Supers Box Set

by Kristofer Bartol

  The broad-nosed cadet raises his hand.

  “Gagnon,” Tessio smiles, “wow, that’s-” he bites his lip and nods, proud.

  The broad-nosed cadet smirks and gives a little shrug in reply.

  Tessio turns cheery to the class, “Yes, ‘sentience’ is the public’s biggest concern. The first Chauk prototype, Prosperion, had an artificial intelligence of such high caliber that it gained sentience and rebelled against its creator. Granted, I don’t like its creator—I think he has a dumb face and no guts—but rebellion, in the judicial sense, is bad.”

  He shrugs.

  “As for Prosperion, nobody is sure of its current location—it pops up every once in a while—and although it has yet to commit a crime, that we know of, it is to be treated as a rogue super, given that it has twice as many capabilities as the average Chauk… and with so many Chauks deployed, the public, as I'm sure you know, overwhelmingly fears what would happen if they all gained sentience, given their hive mind, their energy weapons, their aerial mobility-”

  “And they don’t have mouths,” Singleton adds, “which is pretty creepy.”

  “That’s… yeah,” Tessio nods, “their off-putting appearance could be a factor in public distrust.”

  The well-shaved cadet raises his hand.

  “Ortiz?”

  “Sir, a question.”

  “…alright, what is it?”

  “Sir—who authorizes the Chauks, sir?”

  “Ah,” Tessio says, stepping towards the podium, “the Department of Homeland Security monitors their patrols. The president, however, has the authority to initiate the swarm.” He smiles, “Menacing, huh? Like a…” he waggles his fingers, “like a doomsday weapon; like the nuclear football, or the red telephone.”

  Singleton looks to Tessio. “Hey, man, I don’t wanna harsh your vibe,” he quiets, “but the red telephone is just a direct line to Moscow in case of emergency. It doesn’t, like, cause emergency or anything.”

  Tessio stares in reply, and nods. He returns his attention to the podium, and the class: “That’s a good question, Ortiz, um,” he says, crouching to acquire another fallen test sheet. “Segues nicely into our review of bureaucracy and legislation—and it’s okay to groan for this section; I don’t enjoy it either.”

  Singleton draws the projection screen down over the blackboard.

  Tessio looks at the sheet in his hand, “Mister… Lewis, congratulations, you’ve won the lottery: your prize is to pick-up these papers.”

  He holds the sheet in a limp hand. A bespectacled cadet rushes across the room to collect it, then he bends down and shuffles the others into a pile. Like a footballer, with the deft sweep of his leg, Tessio slides a short metal wastebasket over to the cadet, who hastily shovels the scattered papers inside.

  Singleton rolls an upright film projector into the center of the room, and he unlatches its plastic casing. He feeds the docked celluloid reel through the metal loops and affixes it to the lower spool. A flick of a switch starts the device, whirring; humming; streaming conical light toward the front of the room, onto the white screen.

  Cadet Lewis scampers back to his seat as Singleton turns off the house lights.

  A white arm circulates clockwise as the number ‘8’ devolves into ‘2,’ snuffed-out by a beep. The warm, fuzzy edges of the film stock surround an animated emblem, fading-in on a matte red background. Wrapped around the interior of the emblem is the phrase “Department of Advanced, Enhanced, and Superlative Humans” followed internally by thirteen equidistant gold stars. The heraldic blazon within depicts a twice-engrailed shield of alternating red and white stripes beset by an olive branch on the left and a bound bundle of wooden rods on the right, all upon an uncompromising field of blue. The scroll unfurled laterally across the shield reads “servitium, praesidium, virtus.”

  The emblem fades to black, briefly, with a copyright date of 1974. Then comes the sound of trumpets, blaring through old copper wires. A masculine yet creaky voice—presumably the retired narrator of Coronet’s 1950s instructional films for boys and girls—begins with a citation: the transitive history of bureaucracy regarding supers…

  “The universe is vast, and expanding; comprised of forces beyond our perception and understanding. The smallest building block of life, the atom, can create magnificent forms—but it can also separate in dramatic displays of raw power. Since the dawn of man, we have struggled to dissect the forces of nature, boiling them down into comprehensible, teachable fragments. Some answers, however, evade us.

  “Throughout recorded history, we have made note of individuals so uniquely powerful that their mere existence inspired reverence, curiosity, and fear. In Judea, there was Cain, and Abel; Abraham; Jesus of Nazareth. In Macedonia, Alexander the Great. Across the Mediterranean, there were soldiers from Greece, Sparta, Persia, Carthage, and Rome, such as the exalted emperor Trajan. Across Eurasia, there were those whose lives became myth, including the Oracle, Phoenix, Fairy, Kappa, Minotaur, and Mare.

  “As towns became cities, and roads became networks, the often-scrutinized superlative humans—colloquially known as supers—undertook professions allowing them freedom of travel, either alone or among other outcasts. There were the sailors and pirates of the Colonial Era; the fur trappers and silversmiths of the New World; then came the minutemen, the abolitionists, and the desperados—lone rangers and hired henchmen in the Gilded Age, everywhere from the canyons of the Wild West to the gutters of metropolis. It seemed the diversity of supers—and their abilities—only broadened with time.

  “There was, then, in nineteen-fourteen, the Great War, now called the First World War. Uncle Sam sent overseas his Triumphant Trio: Lady Liberty, the sunbeam suffragette who soared on the wings of angels; Kid Cannon, the unstoppable speedster who pledged himself to the Union; and New Glory, the star-spangled strongman and founder of the group.

  "At war's end, the trio went their separate ways: Kid Cannon to his homeland, England, to aid in cultural rehabilitation; New Glory to the Phenom Three, during Prohibition, and then to the Four Freedoms for service in the Second World War; as for Lady Liberty, she hung her robes in nineteen-nineteen to found and helm the Transhuman Section—a department in the League of Nations for the regard of all supers. Nominated by Woodrow Wilson, and elected unanimously, Lady Liberty oversaw the classification, management, regulation, arbitration, and deployment of supers around the world—until the League's dissolution in nineteen-forty-six.

  “Founded during the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War, the primary mission of the League of Nations was to maintain world peace—to prevent the renewal of the slaughter and devastation that plagued the previous five years—through intergovernmental oversight, accountability, and negotiation. Secondary concerns of the League included global health, labor conditions, arms and drug trafficking, and the protections of minorities, prisoners of war, and humans classified as enhanced, advanced, or superlative. Such persons were grouped as ‘transcendental humans,’ but more often called ‘Transcendentals,’ ‘Transhumans,’ or ‘Trans,’ though such persons tended to prefer the term ‘Superhumans,’ or ‘Supers,’ which has carried less of a social stigma.

  “As the League of Nations folded, following the closure of the Second World War, the United Nations was born in its place. One of its six main branches—the Security Council—was dedicated solely to achieving international peace. Methods of obtaining this goal were more authoritarian than those of the League—including but not limited to the issuance of sanctions, the deployment of joint military forces, and the forging of peacekeeping missions—thereby ensuring the United States of America as a global superpower; a parent and role model for younger, weaker, more primitive nations.

  “The Security Council has been largely helmed by foreign-strength-focused US Ambassadors such as Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., Adlai Stevenson, and—currently—George Herbert Walker Bush of Texas. Each has seen benefit in the use of supers in diplomatic affairs. Of course, the UN's miss
ion to achieve and preserve world peace has been deeply contested by the Soviet Union and their proxy states. In a rare intervention, in nineteen-fifty, the UN fought in opposition to the Soviet Empire for the defense of South Korea during their Communist invasion. However, in the years since, the Security Council has been in a standoff—denied a chance at numerous peacekeeping operations by the Soviet Union’s deliberate obstruction and puppeteering.

  “The UN mobilized in nineteen-fifty-six to end Egypt’s occupation of the Suez Canal; however, that same year, they were unable to defend a freshly-independent Hungary from its own Communist invasion, and their democracy was quickly cannibalized. It is in such inopportune ideological stalemates that America must step-up and offer its own sons for the defense of democracy—as in the Cuban Missile Crisis and the waning Vietnam War—or, at the risk of starting a Third World War, send-in the supers.

  “Following the abstinence of nineteen-fifty-six, the UN has focused on smaller international conflicts—those without the ideological undercurrent—including the Lebanon Civil War in nineteen-fifty-eight; Congo Crisis in nineteen-sixty; West New Guinea transference in sixty-two; Yemen Civil War in sixty-three; defense of Cyprus in sixty-four; Dominican Civil War in sixty-five; throughout the Kashmir Valley since forty-nine; and in the ongoing War of Yom Kippur in Israel. Today, the UN budget for socioeconomic development surpasses that of the budget for peacekeeping—but, unfortunately, the demand for peacekeeping operations has only increased with the border hostilities and intercultural tumult of globalism.

  “Thirteen supers were deployed to Vietnam in the nineteen-sixties, and less than half returned. Among the deceased were Miss Bliss, founder of the Marvelous Six, and Helios, the only child of Hyperion and Lady Liberty. In August of sixty-eight, following the death of Miss Bliss, her hot-headed lover Pharos went on a rampage, killing scores of Viet Cong and civilians alike. He then fled into the jungles of Cambodia, where an elite squad—sent initially to capture him—ultimately ended his life.

  “This rogue act at the height of the Vietnam conflict turned most of America off from the idea of intervention. Democrats were disgusted with the massacre, and the overall use of supers as killing machines, whereas Republicans saw them as a liability: dangerous, and capable of selfish evil. The American people responded to this rhetoric, and so—swept into the tumult of nineteen-sixty-eight, with its protests, wars, and assassinations—much of the country leaned conservative that November, seating Richard M. Nixon in the executive office.

  “The ninety-first US Congress remained predominantly Democratic, and yet—in the wake of this abhorrent episode overseas—the two parties crossed the aisle in a rare moment of cooperation. The initial bill—proposed by the elder statesmen of the House: Congressmen Feighan, Albert, Boggs, Rostenkowski, and McCormack—was deemed too restrictive of individual liberties by the Republicans of the Senate. In particular, the staunch libertarian of New Hampshire, Senator Norris Cotton, led a campaign—aided by the vocal Senators John Tower of Texas and Barry Goldwater of Arizona—to defend the civil rights of supers, in keeping their personalities and abilities unsheathed, resulting in three outlined conditions…

  “First, no supers are allowed to operate outside of United States borders without specific authorization. This means any American super must be vetted and cleared before they can travel abroad, so as to avoid further international incidents. Second, all supers must register with DAESH—the US Department of Advanced, Enhanced, and Superlative Humans; a specialized department created for the identification, registration, organization, application, and control of superhumans within American borders—as all unregistered supers would face steep penalties, including but not limited to heavy fines and incarceration. Lastly, any supers convicted of intentionally harming civilians, without certain provocation, will face a minimum penalty of three years in a high-security prison with a maximum penalty of death.

  “The Cotton Act, as this bill was ultimately called, was passed on March fifth, nineteen-sixty-nine. Much of Alabama Governor George Wallace's democratic Deep South had swung with Senator Cotton and the Nixon crowd—Republicans, the Congressional minority—while many Democrats in both chambers agreed for regulations without an outright ban, citing issues such as urban crime requiring forces appropriate to oppose those supers of malicious intent. Republicans agreed on the issues of national defense and preparedness, citing the enduring threat of China and the Soviet Union.

  “The three men behind the Cotton Act became talking heads for their party. Senator Goldwater retread his ideology, in a circuit of speeches, saying, ‘I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.’ Senator Cotton, a self-described ‘rock-ribbed conservative Republican’ and pioneer of northeastern libertarianism, toured America vocalizing his dissatisfaction with government paternalism and negligent spending, owing the public’s delusion of an all-powerful presidency to the mass-media that focuses little on the powers of Congress.

  “Senator Tower, an eternal proponent for modernizing the military, was elevated to Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee—a position through which he could outline the framework of DAESH. This included appointing his peer on the Senate's Committee on Armed Services, Senator Rye Gerhardt of Minnesota, as the first Secretary of Superlative Humankind. For DAESH, the stringent senator implemented a system—effective January twentieth, nineteen-seventy—of four options available to supers following their registration.

  “The first, for the most ambitious: a military service assignment in an appropriate special forces division, under a high-grade field officer. The second, a civil service position for the patrol and protection of a particular metropolitan area, under a federal officer or city manager. The third option, popular among the aged and experienced: retirement, with electives of witness protection and job placement. The fourth and final option, if all others have been rejected, is incarceration within the Deepwater Penitentiary, located off the coast of Oregon, beneath international waters.

  “As of November, nineteen-seventy-three, one third of known benevolent supers have retired; twenty percent have opted for civil assignment; ten percent have accepted military assignments while another ten percent have been detained, pending trial. The remaining quarter—of known benevolent supers—have yet to be located. They've gone underground, either in hiding or operating as rogue agents; in some cases, easing the jobs of law enforcement; in others, worsening it.

  “But a lawbreaker is a lawbreaker. Regardless of their altruistic intent, all rogue superhumans must be treated as criminals. There is no aid; there is no warning; there is no second chance. As agents of DAESH, your job is to locate the remaining supers and detain them—or, if the situation demands it, eliminate them. In our next video, we'll cover the proper responses to a hostile, belligerent, or noncompliant super.”

  The film reel expends a few feet of blackened celluloid before sliding out the loop and blaring yellow-stained light onto the projection screen. Singleton turns-off the projector as Tessio turns-on the fluorescents, aging the faces of the classroom.

  “Uhh,” Tessio breaks the silence, “of course, this film is a bit outdated; I wasn't even alive when it came out. Did anyone see the copyright? Seventy-four! Yeah, Yom Kippur's long-over; Vietnam's over—or at least I think Yom Kippur is over…" He turns to his partner.

  Singleton shrugs. "Something's going on. Don't know what."

  "That area's a mess, and prolly always will be. Nothing we can do about it. The man best qualified for the job," he points to the blank projection screen, "Herbert Walker Bush, as president, may have dissolved the Soviet Union but he couldn't mend the Middle East; meanwhile the UN stuck their fingers in Kuwait, Namibia, Cambodia, Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Sudan, and the Congo. They cashed-in peace for power, forging dependency in the economies of third-world nations…”

  The broad-nosed cadet raises his hand. “Sir? At the risk of doin
g another fifty burpees—sir—should you be criticizing the government?”

  Tessio stares. “Gagnon…” he points, “life is about drawing lines. And sometimes the lines you draw will cross the lines of your boss, your spouse, your neighbor, or your nation—and maybe you’ll be flexible, but at the end of the day, you have to be yourself. What kind of life would you lead if you excluded yourself from it?”

  Gagnon itches his broad nose with his thumb.

  “We’re metro police. We don’t capture or employ supers; that’s the work of DAESH and other martial departments. If all you gleaned from this video was a false expectation of your duties, then you would no doubt fail another test were I to spring it upon you today. We police are not expected to trifle with supers.”

  The well-shaved cadet raises his hand.

  “Yeah, Ortiz.”

  “Sir, isn’t it a bit sanctimonious that we have a threshold for what’s expected of us?"

  “Again, it’s about drawing lines. You’re not required to, but you have the freedom to do as you please.”

  “Isn’t it our job to risk our lives for the safety of our fellow man?”

  “Well, think of it like bringing a service pistol up against a tank. Could you triumph over a Level Three super? Maybe, but probably not. If they can strike you down with a glance, then why throw your life away? As bad as it sounds, it’s below your pay grade. If a house is on fire, do you find a faucet or do you call for the local F.D.—the guys who are skilled at tackling fires? Think about it. And, word of advice: our department can refuse to pay-out your life insurance to your family if they deem you were putting yourself in a situation of almost-assured death; a situation more suicidal than sacrificial. They call it 'voluntary negligence.' Keep that in mind as yet another line to draw."

  The cadets sit in silence, shifting in their seats.

  "I'm just being realistic," Tessio laments. "Every job has its limits. Have you noticed how none of the older cops are heroes? Myself included. Either you die a brave fool or you live long into cowardice, believing there's more to lose than there is to gain in the line of duty.”