Nuklear Age (69 page)

“I can.”

“And?”

“It’s foggy.”

__________

Issue 49 – Not From Around Here

Hurtling through the emptiness between Sol’s planets at speeds that are supposed to impossible…

The control room was simple enough. A large domed room, bare walls and dark as all heck. The figure of an imposing man sat in a geometrically perfect and symmetrical chair that appeared to have grown from the perfectly smooth floor. His elbows rested on a simple desk that also seemed to be a perfect outgrowth of the floor. His fingers were interlocked just below his nose. He stared straight ahead into a dozen hovering images that were projected into the air in front of him. They changed at random intervals. First a mountain top, then the murder scene of a detective show, then a statue, then a woman happily using floor cleaner, and so on, and so on.

The corner of his mouth fought back a slight grin. “The Earthim.” He stared into the television transmissions. “Fascinating,” he said somewhat in awe.

“The legendary Earthim? Are you sure, Lord Nihel?” his sniveling servant asked from just beside and behind him. The air around his neck collected itself into a solid fist hovering directly in front of him. The lackey gave a startled jump as the fist grabbed him up by the collar and half flung, half dragged him directly into Nihel’s field of vision.

“Yes, Gadriel,” he growled with a deliberate slowness. “I am sure.” The solidified fist threw the lackey to the floor and dissipated back into harmless nothing. “You worm,” he added as an after thought.

“Just making sure, my Lord,” Gadriel groaned while dusting himself off even though there wasn’t a spec of dust in the entire ship. “Ahem. What shall we do to them?”

Nihel gave an indifferent nod. “It is an odd twist of Fate that we should find the sacred home of the Earthim while the scores of explorers and theologians from the Galactic Council continue to come up empty handed. But it is no matter. We have more pressing issues at hand.”

Gadriel nodded in submission. “As you command, my Lord. Shall I make a note of its location? Perhaps destroying it will serve as something of a celebration once we succeed in our mission.”

Nihel continued watching his multitude of television stations. “Hm. A tempting thought, but no. I somewhat like the idea that we should be only ones who know that the children of Earth are real. Let the Council bicker amongst themselves, they seem to enjoy it or else they wouldn’t have been at it all these millennia.” He fell silent. The channels kept changing themselves. Soap operas, fast food commercials. “Besides, once we’ve found our wayward quarry, every living being throughout the Milky Way will be no more.” Again silence. A celebrity gossip show, a diet drink commercial, a sitcom. “To think that from such…” he searched for the word while watching a long distance commercial, “…From such
banality
could come the basis for an empire of enlightenment and peace that spans half a galaxy.” He shook his head, “Fate must be mad.” A porno, something animated, a news cast. One of the screens caught his attention. He froze the image and multiplied it across the other screens.

Gadriel’s gaze slowly turned from his master to the screens. They played back the last few seconds of footage in reverse. The image was from a news document. Apparently an Earthim woman of dubious attractiveness was questioning oddly garbed individuals. First a large man with skin like silver, now a considerably smaller youth. Gadriel looked back at Nihel. His grim master’s hands now lay on their respective arm rests, his eyes had all the surprise of a man who had just been shot in the stomach while in the middle of a rather pleasing dream about pretty girls.

“My Lord, surely you worry too much. Of all the worlds within the Galactic Territories, can you name a single one that is without its own clan of champions? Does not the Great Disk of the Earthim make many references to the exploits of their own Hero, Captain Liberty? It should be no surprise that they’d have others to—” Gadriel’s lungs could no longer do their business. He gasped, as he always did when this happened, and hoped, as he always did when this happened, that this latest bout of asphyxiation would not be his last.

“Now that I have your attention,” Nihel growled. The television image had captured Nuklear Man’s beaming smile, just seconds before Erica would have tried to force herself into frame. “What do you see?” Gadriel struggled to respond but couldn’t bring himself to inhale or exhale so nothing much was accomplished. Nihel watched his toady writhe in agony. “Though I do so relish teaching you the importance of realizing that you are alive for every moment of your life until the instant of death, you may now speak.”

Gadriel collapsed to the perfectly flat floor and desperately worked his lungs for air. The same speech every time. Always just before that instant of death he keeps preaching about. “I see. But, but it cannot be.”

Nihel tensed. “What,” a pair of fists manifested from nothing, heaved Gadriel from the floor, and pushed his nose into the frozen image. “Do you see?”

“My answer is a foolish one and I-I do not wish to incite my Lord’s renowned anger.”

“I assure you,” he growled, “It is much too late for that. Answer me!”

“I see…Arel.” Gadriel winced in anticipation of a retribution that did not manifest. The hands dissolved and he fell to the floor. He was convinced that he was the most oft-bruised being in the Galactic Territories.

“Precisely,” Nihel said. The dark dome was suddenly illuminated even though it lacked any apparent mechanisms for illumination. The Lord had risen. Nihel’s cape, draped over his shoulders, was like a robe that had been soaked in blood and left to dry. It rest against the stony gray of his outfit that accentuated his perfect physique and cold, ageless eyes of granite. The uniform’s only feature was a dark red Nuklear style N with electron orbits around it. “What is my dear brother in Fate doing?”

__________

Atomik Lad walked out of the Danger: Kitchen with a glass of water.“Nuke. What’re you doing?”

“Shush!” the Hero snapped. “I’ve nearly got this part figured out.”

Atomik Lad leaned over to give the situation a closer inspection. “Still on Level One, huh?”

“Yes,” Nuklear Man hissed.

“You know it’s like eleven at night now.”

“It’s harder than it looks!” Nuklear Man defended, though he did not defend his video game starfighter nearly as well. A bullet, the very same one that destroyed his hopes to rid the Neila System from the vile Gorthzok Armada every single damn time, brought about his doom yet again.

“Hm. I dunno. You make it look pretty hard.”

“You’re distracting me! Silence, wicked hellspawn. Speak not whilst yonder Hero plays video game. I’ve got a strategy now.”

“Good for you. Doesn’t change a thing.”

“We’ll just see about—
dammit!”

“Told ya.”

“You’d think a society capable of building a vehicle with all these planet-ripping weapons would have sense enough to mount them on a ship with
armor!”

“You could just dodge that one bullet.”

“It says so right in the game’s intro. ‘You are the last hope for the peace loving people of Neila.’ If they’re so peace lovin’, then how’d they know how to build Null Bombs and Megablasters in the first place? Hm? And if this ship is their only hope,” he quaked with rage. “
Then you’d think they’d at least have sense enough to put some armor on it!”

“Or at least hire a competent pilot.”

“Your negative vibes are influencing the game on a quantum level. I can feel it. Be gone.”

“Sure thing, Big Guy. Try to get some sleep, hm?”

“Feh. Sleep is for the weak. Take you for instance.”

“Right. Don’t make too much noise. I’ve got to get up early tomorrow and meet Rachel on campus. Goodnight.” The Danger: Katkat’s Room Door
fwoosh
ed shut.

“Yes. Retreat into your den of treachery and deceit and quantum warping negative power vibes. Meanwhile, I’ll be saving the galaxy from the wretched Gorthzok Armada!” The magic bullet took him out. Again.
“This
time for sure.”

__________

Nu: Alpha.

I’ve been investigating it for ten years. A clue. A sign. Never did I suspect the subtle nuances of Science would be so blatant as a mile wide orb hurtling through our solar system at several times the speed of light. The mastery of Intrinsity their society must be capable of is astounding. I can only assume they’ve overcome the time dilation paradox. What power.

But I digress.

Nu: Alpha. Tomorrow will see the dawn of a new age.

However, I cannot shake the foreboding that I fear may be looming on the horizon. The entire history of the Earth is a long story of one technologically superior civilization dominating a less developed one. I can only hope that a society capable of interstellar travel has also reached a point of maturity where conquest is but an embarrassing footnote in their distant past.

__________

Wednesday morning. 8:57am.

Atomik Lad blindly fumbled with the wailing banshee that became his alarm clock every weekday morning at nine in the goddamn morning. He lay there staring at the ceiling with sleep-starved eyes. He craved the velvet embrace of slumber like a crack addict on his fifth day without a fix. The state of being without a state, where everything is nothing and he was One with All. Until he was torn, ripped screaming and bleeding from the womb of nowhere, and thrown into a cold world of consciousness. “Ugh,” he told the world.

He sleepily shambled across the Danger: Living Room. He rubbed at his face, his skin half-numb and rubbery to his newly awakened senses.

“Confound you, dratted contraption!” Nuklear Man cursed the screen as Game Over flashed before his bloodshot eyes. “Why do you taunt me, oh vicious and evil God!” he bellowed up the Silo.

Shocked into clarity, Atomik Lad approached his mentor. “Don’t tell me you played this game all night.”

“I didn’t,” Nuklear Man growled at the screen as he gave the game yet another try. “I’ve been mocked,
mocked
I say!” The same bullet took him down. Nuklear Man seethed with Angry Plazma.

“You do know you can use the crossbar on the control pad to make your ship move around so you can do stuff like dodge that one particular bullet.”

“Yes!” he strangled the control pad. “Stupid, no good game! Me smash you now!”

“Nuke. Destroying it won’t solve the problem.”

“Oh, but I think it will.”

“C’mon,” the ex-sidekick gingerly removed the controller from Nuklear Man’s tense hands. “I think someone’s favorite cartoon show is on.”

The Hero’s body melted with the warm gooey thought of Silly Sam’s media brilliance. He was on the Danger: Couch in less than a second, the Danger: TV already blaring its featureless banality across the cosmos.

Atomik Lad yawned. “Another crisis averted,” he said while making his way into the Danger: Kitchen to fix himself some waffles. He made a quick phone call while they cooked.

Ring, ring. “Yo.”

“Hey, Norman.”

“Sparky. What’s shakin’?”

“Me and Rachel are thinking about going to the mall after class. I want to see if the new Turbo Fighter: Street Edition is out yet.”

“You little game whore you.”

“You know it. Wanna join us? Maybe you could take on the ol’ Master?”

Norman laughed. “Yeah, right. Bring it on, punk.”

“Hey, it’s your funeral.”

“I’ll see if Angus and Shiro are busy. We can have ourselves a little tournament.”

“Not a bad idea,” Atomik Lad said. “We haven’t had much else to do lately. I don’t think there’s been a single supercrime since we locked up Superion.”

“Yeah, I’m tired of waiting around for an emergency that never happens. We all need to get out and have some fun while the lull lasts,” Norman said.

“Just what I was thinking. We’ll be at the mall around noon.”

“Works for me. Let’s all meet up at the food court for lunch.”

“That’s a plan. See you guys then.”

__________

The Orb came into Earth orbit just over an hour ago. It’s been hanging there ever since. We remotely adjusted a Planetary KI Survey Satellite orbiting Mars to scan the orb as it passed. What little information we were able to collect form that arrived just a few minutes ago.

I loathe our incomplete, infantile understanding of physics.

Our scans told us nothing I hadn’t already surmised. The actual KI sensors couldn’t get direct readings regarding the craft. Apparently there’s such an intense degree of high-level KI manipulations in or around the craft that it’s even beyond my understanding or our ability to record it for later study. The amount of raw energy necessary to generate these effects is greater than the energy output of the sun.

It’s been hanging there, suspended above the Earth in an eternal free fall to nowhere directly above the Atlantic Ocean. I asked Psiko to take a look at it. She could only glance at it, somewhat like keeping it in her periphery vision. She got nothing but a headache.

One hour. Perfectly silent, as far as we can know. I hate this. I feel like its taunting us, me especially. By the mere virtue that it exists, it thwarts my every attempt to decipher its mystery. Forever falling around the Earth, this smug sphere of silver showing off its immunity to our first feeble steps into a greater understanding of the cosmos. I swear it hasn’t done anything simply because an action would promote a result from which we could conclude or at least
theorize
an intent. But no. Suspended in silence, it exists only to sharpen my awareness of my own ignorance into a blade cutting straight through my entire body, my work, my being.

Psiko says I should calm down. Then she answers
, “Yes, I know exactly how it feels, I’m reading your mind,”
the same time I ask her, Do you know how this feels?

I hate it when she does that.

__________

Somewhere, within the depths of the alien craft, Nihel and Gadriel stood with four others. Each of them was stationed at one of the six points of a perfectly symmetrical hexagonal table. Each one wore a Nuklear N on his or her outfit.