me from "doing my duty" by my wife and to a lesser extent by other people I care about.

Do I feel as though I am, like the cat-man, the victim of some immense, cruel, disproportionate revenge?

Possibly. Several times recently I have felt ill-used by demands and complaints that seem irrational and arbitrary.

I don't know. And I don't know why I have been feeling so irritable all morning when it has actually been a very enjoyable and undemanding day.

I've been feeling very pleased with myself over my increased self-awareness since I went through therapy, but times like this show me that there will always be limits to it. But at least I am noticing that my feelings are irrational, and not trying to blame them on someone or some circumstance around me.

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

2010-12-24T21:48:00.000-08:00

Maybe it's been a long year for you. A hard one. A disappointing one.

Maybe you lost someone -- to death, or circumstance, or estrangement.

Maybe you didn't do something you wanted to. Maybe you didn't stop doing something you shouldn't do.

Maybe you are far from home, or someone close to you is far from home. Maybe home doesn't feel like home anymore.

Hang up a string of lights anyway. Listen to happy music. Or if you can't bear to, at least listen to something encouraging.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g4lY8Y3eoo

The year is ending. A new year is coming. It's going to be different from last year, one way or another.

It Wasn't True

2010-11-30T20:52:00.001-08:00

I looked at an old post today, and was shocked by what I saw there.

I wrote about how it was that, when it seemed there was no chance I would ever be reconciled with my wife, she asked me to come back and try again, and how my abrupt decision to give her a trial hurt other people.

What I wrote back then was an attempt to paint a gentler picture of what happened, out of a desire to exculpate myself for going back on my word, and to scold someone else for what I perceived as going back on hers.

What I said simply wasn't true, and I think I knew even then that it wasn't.

I was really a mess back then, but that is not an excuse for the many ways in which I hurt the people around me. Having figured out that my mind was confused and disordered, I should have withdrawn from human relationships as much as I could until I knew who I was and what I wanted. Instead, I rushed about in all directions at once, causing harm all around me.

And then I distorted and misrepresented what I had done.

I shouldn't have done that, either.

Earth-349: The Secret Six

2010-11-19T14:14:00.001-08:00

Disclaimer #1: This story is set on a hypothetical world within the pre-Crisis
DC Universe. The DC Universe is owned by DC Comics, Inc. This story also
makes use of characters and concepts owned by other publishers. The use of
these copyrighted elements is done only for the amusement of the author and his
readers, and is not intended to infringe or disparage those copyrights.

Disclaimer #2: This story is not recommended for persons under the age
of 18, or the easily offended, especially for those who are uncomfortable with
themes such as organized crime and serial polygamy.

The Galaxy Broadcasting System’s headquarters building houses most of
the network’s Gotham City facilities, which are much more extensive than they
were when it was merely the Gotham Broadcasting System. Even so, the network
does not take up all of the building’s 55 floors.

The entire 49th floor is leased by Sigma-Hex Associates. They are not listed
on the building directory in the lobby, and only the freight elevators stop at
the 49th floor. Their lease indicates that they are a firm of security
consultants, but once they had promised not to handle toxic chemicals nor to
store large quantities of cash or portable valuables on their premises, Galaxy
Properties did not inquire too closely into what its tenants did.

On March 2nd, 1968, two people met in one of the smaller offices in the
Sigma-Hex suites. They hunched over a conference table, their heads close
together, since in spite of the ambient noise that permeated the entire floor
they did not want to turn up the sound on the small tape recorder between them.

One of the listeners would have been instantly recognized by anyone in
the country. Phil Ochs had been a celebrity as a musician even before his
agent had tried to kill him with a faked drug overdose, and turned him into the
toxic avenger known as Poison Oak.

The other was not so famous among the general public, but like Ochs was
well-known to the law enforcement community. Wynona Hudson was the daughter of
a 1920s film actress, and claimed that her father was Wyatt Earp (she sometimes
called herself Wynona Earp). That might or might not be true, but there was no
doubt that she was also known as Deadshot, and was wanted for far more felonies
than was Ochs.

They were not trespassing – they really were Associates of Sigma-Hex,
although they more commonly referred to their organization as the Secret Six.

Poison Oak had retrieved the recorder from the large primary conference
room, the one where the group usually had their general meetings. They hoped
it had recorded the conversation which their colleague Thomas Blake, otherwise
known as the Cheshire Cat, had just had with their leader, whom they knew only
as Mockingbird, and who claimed to be one of them.

The Cheshire Cat was not one of “Gotham’s Most Wanted”, not to be
mentioned in the same breath (followed by spitting) as the Joker or Two-Face,
but he was a wanted criminal with multiple outstanding warrants against him in
Gotham and in several other large Eastern cities.

He was not, as rumor would have it, sexually obsessed with Catwoman,
nor with the Mad Hatter. He also did not have powers of invisibility or
teleportation, nor was he in possession of a panther-skin belt which granted
him superhuman agility and the traditional nine lives of a cat.

He was not terribly prepossessing: short, thick-bodied, with curly hair
and chubby cheeks. Taken all in all, he looked rather like the actor Michael
J. Pollard. In costume, he looked like Michael J. Pollard in a tabby striped
body stocking and cat-eared mask.

Ochs pressed the Play button and the tape reels, the size of silver
dollars, began to turn. Ochs nodded, satisfied with the sound quality.

One voice was clearly Blake’s. The other was one they had all heard
often enough, the buzzing voice of their boss, who spoke to them only by
telephone or recorded message, his or her voice always disguised by an
electronic filter.

“Do you know why this group has six members?”

“Alliteration?”

Mockingbird ignored the mockery.

“I was taken prisoner by the Japanese during the war. They held me for
two years in a camp on the island of Bensalem in the Philippines. We learned,
after a few months, that we needed to live in groups of six: two to scrounge
for food and medical supplies, one to guard our stash, and one to look after
the two who, at any given time, were sick.

“If there were more than six in a group, they couldn’t gather enough
food for all of them. If there were fewer, then not all of the work would get
done, and they’d starve or die from disease. We had to live in sixes.

“I developed a theory from that experience, that in any given field of
endeavor, there was an optimum size for a team. Most of the time, it didn’t
really matter whether a team was slightly too large or small, because there was
a margin for error. But in situations like a prison camp, or a war zone, or a
police patrol, deviating from the optimal number can result in needless death
and in mission failure.

“I studied groups like this one, both law-abiding and law-breaking,
very intensively for two years before forming my own. I am convinced that it
needs to be a group of six, and a mix of genders, and encompassing certain
skills and abilities. And I repeat: I am convinced that the number and makeup
of the group is responsible for its success.”

There was a long pause, in which nothing at all could be heard.

“Blake, since the Secret Six was first formed three years ago, it has
had fifteen members, losing eight after between two years and two months.”

“Yes. Of the original group, only Deadshot and myself remain.”

Deadshot looked up to see if Ochs was eyeing her. The fact that only those two
remained did not eliminate the later-arrived members from consideration: they’d
found clues that suggested some of the more recent members had used someone
else’s identity. A couple of them had never even unmasked in their presence.
But she and Blake were the leading suspects, of course. Assuming that
Mockingbird wasn’t just mindfucking them with the claim of being one of the Six.

“That’s right. And of our nine losses, two were by death, one by disability,
one by voluntary resignation and five due to pregnancy.”

“Yes.”

“And of those five pregnancies, all of them have been your responsibility.”

“Yes, well, it’s something I do. Something I like to do. I’ve been doing it
since I was thirteen years old.”

“Having sex with women?”

“Fathering children. It’s why I became the Cheshire Cat in the first place,
after I’d used up my own money.”

“Yes, settling a trust fund on each child. A need for a large income is a good
strong motivation, one that makes it easier to predict your behavior and makes
me feel secure in having you on the team.”

“Only now you have a problem with it, apparently.”

“Not with making babies per se, but when you do it with teammates, and thus
take them out of the game, that becomes a problem.”

“Well, you don’t have to retire a team member just because she’s pregnant. I
mean, it’s usually not a big problem until the third trimester, and for the
first few months afterward.”

“My policies are my own business, Mr. Blake, and they are not up for
negotiation. If you don’t like them, you are free to leave the group, but I’d
much rather you stayed. You are a very valuable asset.”

“But you want me to stop knocking up my teammates.”

“Yes. Surely there are other women upon whom you could bestow…trust funds.”

“And if I don’t knock it off, you’ll have me neutered, I suppose.”

“Of course not. I respect your abilities far too much to want to make you an
enemy for life.”

Blake chuckled, and continued in an odd tone of voice that gave Ochs the
creeps.

“Oh, I don’t know. If I thought I was facing a threat like that, I’d do
anything to prevent it, as though my life were at stake. But once it was done
and there was nothing I could do about it, who knows? After all, neutered cats
are healthier and live longer.”

“That’s as may be,” Mockingbird continued, in a tone that suggested he too
found Blake’s comments rather creepy, “but in any event, that was not my
intention. If you won’t agree to stop impregnating my team, I will fire you
immediately, and the same if you, er, violate those terms.”

“All right,” Blake said uncertainly, “I can agree to that, except….”

“You need not concern yourself about whether to break it off with Iron-Fisted
Kate – she learned this morning that she is pregnant, and has already been
informed that she will have to leave the team. But there must be no more after
her – is that understood?”

“Yes, Mockingbird, I understand. And yes, I will abide by your . . .
regulation in this matter.”

“Thank you. That is a considerable relief to me. You really are a valuable
member of this group. Good day.”

There was a brief rushing sound which might have been a door opening on a
drafty corridor or an elevator shaft, and then silence until they heard Blake
push his chair back and go through the door.

“Huh,” Hudson said when Ochs had turned the machine off. “That was
interesting, in a gossipy sort of way, but it doesn’t really put us any closer
to knowing who Mockingbird is.”

“Further, I’d say. For one thing, Mockingbird’s story about being in a PoW
camp contradicts what he told me once about having been in the OSS, and
spending most of the war with a Jewish partisan group in Poland.”

“No kidding? Mesmero told me Mockingbird had told him that she’d been too
young for the war, but had gone to Korea with her brother, who died there.”

“Mockingbird lies a lot.”

“That’s true enough.”

“Well, at least I know this much,” Ochs said firmly: “that I’m not
Mockingbird, and Blake isn’t. That just leaves you, Kate, Juan and the chick
in the black hood.”

“Unless of course Blake was sitting there talking into a filtered
microphone, either to deceive us or because he’s even more cracked than we
thought.”

Ochs sighed.

“I wish you hadn’t said that.”

“Well, at least you’re still sure about yourself, I suppose.”

Dogs Playing Poker, Presidents Playing Dumb

2010-11-09T04:25:00.000-08:00

I found this pic awhile back, and was inspired to create a modified version that more accurately depicts the modern Republican party's relationship with its roots.
Today I saw it figuring in a post on Balloon Juice, so I am posting them here.

http://www.balloon-juice.com/2010/11/08/art-appreciation-101/#comments

Answering a "So Much Pun" Challenge

2010-10-27T10:44:00.000-07:00

There you go.

Earth-349: Jimmy Olsen

2010-10-01T20:56:00.000-07:00

Earth-349: Jimmy Olsen
By Anton Psychopoulos, PhD
Disclaimer 1: This story was inspired by a story published in Superman #349,
1980, and also by a story published in Jimmy Olsen #105, 1967, both of which
are copyright DC Comics, Inc. It also draws inspiration from other sources,
including the works of Jack Kirby. This story is written solely for amusement
and is not intended to infringe those copyrights or any others.

Disclaimer 2: This story is not constrained by the stories which inspired it.

Disclaimer 3: This story is not recommended for person under 18, or those who
are uncomfortable with issues of gender and identity.

Jimmy Olsen woke up in the same bedroom he had been waking up in all month. He
supposed that made it “his” bedroom, although he was reluctant to think of it
that way because it seemed as though that would mean surrendering to his
situation, and he didn’t want to do that until he knew what on Earth his
situation was.

His brand of soap (Tugboat) was in the shower, though, and his shaving cream
(Spice Islands) and deodorant (Gladiator) were in the medicine cabinet, and the
clothes in the closet fit him and were more or less his preferred style, so in
about half an hour he was ready to hang his camera around his neck and face the
day.

His neighbor, who looked a lot like him aside from being a couple of inches
taller, was also going out, dressed much as Jimmy was, although his bow tie was
crooked. They both passed their landlady, a slightly plump woman with graying
red hair, who was shampooing the hallway. Jimmy noted with approval that her
bowtie was very neatly tied.

Jimmy stepped out into the street, where there were Olsens as far as the eye
could see.

Cars went back and forth, driven by Olsens of both sexes and all ages, obeying
the directions of a redhaired policewoman who was directing traffic. Jimmy
dodged to avoid a portly, balding Jimmy who was hurrying down the street to
open the bank and nearly ran into a freckle-faced nine-year-old of
indeterminate gender who was hawking newspapers.

Jimmy’s first idea was that the Olsens were all different versions of himself,
snatched by a time machine and dumped here, but that didn’t explain the
females, or the ones who were physically quite different.

A Jimmy of about fourteen, in short-sleeved white shirt, bow tie and leather
jacket, walked down the street holding a transistor radio to his ear. Jimmy
heard a snatch of what Big-O Jimbo, the Red-Haired DJ from the Planet Oh-oh,
was playing on WJO:

I want to ride to the ridge where the West commences

Take in the landscape with all eight senses

Can’t look at hobbles and I don’t like fences

Don’t fence me in….

Jimmy shook his head. Country-Western music hadn’t been the same since the
cowboys had discovered peyote.

Jimmy walked to the next block and entered the diner where he usually had his
breakfast. The waitress was cute and petite, which was a plus for Jimmy, who
was self-conscious about his height (especially now that he shared a town with
Jimmies who might be 5’10 or 6’2 (to say nothing of the nine-foot “Big Jimmy”
and the forty-foot “Turtle-Man”). He’d have made a pass at her by now, except
it felt kind of odd to think about dating someone who seemed like she was at
least his sister, if not himself.

The waitress brought Jimmy his breakfast: six eggs over easy and half a pound
of bacon, with half a loaf of toast, orange juice, tomato juice, prune juice
and a pot of coffee. Every Olsen Jimmy had seen eating had the same kind of
appetite, though they ranged from grossly obese through slightly plump to even
thinner than Jimmy himself.

The waitress smiled openly as she watched him tear into his breakfast, but
Jimmy still didn’t say anything. He hadn’t yet actually seen one of the female
Olsens naked, and he couldn’t quite shake the suspicion that they might all
just be boys who liked to dress up, seeing as how he kind of did himself.

Jimmy thought about all of these things as he ate his bacon and eggs alone at
the counter, while looking idly at last week’s Daily Planet. He’s already read
it. Indeed, he had written most of it.

Neslo the Magnificent entered the diner with a dramatic swirl of his cape, but
that was better than appearing in a puff of smoke as he was sometimes known to
do. When Jimmy had created the “Neslo” persona, he had dyed his hair black,
worn a false beard and used lifts to increase his height. But Jimmy had seen
Neslo in an open-collared shirt and shorts, and noticed his abundant black
chest and leg hair (Jimmy’s own body hair was neither) and sandal-clad feet.

Neslo sat down next to Jimmy and gave the waitress a hard stare. She stood
still for a moment and then nodded. Jimmy didn’t know whether Neslo was really
ordering telepathically, or if it was just part of his schtick, although he
didn’t get the same breakfast each time, and never complained about it.

Jimmy finished and left the diner, leaving coins to pay for his breakfast and a
generous tip, and continued down the street to his job. Along the way, he saw
Secret Agent Double-Five scaling the outside of a building with his hand- and
foot-suction cups. He went into a second-storey window and moments later
emerged holding a female Olsen by the arm.

Elastic Lass suddenly appeared, stretching herself tall enough to grab the
apprehended woman’s other arm, while her free arm entered the apartment and
emerged holding a black satchel from which the ends of strange devices poked.

As he took photos of the arrest, Jimmy tried to remember how he had briefly
come into possession of a set of burglar’s tools from the far future. Or were
they alien burglar tools? It was hard to remember.

A police car pulled up between Elastic Lass’s taffy-like stretched legs. She
and Double-Five handed the burglar Olsen over to a uniformed officer with a
gray-furred wolf face, to the disappointment of a pair of flying Olsens (a boy
in a purple and white suit and a girl in orange and green) who had hoped to
have a role in the capture.

Jimmy continued on his way. The next block ended at Weisinger Plaza, the town
square, where the most important civic organs were concentrated: City Hall,
where a red-bearded Mayor in top hat and red sash held forth in majestic pomp.
The Clinic, where a fat and kindly old nurse kept an arrogant young doctor from
scaring away his patients. The Jail/Police Headquarters, where a hard-faced
Sheriff with six arms was even now taking custody of Burglar Olsen. And the
Daily Planet Building, a grand name for a two-storey building which also housed
a barber shop, a vacuum cleaner store and a used-book dealer. But it did have
a foot-wide brass ringed planet perched on a pole above a glass window which
reproduced the Planet masthead in gold leaf.

Jimmy remembered living in a big city, and being a photographer for the Daily
Planet, which was as its masthead described it, “A Great Metropolitan
Newspaper”. Now he worked for a very different Planet, as its sole
reporter/photographer, sharing its tiny storefront offices with a portly silver-
haired Olsen editor and a scrawny bald-headed Olsen janitor. It was only a
weekly paper in spite of the name, and they were hard-pressed to fill its eight
pages with any news at all, in a town with a population of no more than a
thousand.

It wasn’t clear how the newspaper made any money. Perhaps it didn’t. But once
a week the editor handed Jimmy an envelope containing a sheaf of garishly-
colored bills and shiny silver coins with portraits of assorted Olsens whose
clothing and grooming suggested they had lived in various past generations.
The shops of the town accepted his money, though. The haberdasher sold him
underwear and bow ties, wherever they came from. The restaurants gave him
food, from wherever that came from. There was a lot Jimmy didn’t understand
about his current life, but that didn’t make it all that different from his
other life in that big city called…? He wasn’t sure. Something sort
of…generic, wasn’t it?

Jimmy thought, as he did at least once every day, about talking with someone
about what was going on, at least to his editor. But somehow he couldn’t quite
bring himself to do so. He felt a powerful compulsion -- a powerful need -- to
play along, play his role, pretend nothing was wrong. So he developed his
photos of the burglar-Olsen’s arrest and typed up a brief account of the
incident before knocking off for lunch.

Rather than head for the restaurant where he usually had lunch (if he didn’t
just return to Olsen’s Diner), he walked in the opposite direction, to the end
of the street, at the edge of town.

The town was laid out like a game board, a grid of streets with a single
circular road surrounding it. There were no roads that actually led out of
town. Jimmy had explored the wasteland around the town on foot but hadn’t
found anything worth the effort he’d put into reaching it. This time, he
walked along the curving road, looking left to the sand and rock outside, right
to the bustling little town, and occasionally straight up.

The sky overhead looked…wrong. The sun that rose every morning looked
artificial, somehow, as though if you looked at it through a filter, instead of
sunspots you’d see a Sivana Electric logo. Jimmy snorted at the thought of how
many watts it would be.

That wrongness made Jimmy wonder if they were even on Earth. They might be
under a dome on some asteroid, with artificial air and gravity. Or in a cavern
deep underground. It didn’t matter. There didn’t seem to be any way to get
out of the town, much less its enclosure.

Jimmy heard a distant thudding sound gradually growing louder. He looked out
into the empty land and soon made out the silhouette of the Giant Turtle Olsen,
the only person who regularly walked outside the town (seeing as how he was too
large to fit comfortably anywhere inside it). Jimmy watched the odd sunlight
glint off the many hexagonal plates of the Turtle Man: large ones for his
chest, smaller ones for his limbs, the smallest ones at his neck and groin.

Someone had objected to the Turtle Man walking around naked, and had persuaded
the flying super-Olsens to fit him with a huge blue loincloth, but they
couldn’t get him to leave it on. The Turtle’s yard-long penis, armored except
at the pink glans, dangled freely today. Jimmy was just grateful that he
didn’t, as many turtles did, have two penes.

Jimmy wasn’t sure why he was called a “turtle” man, anyway. With his plated
body he looked more like a dragon than anything from Earth, and really a lot
more like an alien from the cover of some old science fiction magazine. Jimmy
pictured the giant on a cover painting, tearing apart a bridge in a futuristic
city while a rocketship flew around his head.

Jimmy had absolutely no memory of ever becoming a pop-eyed armor-plated giant.

He turned at the next corner and walked back into the center of town. It
wasn’t possible to get more than four blocks from the town square.

A bulbous Olsen, his face obscured by a curtain of hair, a foot-long tongue
dangling to his breast, suddenly stopped and put out a hand to stop his
companion (who had a much more normal face but was entirely robotic from the
neck down). With its other hand, the hairy Olsen-freak pointed upward.

“Wuit! Upp in fa fky!”

Jimmy rolled his eyes. There were three Olsens who flew over the town every
day, as well as one who could strap on a pair of magic wings, and another who
could levitate telekinetically. What was so special about….

Then Jimmy did look up, and saw a flying figure which was definitely not an
Olsen. Even from a distance, there was no mistaking the perfect form and
confident bearing of Superwoman.

The Woman of Steel hovered above the town square, calling out in an
impossibly-loud voice that somehow didn’t hurt Jimmy’s ears.

“Ladies and gentlemen! Olsens! Please listen to me!

“You have probably been wondering, and speculating, on where you are and why
you are here. You may have your own ideas about what is happening. Please
listen, while I explain to you what is going on. You may find what I have to
say upsetting, but I hope you will trust me when I say that I know where you
came from.

“You are clones –“

Superwoman waited for the anguished cries and angry denials of many to die
down, and then continued.

“You are clones, many with your DNA slightly altered from the original, which
is why you come in both genders. Your apparent ages are simply what your
creators chose to grow you to – each of you is actually less than a year old,
some only weeks old.

“Your memories are edited and rewritten versions of the memories of your
original…a close friend of mine.

“You can’t stay in this place. It will soon be incapable of supporting human
life. But I can get you out of here, and I will. I have friends who will help
to place each of you on a parallel world where there is a place for you,
provide you with all necessary documents and assistance to help you get settled
in your new lives.

“Dabney Donovan, the head of the Cadmus Project, is responsible for your
situation. He has committed a terrible crime against you, and he will face
justice. Please take my word for that, also. He will pay.”

Several voices had already been calling out, but now Jimmy found himself asking
the same question as was coming from several others:

“Which of us is the original?”

Superwoman’s face darkened. She shook her head slowly.

“The original Kirsten Olsen…is not here. She never was.”

The implications of Superwoman’s flat statement sank in, and the Olsens stopped
asking questions. One by one, they went to prepare themselves for moving out
of the Olsen town.

Try Other Things Before You Try Killing Yourself

2010-09-30T10:18:00.000-07:00

And other useful advice from rm:

http://rm.livejournal.com/1933522.html?view=22593746#t22593746

For the longest time I thought I wasn't wired for suicide, and that this was all that had saved my life on several occasions. Then I really did feel suicidal.

Bupropion helped*. So did reminding myself to mutter "I want to live" under my breath, instead of "I wish I were dead".

* The first antidepressant I tried didn't help, but I found that it's like reporting sexual abuse: if you don't get help from the first person/drug, keep trying until you do.

Hey, It Was The Least I Could Do

2010-09-17T13:54:00.000-07:00

The call has gone out over the Internet: Take a typically misogynistic "Least I Could Do" strip and give it funnier captions.

Not the funniest comic strip I've ever read, nor even the funniest I've written, but it's definitely better than the original version.

Pastor Jones

2010-09-10T17:22:00.001-07:00

Text of a message Mrs. Psycho and I sent out this morning:

Pastor Jones is back in the news today (first he says he will, and then he won't), and we have decided to donate $20 to the local mosque for the express purpose of providing a copy of the Quran to someone who wants or needs it. We'll inform our local newspapers, also, in the hope that other non-Muslims will follow our example. Maybe we can out-weigh the "pastor's" destruction, for a net increase in the number of Qurans.

We are pretty damned short of money, but we will find $20 in our budget for this purpose, and we hope to persuade some of our friends to do the same.

Considering that "Pastor" Jones' church-and-used-furniture business only has about fifty members, our "action" may be bigger than his.

Earth-349: Green Lantern

2010-08-29T15:16:00.000-07:00

Earth-349: Green Lantern
by Anton Psychopoulos, Ph.D.

Disclaimer #1: This story is set on a hypothetical parallel world within the pre-Crisis DC Universe, based on a story in Superman #349, but is not limited by that story or any other.

Disclaimer #2: Some characters appearing in this story are based on copyrighted characters owned by DC Comics, Inc., Marvel Comics and others. Their use here is not intended to infringe or disparage those copyrights.

Disclaimer #3: This story is not recommended for persons under 18 or the easily offended.

"And when the Security guy turned his flashlight inside the car, the first thing he saw was Tom's face, shining like a glazed doughnut and absolutely dripping with juice!"

Carol Ferris laughed at her own story, then laughed harder as she saw how Liz Jordan was blushing.

"Carol, is that for real? That's why they call him 'Pieface'?"

"If I'm lyin' I'm dyin'."

Liz took another sip of her coffee and shook her head. Looking down, she said softly, "I've never. . .you know."

"You've never had a guy do that for you?"

"No, no, I mean I've never been with a guy who wasn't, you know, white."

"That's easy to fix. You can start with Tom, and work your way up to that architect who's designing the new engine plant."

Liz laughed. Tom Kalmaku was an Eskimo, not very tall and more cute than handsome. The architect (she thought his name was Stewart) was a big, broad-shouldered Negro, darker than Carol's mahogany coffee table. Her laughter died with a shudder as she imagined a man so big, so black, touching her. It was almost unthinkable.

Liz was about to change the subject when her right hand suddenly lit up with a bright green glow. No one on Earth besides those two could even see that light,let alone know what it meant.

A spear of green light shot from the ring to the television set.

"Liz?" Carol said anxiously.

"A new trick I'm teaching it. Watch."

The television came on, as though being activated by some kind of remote control device. On the screen appeared a bosomy redhead with a black patch over her right eye. She wore a purple coverall with an hourglass emblem on one breast pocket. A child about three years old sat on her lap, crowded by the woman's visible pregnancy.

"So when we, the four of us, crawled out of the wreck," the woman on the screen was saying, "we knew we were living on borrowed time twice over, and decided we ought to make good use of the time we'd been given, however much it turned out to be. That's why we --"

The redhead's image vanished suddenly, replaced by a card that read "SPECIAL BULLETIN".

"It scans the airwaves for emergencies in progress," Liz explained as she stood up and let the ring's light play upon her, transforming her black capri slacks,sleeveless plaid blouse and rope-soled sandals into the green, black and white uniform of the Green Lantern.

A newscaster appeared now, describing in plain language but with a breathless manner an earthquake that had just struck Cotati, a small town south of Coast City.

"Cotati, got it," Green Lantern said briskly. A luminous green envelope enclosed the Emerald Gladiatrix and she rose silently from the floor, passing harmlessly through the ceiling and into the Pacific Coast sky.

Carol Ferris kept staring at the ceiling for nearly a minute, until the newscaster declared that "the mystery woman called the Green Lantern" had been seen in Cotati. Clearing roads for fire trucks, lifting rubble off trapped citizens, shoring up buildings with strong though temporary girders of green energy, she had already saved hundreds of lives, and was even now dissolving a pile of old tires into a sticky substance to plug dozens of leaks in a natural-gas pipeline.

Carol winced at the thought of her chum dealing with such a dangerous situation. Natural gas was a terribly volatile, explosive substance. All of the fossil fuels were troublesome. She looked forward to the day when such dirty, dangerous energy sources would be replaced by atomic power.

A camera crew made it into Cotati just in time for a few live shots of Green Lantern patching the pipeline. With a sheepish grin and a modest wave, Liz took off at high speed, but not before the camera captured shots that would be on the front pages of every paper on the West Coast.

Once again Carol thought about starting a diary or annotated scrapbook devoted to Green Lantern. But that was a foolish, self-indulgent notion. Someone could find the thing. Carol was quietly proud that Liz Jordan had made her Green Lantern's only confidante; she would do nothing to endanger that trust.

Once upon a time during the Korean War, Lt. Liz Jordan had just delivered a fighter plane to a United Nations airbase and was badly in need of three days' leave. Her choices were to get a jeep from the motor pool and drive into Seoul, or hitch a ride on a MATS flight going to a South Pacific island. She'd never heard of Bahdnesia, but she hoped it would be something like Tahiti.

Bahdnesia turned out to be nothing at all like Tahiti, but it was certainly a eautiful country, and she'd had a very interesting time, though not an especially restful one. Among other things, she'd saved the life of an aged Bahdnesian monk.

Jordan had thought the only legacy of her time in Bahdnesia was her newfound preference for sunbathing topless, but years later a young Bahdnesian woman had sought her out at the Ferris plant and given her a bequest from that old monk: a tiny oil lantern whose lens was the largest emerald Jordan had ever seen, and a ring set with a smaller emerald cut from the same stone. The magic of those linked stones had given Jordan the power she now wielded as the Green Lantern.

The woman had told Jordan that the monk had been guardian of two other magic gems, a star sapphire and a black diamond, and warned her of a prophecy that two of those who inherited the stones would bring good into the world through them, but the third would bring horror and destruction. Though Jordan pressed,the woman insisted that she could not reveal to her the names of the other two heirs.

Green Lantern flew back to the Ferris Aviation complex with almost as much haste as she had left Carol's apartment. If she didn't hustle, Liz Jordan would be late to work.

Landing invisibly behind a fuel truck, Green Lantern transformed her clothing a second time, then scolded herself for resuming the casual clothes she had worn for her lunch with Carol. She raised the now-invisible green ring to her eyes and was about to command it to dress her in her test pilot's flight suit and helmet when a voice from behind froze her in place.

"Miss Jordan?"

Liz turned, wary. Carl Ferris' tone was mild, but she had caught the slight emphasis in the honorific, his way of reminding her she was the only woman testing planes for Ferris.

"Mister Ferris?"

"Is that the outfit you usually wear when testing my aircraft, Miss Jordan?"

"No, Mister Ferris, it isn't. If you'll excuse me, I'll have to go suit up now. In the same uniform as all your other pilots."

Ferris' face began to darken.

"Miss Jordan, if it were up to me, you would not be wearing any Ferris Aviation uniform, except perhaps that of a Ferris Airways stewardess."

Liz could not completely conceal a look of distaste. Carl Ferris had designed the gaudy, short-skirted FA "fly girl" uniform himself, and it showed.

"Thank you, Mister Ferris, but I find the flight suit more comfortable. And if you find the title 'Miss' uncomfortable, you could always call me 'Captain', and in a few months, God and UC at Coast City willing, you can call me 'Doctor'."

"Miss Jordan, you may feel free to climb into one of my flight suits and report for duty, if you can, within the next --" he checked his watch "--seven minutes, or be reprimanded for tardiness."

The temptation was strong to step into the hangar and emerge a heartbeat later, fully kitted, but that would have been absurdly foolish. As it was, Liz did transform her clothing into a flight suit, and only put on her boots, gloves and helmet the old-fashioned way. Even with that help, she made it to the Green Arrow with only seconds to spare.

The big simulator had a mundane alphanumeric designation, but everyone who worked on it had called it the Green Arrow since the first time the carpenters had installed its green-painted delta wings. They were only plywood in the spaceplane's current incarnation, but one day sleek wings of titanium would carry the Green Arrow's grandchild into orbit.

Liz slipped into the pilot's seat, strapped herself in, fitted on the oxygen mask, waited until she smelled the comforting sour tang of pure O2, then slid the canopy down. The simulator's windscreen snapped into place with a satisfyingly realistic sound.

Still fuming over his encounter with Jordan, Carl Ferris settled in behind his desk and began going over a file relating to Ferris' possible acquisition of Nelson Aviation. He quickly became so engrossed in it that it took him awhile to notice the change in the light in the room. At last he looked up to see that one wall of his office had acquired a luminous patch, an amorphous blob of light that grew and brightened as he watched.

Was it that other obnoxious flying female, Green Lantern, come to tax him with some supposed crime committed by a Ferris employee, or some impertinent request for assistance? But no, this light was yellow, not green. And in a moment the light developed a shining human figure, seated in a luminous chair, a creature of light that moved into the room until it floated in the air before Ferris' desk.

good throbbed a voice, speaking inside Ferris' head with unwholesome intimacy.

"What's good about it?" Ferris snapped. "I have nothing to say to you, Hammond."

As I have nothing to say to the authorities about where I got the missile components I used against Green Lantern last year Hector Hammond sent, with an invisible mental sneer.

"Don't try to threaten me with that," Ferris began, the color (never quite faded) rising again in his face.

I have no desire to threaten you, Ferris. Quite the contrary, I want only to offer you something, something I would like very much for you to have.

"That being?"

Green Lantern

Three days later, Liz Jordan was strapping herself into the Green Arrow for another round of simulated flying. Everything went normally until the canopy slid into place with a sharp click Liz hadn't heard from it before. She looked up to see a small, businesslike lock latching the canopy shut. And a net of gold wire extending across the plexiglass, turning the cockpit into a fiendishly effective trap for Green Lantern, whose ring was powerless against anything yellow.

Green Lantern could do nothing against this trap, but Captain Liz Jordan had gotten herself out of a scrape or two long before she'd ever met old Volthoom. She punched the emergency cowling release switch. No response. She unsnapped the latches on the emergency kit and pulled out a ball-peen hammer. Not as heavy as she'd like, but it would have to do.

The plexiglass was crazed and yielding, and she thought there would be room to get the wire cutters into the golden mesh, but then the whole hangar lit up with a golden glow, and that was all Liz Jordan saw for quite some time.

Standing beside his office desk, Carl Ferris admired his latest acquisition.

Liz Jordan now wore a Ferris Airways stewardess uniform, specially tailored for her at Ferris' orders, with an especially short skirt, an especially low neckline, an especially tight jacket, an especially thin and flimsy blouse.

Ferris stepped forward and patted Liz on the cheek. She glowed with pleasure at the attention.

"'Liz' was a perfect name for you before. A sharp, bitchy name. But you're not a bitch any more. You're my good little personal attendant. What shall I call you?"

"You can call me anything you like, Mister Ferris," the transformed Green Lantern chirped, brown eyes wide with admiration for The Boss.

"Hmm. . . . Betty. No, Betsy. That's your name from now on."

"It's a pretty name. Thank you, Mister Ferris."

Ferris grinned ferally, savoring Betsy's fawning tones and sparkling smile.

"I may have sold my soul to the Devil, but by damn I'll get everything I can out of the bargain."

"I'm flying to Las Vegas for the weekend. You'll come with me. On the way, we can join the Mile High Club."

Betsy squealed with delight.

Light flared from the wall of his office. Ferris grimaced with annoyance. What did Hammond want now?

But it wasn't the yellow of Hammond's life-sustaining nimbus, any more than it was Green Lantern's emerald glow. This light was a brilliant, intense violet-blue. The sort of light that shone from the finest of star sapphires.

There was a human figure in the room, a vague silhouette in the midst of that blinding sapphire glare, a four-armed star of white light shining from approximately the middle of its chest.

"Carl Ferris, you have committed an unspeakable crime. You ought to be given an opportunity to repent of it and learn better, but for the sake of Elizabeth Jordan I must deny you that benefit. Instead, you will remember nothing at all of the last two weeks."

The violet-blue light grew brighter, until it became Carl Ferris' entire world, until staring at it was all he could do. He continued to stare, transfixed, for hours after the light had faded from the room.

Star Sapphire turned to Betsy who stood, still smiling vapidly, where Carl Ferris had ordered her to stand.

"Betsy, Mister Ferris wants you to put your right hand close to your mouth."

Betsy obeyed.

"Repeat after me, Betsy: 'restore the mind of Green Lantern'."

"Restore the mind of Green Lantern."

A green glow leapt out from an invisible source near Betsy's finger. The vacuous smile of Carl Ferris' little stewie was replaced by an expression of grim intensity. Seconds later, the ring appeared, and an instant after that, the uniform of the Green Lantern.

The Emerald Warrior looked down at herself, then brought the ring to her face once more.

"Restore the mind of Elizabeth Jordan," she intoned emotionlessly.

After the light had played over her again, she shook herself and said in a more relaxed tone, "That was . . . strange. At first, I had only the mind of Green Lantern. If she hadn't decided she needed Liz Jordan to carry out her mission, I might have spent the rest of my life with one hell of a one-track mind."

She transformed the Green Lantern uniform into a pale blue sundress and indigo huaraches.

"Now you, Star Sapphire."

She gestured for the apparition to drop the sapphire glow.

"Sorry, Captain. Not just yet."

Hours later, after the staring, unresponsive Carl Ferris had been carried away by an ambulance crew, Carol Ferris was seated at her father's desk, bellowing into the telephone at yet another hapless department head. She seemed to be trying to keep Ferris Air Industries in motion by will alone. Liz Jordan didn't put it past her to manage it.

In the locker room of Hangar Eight, Thomas Kalmaku unscrewed the bottom of his Thermos bottle and looked fondly on the object taped inside, a star sapphire the size of the first joint of his thumb, the gift of the Bahdnesian monk Volthoom.

"Not yet, Liz, not yet. After you've gotten to know Tom Kalmaku a little better, that's when you'll meet Star Sapphire face to face."

Somewhere else entirely, a black diamond lay in another hand, pulsing with enormous energies which would soon be deployed for its owner's purposes, whatever those might be.

Life Can Be Hard -- Don't Make It Harder, Anton

2010-08-24T09:23:00.000-07:00

Well, let's see: my father is still very frail and needs regular assistance. My aunt and uncle were in an accident on Saturday and I'm helping to look after Uncle (who is uninjured but is frail and has Alzheimer's) while Aunt (too badly injured to carry out her usual role as his caregiver) is hospitalized.

And then there are a couple of other obligations that I won't even go into here.

And on top of all that, whenever someone says something complimentary or encouraging, or inquires solicitously how I am holding up, I feel as though I am somehow being insulted. Not a good attitude to take, I really must work on it.

Happy 90th Birthday, Ray Bradbury

2010-08-22T21:13:00.001-07:00

Here's your present:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1IxOS4VzKM

Head Above Water

2010-08-01T17:03:00.000-07:00

Last month, I tried a new antidepressant. I won't annoy you with the brand name or a testimonial of its effectiveness. It works for me where others did not -- YMMV.

But I really do feel very different.

I can now look back over my life and realize just how abnormal it was for me to feel as though I were swimming along the surface of a pool of dirty, stagnant water, trying hard not to disturb my perfect equilibrium of buoyancy lest I sink beneath the surface and have to fight my way back to the air.

The disturbances that could send me sinking were almost any unhappy thought -- regrets from the past, worries about the future, dissatisfaction with the present -- anything upsetting.

It seems a lot easier for me than it ever has been before. I think I will be able to make more progress in my life now.

Maybe. We'll see. I live in hope.

The only alternative is to live without hope.

So Terribly Sorry

2010-07-09T09:53:00.000-07:00

It is so hard to restore trust once it has been broken.

And so easy, when a person doesn't trust you, to give offense without meaning to.

So hard to rebuild a friendship.

And when your time is limited....

Try It And See

2010-07-08T07:28:00.000-07:00

Some years ago, a person I knew professionally said that going on an antidepressant was the best thing that had ever happened to her.
"They should hand out free samples on streetcorners," she said. After all, she reasoned, those who weren't helped by it could simply not take it again.
I'm not sure I would go that far, but I do wish that I had tried Wellbutrin sooner.
I'm being cautious here, since I'm only on my second week, but I do think that it is helping.
Last night, I finally got a clear picture in my mind of how I have been living my life these past fifty years: I pictured myself swimming on my back in a sea of foul, dirty water, knowing that at any moment I might make a false move and sink into it.
Or, it's like that kind of dream where you are aware that you are dreaming, but it feels as though if you can ease smoothly into wakefulness without breaking the spell, then the dog really will have come home alive after all -- only the "dream" in this case is the notion that life is worth living.
That's how I have spent most of my life: at any moment, I might remember some obligation I have not yet carried out, or worse yet something I did wrong which I can't ever take back, and then down I would go, to spend minutes or hours or days in that state of helpless misery and horror.
That is why I agreed with Plato that every person's life is "a terrible battle". And why I wrote that story that became the first post here that says just getting through the day requires "a man of steel".
It's possible that this sense of abject misery lying in wait at all times was the origin of the attention deficit that has kept me from doing better at work.
But I noticed the other day that this cycle of shame and recrimination wasn't happening the same way. Instead, when I thought of something bad, I would wince or shudder and then say calmly, "Well, I need to do that/avoid that/never do that again," the way other people seem to be able to do without much trouble.
It might just be that I'm getting better at handling things. To look objectively at what I am doing and make a rational judgment about it is what I was going for in all that therapy. And it's one of the things they lean on heavily at Co-Dependents Anonymous. Or maybe I'm kidding myself when I think that I'm getting better at it.
But I don't think so. I really do think that I am thinking more clearly about the world and my place in it.
And I am doubting my own judgment a lot less, too.

I Can See (A Little More) Clearly Now

2010-06-01T23:44:00.000-07:00

I can see, more clearly than before, at least, that my biggest problem is and always has been my own image of myself, my own harsh assessment of myself.

When I first met Mrs. Psycho, I was 23 and she was 46, she had been married, she had lived all over the country, she had raised four children, &c. I wanted her but I felt totally outclassed by her.

And now, 26 years later, older myself than she was back then, and having raised four kids my own damn self, I find...that I still feel inferior to her. But now I can see that it's just me.

I also see how much of the misery I have lived with for most of my life really has been my own fault. Not all of it, no, but a lot. And I see how all of it would have been easier to take if only I had been on my own side then whole time.

I have other problems in my life, and not all of them are inside me, but I feel a lot more confident of being able to deal with them now.

To See The Birds Come Back

2010-05-28T21:21:00.000-07:00

Charlie came home from school and found Leo sitting on the front step. Leo was Charlie’s favorite grown-up.

“Hey, dudito, how’s it going?”

“Hey, dudissimo, not bad. What are you doing?”

“Just going to take a walk through the trees over by the soccer fields. Want to come?”

Charlie unlocked the door, put away his backpack and came out to join Leo. They headed along the unpaved footpath beside the house, towards the woods that stood between their street of houses and the long row of soccer fields at the edge of town.
“So, what happened at school?”

“We read a poem called ‘Chicken Soup With Rice’. It’s by Maurice Sendak, who wrote In the Night Kitchen. Do you know that poem?”

“Yes, I do. ‘Happy once, happy twice, happy chicken soup with rice’.”

“Anyway, the teacher said we should each of us write a line to add to the poem. It could be about a time of the year, or a particular day of the year, or a time of day. Preston diMallea wrote, ‘At supper time, it’s so nice to eat supper’, and got mad when everybody laughed. Patti Schulz wrote, ‘On Saturday it’s so nice to visit my Grandpa’. And then Tori Garcia said, ‘At dinner time, it’s so nice to have dinner with my Dad’, and Preston diMallea got mad again and said that’s what he meant.”

“Yeah, sounds like a lot went on in that class. So what did you write?”

Charlie gave an embarrassed smile and said, “’In the spring it’s so nice to see the birds come back.’”

Leo stopped walking, staring at the sky between the trees.

“Oh, man, Charlie, you don’t know just how nice that is.”

Charlie put his hand on Leo’s arm. He could tell that Leo was thinking about something that was making him feel funny.

“What do you mean?”

Just then a big bird flew overhead, looking big and black against the blue sky.

“Look at that one. It’s a turkey vulture.”

Charlie made a face.

“Turkey vultures have ugly heads.”

“They have the kind of heads they need for the way they live. And don’t they look beautiful in flight?”

“Yeah. I like how their feathers spread out like fingers.”

They saw a crow on the ground, picking up and eating some piece of garbage. Charlie remembered the story Leo had told about how the Rainbow Bird got blackened into a crow by carrying a smokey torch.

“It is nice, Charlie, to see the birds come back. And not just in the spring. There are more birds every year now.”

“Why is that?”

“Because for a long time, the birds were dying away, and nobody knew why. One day, a woman was walking in the trees in the springtime like we are doing right now, and she noticed that she could hardly hear any birds. And she said to herself, ‘If the birds keep going away, one day there will be no birds at all singing in the springtime. It will be a…silent spring.”

Charlie shuddered at the way Leo said those last words.

They walked along, and it seemed to Charlie as though there were birds everywhere he looked: crows and robins on the ground, big turkey vultures high in the sky, tiny sparrows and meadowlarks in the tree branches.

“So what was happening to the birds?”

“Well, that woman wanted to know, so she studied birds carefully, to find out what was going wrong. Were hunters killing them? Were the birds catching new diseases? Were humans cutting down too many trees, so birds had no place to build their nests? She found out all of those things were happening, but none of them explained why the birds were going away so fast.

“And then she found out that when birds laid their eggs, the shells were too thin, and the eggs broke before the baby birds could grow inside them. Sometimes the eggs broke when the big birds sat on them to keep them warm.”

“Oh, gross!”

“So then she wanted to find out what was making the eggshells so thin, and she found out that it was being caused by DDT, a poison that farmers were using to kill the bugs that were eating their crops. See, the bugs breathed in the DDT, and got sick and died, but there were a few bugs that could live with DDT in them, so those few bugs had lots of babies, and soon all the bugs were safe from DDT, but the farmers kept on using more and more DDT, and the birds were eating those bugs that were full of DDT.

“The thing is, DDT gets into your body and it stays for your whole life. And when a bird ate a hundred bugs, it got a hundred bugs’ worth of DDT inside it, and it stayed. And when that bird ate more bugs the next day, it got even more DDT in it.”

“But not all birds eat bugs, do they?”

“Some birds eat leaves and seeds, but the plants were all full of DDT too. And the birds that ate mice, like owls, or that ate other birds, like hawks, got even more DDT, because they got all the DDT from all the bugs that those mice and birds ate. So the big birds, like turkey vultures and bald eagles, suffered the most of all.”

Charlie shook his head.

“That’s terrible.”

“It was terrible, Charlie. And year after year, there were fewer birds in the sky.”

“But then people stopped using DDT, right?”

“Not at first. They didn’t want to. They said they couldn’t keep growing food unless they used DDT. They said things like, ‘Do you care more about bird babies, or human babies?’

“It took a long time, and lots of work. And the woman who had been worried about the birds had to go all over the world telling people they had to stop using DDT, and to be careful about all of the chemicals they used, for growing food and for other reasons. It was a huge amount of work, because people were stubborn and didn’t want to admit that there was a problem. There was a man who went on TV and ate a spoonful of DDT to show that it wouldn’t kill him, but that was a trick, because one spoonful of DDT won’t do a human a lot of harm – it’s the damage that lots of DDT over a long time can do to all the animals that is the big problem.

“So that woman spent years giving lectures, and writing books, and talking with important people, trying to get them to stop using DDT. And she went right on working so hard, even after her doctor told her that she was very sick, and was going to die soon. She decided she would rather spend her last days trying to save the birds, even though being sick made her very tired all the time and all she wanted to do was rest. And on the day she died, there were still people saying they didn’t want to stop using DDT. But finally, many years later, they finally did stop. And many years after that, the DDT began to go out of the world – slowly, slowly. And the birds started to come back.”

“But she was already dead.”

“Yes, and I think that’s the saddest thing about that woman’s story: not that she died young, but that she died before she could know whether she had saved the birds or not.”

“The birds coming back was her reward, but she didn’t get to see it.”

“No. So I guess it is our job to watch the birds come back for her, and to remember that the birds wouldn’t be here if she hadn’t done all that hard work.”
They came out of the trees at the far end of the long row of soccer fields. There was one big bird flying very high up. Charlie pointed it out. Leo looked for a moment and then squeezed Charlie’s hand.

“That’s not a turkey vulture. Look at its head. It’s bigger than a buzzard’s.”

“And it looks like it’s all white.”

“Charlie, that’s a bald eagle.”

“It’s our country’s bird,” Charlie whispered.

“When I was your age, there were only a few eagles left. I thought that by the time I grew up, they would be gone. I thought I would never see a bald eagle flying free like that one is.”

“But they’re coming back, too, right?”

Leo stroked Charlie’s head.

“That’s right.”

“I’m glad you got to see an eagle, Leo.”

“I’m glad you got to see it, too, Charlie.”

They watched the eagle until it was out of sight.

I Should Be Happier Right Now

2010-05-15T18:49:00.000-07:00

I got to do two of my favorite things today, and didn't have to do anything terribly unpleasant.

Yes, my father is still dying. And yes, I am still pathetically without a decent career, or even a solid job. And the other things.

Still, I don't know what else to do besides keep moving forward.

And bear with this misery in the hope that I will feel better later on.

Happy Mother's Day

2010-05-09T11:22:00.000-07:00

In honor of his own mother, and her mother, and his wife (most definitely a mother), and to other mothers* who loom large in his life.

*Yes, especially that one.

http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/happy_mothers_day/

-- Dr. Psycho

There are five things we cannot change: 1) everything changes and ends, 2) things do not always go according to plan, 3) justice is not guaranteed, 4) pain is a part of life, and 5) people are not loving or loyal all the time. -- David Richo

My Father is Sick

2010-05-07T23:10:00.000-07:00

My father is sick again.
My father is still sick.
My father is sicker.
He is terribly sick, and has been for a long time.
I am sure he is sick of being sick.
It is hard for me to admit it, but I am getting kind of sick of it, too.
I feel guilty about that.
It kind of makes me feel....

Well, That Sucked

2010-05-04T10:25:00.000-07:00

I was working for the Census, doing work I had never done before, feeling rather stressed but enjoying the challenge of doing work I had never done before.

But this morning, I was informed that I will no longer be working for the Census.

I could have done without that.

But hey, life goes on, live and learn, and like that.

Not the first or the worst failure I've ever committed.

Pain in the Past, Hope for the Future

2010-04-12T23:35:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I had a sudden insight into something that I thought I had already accepted and assimilated: the fact that I have caused terrible pain to the people I cared most about.

I thought I had already owned that, and owned up to it, but suddenly it sank in just a bit deeper, the false hope and disappointment I had created by my careless actions.

It is hard to accept that reality. Apparently I can only do it in small increments.

Still, the reality is what it is. I did do those things, and I had that effect. All I can do now is to admit to what I have done, apologize for it, and try to do better in years to come.

I know that I am not saying anything that I haven't said before, but periodically I can see these things that I am saying again more clearly.

Quakers have a way of saying, "I'll hold him in the Light" to mean they will be praying for him. My wife and I have a joke, "We'll hold him in the Light so God can see him better". But maybe when I am held in the Light, it helps me see more clearly, too. And maybe I have been granted a bit of enlightenment, in spite of everything.

The Good Guys Won

2010-03-21T20:15:00.000-07:00

It just happens that I had a really good day today.

And it ends with the health care reform bill passing.

Thank you, Mister President.

Thank you, House and Senate.

Thank you all.

It Worked

2010-03-18T14:48:00.000-07:00

The other day, while looking after my frail old father, I arranged an outing for him. I took him into town to visit his sister and her husband. Also present were my wife and her former husband, who by chance lives in the same neighborhood.

It was a pleasant, low-key event (my wife referred to it as a "tea party", and in fact tea and cookies were present). When I had taken my father home and gotten home myself, I felt inordinately good about the day's accomplishments, and wondered why.

It's not as though I had never orchestrated an event involving multiple persons, one of whom was quite dependent on me (I've raised four children, after all). But I think it's possible that this was the first time in all my five decades of life that I initiated such an event and organized it from start to finish, as opposed to having at least part of it (especially the initial idea) be someone else's work.

Earth-349: Iron Maiden

2010-03-04T11:32:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer #1:  This story is inspired by a story in Superman #349, but
is not limited by that story or any other.
Disclaimer #2: This story makes use of copyrighted characters owned by
DC Comics, Inc., Marvel Comics, King Features Syndicate, and other
publishers. It is written for amusement only and is not intended to
infringe or disparage those copyrights.
Disclaimer #3: This story is not recommended for persons under 18 or the
easily offended, especially those who are uncomfortable with themes such
as transvestism and transgender.

The contrast between the two men on the platform was sharp.  One was
tall and powerfully built, with a body that seemed to have been carved
from a single block of lustrous bronze.  Bareheaded, his brown hair
fitted to his head like a skullcap.  His lightweight tan suit showed off
his flawlessly developed muscles, with only a black sweater vest as a
concession to the cold.
The other man was tall, but looked puny next to his companion.  Bundled
in a black greatcoat, the lower half of his face obscured by a red wool
muffler, broad-brimmed hat pulled low, only his intense, deepset eyes
and prominent nose were visible.
Wordlessly, the two men faced each other.  The larger man smiled.  The
other might have, but it seemed unlikely.  They placed their hands on a
pair of old-fashioned knife switches and, after a brief pause, threw
them both.
The cameras captured the gray concrete wall behind them, as a section
wide as a boulevard suddenly leapt into the air in a cloud.  A moment
later, microphones transmitted the thunder of the explosion.
The explosion was still echoing, the cloud still rising, when the
Republikswehr pioneers advanced to clear away the rubble.  With shovels,
crowbars, wheelbarrows and small bulldozers, they cleared the remains
of the demolished wall within minutes.  They took care not to move
further inward than they needed to to remove the rubble blocking the road.
The cameras moved closer, showing that the road did indeed continue beyond
the wall.  But with no maintenance for two decades, the road beyond the
wall was little better than rubble itself.
Now the two men stood outside the opening in the wall.  But neither of
them would be the first to walk on that road.  They waited for a small
young man with snow-white hair, who led a little black-haired girl by the
hand.  The men, the pioneers and the large crowd watching behind the
cameras were reverently silent as the pair passed through the wall and
into the newly opened city.
Only after Richard Heinrich Benz, Chancellor of Germany, had officially
escorted little Anna Berlin into the city, were they joined by Kenneth
Robeson, President of the United States, and Maxim Griantov, Premier of
the Soviet Union.
The announcer, "the" newsreader to American audiences, had restrained
himself while the wall was being broken.  Now he began speaking softly.
"The breaking of the Berlin Wall marks a great transition indeed.  Not
only is the city at Europe's heart returning to life, but the whole
world seems to be breathing easier.  With the nuclear disarmament accord,
the partition of Indochina, and the withdrawal of U.S. and Soviet forces
from Europe, most agree that it is safe to say the Cold War is over.  The
threat which hung over the heads of us all for nearly two decades has been
removed, and . . . ."
Tony's view of the TV set blurred, and he knew he was crying.  It had
been so long since he'd been able to cry.  It felt good.  It didn't hurt.
The knot in his chest was untying, it didn't --"
"Burn."
The Mandarin held out his right hand, palm up, middle finger extended.
Tony knew that the gesture was not obscene in Chinese culture.  But in
this case, the effect certainly was.
A beam of red heat shot from the villain's hand, not seeming to
originate from the ring on his extended finger, but from some aura
surrounding him.  Tony didn't really understand how the alien
rings worked.  He supposed the Mandarin didn't, either.
Although he dressed in the fashion of an old-time mandarin, even daring
to affect the coral button on his cap that rightly belonged only to one
confirmed in office by the Emperor, Tony knew that his old foe was really
just another of the bandits who harassed the local people in the lawless
region around China's southern border.  Or had been, before he stumbled
across the alien power rings, and learned to use them.
Inside the armor of Iron Maiden, Anthony Stark writhed in agony and waited
for the end.  Sooner or later, the Mandarin's heat ray would destroy the
pacemaker in his breastplate, and the remains of his heart would stop
beating, and the pain would go away at last.  Either that, or his pain
would only have begun.
I went searching in my memory for a happy time, trying to hide from the
pain.  Apparently, the happiest moment of my recent life was watching
news on TV.  What does that say about my life?
The heat ray stopped.  The Mandarin looked down at the charred armor and
turned his hand over, extending the index and middle fingers together.
"Heal."
The ray was golden and shimmering, quite beautiful.  Tony wondered if
the Mandarin had chosen its appearance.  The excruciating pain of
second-degree burns lessened, faded to an itch, vanished.  His brain
was slapped out of an advanced state of shock, allowed no rest.  The
alternate burning and healing had been going on for hours now, and
Tony's mind was suffering the effects of pain greater than the human
body could normally endure.  But he knew that worse was coming.
The Mandarin stood over the blackened, pitted shell of the Iron Maiden
armor.Tony wondered how much of the breastplate was left, when the
Mandarin would begin to notice how the breasts were being eaten away,
how much skin was showing through the holes.  Sooner or later, the
Mandarin would realize that the body inside the armor wasn't really
that of a tall, muscular woman with prominent breasts.  What he would
do to his prisoner then would make the current abuse seem kindly.
Tony Stark had always taken comfort in escaping from his life as an
industrialist and social aristocrat into the guise of an elegantly
dressed lady.
When shrapnel had lacerated his heart and made him dependent on a metal
breastplate for survival, he had not been able to resist the temptation
of giving it breasts, of building a suit of powered armor that was an
extension of his secret store of gowns and makeup, a red and gold outfit
that was, he thought, his finest design ever.  Now, his imposture was
about to be revealed to his deadliest enemy, and the pain of the burning
rays was almost welcome, since it blotted out the shame he felt as he
cowered in the remnants of his disguise.
He only had one chance of escaping the full wrath of the Mandarin: goad
him into using too much heat, trick him into killing him quickly.
Tony raised a blackened arm.  The strength-boosting motors were dead,
making it an effort to lift the arm.  He extended a finger, seeing
charred metal flaking off of perfect pink skin.  He pointed to the
studded circle on the breast of the Mandarin's robe.
"If you're a Nationalist, why aren't you on Taiwan with your precious
Generalissimo?"
Tony knew what the symbol really meant, but he hoped to goad the
Mandarin into attacking.
The gaunt Chinese villain did not fire again, but merely curled his lip
in disdain.
"This sacred sign does not belong to those Kuomintang cowards.  It is
the symbol of a far older and worthier movement, in support of the true
leaders of China, a cause the so-called Nationalists once supported but
have now forsaken."
He thumped his chest, striking the center of the stylized chrysanthemum.
"I serve the cause of every true Chinese patriot: the restoration of the
divinely-appointed dynasty of the Ming!"
Tony forced a laugh.  He noticed that the electronic voice filter was
still working, giving Iron Maiden a feminine contralto voice.
"You're a little late, aren't you?  That was a couple of dynasties ago.
There aren't any Ming left."
The villain smiled.
"Oh, wench, but you are wrong.  There is a prince of the house of Ming
still living."
He gestured towards the ceiling.
"He is out there, among the stars, ruler of a mighty realm.  But one day
he will return to us, and when he does, he will be generous with his loyal
subjects.  And to traitors and foreign pigs, he will be . . . merciless!"
Tony wanted to laugh at this belief, but his heart wasn't in it.  After
all, the Mandarin's own rings had come from space.  Some people said
Superwoman herself was an alien.  But he would try to put some feeling
into his mockery.
Pathetic as he was, held down by his ruined armor, he had to find some
way to make the Mandarin lose his temper.  Some way to bring on a quick
death rather than the torments and mutilations the outlaw would inflict
upon him once he knew he'd been cheated of the opportunity to make Iron
Maiden his concubine.
He opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted by a thunderclap
from outside, followed moments later by an immense crash that spoke
of splintered timber and pulverized concrete.  A wall fell open like
a drawn curtain, and sunlight entered the room.  The Mandarin fled for
the door, firing rays of a dozen colors at the huge body that stood
framed in the sunlight, and the flying figure that joined it, adding
its own light to the room.
Thunderstrike lumbered after the Mandarin, but the Human Torch snuffed
her flame and bent over Tony.  In a moment the Atom was appearing from
tiny obscurity, using her more-than-normal-sized strength to pry away
the ruins of Iron Maiden's armor.
Foolishly, Tony tried to cross his arms over his chest, to protect
his secret for a moment longer, but that only sped up the crumbling of
the charred shell.  As the Torch helped him to a sitting position, the
last of the breastplate fell away, and Tony realized that it had to have
been wrecked long since.  How many minutes, perhaps hours, had his heart
been beating on its own? The Mandarin's healing rays must have worked
even better than either man had suspected.
As the Torch brushed away crumbs of char and examined Tony's body, he
wondered at his comrades' calm in the face of his unmasking.  His fellow
Avengers were showing no sign of the shock they must feel at finding a man,
a notorious womanizer, under their teammate's armor.
The Torch and the Atom wrapped Tony in a throw taken from a couch.  They
were carrying him towards the hole in the wall when Thunderstrike returned,
jamming her hammer into her belt.
"The base villain did flee, abandoning his stronghold," she boomed.
"And I would suggest we make a more seemly retreat, for the forces of the
Chinese Communists do approach in haste.  Though it was we ourselves who did
rout the rogue, and apprise his enemies of this fortress's whereabouts, I
fear we will not be much welcome amongst them."
As Thunderstrike easily scooped Tony's body into her arms, he exchanged
glances with the other Avengers.  Their concern mirrored his own.  At first,
Donna had only used that pseudo-Elizabethan dialect when there were
reporters around, but lately she'd been acting more and more like she
really believed the mysterious object she carried was Thor's own Mjolnir,
as though she thought she was some figure from bastardized myth.  Every
time Donna St. James transformed herself, Thunderstrike seemed to be less
like Donna.
Tony feared they were heading to a confrontation over this obsession of hers.
Thunderstrike carried Tony to the waiting chariot, her Clydesdale-sized
goats already prancing impatiently.  The Torch, as usual, was humming "I
Got Plenty of Nothin'".  Jostling in Thunderstrike's arms, Tony marveled
at how good he really did feel, now that the accumulated shocks of burning
and healing were fading.  He moved his fingers, flexed his legs.  But
something wasn't quite right.  It felt as though a flap of torn muscle
were lying on his chest.  He reached up, fingers probing delicately.
His hand froze as it closed on something that could not,  could not, be
finally there, after all those years of wishing.
Unless, perhaps, the Mandarin's healing rays could heal better than
anyone had ever suspected....

Contact the author at dr_psycho1960@hotmail.com

Mount Flushmore

2010-02-21T17:34:00.000-08:00

Down Below the Street

2010-02-14T14:02:00.000-08:00

One of my favorites from when my kids were little: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Top8ICjjMw4

To See The Birds Come Back

2010-02-04T13:21:00.000-08:00

For a long time I wasn't sure whether I really was seeing more birds in the Willamette Valley than I had as a child. The answer, though, is yes, I was.

I wondered the other day whether I had really seen a mature bald eagle near Bellfountain Road, just south of Philomath, while taking my father to the gym. Even after seeing a large bird with a light-colored head twice in the same vicinity, I still wasn't sure. But the answer is, yes, I had.

It reminded me of a time years ago when I walked on a country road with one of my kids when he was little, and told him about how a woman who had noticed one day that there seemed to be fewer birds than there used to be, and wondered if it were true, and if so what was causing it....

"And when she found out that DDT was causing birds' eggshells to be so thin the baby birds couldn't hatch, she told all her friends that people needed to stop using DDT to kill the insects, and her friends said, 'But everybody uses DDT. It would be impossible to get everyone to stop using it.' But she said, 'If we don't stop using DDT, one day there will be no more birds at all -- so we have to stop, even if it is hard to do it.'

"So she kept on talking about DDT, and she went around and found proof that the birds really were going out of the world, and that DDT really was to blame, and she got people to stop using it, and she got laws passed on one country after another to stop people from making it, and finally people agreed that it had to stop, and they did stop.

"But the woman was still worried about the birds, because part of the problem with DDT was that it didn't get used up quickly -- it stayed in the bodies of the bugs that were poisoned by it, and it stayed in the bodies of the birds who ate the bugs, and it was going to take a long time for the DDT that was already out there to finally go away, and maybe all the birds would die before that happened.

"And then she found out she was sick, and would soon die. And so she died never knowing for sure whether she had saved the birds or not. But we know now that the answer is, yes, she did."

I enjoyed telling my child that story. I hope one day to tell it ot other children, too.

Nose Jobs

2010-02-02T20:34:00.001-08:00

Right now I am reading Tamara Drewe,

http://www.powells.com/biblio/0547154127?&PID=29017

by Posy Simmonds,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posy_Simmonds

an adaptation of Far From the Madding Crowd

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_from_the_Madding_Crowd

by Thomas Hardy

http://www.yale.edu/hardysoc/Welcome/welcomet.htm

In the adaptation, the Bathsheba Everdene character, Tamara Drewe, has had a nose job as part of her backstory. It started me to wondering what character from a well-known work of fiction might, in a modern-day retelling, get or have had a nose job, a boob job or some other cosmetic enhancement.

I'm not thinking of a character whose story arc would be radically changed by surgery, like Cyrano de Bergerac or the Phantom of the Opera, but rather a person whose history, as written, might include surgery if it had been available at the time.

I'm sure there are characters who fit that description perfectly, but I can't think of one at present. The closest I can manage is a sort of opposite: a version of Silas Marner

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silas_Marner

in which instead of a miser, the central character is a vain pretty-boy actor whose life is changed dramatically by having his nose broken.

So, does anyone have a nomination?

Deleted Scene

2010-01-28T14:34:00.000-08:00

I discovered today that the file for "Crisis on Earth-348" was imperfect, so I
re-formatted it. Since my wife and I have just been watching Season 6 of
Smallville on DVD, "deleted scenes" were on my mind, so I thought I'd share
with you my idea of a bonus scene:

The shaken young heroes sat around a table at the first coffee shop they had
seen beside the road. They had looked in their various pockets and wallets for
anything they could use for money, but none of them were sure what the money on
Earth-348 looked like. Finally Danny offered up his lucky silver dollar, issued
in 1854 and with a portrait of George Washington on it. Dick had noticed a
reference to Washington having been the first President in Earth-348's United
states, and he figured that even if the coin didn't match exactly with their own
money, it was probably the right size, and the average person wouldn't be too
surprised to see an old coin they didn't recognize. It was the best idea they
had, anyway, short of taking some piece of their equipment to a pawn shop, and
they wanted to take a break right away.

The clerk had taken the dollar without so much as a look, and given Danny two
quarters and three dimes in change. He laid them on the table beside the
glasses. Paula added a pocketful of her own change and passed her emerald over
them. Soon the coins were shifting, Naomi Franklin quarters changing to Ulysses
Grants, Eleanor Roosevelt dimes to Woodrow Wilsons, Joseph Black Diamond nickels
to ones bearing someone none of them could identify.

Dick took two of the quarters and went to a small rack of magazines. he came
back with a tabloid-sized book with a cardboard cover that read "Inventorum for
1944". Apparently it was something like an almanac.

"Okay, Dick," Danny said, sipping an odd cola drink, "you seem to have some idea
what's happened to Coast City, so let's rap."

Dick opened up the "Inventorum" to what appeared to be a map of the United
States and put his finger on the West Coast.

"Nothing's happened to Coast City. It's just that this isn't Coast City,
Califia. It's Golden Gate City, in the state of Eldorado, on a parallel world
called Earth-348. Also, the date on the calendar over there is June 5th, 1944."

Danny gasped.

"The day before D-Day?"

"Dummy up, Dan-o. It hasn't happened yet, here. Anyway, it won't necessarily
happen the same way here."

"Is this, like, an alternate history kind of thing?" Danny asked. "Like it's the
world the way it would have been if the South had won Civil War II?"

"More like a parallel history," Dick said. "Things happen differently, but tend
to come out the same in the long run."

He pointed to the map, with its unfamiliar state boundaries.

"Like, they have 48 stars on their flag, the same as we did in '44, but they
don't represent the same 48 states. And they never had a Civil War I, but there
was something like a second War of Independence a few years later, and Jackson
was the Army leader and wound up as President, and they had what they call the
War Between the States in the 1860s, almost the same as on our Earth."

"So they're still gonna beat Hitler on this world, right?" asked Paula, a bit
anxiously.

"Probably. But it might take another two years here, or there might be a coup in
Germany and the war be over tomorrow. No way of knowing exactly how the parallel
history will work out. So don't go around making any predictions to people, or
talking about some secret military operation before it's even begun."

Paula leaned over and punched Danny's shoulder.

"Or making any bets at the racetrack."

"Seriously, though," Dick continued, "it's important that you guys understand
just how different this world is from ours, and how you can't take anything for
granted. Look here, for instance."

He put a finger on the eastern end of the map.

"There's no Metropolis."

"There's no New Troy at all."

Dick turned the page to a map of Europe, passing over the arrows which indicated
the recent movements of the World War, to put a finger on the eastern
Mediterranean.

"No old Troy, either," he said softly.

Earth-349: Crisis on Earth-348

2010-01-28T14:31:00.000-08:00

Earth-349: Crisis on Earth-348
by Anton Psychopoulos, Ph.D.

Crisis on Earth-348Disclaimer #1: This story is set on a hypothetical
parallel world within the pre-Crisis DC Universe, based on a story in
Superman #349, but is not limited by that story or any other.

Disclaimer #2: Some characters appearing in this story are based on
copyrighted characters owned by DC Comics, Inc., Marvel Comics and
others. Their use here is not intended to infringe or disparage those
copyrights.

Disclaimer #3: This story is not recommended for persons under 18 or
the easily offended.

Outwardly, the minibus in the left northbound lane of the Pacific Coast Highway
could have been any one of millions of Volkswagens driven by young people all
over the world. Better-kept than most, with no rust or dents, and perhaps its
motor sounded deeper and quieter than the sewing-machine rattle of the usual
VW, but at a glance it was just another Type 2, with four well-groomed kids
inside.

In fact, only the hood ornament and some of the exterior panels had been made
at Wolfsburg. From its tires (which would not go flat even if punctured by
bullets) to its windows (which bullets would not penetrate at all), it had
been custom-built from exotic materials by brilliant craftsmen at the Dugan
Motor Works. Its young owners called it the Type 2000. It had absorbed almost
half of the two million dollars Roberta Wayne and Jolene Dodds had allotted to
the group.

Dick Gordon was driving. Dick always drove. He rarely let them forget that he
was Batwoman's partner, or how much of the Teen Titans' budget came from his
patroness. In jeans and a red turtleneck, he still looked like a boy wonder.

Jenny West was riding shotgun, in purple bellbottoms and a white peasant
blouse. A red and gold medallion that dangled between her small breasts
concealed the tightly-compressed costume of Impulse, the Flash's young
protegee.

Behind them sat Danny Dunbar and Paula Manning (known to the Atom and Green
Lantern, respectively, as Dyna-Mite and Lamplighter). They sat well apart, to
avoid Jenny's teasing, waiting impatiently for a stop so they could make out.

The Teen Titans were on their way to Coast City.

Barely a year before, Robin had gotten together with Impulse and Sandy the
Golden Boy, just for a lark. They'd brought a minor criminal to justice. More
importantly to their way of thinking, they'd hit it off as friends and decided
to get together on a regular basis. Their respective guardians had loved the
idea and bankrolled it quite generously; Dodds had persuaded the other adults
not to try to run the group themselves, letting the kids find their own way.

Their way hadn't been easy to find. By the time they moved into their New
Jersey headquarters (an old artillery emplacement they called "the cave"), they
had been joined by Aqualass and Dyna-Mite, who had quickly become an item. A
rude remark by Sandy about "interracial" romances had led to a fight between
the two boys, Sandy had been expelled from the group and Aqualass had
resigned. Since then, Lamplighter had joined, Ant Boy had come and gone, and
the team had been on the verge of disbanding at least twice.

It hadn't been easy keeping up interest in the team during the school year, but
they'd spent an exciting summer together, travelling around the country
helping teenagers in one bad scene after another. Now they hoped to get in one
more good session in Coast City before heading back East.

In the city people called "The City", trouble was brewing between the adult
authorities and the local non-conformist kids. Dick talked easily
about "calming things down", as though the four of them could make peace
between generations in a single busy weekend. Danny wasn't talking about the
mission at all, a sign that he expected trouble . Jenny was mainly interested
in finding out what these "hippies" were really like. She suspected that Paula
would fit right in.

The highway was an endless series of curves and loops, hugging the coast. Now
the van was following a long curve to the right, and a dense fogbank loomed
ahead of them.

"Look at that," Dick said happily, "good old Pelican Bay fog. We must be almost
there. Whoa!"

Dick exclaimed aloud as the fog enveloped them, and proved so thick he could
see almost nothing, not even the road under them. He flicked on the
headlights, then threw the switch that boosted them to floodlight level, but
still the gray fog swallowed them.

"Slow down, Dick," Paula urged, holding up her chinese-lantern pendant to send
a beam of green light out into the fog.

Dick braked, then braked more sharply as a human figure suddenly appeared
before them. He brought the van to a stop and noticed that the shape remained
some ten feet in front of them, and that its feet did not appear to touch the
ground.

"It's some super-type," Jenny observed, and the figure did appear to be a woman
in a white skintight bodysuit, accented with a small green skirt, green
slippers, gloves and a hooded cloak.

Then Jenny noticed that the woman had a white face, and white nipples with
white areoles. The white was not skintight fabric but deathly pale skin.

"Spectre," Paula whispered.

"Huh?" said Danny, still goggling at the woman's pale but shapely knockers.

"There was a policewoman named Bridget Corrigan --"

"There may well have been," said a deep female voice that seemed to come as
much from within the van as from the figure floating in the fog before it. "Or
an acrobat named Phoenix Brand, or a florist named Alicia Simmons. Speak
whatever mortal name you please, it matters not to the Spectre."

A chill that had nothing to do with fog settled over the Titans as the voice
reached them.

"What matters is the task that awaits you in the great city on the bay. The
future of Earth Three Hundred and Forty-Eight depends upon what the Teen
Titans do in the next twenty-four hours."

The Spectre lifted her cloak and it billowed out enormously beside her. The van
rolled forward unbidden, driving into the darkness of the cloak as though it
were a tunnel entrance. Dick seized the wheel as they rolled into darkness and
then suddenly into daylight again as they left the fogbank, rounded another
curve and saw the city, the bay and the bridge laid out before them.

But instead of the graceful white curves of the world-famous Sunset Bridge,
they saw the tall square towers of a span that was painted, of all colors, a
brilliant bright orange.

The shaken young heroes sat around a table at the first coffee shop they had
seen beside the road. Danny had paid for four sodas with his lucky silver
dollar (Dick had advised against trying to spend any of their more modern
money), and Paula was holding her lantern over a handful of change, discreetly
trying to turn their own coins into the Woodrow Wilson dimes and Ulysses Grant
quarters Danny had been given. Dick joined them with a tabloid-sized books with
a cardboard cover that read "Inventorum for 1944". Apparently it was something
like an almanac.

"Okay, Dick," Danny said, sipping an odd cola drink, "you seem to have some
idea what's happened to Coast City, so let's rap."

Dick opened up the "Inventorum" to what appeared to be a map of the United
States and put his finger on the West Coast.

"Nothing's happened to Coast City. It's just that this isn't Coast City,
Califia. It's Golden Gate City, in the state of Eldorado, on a parallel world
called Earth-348. Also, the date on the calendar over there is June 5th, 1944."

"The day before D-Day?"

"Dummy up, Dan-o! I'll explain about that in a minute."

"Earth-348. The Spectre used that term," Paula said. "So, you've been to this
other world before?"

"Not me personally, no. But two years ago, the Flash was chasing three of her
enemies when they tried to escape through a sort of portal into another
dimension. She followed them here, to a world similar but not identical to our
own."

"She met up with a super-speedster of this world, called Quicksilver," Jenny
put in.

Dick glared at her but she went on. "Together they defeated them, and three of
Quicksilver's foes they'd teamed up with. Flash took hers back to our world and
back to prison. Quicksilver, um, killed hers."

Dick took over. "Last year, Batwoman and the Flash and some other heroes
visited their world again. I guess it's something that can happen every year
around this time."

"Is this, like, an alternate history kind of thing?" Danny asked. "Like it's
the world the way it would have been if the South had won Civil War II?"

"More like a parallel history," Dick said. "Things happen differently, but tend
to come out the same in the long run."

He pointed to the map, with its unfamiliar state boundaries.

"Like, they have 48 stars on their flag, the same as we did in '44, but they're
not the same 48 states. And they never had a Civil War I, but there was
something like a second War of Independence a few years later, and Jackson was
the Army leader and wound up as President, and they had what they call the War
Between the States in the 1860s, almost the same as on our Earth."

"So they're still gonna beat Hitler on this world, right?" asked Paula, a bit
anxiously.

"Probably. But it might take another two years here, or there might be a coup
in Germany and the war be over tomorrow. No way of knowing exactly how the
parallel history will work out. So don't go around making any predictions to
people, or talking about some secret military operation before it's even begun."

Paula leaned over and punched Danny's shoulder.

"Or making any bets at the racetrack."

A gray-haired man walked past their table, looking them up and down, lingering
on Paula's minidress. Their clothes were fairly conservative, but obviously not
for Earth-348 in 1944.

"Crazy kids. Dressed like circus clowns. The Justice Battallion is in town,
they'll straighten you out."

The young heroes exchanged glances.

"Justice Battallion?"

Dick shrugged.

"I guess we're about to meet the home team."

They were driving down yet another of Golden Gate City's impossibly steep,
absurdly straight boulevards (had they laid out the streets without even
looking at the hills?) when Danny spotted the odd-looking aircraft with a
fireball flying rings around it. It was hovering over a large plaza just ahead
of them, preparing to land.

Green energy flooded the Type 2000 and all four Titans were instantly in
costume. Dick parked hastily and they got out. Paula, in the green Asian dress
and purple domino mask of Lamplighter, formed a green platform to carry them
onto the plaza, over the heads of the quickly-gathering crowd.

"Susan?" Lamplighter called to the flaming figure that still flew overhead.
"Susan Storm, is that you?"

The flaming figure landed and the flames vanished from around her, revealing a
tall blonde woman in a red bodysuit.

"Oh, sorry. I thought you were the Human Torch, a hero from our world."

"I am called the Human Torch," the woman replied in a well-modulated voice,
"but my real name is Galatea Horton, and I'm afraid I've never met you."

"There are a lot of people, heroes especially it seems, who are near-matches
between our world and this one," Robin explained to his comrades. "If we're
here long enough, you'll run into a lot of familiar names: Hercules, Black
Widow, the Falcon, the Vision. . . ."

The aircraft's hatch opened. A broad silhouette filled the darkened opening.

"And who might you be?"

If the contralto voice had been any deeper, it would have been considered
freakishly low for a woman's. The tone was that of an officer who could get a
dozen princes to march in step. The owner of the voice was tall and broad-
shouldered, with muscles that again were almost too much for a woman, though
subtantial breasts distorted the white star at the center of her blue scale-
mailed shirt.

"Uh, I'm called Robin, and these are Impulse, Lamplighter and Dyna-Mite. We're
from the same world as Batwoman and Aquawoman and those guys."

Impulse stared at Robin. She'd never seen his air of calm, assured authority
crack so badly, except when Batwoman had been present.

The flag-draped woman smiled.

"Oh, yes, visitors from the future or something. Wasn't in on that caper, but I
heard about it."

She shot out a red-gloved hand.

"Captain America. You've already met the Human Torch, and here's --"

A tall, lean man, dressed only in a pair of scaly green swimming trunks,
stepped from the aircraft. He raised one long eyebrow, regarding the young
heroes skeptically.

"Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner."

Robin stared at the strange, prick-eared apparition (his near-nudity
reminiscent of the Spectre) for a moment before hastily grasping Captain
America's hand.

"Wow, Captain America, for real? There was a Captain America on our world in
the '40s, sort of. But she was a symbolic figure like Uncle Sam, not a real
person. Just something they used to sell bonds."

Cap laughed ruefully.

"Sometimes it seems like that's all I ever do."

A few minutes later, the seven costumed heroes were gathered in a meeting room
in City Hall. The Justice Battallion had been expected, and the unfamiliar
young heroes were accepted by the authorities as merely some new recruits.
While they waited for the police captain who would brief them, the heroes of
two worlds made further introductions and explained their respective missions,
which turned out to be strangely parallel.

On Earth-348, there was a subculture named for the weirdly-cut "zoot suits"
worn by the young men. A few days before, in another El Dorado city, there had
been a riot for which the zoot suiters had been blamed, though apparently it
was common knowledge that it had really been an unprovoked attack by sailors on
liberty.

"The situation is complicated because the zoot suiters are Mexicans, who aren't
the most popular people in El Dorado," Captain America explained. "And those
sailors in Todos Santos, well, with a war on, folks are very reluctant to
criticize servicemen."

Dick saw how uncomfortable his teammates were looking, especially Lamplighter.
He began talking rapidly, trying to keep the Titans from saying anything to
alienate the Justice Battallion heroes. He explained how they faced a similar
situation on their own world, and how they had hoped to mingle with the young
people and learn more about them, before taking action.

"An excellent plan," Cap said crisply, "and workable of we can only move fast
enough. We're operating under a deadline, you see. John Hoover, the National
Ombudsman, wants to shut down the dance clubs, ban jazz music, round up all the
zoot suiters and stick them in the camps."

Paula gaped, appalled.

"Camps? Like, concentration camps?"

Namor shrugged.

"The same camps where they're keeping the Japs."

"So like, Japanese nationals have been interned for the duration," Dick said
uncertainly.

"Them," Cap admitted, "and native-born Americans of Japanese descent, and
anybody else whose loyalty has been questioned. The camps were built before the
war to house the refugees from the midwestern drought."

Paula opened her mouth. Jenny squeezed her hand to silence her. Dick took a
deep breath and said, "We never had . . . such camps in our America."

The three heroes of Earth-348 exchanged glances, suggesting that they envied
the Titans their youth, and their world, which seemed happier than their own.

"So, how about if we, the Titans, go out tonight, try to gather some
impressions," Dick pressed. "Maybe the police have some young-looking rookies
they could lend us."

Cap smiled.

"I can pass for 17 when I have to."

Her smile broadened at Dick's dubious look. She removed a glove and raised her
hand to her throat, as though reading her own pulse. For a moment she just
stared, eyes glazed, into the distance. Then she shrank within her costume,
until it hung on her like a tent. The young woman Dick now saw was shorter than
himself, with no noticable muscle and not much of a figure. She smiled at him
shyly, showing slightly irregular teeth.

"That is, if you don't mind being seen with the real me."

It was still before seven when they got there, so the club was pretty quiet.
Dick looked acceptable in a jacket from a police evidence locker and the one
pair of slacks in his suitcase that wasn't flared. Gloria Rogers, the
unenhanced version of Captain America, was perfect in a fuzzy blue sweater, a
calf-length pleated skirt, white socks and saddle shoes. Dick paid at the door
and they drifted towards the bar.

Dick looked over the unfamiliar list of soft drinks.

"What looks good to you, Glory?"

The kid behind the counter smirked, and Gloria said softly, "I'm dying for a
Hi-Ho, if that's all right with you, Dick."

Dick bought two bottles of a frighteningly red liquid. The bartender opened
them both and dropped in paper straws without being asked, handing Gloria hers
first, then giving the other to Dick with a raised eyebrow.

As they moved away, Gloria whispered, "You should have ordered for both of us
without consulting me. When he handed me my own bottle instead of giving them
both to you and you didn't snatch it from his hand to give to me, you confirmed
that you're a rube who doesn't know enough to treat a girl like dirt. I'm
afraid you've just lost some credibility."

"Shut up, girl, you're boring me."

Gloria smiled.

"That's the idea."

There was no amplification to the music, and Dick knew that Rock&Roll was a
good decade away, but the band beat their instruments with energy and style,
and the place was alive with what he could only call good vibrations. He saw
Danny and Paula dancing off to one side with more energy than grace. Jenny and
a tall rookie cop were doing a better job, since the cop knew the steps and
Jenny was a fast learner. Applying the skills of observation Batwoman had
taught him, Dick had figured out the most common steps and set about applying
them with Gloria. After the first number, it was less of an effort, and he
began to enjoy the activity for its own sake. And Gloria's.

The entrance doors burst open, and a dozen cops waving nightsticks burst in.
The exits to either side of the stage opened, and more uniforms appeared there.

The music stopped. The kids drew back, crowding together, backing away from the
cops but still defiant. Jenny had vanished, probably vibrating into
invisibility to try to intervene unseen. Her dance partner was looking around
for her, fumbling in his pocket for his badge. Dick couldn't see what Danny or
Paula were doing.

One boy stepped forward, almost nose to nose with a particularly large officer.
His face was pale under dark coloring, but he stood up to the big man.

"We ain't doin' nothin', man! We don't got to take this from you!"

The cop raised his stick and snarled, "You'll take whatever we --"

"WAIT!"

On the stage, Lamplighter had materialized a microphone and loudspeaker from
green energy. The crowd goggled at the apparition, and at her amplified voice.
Everyone paused, and Dick prayed that she would find the right words to say.

Then she began to sing, and Dick's heart sank.

She doesn't understand, Dick thought, she thinks these kids are squares because
their clothes and their music seem old-fashioned to her. But they're not
squares, they're not old farts -- they won't buy it!

Then he looked around the room, and saw that they were buying it. They were
listening. And then he understood.

It was new to them. They'd never heard it before. The song had never been
written on Earth-348.

They listened, while she sang about a wonderful country, a country with land as
beautiful and resources as rich as the souls of its people, a country where a
new civilization was rising that would outshine anything that had ever existed
before. And gradually they understood that Lamplighter wasn't singing about the
flawed and fearful country they lived in, but the country they could have one
day, if they -- all of them -- were worthy of it.

They listened, and they listened, through all four verses, and everyone --
kids, cops, the band, and Dick, too -- were in tears by the time Paula reached
the last refrain:

"And crown thy good with brotherhood

"From sea to shining sea."

In the silence that followed, Paula said softly, but clearly thanks to her
amplifier, "This is our city, our country. It belongs to all of us. In war or
in peace, we're all in this together. We don't have to fight with each other."

The sticks were holstered. Cops and kids were talking now, some of them
smiling. In the back, Dick saw the manager talking with a plainclothesman.
Photographers were preserving the moment of amity between cultures and
generations, creating images that would be in papers all over the country the
next day. So, he suspected, would the words to that memorable new song.

Dick turned towards Gloria, who was still watching Lamplighter as she dissolved
the amplifier and tried to make her escape.

"I think, Dick, that we just saw what you kids came here for."

He put his arm around her shoulder and squeezed.

"No. What she came here for. Paula's the hero this time; we were just along for
the ride."

The music started up again.

"Dick, do you like this kind of music?"

"Not much, to tell the truth."

"Me neither. Let's go some place quieter."

They stopped at the police station. The department had rented rooms for the
Justice Battallion group, and Gloria picked up a room key from the desk
sergeant. They walked the few blocks to the hotel.

Dick looked up at the building.

"What do you know? The Dominion Hotel. They have this same place in Coast City."

"Were you going to stay there?"

"Nah. We're almost out of money. A Motel Five, most likely."

The room was expensively furnished, but lacked the amenities of a first-class
hotel room on Earth-349 in 1964: no refrigerator, a simple AM radio instead of
a stereo system, and of course there was no TV. But Dick didn't mind a bit,
once they were settled on the couch, soft music playing, room service drinks in
front of them.

Gloria tugged at the sleeve of his jacket.

"You look good in those clothes."

"Thanks. It's never been the style back home, but I can see how it could catch
on."

"Your Robin costume, it, well . . . ."

"Makes me look stupid?"

"I was going to say, it doesn't flatter your build."

Dick laughed.

"That's a very polite way of putting it. Yeah, well, when I first became Robin,
three years ago, I was just a skinny kid, built kind of like a dancer."

Gloria reached up and squeezed his left biceps.

"Now you're built like a football player."

Dick stared, then burst out laughing.

"I hope that means on this Earth boys play football!"

Gloria's hand was still on Dick's arm. He put his hand over hers and returned
her smile. They moved closer, and in a moment were kissing.

Dick was surprised to feel Gloria's tongue in his mouth, but he adapted
quickly. He held her for a long time, enjoying the feel of her body against
his, through their clothes. When they broke, she stepped back and placed a hand
at her throat.

"Just a minute, and I'll change back to Cap."

Dick frowned.

"What for?"

Startled, Gloria dropped her hand.

"Well, don't you want me at my best?"

Dick took her hand and kissed the inside of her wrist.

"Am I complaining?"

Gloria blushed and ducked her head.

"Do you really want me . . . the way I am?"

He raised her chin and kissed her lightly on the lips.

"Absolutely."

she shuddered.

"I've only ever done it as Cap, never as Gloria."

Dick stroked her cheek.

"Want to know a secret? I've never done it at all."

Like two virgins, they made love slowly, cautiously, but with only a little
clumsiness. Gloria surprised him by whipping out a condom and opening it with
her teeth.

"On my world there's a pill women can take for birth control."

She chuckled.

"Does it keep the clap away, too?"

Dick had to admit that it didn't.

"Then this way is better, isn't it?" she smiled, expertly rolling it onto him.

"Sure feels nicer."

Later, she did change to Captain America, and rode him hard to climax. His
hands gripped her steely thighs, his neck craning so he could reach her nipples
with his lips and try to suck an entire breast into his mouth.

"You'd have better luck trying that with Glory!"

Dick had intended to go out to look for more signs of trouble afterwards, but
it felt so good to just lie there, his muscular limbs tangled with Cap's, and
he was so tired, besides . . . .

It was broad daylight when they were awakened by a pounding on the door. Dick
dove for the bathroom with his pants while Gloria calmly answered the knock,
pulling a sheet around herself.

From the bathroom, Dick heard Namor's voice at the door, excitedly telling Cap
that they needed to get to back to England immediately. When he emerged,
dressed, Namor gave him a thumbs-up, ignoring Cap as she pulled on her chain
mail.

"There's something big going on over in Europe, they've invaded France or
something."

Dick nodded grimly.

"Or something."

The early reports would be confused, of course, but soon enough they would know
the truth: on Earth-348, as on Earth-349, this was D-Day: Dust Day, the day
Allied planes dropped a load of radioactive powder on Berlin. As on Earth-349,
over a hundred thousand Berliners would die (though Hitler would escape), and
all of the city's millions would become homeless.

After the war, the Allies would enclose the poisoned city in a high concrete
barrier. The Berlin Wall would stand for decades, until the deadly dust had
finally decayed to a safe level, and the grandchildren of present-day Germans
could reclaim their ancient capital.

D-Day would ensure an eventual Allied victory, but a victory that was tainted,
as surely as Berlin was tainted, a victory that would burden the whole human
race with horror.

Well, it was their problem, their history, to deal with as best they could, just as Earth-349 had.

Robin shook himself and smiled at Cap.

"I think that's our cue for an exit."

The others had also spent the night at the Dominion, and Dick had them gathered
quickly at the Type 2000.

Impulse was reluctant to go.

"We haven't really solved anything, you know."

Robin nodded.

"But we helped. They'll all see things from a new perspective: the authorities,
the kids, maybe even the great and terrible National Ombudsman."

"But will that be enough?"

"It'll have to be. 24 hours is all the Spectre gave us."

Jenny nodded, knowing that would have to do.

With their seat belts fastened, Robin started the engine.

"Back to the highway, I guess."

But before he had driven out of the plaza, the black fog suddenly enveloped
them again. Dick wondered for a moment what their departure looked like to the
people left behind on Earth-348, then his attention was drawn to the oncoming
headlights of a huge bus with a rounded rear end. He caught a glimpse of people
in the vehicle, people who seemed to be dressed for winter, and then it was
gone.

"Do you think something's wrong," Jenny asked as another pair of headlights
loomed. "There wasn't any, um, traffic the other time. Maybe I should get out
and scout at super-speed."

"No! That sounds like a great way to get lost but good."

Dick drove on through the fog, which seemed to go on forever, passing a stream
of traffic that included a mammoth old truck hauling a passenger trailer,
something that looked like a 1920s touring charabanc, and a flying saucer with
Minnesota plates.

"Hey!" cried Danny. "Did you see that lady in the red T-shirt driving that old
car? She looked just like Tom Smart, except instead of that Egyptian thingie,
she had a Greek letter on her shirt!"

"Duesenberg," Dick muttered.

"Eye of Horus," Paula said softly.

"Psi," Jenny finished.

Danny chuckled.

"Maybe the next Human Torch we run into will be a guy!"

Just then the fog parted, and Dick was driving along a lonely stretch of highway
that he guessed was part of the agricultural region south of Coast City. Then a
highway sign informed the travellers that they were actually just outside
Piscataway, about 40 miles from the "Cave".

"Well," Jenny observed, "I guess the Spectre gave us a lift. Better than no
reward at all."

They spent a few hours relaxing in their headquarters, showering and snacking,
but then it was getting late, time for the young heroes to call in to their
respective guardians, parents and mentors.

Danny, in an Aztec Gold suit, was combing his hair before hopping into his
Mustang for the long drive to Ivy Town.

"Hey, guys, what are your plans for the month? Anything big in mind?"

"Not me," Jenny declared. "Just decompressing before school starts."

"Green Lantern wants me to go along on a trip to Alpha Centauri," Paula said.
"I probably won't have time for any big projects after that."

Jenny turned to Dick.

"How about you, Dick?"

"I was thinking of dumping the Robin schtick and developing something more
grown-up."

Jenny sighed.

"I suppose you're going to start dressing all in black and gray, like all the
other Bat-types in Gotham."

"No, I like wearing bright colors, staying upbeat.

"What'll you call yourself, then, the Rainbow Batman?"

"No. I was thinking of a name more like, I don't know . . . Captain America."

Where the Wild Things Are

2010-01-17T11:01:00.001-08:00

Do you love a child?

Especially, an intelligent and energetic child?

Find out if that child has a copy of Where the Wild Things Are, and if not, buy a copy or check one out from the library, sit that child down and read it to him/her.

Because every child needs to hear its lesson: that even if you are wild and rambunctious and sometimes exasperate your mother, she still loves you, and will still feed you.

Possession of Condoms With Intent

2010-01-12T09:28:00.000-08:00

According to police in San Francisco, New York and the District of Columbia, condoms in a woman's purse may be cited as evidence that she is

[ ] sexually active, or may be in the future.
[ ] concerned about her health.
[x] a prostitute.

http://www.change.org/actions/view/tell_dc_san_francisco_and_new_york_condoms_arent_a_crime?js_twit

Thanks, as is often the case, to Amanda Marcotte:

http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/tiger_cubs_really/

My Favorite Christmas Story

2009-12-24T19:57:00.000-08:00

[This is a story I enjoy reciting aloud to groups of people. It usually gets a good reception, if they stick with it and get past an opening that sounds like it's just a rude joke. It's a retelling of a story I read in an anthology some years ago -- no idea of title, author or publishing history -- does anyone recognize it?]

Our story begins on a cold, wet, slushy Winter night, many years ago, when a group of impoverished swineherds were sitting up with their charges, cursing and quarreling and fighting over the jug, when the ground before them suddenly split open, and with a gout of flame and a roiling cloud of sulfurous smoke, a hideous demon rose before them.

"Are you scared? Good. Now listen close: five miles to the south there is the ruin of an abandoned tavern, and in it you will find a whore who has just given birth. Bow down before her child and worship him, or I'll break your heads."

The demon vanished, and the swineherds hastily hurried off. Soon they came to the ruined tavern, and in it they found a skinny, ragged girl clutching an ugly little baby covered in black hair. They bowed down before him and then hurried off as quickly as they thought safe, except for one of their number who paused to take off her shawl and tuck it around the child, saying, "The mite looks cold."

Once they were alone again, the child said, "Mother, those people bowed down before me because they were afraid of Father and Father's demon, but I don't think that is why the woman gave me her shawl."

"No, dear. I think she did that out of friendship."

"Is friendship important?"

"I think sometimes it is."

Soon after, the mother and child were joined by new visitors, this time three Princes out of the East.

They too bowed down before him, and then the first approached and set down an urn full of silver coins, saying, "People will do almost anything if you give them enough silver."

The second Prince then approached, and opened a chest of opium, saying, "People will do things for opium that they won't do for any amount of silver."

The third Prince offered the child a vial of arsenic, observing, "If you meet someone who can't be bought with silver or opium or anything else, you can always get rid of him."

Then the three Princes bowed low and retired, leaving the mother and child alone again.

Eventually, the child said, "Mother, the Princes bowed down to me and gave me gifts, but they did that because they thought they could gain power by helping Father, didn't they? I don't think any of them was a friend."

"No, dear. Princes seldom have any friends."

Last of all from out of the West came the child's father himself, a far more terrifying creature than his servant. He looked down on his son and said,

"It is good. This child will grow and be loved and feared by all for his powers of illusion-making and prophesy, and he will be sought by all kings for their courts. And soon the Great King will be born, and you my son will be his teacher and counselor, and shape him into the king I need, to conquer the realm I need, to raise the army I need for the final battle, and all will occur as I desire."

Saying this, he departed, and the mother and child knew they would not be disturbed again that night. After a long silence, the mother finally spoke, saying,

"Dear, is it true what your father said, that you have the gift of prophesy? Can you see the future?"

"Yes, Mother. I can see the future more clearly than Father can, and I know something important that Father doesn't know."

"What's that, Merlin?"

"I know that Arthur will be my friend."

[I love that story.]

Weird But Apparently Real Books on Amazon

2009-12-24T00:36:00.000-08:00

http://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Oddities-Weirdness-Books/lm/R11LZ0L58F8SLL/ref=cm_lmt_DYNA_f_3_russss0?pf_rd_p=496997231&pf_rd_s=listmania-center&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=1425992609&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1MYEF42RVHYVGEQST8SF

Assassins Can Fail In More Ways Than One

2009-12-23T21:58:00.000-08:00

This is my fair warning for those who think that bullets can trump ballots.

Here, Put This in Perspective While You're At It

2009-12-23T09:31:00.000-08:00

http://www.disinfo.com/2009/12/saturnalia/

Put Things in Perspective

2009-12-21T17:41:00.000-08:00

We Can't Find Our Christmas Card List

2009-12-20T17:03:00.001-08:00

So if you were expecting (or would like to get) a card from us, please e-mail me at dr_psycho1960@hotmail.com

What Has been Seen Cannot be Unseen

2009-12-18T21:00:00.000-08:00

Unexplained . . . .

2009-12-10T22:00:00.000-08:00

Over at Shakesville ( http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2009/12/question-of-day_10.html?dsq=25496616#comment-25496616 ) the Question of the Day is whether you have had any personal experience of "the unexplained": ghosts, UFOs, telepathy, &c.

It reminded me of when my brothers and I were little, and we would make up our own radio shows, complete with commercials and theme songs. One of our favorites was introduced with a thin, spooky voice singing: "Unexplained . . . unexplained . . . Unexplained Phenomena!" [THUMP THUMP!]

Here is my answer, inspired by a couple of dozen earlier ones:

I have always described myself as suffering from tinnitus (in the form of prolonged high-pitched whines akin to the behavior of malfunctioning electronics), but after reading a comment at Shakesville, I'm thinking of starting to call it "exploding head syndrome": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_head_syndrome

In response to someone who has been troubled by undulating walls, I observe that I can deliberately make a wall or ceiling begin to seemingly undulate, if I stare at it long enough. It's just an artifact of the way the nervous system is put together, not a physical phenomenon. You don't need to be scared of it. In fact, it can help to pass a boring interval.

In response to several references to sleep paralysis, I told the story of how I once came into my little son's bedroom and saw him staring wide-eyed at the ceiling. He seemed so strange, for a moment I thought he must be dead, but when I spoke to him, he blinked and then closed his eyes and relaxed into normal sleep. I woke him to sleep. Wow.

In response to someone whose "UFO" turned out to be a blimp, I said that I once saw a blimp passing overhead, and for a moment of terror and elation was convinced that I had slipped into some alternate world.

Regarding ghosts, I don't believe in them, but if I ever see any evidence of their presence, I won't go out of my way to ignore it, either.

But my one genuine unexplained experience is having read a summary of a comic book story (Superboy & the Legion of Super-Heroes #195, 1973: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildfire_%28comics%29) before it was ever published, and possibly before it was written. Pretty minor, right? But I have no rational explanation for how I could have the vivid memory of reading a text page in a comic book which described the debut and apparent death of ERG-1 before he was published. Spooky....

Nice Wood

2009-11-30T00:10:00.001-08:00

Today, as we have more than once, my wife and I were driving in the hills east of Corvallis, and passed Nicewood Drive, only this time we looked at each other, snickered and exchanged those fateful words:
"Nice wood...."
"Wanna fuck?"
Because you're only young once, but you can be immature your whole life. 8-) :-})

Fridtjof Nansen

2009-10-09T15:25:00.000-07:00

Over at Sadly, No!, they are discussing the question of whether the far-right goofballs have ever liked any of the other Nobel Peace Prize laureates (at least while they were still alive).

http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/25803.html/comment-page-1#comment-984884

One commenter brings up the 1922 laureate, the now mostly forgotten Fridtjof Nansen, and much of the subsequent comments are to the effect that Nansen was way cool and probably proto-metal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fridtjof_Nansen

Not so sure about his being metal, but he was definitely cool.

Earth-349: Aquawoman

2009-10-08T16:15:00.001-07:00

Disclaimer #1 This story is set in a hypothetical parallel world within the pre-Crisis DC Universe, based on a story in Superman #349, but not limited by that story or any other.
Disclaimer #2 Some characters appearing in this story are based on copyrighted characters owned by DC Comics, Inc., Marvel Comics and others. Their use here is not intended to infringe or disparage those copyrights.
Disclaimer #3 This story is not recommended for persons under 18 or the easily offended, especially those who are uncomfortable with such topics as transgender, transformation, polyfidelity and participatory democracy.

Gloriana Curry, known to the land-dwelling public as Aquawoman, considered her reflection in her bedroom mirror. She liked the mirror very much: oval, a meter and a half tall, an ormolu frame, salvaged from the wreck of the Antilie (sank in a storm, July 23rd, 1911, near Bermuda). She thought the reflection was...adequate: 421 moons old (32.2 years, land-reckoning), blonde hair, fair skin (evenly colored but not very smooth), tall and muscular (chest very broad, making her breasts look smaller than they really were), belly firm enough that she could still wear her unforgiving shirt of orichalcum scale mail. No scars, thanks to the excellent Atlantean healing capacity. Her right hand was still a little pale, and the wrist would probably always be slightly crooked where it had grown from the stump of the one she'd lost, but it was no longer so noticable that she felt the need for gloves. Absolutely stunning legs, by the standards of either land people or Atlanteans (did they look better bare, or in the green tights? Tights today). She would do for a routine appearance as the Queen of Atlantis. Queen of Atlantis was a very fanciful translation of her actual title. A better one would be First Speaker of the Executive Council of the Poseidonis Reach. Her executive position was an elective one (though it did involve wearing a crown and carrying a ceremonial trident), and her territory did not by any means cover all of Atlantis. The city of Poseidonis and its environs, plus its assorted vassal city-states and allied settlements and nomadic tribes, accounted for only about half of the population, and maybe a third of the inhabited area of the Atlantic Ocean basin (the Reach was defined by tides and currents, not lines drawn on the seafloor). Still, calling her a Queen did no harm, and calling the Poseidonis Reach "Atlantis" harmed only those insufferable merfolk in Tritonis, so what the hell?

Aquawoman thought of a Quaker fishing boat captain she knew, who had recently been named Clerk of the Committee for Ministry and Oversight of the Gulf Coast Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends of Christ. She made a mental note that when next they met, she would address him as "Archbishop of New Orleans".

It was not a ceremonial occasion, just a semi-formal birthday party for the oldest member of the Council, so she would forgo the crown, the trident, the walrus-hide mantle and the tedious riding of an Atlantic Giant Seahorse. There would probably be a good crowd even so, because people would be wanting to see the royal consorts. With a final check of her tights for wrinkles, she swam out the nearest window and down to the plaza, where her husbands and most of the other guests were waiting. It was rare enough for all five of her husbands to be gathered together in one place. They all had their jobs and their private interests, and if it didnâ€™t happen that one or more of them was away from the city, he was likely to be occupied with some project elsewhere in town. For once, though, she found them together: Turth, scion of a Poseidonis family even older than her own. Malco, a legless merman from Tritonis. Glibdup, a clawed and scaly gill-man from the chilly coastal waters of Rhode Island. Blue-skinned Niaremus, an adventurer from Earth-348. And perhaps the oddest of all â€“ â€œHey, whereâ€™s Todd?â€ Nobody seemed to know. Turth said, â€œHe was definitely going to be here, but I havenâ€™t seen him all day.â€ A boy in an Army uniform, barely into puberty, swam into the midst of the royal party, glancing uncomfortably around at the consorts but remembering to salute the queen, and said, â€œExcuse me, Maâ€™am, but the Black Manta is approaching from north by northeast, showing truce lights.â€ Todd Arlissâ€™ family had been shipchandlers for over a century, and had inherited a very substantial business at the age of 19. He had insisted on selling the business and spending almost his entire fortune on illegal experimental treatments intended to give him an Atlantean metabolism, allowing him to live in the sea, go to Atlantis, and plight his troth to Aquawoman. He had been phenomenally lucky. He might have died, or become a mindless Aquabeast, or worse yet from his point of view, been turned into a too-exact duplicate of Aquawoman. Instead, he had wound up as the curly-haired, round-cheeked amphibian the Atlanteans fondly called Aquababy. Even then, there was no guarantee that the adventurer and stateswoman would want anything to do with a somewhat-obsessive admirer. But heâ€™d proven to have many attractive qualities, and in the end had been allowed to become her fifth companion. Heâ€™d also proven very popular with the people of Atlantis, who had made him something of a mascot. It had been very clever of the Ocean Master to choose him as a hostage. By the time Aquawoman had reached the dome that covered the city, the Ocean Masterâ€™s immense black submarine was holding a position less than fifty fathoms from the glass. It loomed there, resembling nothing so much as an immense sperm whaleâ€™s penis, with the Ocean Master himself perched suggestively at its prow. Atlantean soldiers were arrayed in a half-sphere before the vessel, spearguns ready. Aquawoman swam up to the officer in charge. "Has he said yet what he wants?â€ â€œYes, Maâ€™am. The crown of Queen Clea.â€ â€œHe canâ€™t have it,â€ she said automatically. The officer nodded curtly. Moments later the four husbands and most of the Council arrived. Aquawoman told them what the Ocean Master wanted, and assured them that she considered paying the ransom out of the question. Malco was dubious, and tried gently to suggest that they at least consider it. The others all disagreed strongly. Turth spoke smoothly to calm Malco, with a trace of condescension. â€œWe must not, of course, allow...that object...to fall into such hands as those. The Ocean Master is bothersome enough as a science pirate; giving him the power to truly master the worldâ€™s oceans would be disastrous. Nevertheless, for our beloved brotherâ€™s sake...?â€ Aquawoman nodded. â€œFor Toddâ€™s sake, we should consider all our options. And what better place to discuss the matter than in the Nameless Vault?â€ A generation before, Atlantean archaeologists had found an ancient crown once worn by the Wizard-Kings, a hideous thing formed of seven serpents. Everyone who saw it was troubled by the evil power emanating from it, but the silver-haired Queen Clea had dared to place it on her head. After that, she had displayed increasingly spectacular magical powers â€“ and increasing megalomania and depravity. The escalating crimes of Queen Clea, and the civil war that eventually resulted, had nearly destroyed Poseidonis. Once she had been neutralized and the crown secured, it had been stowed in the Nameless Vault, along with other items deemed too dangerous to be used. The Executive Council, Aquawoman and her husbands made a crowd that did not easily fit down the narrow passageways that led below the city to the Nameless Vault. The Vault itself lay in the deepest and oldest of the Palaceâ€™s sub-basements, in the natural caverns and chambers hewn from living stone that had underlain the city when Atlantis was still above the surface. Its door was of a kind of steel otherwise unknown on Earth, possibly older than Earth itself. The lock was two years old, from Stark Industries, and required three members of the Council to authorize entry. The Vault-Keeper, a broad-chinned oldster in a red robe, stood by watchfully as they unlocked the massive door. As the door swung open, a perverse corner of Aquawomanâ€™s mind reflected that the term â€œNameless Vaultâ€ could also be translated as simply â€œa secure unnamed locationâ€. The contents of the vault seemed deceptively ordinary. On one table stood an insulated steel vial labelled simply â€œVirusâ€. On a set of shelves were several boxes of waterproof punchcards, marked â€œMaster PCâ€. Presumably PC stood for â€œpunchcardâ€, but what made a computer program so dangerous? A television set, looking to be about ten years old, seemed laughably out of place until it moved, turning toward the visitors as though it were alive. A sealed package offered no clue of its contents, except for being marked â€œSRUâ€. It seemed to Aquawoman that the Vault badly needed a catalog. At the very back of the Vault, on a pedestal as though in a museum display â€“ or on a blasphemous altar â€“ a dreadful object waited. Three snakes glared off to the left, three to the right, and the largest looked forward, its eyes projecting a challenge. Come wear me. Come, and have power over the sea and the land. Come and be like Clea, only better, more perfect. Wear me, and be a real queen, feared and loved by the whole world. Not taking her eyes off the crown, Aquawoman said to her companions, â€œThis is what weâ€™re here for. Letâ€™s go.â€ The Ocean Master had his feet planted on the prow of the Black Manta when Aquawoman returned. It was a strange, nonsensical position to hold underwater, but landsman that he was, he doubtless thought it looked dramatic and authoritative. He remained in position as Aquawoman swam out to meet him. He saw that she did indeed have the Serpent Crown with her. She was wearing it. The Ocean Master spoke through a hydrophone in his ornate helmet, â€œThe Queen of Atlantis will surrender the Serpent Crown to the Ocean Master, and thereby acknowledge him her overlord and the true ruler of all the Earthâ€™s oceans.â€ â€œFrancis Marion Ormsby, if you think Iâ€™m going to let you leave here with Cleaâ€™s crown, youâ€™re a dumber sprat than you were when you tried to pants me the first day we swam together!â€ â€œI need the crown,â€ the Ocean Master said coldly, not showing any sign that her backhanded appeal to familial ties had touched him. â€œI have to have it, Atlantean, in order to fulfill my destiny. Hand it over, now, or Iâ€™ll kill your precious Aquababy before your eyes.â€ She swam toward him, her eyes burning in a manner that suggested red lightning might shoot from them at any moment, or perhaps from the eyes of the serpents in her crown. The ancient and obscene power of the object carried a weight of silent menace. â€œYes, you could do that, and it would wound my heart in ways I doubt you can even understand. But with my surviving husbands to console me, Iâ€™d manage to go on. Iâ€™d retain enough of my self-control to begin the hunt for you right away, and youâ€™d find that 71% of the planetâ€™s surface area is not room enough to hide you from my vengeance.â€ He remained still for a long moment, his face unreadable in that mask, and then he turned to his nearest henchman, a silver-blonde youth in the ragged remnants of a U.S. Navy enlisted work uniform. â€œLet him go.â€ Less than a minute later, Aquababy swam out through an airlock, waved to the crowd as they cheered him, then swam toward his wife. The so-called Ocean Master slipped into his vessel through a different airlock, and the Black Manta began to turn slowly in place, preparing to depart from the city. There was more loud cheering as the invaders fled. Aquababy swam to his wifeâ€™s side, but held back at the sight of her wearing the crown. He was not an Atlantean, and had not even been born yet when Queen Clea made it infamous, but he knew its reputation as a corrupting influence. He was clearly wondering whether Aquawomanâ€™s sacrifice had been worth his life. Aquawoman pulled the crown from her head and crushed it between her hands. The baked-clay replica crumbled to powder and dispersed in a muddy cloud. To the people of Atlantis she called out, â€œThe crown of Clea is safely stored away, and thatâ€™s where it will stay!â€ and then kissed her husband very warmly and firmly. They broke from the kiss and began swimming back toward the palace side by side, surrounded by her other husbands and, more distantly, by government officials and the adoring populace. Aquawoman gave a long telepathic sigh. â€œI swear, I donâ€™t know what itâ€™s going to take to make him put a stop to all this Ocean Master nonsense. I may have to marry him."

Niaremus turned to Malco and raised one long eyebrow.

"Marry him? Isn't he her half-brother?"

"Step-brother. Former step-brother, since her father is divorced from his mother."

"So I suppose a relationship between them would only be..."

"Palimpsest?"

Todd swam close to Aquawoman, bumping against her frequently in an intimate gesture that would only be tolerated between lovers.

"Have I mentioned lately what a really magnificent woman you are?"

"I'm not sure how recently the last time was," she replied lightly, "but feel free anytime it comes up."

"It's relevant right at the moment, hon. When I heard you telling Ormsby, 'Go ahead, there's four more where he came from'--"

"That's not what--"

He shushed her.

"You said what you had to say. I have no complaint. Quite the contrary. I love and admire you more for having had the strength to say it. When you stood him down like that, I think it was the first time I'd ever really seen you look like a queen."

Aquawoman made a dismissive gesture.

"Me, a queen? I'm just a nice girl with five husbands."

More Earth-349 stories can be found at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/earth349

Contact the author at dr_psycho1960@hotmail.com

On the Streets of Portland

2009-08-22T09:24:00.000-07:00

KPOJ, "Portland's Only Progressive Talk Station", is sponsoring a team in Portland's Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, called "Get Outta My 'raq", thus demonstrating that multi-layered cultural references don't need to be subtle or clever.

But it does bring to mind this image, which I have not yet been able to expel, of Lady Babylonia entered in the race, going down the streets of Portand with classical draperies over a sports bra that contains her Junoesque though alas occupied bosom.

Her cousin Portlandia hands her a cup of Bull Run water as she passes, while the Dragon of the Ishtar Gate yelps happily at her heels.

I blame Detective Neptune, myself.

I Give You My heart

2009-07-16T15:19:00.000-07:00

Once there was a boy who loved a girl, as so many do. And like so many boys, he had been told by his mother that one day he would meet a girl and want to give her his heart. So he did.
He came to her door with the front of his shirt still bloody, so that she cried out with alarm when she saw him, but he brushed aside her concerns and pressed a bundle wrapped in white paper into her arms.
“Go on, unwrap it,” he said eagerly. “See what I have done for you!”
Backing into her house, still casting anxious glances at his bloody shirt, she carefully unwrapped his gift. When she saw the rounded bloody mass, excitedly throbbing in her hands, she nearly fainted.
She looked up at him, horrified.
“What…?”
“It’s my heart. I have given it to you!”
She looked at the heart in her hands, and then at the bloody front of his shirt.
“But why would you do such a thing?”
He looked stunned.
“Last night, you said you loved me, and I said I loved you. Isn’t that what you ought to do after you have pledged your love – to give them your heart?”
She cradled the heart in her arms and stroked it gently with her fingertips. He moaned softly with pleasure.
“But…that’s just a saying. You shouldn’t do it literally!”
He shook his head, confused
“Are you saying you don’t want my heart? I thought you cared!”
“I do care. I care too much to see you put yourself in so much danger over a silly gesture like this.”
His eyes darkened.
“You think it’s silly? I did this for you!”
“Well, you shouldn’t have! Don’t you see how dangerous it is to take your heart out like this?”
As she spoke, she carelessly clutched the heart just a tiny bit too hard. The boy gasped in pain and doubled over, clutching at his heartless chest.
“Oh, dear, did I do that?”
“I’m sorry, I know you didn’t mean to do that. Just…be careful with it.”
She gave the heart some careful strokes, then stopped and sighed heavily.
“God, I wish you hadn’t done this. There are other ways of showing that you care. You didn’t have to do this to yourself – or to me.”
“What? What do you mean, do this to you?”
“Well, look, what am I supposed to do with your heart? Am I supposed to just carry it around with me all the time?”
“Well, why not?”
“For one thing, I have work to do. For another, it’s just too much responsibility. Carrying your heart around with me is like having a baby to look after. If I make a mistake, I could kill you, or cause you so much pain.”
“Well, what do you want me to do then? Take my heart back? Put it back in my chest?”
“Yes. Your heart needs to be in your chest, protected by your ribs. That’s where it belongs. That’s the best place for it. It won’t mean I love you any less.”
The boy sighed.
“All right, then.”
He unbuttoned his shirt, and reached for his heart.
“No. Let me do it.”
She nestled the heart lovingly in its spot, and gently reconnected the aorta and vena cava. She withdrew her hands, and his ribs quickly closed around his heart. The skin followed moments later.
The boy looked down sadly at the unbroken skin between his nipples.
“I’m sorry you didn’t like your gift.”
“Well, I’m sorry I couldn’t accept it. I do love you, you know.”
She placed her hand on his chest.
“I can still feel it beating, you know.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Come feel mine.”

See You Later...?

2009-05-31T11:50:00.000-07:00

Little Boy, I hope I get to see you again before too much time goes by.

But I would settle for being able to write you latters, send you birthday presents, and maybe talk with you on the phone once in awhile.

So, I hope your mother relents enough to let me have a mailing address and e-mail where I can reach you.

I hope so.

And I'm not the only one.

Earth-349: General Jumbo

2009-05-26T01:42:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer #1 This story was inspired by a story in Superman #349, but is not
limited by that story or any other.
Disclaimer #2 This story features characters based on characters owned by DC
Comics, Inc., Marvel Comics and others. This story was written for
entertainment only and is not intended to infringe or disparage those
copyrights, even though they should have expired decades ago and freed those
characters from the dead hand of perpetual corporate ownership.
Disclaimer #3 This story was inspired in part by the short story “Boobs” by
Suzy McKee Charnas, but not so much that anybody’s likely to call it an
infringement.
Disclaimer #4 This story is not recommended for persons under 18 or the easily
offended, especially those who are uncomfortable with a feminist analysis of
precocious breast development in jailbait.
Note 1: General Jumbo will be a pretty obscure character to USAn readers, but
Britons should recognize him. More information can be found at
http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/j/jumbo.htm
Note 2: This story is dedicated to “Melons” and all the other girls who have
had to endure the sort of cruelty Amanda suffers from in this story.

Mummy always says I’ll be glad one day to be “well-endowed”, and maybe
I will, but if so, couldn’t the silly great things have waited until “one day”
to come along, instead of popping in unannounced during the summer I turned
twelve?
“One day”, according to all of Mummy’s friends, the boys will be
worshipping me on account of them, but so far it’s been nothing but teasing and
rude jokes and hands grabbing at them.
I swear, if one of the boys would just look me in the eye and tell me
that my knockers were driving him crazy and could I please take off my jumper
and let him have a feel, I might just say yes. I could see doing that for
Nigel Barr or Bert Gregory. They’re halfway human most of the time and they
used to act like they were my friends (although I haven’t got the least wish
for a “boyfriend”). But not for that beastly Colin Gillie. He’s the one who
really made my life miserable over the things. He was the one who started
calling me “Jubblies” instead of Johnson, and when he got four of the best for
it, he changed it to “Jumbo”, and pretended it was just because I was so tall.
I don’t think the adults were fooled, but it gave them an excuse to pretend
they were fooled, and most of the time that seems to be all they want.
And it was Colin Gillie who got that pack of boys chasing me down
Mulberry Lane that day in April, when I really thought something bad was going
to happen.
I was walking home from school. It’d been a long day and I was good
and ready to be home and watch a little tele. I was adjusting my bra, trying
one more time to find a way to make it actually comfortable, when I heard
Colin’s nasty voice behind me.
“Look at that, even she can’t keep her hands off them!”
And it was his nasty voice, not the one he used for talking to boys or adults
or other human beings, but the one that was for talking about my tits and the
creature unlucky enough to be standing behind them.
I looked behind and there were Colin and Nigel and Bert and a couple of
other boys I recognized from the comprehensive, though I couldn’t put names to
them.
I shouldn’t have run. I should have walked up real close and showed my
teeth and called Colin a nice ripe bad name. If I’d done that, they might have
left me alone. Instead, I started to run, and when I did Nigel yelled “Get
her!” and they were off after me.
If it had only been Colin by himself, or Nigel, I expect he wouldn’t
have gone past copping a feel, but with the lot of them together, each one
afraid to back down before the others did, it might have gotten a lot worse.
In the books I’d been reading lately, boys did terrible things to girls at
times like this. They didn’t go into detail, those books, but that made the
terrible things all the more terrifying.
In the books, it was bad girls who had things happen to them, but I
wasn’t so stupid as to think that there were really rules about who bad things
happened to in real life.
Besides, any girl in those books who had big tits was always a bad one.
I ran, and the boys all came baying after me, and the more I ran and
they yelled, the more frightened I became. And it would have to be the part of
Mulberry Lane where the creek ran along one side and there was a stand of trees
along the other, and no houses for a couple of hundred metres, and there was
nobody else around.
I rounded a turn and the boys were still after me. I was taller than
all of them except Bert, and I probably could have just outrun them, but I was
scared and I wanted help, wanted adults or better yet a policeman nearby. I
wanted to be amongst people, not here in this frightening place where there was
nothing between the boys and me but the law of the jungle. Yes, I was getting
all out of proportion here, but that’s the way I was thinking right then.
Up ahead was a garden wall, and I ran right up to it and grabbed its top and
hauled myself up. I balanced on top of the wall, trying to get a purchase with
my feet, and felt myself starting to slide over the other side. I remember
thinking that with my buttercakes on the far side of the wall, I had gravity on
my side. A hand grabbed my foot and I kicked back, connecting with somebody’s
face, and served him right.
Somebody’s hand went up under my skirt. I don’t think he did it on
purpose, I think he was just grabbing for me any which way, but whoever he was
got hold of the waistband of my panties and I screamed and made a crazy
scramble that put me over the wall in a tumble, scratched and bruised and
panting. I sat up and there was a tank pointing its cannon right in my face.
It was small enough that you could cover it with a hat, but somehow it
didn’t look like a toy. Looking down that pen-sized barrel, I felt as though
it could shoot a small but very real hole in me.
There were more tanks, I now saw, and behind them squads of tiny soldiers scrambling over miniature terrain, forming up to face me. I was in a garden, back of a house, and it was all little ridges and hills and tiny trees and houses, all made to the scale of the soldiers, who were maybe five centimetres tall. With all those little guns pointed up at me, I felt like one of the monsters in the films they showed at the Palace on Saturdays, except for
the “bombs and shells have no effect” part.
I stood up slowly, and the guns all tracked on me. The soldiers aimed their
rifles (I learned later that only their bayonets were functional, but I didn’t
know that then), and the tanks swung their turrets, all aimed at my chest. I
held very still.
“Here, girl, leave off the toys and come play with us!”
I looked over my shoulder, and there was Colin grinning over the wall at me.
I stood there, frozen between a danger I didn’t really understand and a danger
that just seemed crazy, and then I heard a buzzing noise like a giant wasp, and
a tiny little fighter jet flew between Colin and me and shot something at him
that exploded like a squib in his face. Colin fell backward, squawking, out of
sight.
I stared at the wall for a moment and then remembered the army behind me. I
was turning to face them again when I heard a sharp voice.
“Who are you and what are you doing in my garden?”
On the far side of the tanks and soldiers, a tall thin man with white hair was
holding a small metal box with a long antenna coming out of it. He was pushing
buttons on the box, and turning a little dial, and the army was moving away
from me. The man looked rather familiar, though I couldn’t place him.
“Those aren’t toys, you know. Their weapons are real. You could have been
badly hurt.”
The man wasn’t very cross, he was obviously more concerned for me than anything
else, but he also seemed like a very authoritative person, like a teacher or
even a clergyman. I’d never dropped a curtsey to anyone before without having
been reminded ahead of time to do it, but I did for him.
"Amanda Johnson, Sir. I’m sorry for intruding, but there were these boys….”
He nodded, and then he bowed.
“Yes. I saw that one nasty fellow, and you were obviously afraid of him, so I
saw him off. Christopher Pike, Miss Johnson.”
“You’re Professor Pike? You’re the one who invented Robot Annie!”
I expected him to smile and look proud at that, since Robot Annie is so
famous, but instead he just looked sad, and then he said, “I worked on that
project, yes, but I’m not a member of that group anymore.”
He sort of shook himself, and then he smiled at me.
“Well, let’s get you inside, where you can telephone home and have a
cup of tea to settle your nerves.”
That sounded lovely to me, so I went to walk with him into the house,
and that’s when I found out that the boy who’d been yanking at my panties had
ruined the waistband, because they fell down around my ankles right in front of
Professor Pike himself. Worse yet, there was no way I could just pull them up
and they’d stay up, so I was forced to step out of them and stuff them in the
pocket of my blazer. The Professor was ever so kind, though, and didn’t say a
word.
It was the most remarkable cup of tea I’d ever had. In the Professor’s
parlour, more little creatures like the little army bustled about. A teddy
bear, three feet high, brought sugar and milk to the table, and a little
footman walked across the tabletop to scoop up sugar for me. The teapot rolled
over to my cup on little wheels and poured itself without spilling a drop.
The Professor told me that he was living in Dinchester to have a quiet
place to work on robots for the military. They were going to be used for
things like sneaking cameras behind enemy lines, or bombs that could fly
themselves to their targets. For fun, he’d built his first prototypes in the
form of toys, but he’d given them the kind of motors and sensors that the real
military robots would have, and had even armed some of them. The planes fired
missiles that exploded like squibs. That was what he’d used on Colin. The
tanks had the barrels and firing mechanisms of small pistols (“twenty-twos”, he
called them), and while they normally just fired blanks, he’d loaded them with
real bullets to do some target practice today.
He explained that the government was eager to have weapons that could
keep Britain a world power, even though we had no atomic weapons, and also
wanted to encourage science, even though we had no space program. He made a
joke, saying, “And if we’ve got any superheroes stashed in a bunker somewhere,
I’m not aware of it!”
We went out into his garden after that, and he showed me what his
little army could do. He let me handle the control box, and told me I was
a “natural”, which made me feel terribly proud. I told him about how the boys
harassed me on account of my tits (only I said “bosom”), and he was very
sympathetic.
“When I was your age, I developed the foulest breath on Earth. No
tooth powder or mouthwash could control it. I learned much later that it was
an infection, and it took sulfa to get rid of it, but at the time it was just
misery for me. The kids all called me ’Stinky’ and that name came close to
breaking my heart.
“And then one day a boy called me ‘Stinky’ one time too many and I just
snapped. I grabbed him by the shoulders and shoved him up against the wall,
good and hard, and I put my face up close to his so he could get a real faceful
of my breath, and I yelled, ‘That’s Mister Stinky to you!’ And somehow, that
was the right thing to say, because after that they did call me Mr. Stinky, and
it didn’t seem so bad. I had my Mum knit me a sweater with a big picture of a
skunk on the front, and I had more friends and less trouble.”
I could only shake my head at this story, finding it hard to believe
that I could ever make a decent name out of “Jumbo”.
The Professor had a caller then, and I was ready to say goodbye and
head for home, but he invited me to spend some more time with his little army,
and left me alone in the garden. I set the soldiers to drilling in formation
and the tanks to patrolling along the garden wall, and started getting familiar
with the planes. It really was amazing how much you could get the little
things to do, with just one little control box with only a few buttons and a
couple of dials.
It felt good, having those little machines under my command. It felt
like nothing I’d ever done. The sense of power, of control, of having a kind
of talent for running things, was simply marvelous.
For so long, I’d felt as though I were helpless, pinned down by adults
and their rules, by boys and their mad hands, by girls and their envy, but at
least here, in command of the Professor’s little army, I was in charge.
I was making the planes fly in formation and then break off one by one,
while part of my mind was working out how you could set up little tabletop
battlefields and have people hire them like pinball machines, when I heard a
cry of pain from the house.
I ran back to the French doors and saw two men raising the Professor
roughly from the floor, while a third stood over him with a pistol in his
hand. There was blood coming from the Professor’s mouth.
“I’ll say again,” the man with the gun said, “is there anything you’d
like to take with you? We really do want you to comfortable in your new home.”
I should have been too frightened to do anything, except maybe run the
way I had from those boys. But right at that moment, I didn’t feel like a
schoolgirl – I felt like a general. So I twisted dials and punched buttons as
fast as I could, and the Professor’s little army went marching through the
French doors with guns blazing.
I saw later that I really shouldn’t have fired so many of the guns.
The three men were all wounded, and one of them nearly died, and it was only
luck that the Professor wasn’t also shot. Still, I did manage to stop them
from abducting him.
My little army stood guard over the men while I telephoned the police,
a little plane circling above them as they cringed together and held
handkerchiefs to their wounds.
I got a nice letter from the police and my picture in the paper.
Everyone at school made a fuss over me, and so did my family, but I assumed
that would be the end of it. At tea a few days later, though, the Professor
surprised me. He told me that he wanted me to come by every day and drill his
army, and even take some of them out with me to march and roll and fly around
town. He said it would serve as a test of his robots’ powers, and also let me
get practice at using them. He said that I had a real future as an operator of
little machines like his, and that there would be lots of jobs calling for that
kind of work in the future, both in business and in the military.
The idea of being part of a new industry, and maybe a new kind of war,
was kind of interesting, but I’ll admit that what really sounded good was
getting to have my own personal army to follow me around.
I have a permit from the police to take the little army out in public. The tanks and planes only fire squibs now (even an adult wouldn’t be allowed to
load the tanks with bullets), but those can be quite useful in distracting and
confusing a person. I’ve already helped the police capture a man who was
robbing a shop, and disarmed a bomb someone left in the Mayor’s office.
Things are different at school, as you might imagine. Nobody tries to
bully a girl who commands an army. They call me General Jumbo now, and you
know, I do like the name better, just as Professor Pike said. I even have a
cap with gold braid on the bill, and a military tunic.
Double-breasted, of course.
Contact the author at dr_psycho1960@hotmail.com

Goodbye, Little Boy

2009-05-24T09:39:00.000-07:00

I hope you enjoy wherever it is you are going.
I'm sorry that I probably won't see you for quite awhile.
I will miss you. But then, I already miss you.
And I'm not the only one.

Happy Birthday, Little Boy

2009-05-21T08:53:00.000-07:00

Two years old today.

And what a trip it has been. Glad you made it.

Wish I could be there to celebrate it with you, and I'm not the only one.

I will hold you in the Light.

"Pro-Sex Feminists" vs. a Feminist who is Pro-Sex

2009-05-12T13:31:00.000-07:00

I am so confused. I have been a feminist since before pubefrty (but no, I already knew I was a boy :-), and was never under the impression that there was anything anti-sex about feminism, and yet look at the hassles that a feminist advocate for battered women underwent because she also writes erotica: http://midnightseductionsauthors.blogspot.com/2009/05/being-judged-for-sex-and-erotic-romance.html?zx=a4026484409f9408

I'm confused. I wonder whether Suzie Bright might help me figutre this out. Suzie is my second-favorite horny feminist, after my wife.

Little man, What Now?

2009-04-16T20:10:00.001-07:00

Years ago, I saw a film on television late at night, titled, Little Man, What Now?. It was a remarkable film about a young couple struggling to survive in a country where everyone but themselves seemed to be going crazy over one ideology or another, each promising to bring the country out of the Great Depression and provide every citizen with his/her due.

Rather than embrace any of the various movements, they preferred to just muddle through, raise their baby and hope for the best.

It could have been set in almost any Western country in the early 1930s, but it is especially poignant because it is set in Germany, and we who watch it a lifetime later know what lay ahead for them.

Poor souls. To say nothing of their baby....