Disclaimer #1: This story is set on a hypothetical world within the pre-Crisis
DC Universe. The DC Universe is owned by DC Comics, Inc. This story also
makes use of characters and concepts owned by other publishers. The use of
these copyrighted elements is done only for the amusement of the author and his
readers, and is not intended to infringe or disparage those copyrights.
Disclaimer #2: This story is not recommended for persons under the age
of 18, or the easily offended, especially for those who are uncomfortable with
themes such as organized crime and serial polygamy.
The Galaxy Broadcasting System’s headquarters building houses most of
the network’s Gotham City facilities, which are much more extensive than they
were when it was merely the Gotham Broadcasting System. Even so, the network
does not take up all of the building’s 55 floors.
The entire 49th floor is leased by Sigma-Hex Associates. They are not listed
on the building directory in the lobby, and only the freight elevators stop at
the 49th floor. Their lease indicates that they are a firm of security
consultants, but once they had promised not to handle toxic chemicals nor to
store large quantities of cash or portable valuables on their premises, Galaxy
Properties did not inquire too closely into what its tenants did.
On March 2nd, 1968, two people met in one of the smaller offices in the
Sigma-Hex suites. They hunched over a conference table, their heads close
together, since in spite of the ambient noise that permeated the entire floor
they did not want to turn up the sound on the small tape recorder between them.
One of the listeners would have been instantly recognized by anyone in
the country. Phil Ochs had been a celebrity as a musician even before his
agent had tried to kill him with a faked drug overdose, and turned him into the
toxic avenger known as Poison Oak.
The other was not so famous among the general public, but like Ochs was
well-known to the law enforcement community. Wynona Hudson was the daughter of
a 1920s film actress, and claimed that her father was Wyatt Earp (she sometimes
called herself Wynona Earp). That might or might not be true, but there was no
doubt that she was also known as Deadshot, and was wanted for far more felonies
than was Ochs.
They were not trespassing – they really were Associates of Sigma-Hex,
although they more commonly referred to their organization as the Secret Six.
Poison Oak had retrieved the recorder from the large primary conference
room, the one where the group usually had their general meetings. They hoped
it had recorded the conversation which their colleague Thomas Blake, otherwise
known as the Cheshire Cat, had just had with their leader, whom they knew only
as Mockingbird, and who claimed to be one of them.
The Cheshire Cat was not one of “Gotham’s Most Wanted”, not to be
mentioned in the same breath (followed by spitting) as the Joker or Two-Face,
but he was a wanted criminal with multiple outstanding warrants against him in
Gotham and in several other large Eastern cities.
He was not, as rumor would have it, sexually obsessed with Catwoman,
nor with the Mad Hatter. He also did not have powers of invisibility or
teleportation, nor was he in possession of a panther-skin belt which granted
him superhuman agility and the traditional nine lives of a cat.
He was not terribly prepossessing: short, thick-bodied, with curly hair
and chubby cheeks. Taken all in all, he looked rather like the actor Michael
J. Pollard. In costume, he looked like Michael J. Pollard in a tabby striped
body stocking and cat-eared mask.
Ochs pressed the Play button and the tape reels, the size of silver
dollars, began to turn. Ochs nodded, satisfied with the sound quality.
One voice was clearly Blake’s. The other was one they had all heard
often enough, the buzzing voice of their boss, who spoke to them only by
telephone or recorded message, his or her voice always disguised by an
electronic filter.
“Do you know why this group has six members?”
“Alliteration?”
Mockingbird ignored the mockery.
“I was taken prisoner by the Japanese during the war. They held me for
two years in a camp on the island of Bensalem in the Philippines. We learned,
after a few months, that we needed to live in groups of six: two to scrounge
for food and medical supplies, one to guard our stash, and one to look after
the two who, at any given time, were sick.
“If there were more than six in a group, they couldn’t gather enough
food for all of them. If there were fewer, then not all of the work would get
done, and they’d starve or die from disease. We had to live in sixes.
“I developed a theory from that experience, that in any given field of
endeavor, there was an optimum size for a team. Most of the time, it didn’t
really matter whether a team was slightly too large or small, because there was
a margin for error. But in situations like a prison camp, or a war zone, or a
police patrol, deviating from the optimal number can result in needless death
and in mission failure.
“I studied groups like this one, both law-abiding and law-breaking,
very intensively for two years before forming my own. I am convinced that it
needs to be a group of six, and a mix of genders, and encompassing certain
skills and abilities. And I repeat: I am convinced that the number and makeup
of the group is responsible for its success.”
There was a long pause, in which nothing at all could be heard.
“Blake, since the Secret Six was first formed three years ago, it has
had fifteen members, losing eight after between two years and two months.”
“Yes. Of the original group, only Deadshot and myself remain.”
Deadshot looked up to see if Ochs was eyeing her. The fact that only those two
remained did not eliminate the later-arrived members from consideration: they’d
found clues that suggested some of the more recent members had used someone
else’s identity. A couple of them had never even unmasked in their presence.
But she and Blake were the leading suspects, of course. Assuming that
Mockingbird wasn’t just mindfucking them with the claim of being one of the Six.
“That’s right. And of our nine losses, two were by death, one by disability,
one by voluntary resignation and five due to pregnancy.”
“Yes.”
“And of those five pregnancies, all of them have been your responsibility.”
“Yes, well, it’s something I do. Something I like to do. I’ve been doing it
since I was thirteen years old.”
“Having sex with women?”
“Fathering children. It’s why I became the Cheshire Cat in the first place,
after I’d used up my own money.”
“Yes, settling a trust fund on each child. A need for a large income is a good
strong motivation, one that makes it easier to predict your behavior and makes
me feel secure in having you on the team.”
“Only now you have a problem with it, apparently.”
“Not with making babies per se, but when you do it with teammates, and thus
take them out of the game, that becomes a problem.”
“Well, you don’t have to retire a team member just because she’s pregnant. I
mean, it’s usually not a big problem until the third trimester, and for the
first few months afterward.”
“My policies are my own business, Mr. Blake, and they are not up for
negotiation. If you don’t like them, you are free to leave the group, but I’d
much rather you stayed. You are a very valuable asset.”
“But you want me to stop knocking up my teammates.”
“Yes. Surely there are other women upon whom you could bestow…trust funds.”
“And if I don’t knock it off, you’ll have me neutered, I suppose.”
“Of course not. I respect your abilities far too much to want to make you an
enemy for life.”
Blake chuckled, and continued in an odd tone of voice that gave Ochs the
creeps.
“Oh, I don’t know. If I thought I was facing a threat like that, I’d do
anything to prevent it, as though my life were at stake. But once it was done
and there was nothing I could do about it, who knows? After all, neutered cats
are healthier and live longer.”
“That’s as may be,” Mockingbird continued, in a tone that suggested he too
found Blake’s comments rather creepy, “but in any event, that was not my
intention. If you won’t agree to stop impregnating my team, I will fire you
immediately, and the same if you, er, violate those terms.”
“All right,” Blake said uncertainly, “I can agree to that, except….”
“You need not concern yourself about whether to break it off with Iron-Fisted
Kate – she learned this morning that she is pregnant, and has already been
informed that she will have to leave the team. But there must be no more after
her – is that understood?”
“Yes, Mockingbird, I understand. And yes, I will abide by your . . .
regulation in this matter.”
“Thank you. That is a considerable relief to me. You really are a valuable
member of this group. Good day.”
There was a brief rushing sound which might have been a door opening on a
drafty corridor or an elevator shaft, and then silence until they heard Blake
push his chair back and go through the door.
“Huh,” Hudson said when Ochs had turned the machine off. “That was
interesting, in a gossipy sort of way, but it doesn’t really put us any closer
to knowing who Mockingbird is.”
“Further, I’d say. For one thing, Mockingbird’s story about being in a PoW
camp contradicts what he told me once about having been in the OSS, and
spending most of the war with a Jewish partisan group in Poland.”
“No kidding? Mesmero told me Mockingbird had told him that she’d been too
young for the war, but had gone to Korea with her brother, who died there.”
“Mockingbird lies a lot.”
“That’s true enough.”
“Well, at least I know this much,” Ochs said firmly: “that I’m not
Mockingbird, and Blake isn’t. That just leaves you, Kate, Juan and the chick
in the black hood.”
“Unless of course Blake was sitting there talking into a filtered
microphone, either to deceive us or because he’s even more cracked than we
thought.”
Ochs sighed.
“I wish you hadn’t said that.”
“Well, at least you’re still sure about yourself, I suppose.”
Friday, November 19, 2010
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Dogs Playing Poker, Presidents Playing Dumb
I found this pic awhile back, and was inspired to create a modified version that more accurately depicts the modern Republican party's relationship with its roots.
Today I saw it figuring in a post on Balloon Juice, so I am posting them here.
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2010/11/08/art-appreciation-101/#comments
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Friday, October 1, 2010
Earth-349: Jimmy Olsen
Earth-349: Jimmy Olsen
By Anton Psychopoulos, PhD
Disclaimer 1: This story was inspired by a story published in Superman #349,
1980, and also by a story published in Jimmy Olsen #105, 1967, both of which
are copyright DC Comics, Inc. It also draws inspiration from other sources,
including the works of Jack Kirby. This story is written solely for amusement
and is not intended to infringe those copyrights or any others.
Disclaimer 2: This story is not constrained by the stories which inspired it.
Disclaimer 3: This story is not recommended for person under 18, or those who
are uncomfortable with issues of gender and identity.
Jimmy Olsen woke up in the same bedroom he had been waking up in all month. He
supposed that made it “his” bedroom, although he was reluctant to think of it
that way because it seemed as though that would mean surrendering to his
situation, and he didn’t want to do that until he knew what on Earth his
situation was.
His brand of soap (Tugboat) was in the shower, though, and his shaving cream
(Spice Islands) and deodorant (Gladiator) were in the medicine cabinet, and the
clothes in the closet fit him and were more or less his preferred style, so in
about half an hour he was ready to hang his camera around his neck and face the
day.
His neighbor, who looked a lot like him aside from being a couple of inches
taller, was also going out, dressed much as Jimmy was, although his bow tie was
crooked. They both passed their landlady, a slightly plump woman with graying
red hair, who was shampooing the hallway. Jimmy noted with approval that her
bowtie was very neatly tied.
Jimmy stepped out into the street, where there were Olsens as far as the eye
could see.
Cars went back and forth, driven by Olsens of both sexes and all ages, obeying
the directions of a redhaired policewoman who was directing traffic. Jimmy
dodged to avoid a portly, balding Jimmy who was hurrying down the street to
open the bank and nearly ran into a freckle-faced nine-year-old of
indeterminate gender who was hawking newspapers.
Jimmy’s first idea was that the Olsens were all different versions of himself,
snatched by a time machine and dumped here, but that didn’t explain the
females, or the ones who were physically quite different.
A Jimmy of about fourteen, in short-sleeved white shirt, bow tie and leather
jacket, walked down the street holding a transistor radio to his ear. Jimmy
heard a snatch of what Big-O Jimbo, the Red-Haired DJ from the Planet Oh-oh,
was playing on WJO:
I want to ride to the ridge where the West commences
Take in the landscape with all eight senses
Can’t look at hobbles and I don’t like fences
Don’t fence me in….
Jimmy shook his head. Country-Western music hadn’t been the same since the
cowboys had discovered peyote.
Jimmy walked to the next block and entered the diner where he usually had his
breakfast. The waitress was cute and petite, which was a plus for Jimmy, who
was self-conscious about his height (especially now that he shared a town with
Jimmies who might be 5’10 or 6’2 (to say nothing of the nine-foot “Big Jimmy”
and the forty-foot “Turtle-Man”). He’d have made a pass at her by now, except
it felt kind of odd to think about dating someone who seemed like she was at
least his sister, if not himself.
The waitress brought Jimmy his breakfast: six eggs over easy and half a pound
of bacon, with half a loaf of toast, orange juice, tomato juice, prune juice
and a pot of coffee. Every Olsen Jimmy had seen eating had the same kind of
appetite, though they ranged from grossly obese through slightly plump to even
thinner than Jimmy himself.
The waitress smiled openly as she watched him tear into his breakfast, but
Jimmy still didn’t say anything. He hadn’t yet actually seen one of the female
Olsens naked, and he couldn’t quite shake the suspicion that they might all
just be boys who liked to dress up, seeing as how he kind of did himself.
Jimmy thought about all of these things as he ate his bacon and eggs alone at
the counter, while looking idly at last week’s Daily Planet. He’s already read
it. Indeed, he had written most of it.
Neslo the Magnificent entered the diner with a dramatic swirl of his cape, but
that was better than appearing in a puff of smoke as he was sometimes known to
do. When Jimmy had created the “Neslo” persona, he had dyed his hair black,
worn a false beard and used lifts to increase his height. But Jimmy had seen
Neslo in an open-collared shirt and shorts, and noticed his abundant black
chest and leg hair (Jimmy’s own body hair was neither) and sandal-clad feet.
Neslo sat down next to Jimmy and gave the waitress a hard stare. She stood
still for a moment and then nodded. Jimmy didn’t know whether Neslo was really
ordering telepathically, or if it was just part of his schtick, although he
didn’t get the same breakfast each time, and never complained about it.
Jimmy finished and left the diner, leaving coins to pay for his breakfast and a
generous tip, and continued down the street to his job. Along the way, he saw
Secret Agent Double-Five scaling the outside of a building with his hand- and
foot-suction cups. He went into a second-storey window and moments later
emerged holding a female Olsen by the arm.
Elastic Lass suddenly appeared, stretching herself tall enough to grab the
apprehended woman’s other arm, while her free arm entered the apartment and
emerged holding a black satchel from which the ends of strange devices poked.
As he took photos of the arrest, Jimmy tried to remember how he had briefly
come into possession of a set of burglar’s tools from the far future. Or were
they alien burglar tools? It was hard to remember.
A police car pulled up between Elastic Lass’s taffy-like stretched legs. She
and Double-Five handed the burglar Olsen over to a uniformed officer with a
gray-furred wolf face, to the disappointment of a pair of flying Olsens (a boy
in a purple and white suit and a girl in orange and green) who had hoped to
have a role in the capture.
Jimmy continued on his way. The next block ended at Weisinger Plaza, the town
square, where the most important civic organs were concentrated: City Hall,
where a red-bearded Mayor in top hat and red sash held forth in majestic pomp.
The Clinic, where a fat and kindly old nurse kept an arrogant young doctor from
scaring away his patients. The Jail/Police Headquarters, where a hard-faced
Sheriff with six arms was even now taking custody of Burglar Olsen. And the
Daily Planet Building, a grand name for a two-storey building which also housed
a barber shop, a vacuum cleaner store and a used-book dealer. But it did have
a foot-wide brass ringed planet perched on a pole above a glass window which
reproduced the Planet masthead in gold leaf.
Jimmy remembered living in a big city, and being a photographer for the Daily
Planet, which was as its masthead described it, “A Great Metropolitan
Newspaper”. Now he worked for a very different Planet, as its sole
reporter/photographer, sharing its tiny storefront offices with a portly silver-
haired Olsen editor and a scrawny bald-headed Olsen janitor. It was only a
weekly paper in spite of the name, and they were hard-pressed to fill its eight
pages with any news at all, in a town with a population of no more than a
thousand.
It wasn’t clear how the newspaper made any money. Perhaps it didn’t. But once
a week the editor handed Jimmy an envelope containing a sheaf of garishly-
colored bills and shiny silver coins with portraits of assorted Olsens whose
clothing and grooming suggested they had lived in various past generations.
The shops of the town accepted his money, though. The haberdasher sold him
underwear and bow ties, wherever they came from. The restaurants gave him
food, from wherever that came from. There was a lot Jimmy didn’t understand
about his current life, but that didn’t make it all that different from his
other life in that big city called…? He wasn’t sure. Something sort
of…generic, wasn’t it?
Jimmy thought, as he did at least once every day, about talking with someone
about what was going on, at least to his editor. But somehow he couldn’t quite
bring himself to do so. He felt a powerful compulsion -- a powerful need -- to
play along, play his role, pretend nothing was wrong. So he developed his
photos of the burglar-Olsen’s arrest and typed up a brief account of the
incident before knocking off for lunch.
Rather than head for the restaurant where he usually had lunch (if he didn’t
just return to Olsen’s Diner), he walked in the opposite direction, to the end
of the street, at the edge of town.
The town was laid out like a game board, a grid of streets with a single
circular road surrounding it. There were no roads that actually led out of
town. Jimmy had explored the wasteland around the town on foot but hadn’t
found anything worth the effort he’d put into reaching it. This time, he
walked along the curving road, looking left to the sand and rock outside, right
to the bustling little town, and occasionally straight up.
The sky overhead looked…wrong. The sun that rose every morning looked
artificial, somehow, as though if you looked at it through a filter, instead of
sunspots you’d see a Sivana Electric logo. Jimmy snorted at the thought of how
many watts it would be.
That wrongness made Jimmy wonder if they were even on Earth. They might be
under a dome on some asteroid, with artificial air and gravity. Or in a cavern
deep underground. It didn’t matter. There didn’t seem to be any way to get
out of the town, much less its enclosure.
Jimmy heard a distant thudding sound gradually growing louder. He looked out
into the empty land and soon made out the silhouette of the Giant Turtle Olsen,
the only person who regularly walked outside the town (seeing as how he was too
large to fit comfortably anywhere inside it). Jimmy watched the odd sunlight
glint off the many hexagonal plates of the Turtle Man: large ones for his
chest, smaller ones for his limbs, the smallest ones at his neck and groin.
Someone had objected to the Turtle Man walking around naked, and had persuaded
the flying super-Olsens to fit him with a huge blue loincloth, but they
couldn’t get him to leave it on. The Turtle’s yard-long penis, armored except
at the pink glans, dangled freely today. Jimmy was just grateful that he
didn’t, as many turtles did, have two penes.
Jimmy wasn’t sure why he was called a “turtle” man, anyway. With his plated
body he looked more like a dragon than anything from Earth, and really a lot
more like an alien from the cover of some old science fiction magazine. Jimmy
pictured the giant on a cover painting, tearing apart a bridge in a futuristic
city while a rocketship flew around his head.
Jimmy had absolutely no memory of ever becoming a pop-eyed armor-plated giant.
He turned at the next corner and walked back into the center of town. It
wasn’t possible to get more than four blocks from the town square.
A bulbous Olsen, his face obscured by a curtain of hair, a foot-long tongue
dangling to his breast, suddenly stopped and put out a hand to stop his
companion (who had a much more normal face but was entirely robotic from the
neck down). With its other hand, the hairy Olsen-freak pointed upward.
“Wuit! Upp in fa fky!”
Jimmy rolled his eyes. There were three Olsens who flew over the town every
day, as well as one who could strap on a pair of magic wings, and another who
could levitate telekinetically. What was so special about….
Then Jimmy did look up, and saw a flying figure which was definitely not an
Olsen. Even from a distance, there was no mistaking the perfect form and
confident bearing of Superwoman.
The Woman of Steel hovered above the town square, calling out in an
impossibly-loud voice that somehow didn’t hurt Jimmy’s ears.
“Ladies and gentlemen! Olsens! Please listen to me!
“You have probably been wondering, and speculating, on where you are and why
you are here. You may have your own ideas about what is happening. Please
listen, while I explain to you what is going on. You may find what I have to
say upsetting, but I hope you will trust me when I say that I know where you
came from.
“You are clones –“
Superwoman waited for the anguished cries and angry denials of many to die
down, and then continued.
“You are clones, many with your DNA slightly altered from the original, which
is why you come in both genders. Your apparent ages are simply what your
creators chose to grow you to – each of you is actually less than a year old,
some only weeks old.
“Your memories are edited and rewritten versions of the memories of your
original…a close friend of mine.
“You can’t stay in this place. It will soon be incapable of supporting human
life. But I can get you out of here, and I will. I have friends who will help
to place each of you on a parallel world where there is a place for you,
provide you with all necessary documents and assistance to help you get settled
in your new lives.
“Dabney Donovan, the head of the Cadmus Project, is responsible for your
situation. He has committed a terrible crime against you, and he will face
justice. Please take my word for that, also. He will pay.”
Several voices had already been calling out, but now Jimmy found himself asking
the same question as was coming from several others:
“Which of us is the original?”
Superwoman’s face darkened. She shook her head slowly.
“The original Kirsten Olsen…is not here. She never was.”
The implications of Superwoman’s flat statement sank in, and the Olsens stopped
asking questions. One by one, they went to prepare themselves for moving out
of the Olsen town.
By Anton Psychopoulos, PhD
Disclaimer 1: This story was inspired by a story published in Superman #349,
1980, and also by a story published in Jimmy Olsen #105, 1967, both of which
are copyright DC Comics, Inc. It also draws inspiration from other sources,
including the works of Jack Kirby. This story is written solely for amusement
and is not intended to infringe those copyrights or any others.
Disclaimer 2: This story is not constrained by the stories which inspired it.
Disclaimer 3: This story is not recommended for person under 18, or those who
are uncomfortable with issues of gender and identity.
Jimmy Olsen woke up in the same bedroom he had been waking up in all month. He
supposed that made it “his” bedroom, although he was reluctant to think of it
that way because it seemed as though that would mean surrendering to his
situation, and he didn’t want to do that until he knew what on Earth his
situation was.
His brand of soap (Tugboat) was in the shower, though, and his shaving cream
(Spice Islands) and deodorant (Gladiator) were in the medicine cabinet, and the
clothes in the closet fit him and were more or less his preferred style, so in
about half an hour he was ready to hang his camera around his neck and face the
day.
His neighbor, who looked a lot like him aside from being a couple of inches
taller, was also going out, dressed much as Jimmy was, although his bow tie was
crooked. They both passed their landlady, a slightly plump woman with graying
red hair, who was shampooing the hallway. Jimmy noted with approval that her
bowtie was very neatly tied.
Jimmy stepped out into the street, where there were Olsens as far as the eye
could see.
Cars went back and forth, driven by Olsens of both sexes and all ages, obeying
the directions of a redhaired policewoman who was directing traffic. Jimmy
dodged to avoid a portly, balding Jimmy who was hurrying down the street to
open the bank and nearly ran into a freckle-faced nine-year-old of
indeterminate gender who was hawking newspapers.
Jimmy’s first idea was that the Olsens were all different versions of himself,
snatched by a time machine and dumped here, but that didn’t explain the
females, or the ones who were physically quite different.
A Jimmy of about fourteen, in short-sleeved white shirt, bow tie and leather
jacket, walked down the street holding a transistor radio to his ear. Jimmy
heard a snatch of what Big-O Jimbo, the Red-Haired DJ from the Planet Oh-oh,
was playing on WJO:
I want to ride to the ridge where the West commences
Take in the landscape with all eight senses
Can’t look at hobbles and I don’t like fences
Don’t fence me in….
Jimmy shook his head. Country-Western music hadn’t been the same since the
cowboys had discovered peyote.
Jimmy walked to the next block and entered the diner where he usually had his
breakfast. The waitress was cute and petite, which was a plus for Jimmy, who
was self-conscious about his height (especially now that he shared a town with
Jimmies who might be 5’10 or 6’2 (to say nothing of the nine-foot “Big Jimmy”
and the forty-foot “Turtle-Man”). He’d have made a pass at her by now, except
it felt kind of odd to think about dating someone who seemed like she was at
least his sister, if not himself.
The waitress brought Jimmy his breakfast: six eggs over easy and half a pound
of bacon, with half a loaf of toast, orange juice, tomato juice, prune juice
and a pot of coffee. Every Olsen Jimmy had seen eating had the same kind of
appetite, though they ranged from grossly obese through slightly plump to even
thinner than Jimmy himself.
The waitress smiled openly as she watched him tear into his breakfast, but
Jimmy still didn’t say anything. He hadn’t yet actually seen one of the female
Olsens naked, and he couldn’t quite shake the suspicion that they might all
just be boys who liked to dress up, seeing as how he kind of did himself.
Jimmy thought about all of these things as he ate his bacon and eggs alone at
the counter, while looking idly at last week’s Daily Planet. He’s already read
it. Indeed, he had written most of it.
Neslo the Magnificent entered the diner with a dramatic swirl of his cape, but
that was better than appearing in a puff of smoke as he was sometimes known to
do. When Jimmy had created the “Neslo” persona, he had dyed his hair black,
worn a false beard and used lifts to increase his height. But Jimmy had seen
Neslo in an open-collared shirt and shorts, and noticed his abundant black
chest and leg hair (Jimmy’s own body hair was neither) and sandal-clad feet.
Neslo sat down next to Jimmy and gave the waitress a hard stare. She stood
still for a moment and then nodded. Jimmy didn’t know whether Neslo was really
ordering telepathically, or if it was just part of his schtick, although he
didn’t get the same breakfast each time, and never complained about it.
Jimmy finished and left the diner, leaving coins to pay for his breakfast and a
generous tip, and continued down the street to his job. Along the way, he saw
Secret Agent Double-Five scaling the outside of a building with his hand- and
foot-suction cups. He went into a second-storey window and moments later
emerged holding a female Olsen by the arm.
Elastic Lass suddenly appeared, stretching herself tall enough to grab the
apprehended woman’s other arm, while her free arm entered the apartment and
emerged holding a black satchel from which the ends of strange devices poked.
As he took photos of the arrest, Jimmy tried to remember how he had briefly
come into possession of a set of burglar’s tools from the far future. Or were
they alien burglar tools? It was hard to remember.
A police car pulled up between Elastic Lass’s taffy-like stretched legs. She
and Double-Five handed the burglar Olsen over to a uniformed officer with a
gray-furred wolf face, to the disappointment of a pair of flying Olsens (a boy
in a purple and white suit and a girl in orange and green) who had hoped to
have a role in the capture.
Jimmy continued on his way. The next block ended at Weisinger Plaza, the town
square, where the most important civic organs were concentrated: City Hall,
where a red-bearded Mayor in top hat and red sash held forth in majestic pomp.
The Clinic, where a fat and kindly old nurse kept an arrogant young doctor from
scaring away his patients. The Jail/Police Headquarters, where a hard-faced
Sheriff with six arms was even now taking custody of Burglar Olsen. And the
Daily Planet Building, a grand name for a two-storey building which also housed
a barber shop, a vacuum cleaner store and a used-book dealer. But it did have
a foot-wide brass ringed planet perched on a pole above a glass window which
reproduced the Planet masthead in gold leaf.
Jimmy remembered living in a big city, and being a photographer for the Daily
Planet, which was as its masthead described it, “A Great Metropolitan
Newspaper”. Now he worked for a very different Planet, as its sole
reporter/photographer, sharing its tiny storefront offices with a portly silver-
haired Olsen editor and a scrawny bald-headed Olsen janitor. It was only a
weekly paper in spite of the name, and they were hard-pressed to fill its eight
pages with any news at all, in a town with a population of no more than a
thousand.
It wasn’t clear how the newspaper made any money. Perhaps it didn’t. But once
a week the editor handed Jimmy an envelope containing a sheaf of garishly-
colored bills and shiny silver coins with portraits of assorted Olsens whose
clothing and grooming suggested they had lived in various past generations.
The shops of the town accepted his money, though. The haberdasher sold him
underwear and bow ties, wherever they came from. The restaurants gave him
food, from wherever that came from. There was a lot Jimmy didn’t understand
about his current life, but that didn’t make it all that different from his
other life in that big city called…? He wasn’t sure. Something sort
of…generic, wasn’t it?
Jimmy thought, as he did at least once every day, about talking with someone
about what was going on, at least to his editor. But somehow he couldn’t quite
bring himself to do so. He felt a powerful compulsion -- a powerful need -- to
play along, play his role, pretend nothing was wrong. So he developed his
photos of the burglar-Olsen’s arrest and typed up a brief account of the
incident before knocking off for lunch.
Rather than head for the restaurant where he usually had lunch (if he didn’t
just return to Olsen’s Diner), he walked in the opposite direction, to the end
of the street, at the edge of town.
The town was laid out like a game board, a grid of streets with a single
circular road surrounding it. There were no roads that actually led out of
town. Jimmy had explored the wasteland around the town on foot but hadn’t
found anything worth the effort he’d put into reaching it. This time, he
walked along the curving road, looking left to the sand and rock outside, right
to the bustling little town, and occasionally straight up.
The sky overhead looked…wrong. The sun that rose every morning looked
artificial, somehow, as though if you looked at it through a filter, instead of
sunspots you’d see a Sivana Electric logo. Jimmy snorted at the thought of how
many watts it would be.
That wrongness made Jimmy wonder if they were even on Earth. They might be
under a dome on some asteroid, with artificial air and gravity. Or in a cavern
deep underground. It didn’t matter. There didn’t seem to be any way to get
out of the town, much less its enclosure.
Jimmy heard a distant thudding sound gradually growing louder. He looked out
into the empty land and soon made out the silhouette of the Giant Turtle Olsen,
the only person who regularly walked outside the town (seeing as how he was too
large to fit comfortably anywhere inside it). Jimmy watched the odd sunlight
glint off the many hexagonal plates of the Turtle Man: large ones for his
chest, smaller ones for his limbs, the smallest ones at his neck and groin.
Someone had objected to the Turtle Man walking around naked, and had persuaded
the flying super-Olsens to fit him with a huge blue loincloth, but they
couldn’t get him to leave it on. The Turtle’s yard-long penis, armored except
at the pink glans, dangled freely today. Jimmy was just grateful that he
didn’t, as many turtles did, have two penes.
Jimmy wasn’t sure why he was called a “turtle” man, anyway. With his plated
body he looked more like a dragon than anything from Earth, and really a lot
more like an alien from the cover of some old science fiction magazine. Jimmy
pictured the giant on a cover painting, tearing apart a bridge in a futuristic
city while a rocketship flew around his head.
Jimmy had absolutely no memory of ever becoming a pop-eyed armor-plated giant.
He turned at the next corner and walked back into the center of town. It
wasn’t possible to get more than four blocks from the town square.
A bulbous Olsen, his face obscured by a curtain of hair, a foot-long tongue
dangling to his breast, suddenly stopped and put out a hand to stop his
companion (who had a much more normal face but was entirely robotic from the
neck down). With its other hand, the hairy Olsen-freak pointed upward.
“Wuit! Upp in fa fky!”
Jimmy rolled his eyes. There were three Olsens who flew over the town every
day, as well as one who could strap on a pair of magic wings, and another who
could levitate telekinetically. What was so special about….
Then Jimmy did look up, and saw a flying figure which was definitely not an
Olsen. Even from a distance, there was no mistaking the perfect form and
confident bearing of Superwoman.
The Woman of Steel hovered above the town square, calling out in an
impossibly-loud voice that somehow didn’t hurt Jimmy’s ears.
“Ladies and gentlemen! Olsens! Please listen to me!
“You have probably been wondering, and speculating, on where you are and why
you are here. You may have your own ideas about what is happening. Please
listen, while I explain to you what is going on. You may find what I have to
say upsetting, but I hope you will trust me when I say that I know where you
came from.
“You are clones –“
Superwoman waited for the anguished cries and angry denials of many to die
down, and then continued.
“You are clones, many with your DNA slightly altered from the original, which
is why you come in both genders. Your apparent ages are simply what your
creators chose to grow you to – each of you is actually less than a year old,
some only weeks old.
“Your memories are edited and rewritten versions of the memories of your
original…a close friend of mine.
“You can’t stay in this place. It will soon be incapable of supporting human
life. But I can get you out of here, and I will. I have friends who will help
to place each of you on a parallel world where there is a place for you,
provide you with all necessary documents and assistance to help you get settled
in your new lives.
“Dabney Donovan, the head of the Cadmus Project, is responsible for your
situation. He has committed a terrible crime against you, and he will face
justice. Please take my word for that, also. He will pay.”
Several voices had already been calling out, but now Jimmy found himself asking
the same question as was coming from several others:
“Which of us is the original?”
Superwoman’s face darkened. She shook her head slowly.
“The original Kirsten Olsen…is not here. She never was.”
The implications of Superwoman’s flat statement sank in, and the Olsens stopped
asking questions. One by one, they went to prepare themselves for moving out
of the Olsen town.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Try Other Things Before You Try Killing Yourself
And other useful advice from rm:
http://rm.livejournal.com/1933522.html?view=22593746#t22593746
For the longest time I thought I wasn't wired for suicide, and that this was all that had saved my life on several occasions. Then I really did feel suicidal.
Bupropion helped*. So did reminding myself to mutter "I want to live" under my breath, instead of "I wish I were dead".
* The first antidepressant I tried didn't help, but I found that it's like reporting sexual abuse: if you don't get help from the first person/drug, keep trying until you do.
http://rm.livejournal.com/1933522.html?view=22593746#t22593746
For the longest time I thought I wasn't wired for suicide, and that this was all that had saved my life on several occasions. Then I really did feel suicidal.
Bupropion helped*. So did reminding myself to mutter "I want to live" under my breath, instead of "I wish I were dead".
* The first antidepressant I tried didn't help, but I found that it's like reporting sexual abuse: if you don't get help from the first person/drug, keep trying until you do.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Hey, It Was The Least I Could Do
The call has gone out over the Internet: Take a typically misogynistic "Least I Could Do" strip and give it funnier captions.
Not the funniest comic strip I've ever read, nor even the funniest I've written, but it's definitely better than the original version.
Not the funniest comic strip I've ever read, nor even the funniest I've written, but it's definitely better than the original version.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Pastor Jones
Text of a message Mrs. Psycho and I sent out this morning:
Pastor Jones is back in the news today (first he says he will, and then he won't), and we have decided to donate $20 to the local mosque for the express purpose of providing a copy of the Quran to someone who wants or needs it. We'll inform our local newspapers, also, in the hope that other non-Muslims will follow our example. Maybe we can out-weigh the "pastor's" destruction, for a net increase in the number of Qurans.
We are pretty damned short of money, but we will find $20 in our budget for this purpose, and we hope to persuade some of our friends to do the same.
Considering that "Pastor" Jones' church-and-used-furniture business only has about fifty members, our "action" may be bigger than his.
Pastor Jones is back in the news today (first he says he will, and then he won't), and we have decided to donate $20 to the local mosque for the express purpose of providing a copy of the Quran to someone who wants or needs it. We'll inform our local newspapers, also, in the hope that other non-Muslims will follow our example. Maybe we can out-weigh the "pastor's" destruction, for a net increase in the number of Qurans.
We are pretty damned short of money, but we will find $20 in our budget for this purpose, and we hope to persuade some of our friends to do the same.
Considering that "Pastor" Jones' church-and-used-furniture business only has about fifty members, our "action" may be bigger than his.
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