Nuklear Age (38 page)

Atomik Lad held out his hand as Shiro gave a quick bow of respect. “Er, right.” He mimicked Shiro’s greeting.

Shiro turned to Genius and bowed to her as well. “Arigato for invited me to battle dragons of evil beings at your American town with my SUPAAA ACTION BATTLER ATTACKU PAWAAA!!!” Shiro struck a few minor poses, sheathed his sword, and bowed again.

Atomik Lad rubbed his ears. “Does he have to keep yelling so much?”

Shiro shot straight up, his little samurai armor rattling slightly with the quick movement. “This I focus my SUPAA ACTION BATTLER SPIRITO ENERGY ATTACKU PAWAAAA!!!”

“Right,” Atomik Lad said. He turned to Dr. Genius. “Um, can we begin my tests now? Please?”

“Just as soon as I finish with Nuklear Man here. Shiro?”

“HAI!”

“Why not take Atomik Lad to visit Angus for a bit?”

“No really, that’s fine. I don’t mind watching Nuke there. In fact, it’s probably better, you know. For me to be more personally aware of his limits.”

“TOUR GAIDOOOO POWAAA!!!” Shiro snatched Atomik Lad’s hand and dragged him out of the room through the entrance he just improvised. Atomik Lad jostled and bounced as Shiro dragged him along. The dwarf’s legs moved so quickly they were nothing more than a blur propelling Shiro and his cargo through corridors and a few obtrusive walls.

From his angle, Atomik Lad noticed something new about Shiro. The Tiny Typhoon had an oversized red firecracker looking rocket strapped to his back.
No good can come of this
, he thought to himself
.

They skidded to a halt. Atomik Lad lay on the cool tiled floor. He could feel the bruises sinking in. “Ugh.”

“Razy American Hero! Stand and delivaa to witness many amazing sights at this time super fun is now for us!”

Atomik Lad sat up. “What?”

“Here is your hero supaa action peer, Angus-san.”

The sidekick turned and there, in a Scientific: Observation Chamber not unlike the one Nuklear Man was being tested in, was Angus. A monitor above the wide Negaflux protected Scientific: Observation Window displayed Angus’s brain waves, heart rate, and KI field spikes. Each digital line was barely active as Angus lay against the far wall vacantly staring at or through Atomik Lad. The Surly Scot’s jaw was slack and his armor was indeed on backwards.

“Geez, what happened to him?” Atomik Lad asked aloud.

“Old Japanese regend say: When on the hunting Great Dragon, do not be use Great Dragoness Impression.”

“Um,” Atomik Lad answered.

Lookit ‘em,
comatose Angus thought.
That fancy boy Atomik Laddie talkin’ up a storm. ‘Ooh, lookit me, Ah’m so tall, not like that Angus. Ye want ta know what we call ‘em when he’s not around? Shorty Short Short ‘CUZ ANGUS IS BUT A WEE LADDIE! Ha!’ But ye can’t fool ol’ Angus, ye too-tall mutants! Ye make it so we wee folk can’t walk through the doors o’ society. Literally! Them blasted doorknobs is too damned high up! ‘Lookit that wee laddie try to open the door, he couldn’t reach that without an elevator—TOO BAD THE BLASTED ELEVATOR BUTTONS IS TOO DAMNED HIGH!!! Let’s go put stuff on the top shelf before we go an’ buy some more Nuklear Man T-shirts—XTRA LARGE ONES, AS MERE MORTAL SIZED SHIRTS SIMPLY WILL NOT SUFFICE OUR ABNORMALLY HUGE FRAMES!!!’

“That’s not very super fun big cell,” Shiro observed.

“Yeah, it’s pretty small,” Atomik Lad agreed.

Lookit ‘em talkin’ about me, sayin’ how much taller that samurai is than me. Ah knew it! They used that giant crab laddie as an excuse to drive me insane so they could look for a taller replacement! Bunch o’ backstabbin’ haggis-brained cowards! Just standin’ there gloatin’. Gloatin’ and infectin’ me brain with paranoid thoughts, but it won’t work on me! Oh no, Ah’m on to their plans. First they deprive me of my whiskey to weaken me mind, and then they begin their mental conditioning to make me docile an’ sober. And greatest crime of all, they use me own Battlesuit against me by welding it on backwards like soome kind o’ Iron: Battle-Straight Jacket.

“Hopingfully, honorable Angus-san be will the cured on soon.”

“Oh, I’m certain Angus’s stay will be a short one.”

SHORT?! Ah’ll show ‘em who’s so short!!!

“Hm,” Atomik Lad said, looking up at the monitor thingie. “Angus’s vital signs are going all screwy.”

Shiro stepped back and looked way up. “Hai. Perhaps maybe we call the doctoring?”

“What?”

“DWARF-A-PULT!!!” Angus erupted in a flurry of fury. His Iron: Bagpipe Thrusters flared to life with exactly the sound a blue whale makes when it explodes. “YYYYYEEEEEEEEARGHBLB—huh?” Unfortunately for Angus, since his Iron: Battlesuit was on backwards, the Iron Scotsman was propelled at Mach 1.3 through the back wall of his cell, a storage closet, a pocket dimension, back into our dimension, out a window, across town, and into a birdbath in the front yard of an ordinary looking house on Suburbia Street in the middle of the Panoptica Waterheight Viewshore Happydale Sunnyoaks Phase 3 planned community instead of his intended targets.

“Well, I guess we might as well get back to Dr. Genius,” Atomik Lad said after a while.

Shiro lit up. “TOUR GAIDOOOO FUKAZAKE ON THE RESCUING PARTY—IS GO!!!”

“Oh no,” Atomik Lad groaned as he felt his arm nearly get torn from his body.

__________

“Aww, gee whiz, Doc. This is kids’ stuff. When’re you gonna turn the heat on already?” Nuklear Man complained.

She glanced up to him, then back to her instruments. “It’s currently one million degrees Celsius in there.”

“Feh. My grandmother could Celsius hotter than this.”

“Your grandmother...? What? You’re not making sense, perhaps as a result of the heat, though I wouldn’t think you’d have any adverse reactions to such a relatively low temperature.”

“Heat, shmeat. Crank up that bad boy, it’s getting chilly in here.”

“Nameless, increase the temperature by a factor of two.”

“Doctor, are you—”

“Do it. We’ve got thirty-two safeties, each with three backup units. This test will pose no danger to anyone.”

“But Nuklear Man—”

“His KI Field has consistently adapted to the environment. To him, it’s as comfortable in there as it is out here for us. It’s astounding, even his
clothes
are unaffected. We have to push on. Kopelson Intrinsity is the thread of God’s tapestry. We are so close to reweaving it in our own image.”

Dr. Genius’s console beeped. “Two million,” she reported aloud while scanning Nuklear Man’s raw KI data. “It’s always better to just run the numbers through the KI equations in your head than rely on those three dimensional graphical representations,” she scolded Technician as he recorded a few notes based on an ever-changing 3D bar graph on his console.

“Easy for you to say,” he said.

“You lose context when you don’t see the whole picture. It’s like reading every fourth word in a book. You can get the general idea, but not the nuances, the true beauty.”

“Not everyone can visualize a twelve-dimensional figure in their head, Dr. Genius.”

“Yes, my utterly inhuman IQ does help with that bit, I must admit.” She shook her head in amazement and mumbled, “No adverse reactions whatsoever.” She looked back up at Nuklear Man. “How is it in there?”

“Baby, you’re twice as hot as this,” he said with a wink, smile, and finger-gun snap.

“How does he
do
it?” she mused to herself. “We’ll see about that, Nuklear Man. Nameless, four million.”

“Yes Doctor,” he replied.

Nuklear Man sighed. “Lousy reality not harsh enough to challenge Nukie, self-appointed Eternal Dictator for Life.”

“Four million,” she whispered to herself as her eyes absorbed the KI data streaming through her console.
How does he do it? I used to think KI was affected by the mind. Non-Supers have been effecting minor alterations in their fields and those of ordinary objects through intense concentration for centuries. Firewalkers, Buddhist meditators, and so on. But Nuklear Man performs incredible feats of KI manipulation without the slightest mental effort. It’s not physical, it’s not mental. What is it? I feel so close, like I can’t see the answer because it’s right in front of me. Maybe I should re-evaluate the parameters and approach from another vector.

Shiro crashed back into the lab through the nearly N2-healed hole he’d made earlier.

Atomik Lad flopped to the floor and moaned in pain while wishing that he could do away with enough morals to let him use his Atomik Powers on Shiro in a way neither comfortable nor sanitary but undoubtedly fatal to the samurai. “We’re back,” he groaned.

“SUPAAA ACTION TOUR GAIDOOOO FUKAZAKEEE reporting is now!” Shiro announced with a separate pose for every word.

“Ooh, excellent form,” Nuklear Man commented before adding, “Er, for not me.”

“Welcome back Shiro, Atomik Lad,” Dr. Genius said without taking her attention from the KI data. “How was Angus?”

“Um, better. In a way,” Atomik Lad answered while rubbing his neck.

“Eight million degrees,” she muttered. “Nuklear Man, how is it in there?”

“Hm, kinda warm.” She caught a slight waver in the Hero’s KI readings.

Atomik Lad looked over Ima’s shoulder to examine the incomprehensible streams of data that flooded her screens. They were covered in a constantly amorphous series of symbols and numbers. In fact, the only things that made any sense to him was the Scientific: Temperature Gauge and the large Scientific: Threat Level Display off to the left of the console. It consisted of three rectangular lights stacked on top of one another, green on the bottom, yellow in the middle and red on top. Currently, the green block was illuminated with the word “SAFE” alight in it.

Atomik Lad leaned back and noticed Ima’s concentration. “Um, so how’s it goin’, Doc?”

“Close,” she answered. “Very close.”

“Uh, good.” He knelt down to Shiro and whispered, “Close to what?”

The Tiny Typhoon shrugged. “I am don’t the knowing.”

Finally, his KI field is showing signs of losing its consistency. But why now, at the eight million range? His Plazma is almost identical to the energy given off by the sun and that reaches temperatures closer to twenty-seven million. He shouldn’t suffer field degradation until at least the teens. A little further, that’s all we’ll need. It’s right there in front of me, all I have to do is make the connections.

“Nine million degrees,” she watched his field twitch and churn as the temperature rose.

“It’s a bit uncomfortable in here, actually,” the Hero reported.

“More,” Dr. Genius ordered Technician.

Atomik Lad watched the Scientific: Thermometer pass the ten million degree mark.

Look at it
, Genius wondered,
creation dancing to the symphony of eternity, yet all form is nothingness
. “In the void there is no evil and only virtue.”

“I could use a drink of water,” Nuklear Man said while tugging at his collar.

The yellow light flared “WARNING.”

“Um, Dr. Genius?” Atomik Lad prompted. “Maybe you should shut it down?”

“Not yet.”

Eleven million. “Erk. I’m kinda woozy,” Nuklear Man said, swaying slightly.

“Dr. Genius?”

Eleven million three hundred thousand degrees and Nuklear Man collapsed while a red “DANGER” light blinked.

“Ima!”
Atomik Lad yelled with a burst of fear in his voice.

“Almost there,” she said through a mask of intense focus.

The temperature continued to increase as Nuklear Man’s KI readings became more erratic. Nuklear Man’s face twisted in pain as he lay on the Negaflux shielded floor. “Oh. Darn it, this hurts.”

“Ima. Let him go,” Atomik Lad insisted.

“Not yet,” she whispered to herself.

“Argh! Heat nearly. As strong. As me,” Nuklear Man said, his mega-ego unable to relent to the unrelenting reality around him.

“Ima, you’re killing him!”

“He’s fine,” she said nonchalantly as the temperature passed twelve million.

Atomik Lad clenched his fists, “Let him go,” he said with an even calmness. Shiro thought he could feel a light breeze whisk through the lab.

“Soon.”

“I said,
let him go!”
A gale blasted through the lab, tossing Shiro head first into a wall and Nameless across the room. Ima desperately held onto her console to save herself from a similar fate. Her lab coat made it all the more difficult, but she held firm. She beheld Atomik Lad with nearly as much awe as she had Nuklear Man’s results. There he stood, his Atomik Field blazing angrily just like his eyes.
His eyes, fierce, just like the Field. If a KI field contains infinite information about its host, then it should reflect the most minute details of that host. Atomik Lad’s field is inextricably linked to his emotional state--just as his KI field is. They’re the same. Somehow his KI has broken the Metathreshold. His KI field has been realized in our universe. Of course! That is the source of its power! Twelve dimensions packed into our four. That explains its tumultuous Realization with all the jagged edges. It tears at realty because it can barely confine itself to our realm of existence, it protects its host because it is an extension of him—no, literally he himself. It is his identity, this is why it falters and lashes out and gains strength from the intensity of his emotions, a physical representation of his own latent angst! If this is true, he is the key, not Nuklear Man. Atomik Lad holds the answers, Nuklear Man is merely the catalyst, a bundle of clues, a guinea pig, he’s— “—dying!”
the sidekick screamed hysterically. “You’re killing him! Stop it!” His Atomik Field flared and roiled around his body like razor-bladed crimson fire. He rushed to the Scientific: Observation Chamber. The Negaflux Field repelled him but he pushed on.

Ima watched.
He’s bending the Negaflux field through sheer force of will. But that’s impossible, it negates and redirects any force applied against it
. She finally took a breath as Atomik Lad had managed to push the Negaflux field into Nuklear Man’s little super-heated room.
Impossible, but that’s not stopping him
. Her mind snapped to more immediate concerns.
If he pierces the Negaflux, it’ll release all that plasma. It’ll be like setting off a nuclear warhead in here, destroying a good portion of the city, killing millions, and I’ll never finish my work.