Klibanov stood awkwardly on the other side of the desk, looking for a chair.
"It's healthier to stand," said Topper, enjoying it.
Edwin said, "Ah, Dr. Klibanov. So good of you to come. How goes it with your daughter?"
The Doctor's weathered face softened and he said, "Not well I am afraid. She remains in stasis, and for all our hard work, we are no closer to a cure. With more money, with more research teams we could—"
"Ah, money. If that is all you need," said Edwin with a cold smile, "we have that in some abundance around here."
"What would you have me do for your blood money, Windsor?" Klibanov said warily.
Edwin slid a photograph across the desk, a picture of the man with lightning leaping from his fingers and “PB” emblazoned on his chest. "Can you identify this man?"
Klibanov considered the picture. "Hmm, it is the Faraday effect," he said quietly.
"His name is Faraday?" asked Topper
"No, no, no, you strange little man. That is not his name. That is my name for how he became like this. If you take a strong, very, very strong electromagnetic field, place a man in it and rotate him very fast, sometimes he develops these abilities. Becoming, in effect, a battery able to channel negative electrons. But this is on a scale and power that I have never seen before."
"So you do not know this man?"
"I did not say that. But what is first notable to me is the magnitude of discharge that this person is producing."
"You mean LeadMan?" asked Topper.
"What? Why do you interrupt me, troll?"
"It's just, we figure, that his name is LeadMan or something like that, on account of the, uh, chemical, yeah, chemical symbol for lead on his chest." Topper said, trying to sound smart and scientific but not quite sticking the landing.
"PB? Would it not be more sensible to assume that his name is PowerBoy?" said Klibanov.
"Oh," said Topper.
“The only ones I know of who can control the Faraday effect are PowerBoy and WeatherGirl."
"Those names are so cutesy, they are kind of disgusting," countered Topper.
"The names are not important," Klibanov snapped, "You see, it is so much electricity. Too much. It cannot come from himself alone; he must have another source of power."
"You mean like batteries?" asked Topper.
"No, NO! Batteries? There is no battery in the world powerful enough to—ah, but why do I waste my time. Windsor? You understand."
Edwin stepped in, "It's an industrial facility. One that uses a great deal of power. Dr. Klibanov is suggesting that he draws his power from a dynamo, or transmission lines. Perhaps buried underground?"
"Yes, exactly."
"And who is he?"
"I cannot say for certain, but there was a young man in Chicago. The son of an electrician."
Topper tried one last time. "Ah, c'mon. Why can't he be a plumber? ‘Cause pipes and lead and PB, y'know?" Klibanov and Edwin both ignored him.
"As a child he survived a tremendous shock. One that should have killed him. A kind of punctuated evolution, I would guess. Under strain his body had to learn to deal with the extreme current. He would be the only one I know of. But things are changing so fast. Your government does a poor job of regulating such things."
"Our government does a poor job of many things. How do we neutralize him?"
Klibanov studied the picture carefully for a time. Then he said, "He is channeling powers that do not truly belong to him. The solution in such cases is uniform. Ground him. That is how you neutralize his power. Once his ability to affect the electromagnetic spectrum is removed, you may use any of your usual methods to neutralize him."
"Thank you, Doctor."
The strategy and planning session lasted throughout the day and long into the following night. Edwin never seemed to get tired. The Adjustors gathered in his office. They would be dispatched for a piece of information and return. Slowly but surely a plan began to take shape.
It had always seemed strange to Topper, downright inefficient, that Edwin never had a computer in his office. With most of Edwin's requests, one or more of the severe men in black suits would leave Edwin's office, walk to a computer, find the answer, and return with it or a printout or a drawing of some kind.
In distant, happier times, Topper had asked Edwin about this and Edwin had replied, "Computers are useless, all they can give you are answers.”
Topper wasn't too sure it made sense to him. He was the kind of person who always knew the question. "Where's the bar?" What's a good place to eat around here?" "Where's the strip club?" Life just wasn't that complicated for Topper. He knew what he wanted, and he went about getting it the easiest way possible. Topper was pretty sure Edwin would be a lot happier if he adopted a similar view of things.
As Edwin asked his questions, the empty parts of the room were filled with papers and implements. Revisions were made to equipment lists. Maps were drawn and re-drawn. By about five in the afternoon of the following day, the plan had come together. It was physically manifest in Edwin's office. As the tall man talked it through and refined it and asked questions, he literally paced through his conception. He arranged and rearranged it, adjusted and caressed it, until finally each item was in proper relation to every other. The physical organization mirrored and extended his mighty mind.
The broad strokes of the plan were simple enough. They didn't have to find the man with the PB on his chest. They knew what he was going to do. He would come to them. Some unknown party was trying to bankrupt Omdemnity Insurance by creating the exact event that the company was supposed to insure against. No amount of financial engineering could change the nature of losses in the real world, or the fact that Omdemnity, as a legal entity, was obligated to pay.
When Topper had finally seen the shape of the plot against them, he said, "Wow, E, these guys are organized, well-capitalized and smart."
As Edwin shook his head, several of the Adjustors laughed at Topper. "No, Topper," Edwin said, with that voice that indicated the smaller man had said something particularly tiresome, "Not smart. If they were smart, they wouldn't have left the obvious weakness."
"Enh-henh. Okay, well, I don't want to say that this hasn't been a barrel of laughs, so I'll sing it. THIS HASN'T BEEN A BARREL OF LAUGHS!" Topper's singing voice approximated the sound that Ethel Merman might have made while being crushed to death in a cement mixer. "Good luck fellas, your President of Vice is taking a break." With the mocking laughter of the Adjustors ringing in his ears, Topper left the room, the floor, the building and the suburbs. He had had quite enough of this work bullshit, thank you very much.
Edwin and the Adjustors continued to work long into the night. This was the meticulous work of planning and execution that Topper hated. For Topper, the 80% solution was good enough. Pull the pin and throw the damn thing already. The rest was balls and improvisation. That was the spirit that made this country great. The way Edwin could work and rework a plan just drove him nuts.
To Edwin's way of thinking, it was never wise to undertake a course of action until you were sure you could squeeze every bit of advantage out of it possible. That included making sure you had the maximum chance of success. As Edwin worked, the Adjustors, those hollow men with empty eyes and calculating brains, attended Edwin in an almost religious rite. They knew what Edwin had tried to explain to Topper—the hallmark of superior technique was efficiency in multiple dimensions. When Edwin finally allowed himself to sleep, that's exactly what he had achieved.
As he drifted off to sleep, he recognized the flaw in their unknown opposition's plan. To bankrupt Edwin, there were only a limited number of sites they could attack. And while Omdemnity could not defend them all, it was only a matter of time before the man who fired lightning from his hands attempted to destroy the wrong one.
If the roles had been reversed, Edwin would have adopted a random pattern of attack. So random that he himself would not have known the location of the next strike and therefore would not be able to give it away. Even something as crude as putting locations on slips of paper and choosing one out of a hat would have sufficed.
Edwin's counter for this strategy was simple. He staged two-man teams with specialized equipment at a third of the locations he insured. He thought he might have to pay out on another claim (a painful thought) but he was mathematically likely to capture the offending hero/villain by his third attempt.
Edwin felt some disappointment when the man with the PB on his chest attacked the next closest factory. It was all too obvious.
When the first bolts of electricity hit the building, the blanket of snow surrounding the facility turned brilliant white, like the filament of some planet-sized light bulb. Every non-hardened electrical circuit in the facility went dead. The wall of glass that had protected the executive suites from the real world shattered spectacularly on the lawn. It was so impressive that the man in spandex with the PB on his chest did not hear the net gun fire. He also did not see the fine mesh net descending though the night towards him.
The net was large, about 300 square feet, but made of a very light, highly conductive material. When its gossamer strands settled upon him as lightly as a spider web, he was confused. What was this? This was no attack. This was some kind of a joke.
He grabbed the mesh and, with a bulging of encased sinews, tried to tear it apart. But the strands did not break. Even when he pulled so hard that the wire cut into his hands.
Two men in black suits, wearing heavy black rubber gloves and boots, came walking towards him through the snow.
Yeah right, thought PowerBoy, like those insulators will save them. Just the electrical field I can generate is enough to stop their hearts and scramble their brains.
He stretched out his hand in a dramatic gesture and smiled underneath his mask when he felt the tingle begin in his fingertips. The charge stored in his body built and built and built until it could no longer be contained. It released with an industrial-sized snapping noise. His pupils dilated in response to the bright blue flash he had come to know and love.
When his pupils re-adjusted to the night, he realized that men were still walking towards him. What had happened? Why had his powers failed him? Why hadn't they been reduced to greasy, burnt spots on the lawn? He tried again. And again. Each time, he created less of a spark. The third bolt was so weak, he could see that his charge was being grounded out by the net.
Then PowerBoy panicked. He struggled against the fine mesh that enclosed him. But it was no use. The net did not break, and he only tangled himself tighter and tighter. He twisted and fell to the ground.
The men in black suits advanced, their lack of expression and large rubber gloves making them seem something monstrous, something not even remotely human.
Well, thought PowerBoy, I might not be able to throw lighting, but the net will protect me when I electrify it. He reached out to the mighty electrical transmission line he could feel pulsing through the factory. Oh, yes, he would melt those silly boots and gloves right into their flesh. But just as he began to suck the coulombs of energy into his body, the power line went dead. Then he knew fear.
"You can't do this to me! Do you know who I AM?"
The cold-faced men said nothing. They simply rolled up the net, trapping PowerBoy even more securely in its fine wire mesh.
As they picked him up, PowerBoy tried one more time. When his finger brushed one of their wrists, he discharged everything he had left.
The man grunted and said, "Quit it, that tickles." He raised a rubberized fist and brought it down across PowerBoy's jaw. The world faded and came back.
"You can't do this to me," he protested again, "I'm PowerBoy. I'm a hero."
The man who had hit him said, "Heroes don't blow up factories." Then he heaved his neatly trussed human package into the back of a white nondescript panel van. Mummified in wire, PowerBoy was unable to protect himself. His head bounced off the unfinished metal of the van's cargo space and he saw stars.
As the rear doors of the white panel van were slammed shut, he had just enough time to cry, "But you can't do th—"
The van disappeared into the night.
If someone had made a nature documentary about Topper, it would start off with a wide shot of the Peppermint Hippo. It wasn't the nicest, or best-named, strip club in world, but for Topper, it was a comfortable place. He knew the dancers. He knew the bartenders. He knew the bouncers. And everybody there thought he was just a hell of a guy. Primarily because he tipped well. They even put in a special chair for him, so his legs wouldn't hurt. It might have been the only midget-fitted reclining leather chair in a strip club in the entire world. That would be the way to bet, anyway.
And in this perverse nature documentary, or, more accurately, this documentary of a perverse nature, the camera would follow a scantily clad cocktail waitress as she made her way through the darkened room (darkened as a kindness to dancers and patrons alike) and delivered a full glass of scotch to the table next to Topper's chair. The camera would frame the table and the edge of the chair, allowing the flashing lights to reveal Topper's small hand to reaching out to pick up the glass. Then the narrator would say, "A Topper in his natural habitat."
Topper sipped his overpriced scotch and waved to a dancer. She waved back. She was excited by the prospect of a large tip, but, in keeping with the inalterable feeding habits of her species, she disappeared into the back to do a bump of cocaine first. On other nights, Topper would have enjoyed this warm, comforting womb of sleaze and flesh that made him forget how truly alone in the world he was. But tonight, something was wrong.
Topper took another belt and watched a different girl with long dark hair writhing and twisting on the stage. She was new. He didn't know her name. But he was going to. Bah, it was no good. Even that didn't make him excited.
