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....
Showing posts with label Parenting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Parenting. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Monday, April 11, 2011
Earth-349: The Star-Spangled Kid
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.
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.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
The Woman Who Received Many Blessings
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.
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.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Earth-349: The Last Story, Part 4
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]
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]
It Doesn't Take Long
...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.
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.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
It Wasn't True
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.
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.
Friday, May 28, 2010
To See The Birds Come Back
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.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Happy Mother's Day
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
*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
Monday, April 12, 2010
Pain in the Past, Hope for the Future
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.
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.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
It Worked
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.
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.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Where the Wild Things Are
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.
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.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
We Can't Find Our Christmas Card List
So if you were expecting (or would like to get) a card from us, please e-mail me at dr_psycho1960@hotmail.com
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Goodbye, Little Boy
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.
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.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
News
News about me: My injured back is feeling much better, thanks to physical therapy and regular exercises.
News about my father; He fell and injured his hip, and he is going into a nursing home.
News about my son: After being out of contact for over a year, without even the unpleasant updates provided by police and rehab centers, I had begun toresign myself to thinking of him as dead. Then the other day my daughter called and said she had seen him, that he looked reasonably healthy and did not show any obvious signs that he was either drinking again or homeless again.
There is news about a couple of other people in my life, but maybe I will save that update for later.
News about my father; He fell and injured his hip, and he is going into a nursing home.
News about my son: After being out of contact for over a year, without even the unpleasant updates provided by police and rehab centers, I had begun toresign myself to thinking of him as dead. Then the other day my daughter called and said she had seen him, that he looked reasonably healthy and did not show any obvious signs that he was either drinking again or homeless again.
There is news about a couple of other people in my life, but maybe I will save that update for later.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Reflections
If I had it to do all over again, how would I do things?
If I could rewrite my life so that it did not include the pain I caused to my wife, and to R, and to N, and to others . . . .
But in that case, I would not have had so many good, rewarding experiences, ranging from the birth of R-boy to the simple good times I had with each of my lovers.
So I am in the position of feeling terribly guilty over actions by which I benefitted immensely, some of which I simply could not wish undone.
So what does that make me?
Maybe just...an American.
If I could rewrite my life so that it did not include the pain I caused to my wife, and to R, and to N, and to others . . . .
But in that case, I would not have had so many good, rewarding experiences, ranging from the birth of R-boy to the simple good times I had with each of my lovers.
So I am in the position of feeling terribly guilty over actions by which I benefitted immensely, some of which I simply could not wish undone.
So what does that make me?
Maybe just...an American.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Uncle C, Contact Me
Uncle C, please e-mail me at dr_psycho1960@hotmail.com
I think each of us could learn things that are useful to us.
I think each of us could learn things that are useful to us.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Life is Full of Surprises
Strange, strange. Until today, this was the blurb for this blog:
Life is full of surprises. Two years ago I thought I was a happily married man in an open relationship who would remain married to my wife for the rest of our lives. Now I'm in the process of divorce and courting the mother of my child.
I was all set to move in with R this month, and then....
My wife asked me to give her another chance: three months to show me that we could live together better and happier than we had ever been before. I told R that I was deeply tempted by the offer, and thought that maybe I owed it to her to let her try again. R reluctantly agreed to allow me the three-month trial.
I'm not sure if I said or did something wrong, or gave R some kind of wrong impression, or if maybe it was simply that when I took my wife up on her offer, but R took it very badly. She showered me with blistering abuse for several days, in response to which I tried to be polite and respectful.
Although she had previously given me many assurances that she would always allow me to spend time with our child, R revoked that offer and swore that I would never see him again.
I don't know whether R will feel differently in the future. Hell, I don't even know whether my wife and I will be able to work things out, although she has frankly surprised me so far. If I do wind up staying with my wife, I know that R and I will probably never be entirely comfortable with one another, but I hope that I will be able to offer R and her child whatever help and friendship I am able.
And although neither my wife nor R want to hear it right now, I will say once more, for the record, that I love R and always will.
Now, Always and Forever.
Life is full of surprises. Two years ago I thought I was a happily married man in an open relationship who would remain married to my wife for the rest of our lives. Now I'm in the process of divorce and courting the mother of my child.
I was all set to move in with R this month, and then....
My wife asked me to give her another chance: three months to show me that we could live together better and happier than we had ever been before. I told R that I was deeply tempted by the offer, and thought that maybe I owed it to her to let her try again. R reluctantly agreed to allow me the three-month trial.
I'm not sure if I said or did something wrong, or gave R some kind of wrong impression, or if maybe it was simply that when I took my wife up on her offer, but R took it very badly. She showered me with blistering abuse for several days, in response to which I tried to be polite and respectful.
Although she had previously given me many assurances that she would always allow me to spend time with our child, R revoked that offer and swore that I would never see him again.
I don't know whether R will feel differently in the future. Hell, I don't even know whether my wife and I will be able to work things out, although she has frankly surprised me so far. If I do wind up staying with my wife, I know that R and I will probably never be entirely comfortable with one another, but I hope that I will be able to offer R and her child whatever help and friendship I am able.
And although neither my wife nor R want to hear it right now, I will say once more, for the record, that I love R and always will.
Now, Always and Forever.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Everything Changes
When I started this blog, under the name "Mister Nice Guy", many things were different. For one thing, I thought I was a much nicer guy than I do now. But that's hardly the most significant.
Some of the changes have been in me: when I started this, I said firmly that nothing could ever break me up with my wife. Since then, two women came into my life who made me rethink that, and one of them is still in it.
Some of the changes have been in the people around me: my lover R wanted a child, and I helped her conceive one. At the time, I was comfortable with the idea of that child's being out there in the world with his single mother, but now I have the prospect of being an actual father to him, and I find it...not unpleasant.
Some of the changes have supposedly not been changes at all: when I started this blog, partly in order to search for a sex partner, I was under the impression that my wife's sex drive had vanished during a long illness and had never returned. Now my wife tells me that her sex drive did indeed return, and that she tried to interest me in sex to no avail. I have a hard time accepting that -- "Mrs. Psycho" was the best lover I'd ever had, and I love her very much, yet supposedly we slept side by side for over a year without her being able to get my attention? But that's what she says happened.
Now it's time for more change, and I'm not at all sure I'm ready for it. But I have little choice. The world moves on, with me or without me.
Some of the changes have been in me: when I started this, I said firmly that nothing could ever break me up with my wife. Since then, two women came into my life who made me rethink that, and one of them is still in it.
Some of the changes have been in the people around me: my lover R wanted a child, and I helped her conceive one. At the time, I was comfortable with the idea of that child's being out there in the world with his single mother, but now I have the prospect of being an actual father to him, and I find it...not unpleasant.
Some of the changes have supposedly not been changes at all: when I started this blog, partly in order to search for a sex partner, I was under the impression that my wife's sex drive had vanished during a long illness and had never returned. Now my wife tells me that her sex drive did indeed return, and that she tried to interest me in sex to no avail. I have a hard time accepting that -- "Mrs. Psycho" was the best lover I'd ever had, and I love her very much, yet supposedly we slept side by side for over a year without her being able to get my attention? But that's what she says happened.
Now it's time for more change, and I'm not at all sure I'm ready for it. But I have little choice. The world moves on, with me or without me.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Still Driving Myself Crazy After All These Years
Why do I find it so hard to choose between a woman I have been married to for 23 years, and a woman I have only known for a couple of years, and with whom I was only supposed to have a light and easy relationship, with no string attached?
Why do I find it so hard to choose between a woman with whom I have raised four children, all of them now grown, and the mother of the only biological child I have ever fathered, a beautiful little boy not yet a year old?
Why do I find it so hard to choose between a woman who has shown me a love I would never have thought myself worthy of, over a woman who has shown me a love I would never have thought myself worthy of?
Why is it that having three amazing, intelligent, talented women so profoundly in love with me makes me feel so miserable?
Why is it that with two clear and obvious courses for the rest of my life ahead of me, both good lives full of happiness and bright challenges to be embraced with joy, I feel as though I would rather just fucking die and get it over with?
I remember the MRAs who were harassing me on my old blog, and how they snickered and sneered, anticipating the unhappy future I was so obviously creating for myself. But they supposed that I would wind up with three women hating me, and living in poverty while I paid child support to an ungrateful bitch. Pretty much the opposite of what actually happened, but the life I have now is making me feel so much worse than their scenario would have.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
What the fuck do I do now?
Why do I find it so hard to choose between a woman with whom I have raised four children, all of them now grown, and the mother of the only biological child I have ever fathered, a beautiful little boy not yet a year old?
Why do I find it so hard to choose between a woman who has shown me a love I would never have thought myself worthy of, over a woman who has shown me a love I would never have thought myself worthy of?
Why is it that having three amazing, intelligent, talented women so profoundly in love with me makes me feel so miserable?
Why is it that with two clear and obvious courses for the rest of my life ahead of me, both good lives full of happiness and bright challenges to be embraced with joy, I feel as though I would rather just fucking die and get it over with?
I remember the MRAs who were harassing me on my old blog, and how they snickered and sneered, anticipating the unhappy future I was so obviously creating for myself. But they supposed that I would wind up with three women hating me, and living in poverty while I paid child support to an ungrateful bitch. Pretty much the opposite of what actually happened, but the life I have now is making me feel so much worse than their scenario would have.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
What the fuck do I do now?
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