The Subatomic Kid (38 page)

In any fight there are rules: Hit hard, hit fast, and attack as many places as you can at one time. There is also a rule that states when the enemy is running away, don’t chase after him. Sadly, it was a rule John was woefully unfamiliar with. In life these traps are laid to be fallen into; it’s how we get out of them that shapes who we are.

The missile and the shield flew through the sky, and John’s mind must have been working on a very instinctive level, because the shield carried a crest with the letters SK emblazoned on it. The Subatomic Kid was a knight fighting for his lady, but he was just about to be unseated from his horse.

The only tactics the cannonball had to employ to cause major damage was to stop dead in midair, which it did, causing the shield to crash haplessly into it, breaking the spell of John’s metamorphosis, and sending him plummeting to the earth like a rag doll.

Doctor Angstrom grasped the arms of his wheelchair and imagined victory. Kate, Cal, and Tex winced, fearing defeat, and Hunter wondered what the kid would do next. John began his fall to earth by kicking himself mentally in the head; rushing after the missile had been his downfall, and now he was finished.

He had let his friends down, and his ebbing consciousness prevented him from pulling out of his dive to destruction. He saw the hard tarmac rushing toward him. Only seconds before it smashed him to smithereens, he heard a voice in the back of his mind whisper, “Into the Subatomic World John.” It wasn’t his thought, he was sure of that, but it was enough of an impetus for him to make the transition. He disappeared in a cloud of shiny particles, and the missile hot on his tail did the same.

Once he splashed through the cosmic barrier into the rejuvenating waves of the subatomic stream, all physical pain dissolved away like a seltzer tablet in a glass of water. Just like bubbles, his being stretched out across space, and being unburdened from physicality, his essence danced on waves of electromagnetic freedom. He was at once everything and nothing again; his heartbeat was a drum beating at the edge of time, and his consciousness was the drummer silhouetted at the birth of dawn.

He had entered this sanctuary in a conscious state somewhere between dreams and reality. His pride was wounded, he was confused, and he needed to take stock of the situation so that he might plan his next assault. Then, in a blinding flash of realization it suddenly occurred to him how futile it was to be fighting with himself. Fighting never solved anything. What purpose did it serve? Only Doctor Angstrom’s. Surely it would be far better to just absorb all the rancor of his nemesis, both positive and negative, back into himself and transform it into his new being. The Subatomic Kid! That would solve the problem for good, and Doctor Angstrom would be de-fanged.

He had no idea whether he could incorporate the Wild Child back into his being--but why not? It was, after all,
himself
, and the two of them were floating in a subatomic soup, which was already beginning to blend them together. He let the idea form in his mind, gave it wings and released it with a prayer of forgiveness, and in no more time than it takes a moth to fall into a flame, the angry byproduct of Doctor Leitz’ experiment was absorbed back into his essence.

He felt the pain and the anguish like a tidal wave washing over his soul, and then it seemed like a huge sigh whooshed through his mind, and everything was still. He felt kind of goofy, like he was in love or something, and then he realized that in order to love anyone else, he had to truly accept all aspects of himself first. It was obviously a concept Doctor Angstrom didn’t understand. He had spent his whole life hating, which had driven him to become a wreck of a human being.

“Congratulations,” proclaimed the Master of the Perfect Word. “You have conquered the danger at the heart of the Subatomic World, and now you can continue with your quest.”

John was still reeling from the sense of euphoria he was experiencing. He had won, but he had won by giving up the fight, and he couldn’t believe how easy it had been. “You mean that’s it?” John asked. “How can that be it? It was too easy!!”

“The path of least resistance leads to the palace of peace,” the Master intoned in his enigmatic manner. “What more do you want? You have crossed the first threshold!”

“First threshold?” John asked suspiciously. “First infers second, and third, and fourth, and—”

“Life is a maze of bridges and tunnels,” the Master interrupted, “and there are seas, and rivers, and dark places in the mind. All manner of obstructions await to teach us meaning.”

“That doesn’t answer my question,” John complained bitterly.

“I can’t tell you if the second threshold is in your future,” the master explained. “The future is unknown, even to me.”

“Just tell me this,” John pleaded, pressing him as hard as he could. “If I take my friends back home, can I be assured that this is over? Can I go back to being a normal kid again?”

“Oh, it’s never over,” the master said wistfully. “As long as there’s music, the song plays on. The enemy will be right there beside you, waiting for an opportunity to rise again. You must be vigilant; you have created the peace and now you must keep it.”

Damn
, John thought,
another cryptic answer
! He knew he wasn’t going to get to ask even one of the thousand questions burning in his mind, because he felt the tug of the material world pulling him back to solidity.

BACK TO SCHOOL

John dove into the subatomic stream with a whole new lease on life. He liked the fact that he’d conquered himself, and now he knew for sure that all too often we are our own worst enemy. He also knew that uniting the two halves of his being had freed him and his friends from the World of Science. He knew it instinctively, the way a bird knows how to fly south when the winter sets in, or the way a salmon knows it’s time to swim upstream. Unfortunately, it meant that Doctor Angstrom would be freed too, but that was a small price to pay for liberation.

He knew that his long, strange journey was at an end, and he knew when he got back he would…what?! What would he do? He had gone soft in the head; he was hurtling back through subatomic space and time without a plan! That’s the trouble with success; history is littered with the corpses of bright lights who burned out too early because they believed in their own invincibility! Success is a trap we set for ourselves; it brings the snakes out of the grass, and their hedonistic dance is so alluring we don’t realize we’ve been bitten until it’s too late.

He needed to maintain his consciousness through all the highs and lows of life, and he needed to start right now. He decided to shift back in time; not far, just back to the time he had disappeared.
Doctor Angstrom is a megalomaniac
, he thought,
he will quite naturally assume that he is victorious
.
Success went to his head a long time ago and now he’s one of those people who figures he can trample over everybody to get what he wants. It’s time to remind him that humility is a virtue, and that the soft always conquers the hard
.

He arrived back beside Doctor Angstrom just in time to see the shield crash into the missile with such a sickening crunch that the Subatomic Kid crest was completely obliterated. He watched himself drop from the sky like a stone, and he watched the missile chase him into the Subatomic World.
It looked bad
, he thought; it looked really bad, and he was sure nobody watching would think he was alive after that.

When Tex turned his gaze from the fiasco to see what he thought was the Wild Child standing beside Angstrom, his heart sank into his boots. He suddenly felt very alone, and his first reaction was to worry about Kate. He reached out his arm, put it around her waist, and pulled her close to him. “I think we’ve got trouble,” he said.

When Kate glanced over at the angry-faced teen beside Angstrom, she suddenly knew what heartbreak was all about because she felt her own heart crack. “Oh no, it can’t be!” she said with a sob. “It just can’t be!”

Cal had turned at the same time, and when he heard Kate’s tiny sob his knees almost buckled. In his short life he had always tried to see the positive side of every situation. But even he had to admit that, search as he might, it was hard to find a glimmer of hope in this one.

Hunter didn’t know what to think. He was busy questioning the whole concept of reality as he knew it. People appearing and disappearing, and then changing shape: Bowling balls doing aerobatics: Moving out of one world and into another: The quirky list went on and on. But he was absolutely sure of one thing: the story is never over until you hear the very last word; he was damn sure of that.

Angstrom beamed from ear to ear; his champion was back beside him looking angrier than ever, and the looks on the three kid’s faces were priceless. It was a moment he wanted to drink in; it was a moment he wanted to prolong. Victory was a dish to savor while gloating at the enemy. “Did you take care of him in the manner we discussed?” he asked, almost salivating.

The scowl on John’s face grew and his eyes flashed maniacally. “Yes, and now I want them,” he growled, pointing at the kids.

Cal may not have been able to find a positive angle on the situation, but he was damn sure of one thing; this jerk wasn’t going to push him or his friends around. “We ain’t scared of you,” Cal sneered, quaking in his running shoes.

Tex thought he had given in to the inevitable, but when he heard his friend’s defiant tone, it stirred his fighting spirit and filled him with courage. “And we ain’t for sale,” he spat, his heart pounding in his chest.

“Not at any price,” Kate chipped in. Her head was whirling like a carousel and everything was blurry, but her intuition was telling her a story her eyes weren’t seeing. “And we want to know what you’ve done with our friend.”

John thought the guys were taking it a little bit too seriously. He hadn’t realized he meant this much to them, and he suspected when the time finally came to admit who he was, there was going to be hell to pay. He gave them his evilest sneer. “I ripped his eyes out, stuffed them in his ears, tore him limb from limb, and threw him into a black hole,” he proclaimed venomously.

These kids continued to astound Hunter with their positive attitude; they were gazing into the jaws of hell and defying it. He thought he’d read somewhere that kids today were confused, angst-ridden softies, but that surely wasn’t evident with these kids. Whatever Leitz was teaching them at that school, it was working!

“Yeah, well, what do you know, Miss Smarty-pants? “John growled. “You’re just a girl.”

Angstrom smiled; he loved nothing better than a good argument. He could listen to one for hours; he just loved it when other people were in more pain than he was, and he loved it when he could see it.

“First of all, if you knew anything about the opposite sex,” Tex said, “you’d know she was a young woman; and second, she’s got her head screwed on just right, which is more than I can say for you.”

“Thanks,” Kate said, slightly taken aback.

“You’re welcome,” Tex replied.

Steve was back in the land of the living, but he’d missed so much of the show he didn’t know what everyone was so steamed about. He couldn’t trust anything anymore; his world had been turned inside out, and he needed a holiday.

“Do you want to take all three at once,” Angstrom asked, “or one at a time?” As much as he adored seeing fools suffer, he realized it was small potatoes in comparison to the world domination he so craved. There would be plenty of people to punish; the world was full of them, and he wanted them all to feel pain, his pain. He looked up at his young champion and smiled a crooked smile. Everything was in place; he would put Leitz back to work again on the elixir of life, and then he and his new son would rule with an iron fist for eternity.

“Oh, I think I’ll take them all at the same time,” John said nonchalantly, wondering just how long a pregnant pause should be. He stared down at Angstrom’s stupid face, his twisted smile, his beady eyes, and his white flaky skin; he wasn’t a pretty sight, but he’d made himself this way. Each of us reflects what we feel within; we mirror our emotional health on our faces and in our bodies. In order to be loved, we must love, and to have a friend, you must be a friend. But Angstrom had only ever known hate; it exuded from him like a black cloud. It was such a heavy weight it had immobilized him and confined him to a wheelchair and the dark places of his mind.

“While I’m about it,” John said, losing his evil scowl, “why don’t I just take them all home? Because I figure that it was just about now that I put paid to your scheme for world domination by absorbing that crazy kid’s hatred.”

Doctor Angstrom was caught off-guard; he was surprised and confused. He felt the cold steel sting of betrayal, and his mind whirled into a vortex of despair. “Who are you?” he screamed, losing his cool demeanor in a whirlwind of anxiety.

“I’m the Subatomic Kid,” John said, “and I’m your worst nightmare.”

Angstrom began to shake uncontrollably; his whole world was falling apart right in front of his eyes. But like any egomaniac, he didn’t want to believe the cold hard truth. “What do you mean?” he asked, a tremble in his voice.

“I mean it’s over for you,” John said. “None of us ever did belong in this world, and it was you who brought us all here with Doctor Leitz’ party trick. Yes,” John continued, enjoying Angstrom’s consternation, “I know everything now. You did quite a lot of talking to convince my confused twin to do your dirty work.”

Angstrom wasn’t the only one who was confused, apart from Steve who was confused most of the time. Tex, Cal, Kate, and Hunter had scrambled all the pieces of the puzzle, and were trying to put them back together again.