Project Northwoods

by Jonathan Charles Bruce

  Nine-to-five isn’t my style, thought Arthur as he hopped up the steps of the Super Villains’ Guild. Gonna have a fortress and henchmen… tons of henchmen. A smile wove its way onto his features, and he couldn’t help but feel ridiculously giddy. He had worked so hard on his proposal that even that crazy, good-for-nothing committee chief would be begging him to take on the mantle of villain.

  Arthur shoved his way through the revolving doors and ran into a wall of air-conditioning. It was surprisingly refreshing, as he hadn’t realized he had been sweating during his journey down the street. The front hall was large, one of those old time buildings that seemed like a cross between a bank and a hospital. Behind the reception desk, a large, bronze statue of a female villain holding a fallen male cohort looked skyward defiantly. Flanking the sides were the stairs, joining behind the statue and rising to the second floor. On the ground level, halls stretched in many directions, each splitting off further into various offices and meeting rooms. The business-suited government workers milled around him, paying him no heed. The murmur of voices discussed various planned conflicts between heroes and villains, approval of heists, ramifications of potential tax cuts, and lunch.

  He approached the reception desk to see if they had hired anyone new since the last time he was in, only to be disappointed at the octogenarian staring listlessly at his computer. The story was that he was a legendary safe-cracker and this was the only job he could land after an employer broke his kneecaps. That was, of course, before mob bosses had to answer to the Guild, let alone the Henchmen Union.

  The white-haired gentleman cocked an eyebrow and looked above the rims of his glasses. Arthur smiled curtly and nodded. “Headed up to SVAC,” he politely explained, not stopping.

  “Didn’t ask,” came the reply in a way that implied the word ‘dumbass’. The computer, apparently, was far more important than his job.

  Arthur arched his eyebrows in a display of indifference, even though the slight had annoyed him enough to add the man to the ‘people who piss me off’ file he kept in his head. In about an hour, you’ll have to call me ‘sir’, he thought smugly. A smile crept onto his face at the thought of just hanging around, asking the guard questions just to hear the three letter word over and over again. As he hit the base of the stairs, he threw a quick look behind him to see what was so enthralling on the computer.

  Porn. Porn was clearly enthralling him.

  Arthur had to laugh as he climbed up the stairs two at a time. “Good for him,” he said to no one in particular.

  When he finally reached the appropriate hallway, he scanned the wall for a clock. He panicked slightly when he saw one just as the minute hand clicked closer toward eleven-thirty. Trying to muster his confidence, he strode toward his destiny only to become incredibly aware of his heart thundering against his chest. As his rib cage rattled, his throat became murderously dry. Without so much as a goodbye, his nerve had vacated his body. This response was customary at this point. No amount of preparation could stop it.

  It was why he cut the time so short, why he procrastinated so intensely. The more time he had to think of what could go wrong, the more he’d dwell on it. The more he dwelled on it, the worse he’d feel. The actual presentation would be easy, but getting to that point felt like someone was shoving red-hot rocks down his throat. Someone very angry.

  Rubber-legged and suddenly violently nauseated, Arthur opened the door to the large waiting room he had been assigned. He staggered in, ignoring the greeting from the secretary, and half-fell on the nearest bench. The nearby fern lazily scratched at his face as he struggled to keep his bearings. The room around him swam, the four doors to the conference rooms wobbling menacingly as muffled voices drifted out of them. Further, beyond the water coolers and the fern’s duplicate seated by the window, there must have been a dozen offices and two gender-specific restrooms. The walls were adorned with a variety of magazine covers and old, World War Two-era posters, Arthur’s personal favorite being an American G.I. with flaming hands above ‘Bestowed? Enlist Today!’, if only due to the outstandingly stupid look on the man’s face.

  “You need to sign in,” came a sugar-sweet voice he certainly didn’t recognize. Arthur looked up as the secretary stood and grabbed the clipboard. She was blond, pale, and had candy-apple red lipstick on. The plaque on her desk read ‘Sierra’, and Arthur wondered how many of those plaques SVAC went through each year because of the lecherous old man waiting behind that door. Sierra sat down next to him, her short black skirt pulling even higher, and handed him the clipboard.

  He stared, glazed, before realizing he was being rude. It took a moment longer to realize he cared. Arthur looked at the sheet in a daze. Taking the pen offered by Sierra, he put his name on the sheet with the time. The secretary adjusted her too-tight pink sweater before taking the clipboard back. She placed a reassuring hand on his knee. The touch should have thrilled him, but instead filled him with a cold, unnerving dread. He looked in her green eyes, soaking in their depth before her boss inevitably grew bored with her looks and fired her.

  “You’ll do fine, sweetheart,” she said with a smile as she got to her feet. The vote of confidence did little to help his mental state. Especially when, on the way back to her desk, she looked at the name he wrote down, looked back at him, and muttered a semi-casual, “Oh.” She snickered as she sat down, and Arthur couldn’t help but be grateful she’d probably be jobless by the end of the month.

  With a slight creak, a door to one of the conference rooms opened. Unsteadily at first, then with greater confidence, a young man seemingly just out of puberty emerged. A powder-blue towel was wrapped around his neck, clashing mightily with the tie-dyed t-shirt he wore. Below that, a pair of unsettlingly short jean shorts hovered several feet above black roller blades. He thunked in place a moment before gliding toward Arthur. He smiled the self-assured grin of someone with too much confidence. He accidentally veered toward the wall, a problem he solved with a quick push off the wooden surface. He tossed a look at Sierra, who had gotten once more onto her feet.

  “Did you do it?” she asked, as though his swagger, if one can swagger on skates, wasn’t enough of a clue. He pushed himself to face her, snapped with both hands and pointed at her, the force of which sent his back gently into the wall.

  “You can call me Roller Jockey, now.” Sierra over-enthusiastically clapped, smiling what Arthur hoped was a polite-though-insincere smile. Roller Jockey shoved his way off the wall and headed to the desk. “So… you got some…” He rolled a bit too far and had to catch himself. Without a loss of self-importance, he continued, “… forms for me to fill out?”

  “Yes, I do, Mr. Jockey,” she smiled before turning her look to Arthur. “You may head inside, Mr. Lovelass.”

  The words acted like a panacea. He rose from his seat, confidence restored, and slipped past the newly-dubbed villain. He fought the urge to shove him over, and instead continued on his way. He felt light, elated, and he knew that this was his day.

  Jack Cleese would be begging him to be a villain.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE SUPER VILLAIN AUTHORIZATION COMMITTEE

  ARTHUR ENTERED THE HAZY, SMOKE-FILLED ROOM. The lights were dimmer than normal due to the clouds of cigar effluvium. It was a standard office room, longer than it was wide, with a table taking up a large portion of the center. Fourteen chairs paired off along the edges, the one nearest to Arthur empty and its much higher-backed mate at the far end noticeably turned away from the door. Plastic potted plants thrived on top of cabinets where living greenery would have both choked and starved to death. The walls were populated with numerous paintings of notable villains, the largest of which was a huge, comic book cover-like mural of the super villain Spitfire ejecting impressively from his plane as it slammed into the head of Desecrator’s city-destroying armor-tank-thing. He was smiling crazily as the fireball rolled over the steel monstrosity, a bottle of gin in one hand and the two-finger salute proudly displayed in the other.
The corner boasted an ‘ELZ’, no doubt the artist’s initials.

  The murmur of laughter seemed to cling to the air just as thickly as the smoke. The twelve visible members of the committee were all chuckling to an inside joke that, no doubt, Arthur or all those who wished to become villains were the target. At the moment, he could not bring himself to care. The knot in his stomach had since turned into resolve. He inhaled in order to clear his throat and bring the attention to himself.

  “Ah, Mr. Lovelass,” the familiar, so-British-it-hurt voice cut through the muttering effortlessly. “A perennial pleasure.” The chair at the far end of the room rotated, revealing the tall, gloriously mustachioed and impeccably groomed Jack Cleese. Arthur inwardly thrilled at the dramatic flair of a true super villain, even if it meant that Cleese had been staring at a painting of himself in the time between Roller Jockey leaving and Arthur’s arrival.

  Which, knowing what he did of Mr. Cleese, was not too much of a stretch to believe.

  “Thank you so much for seeing me today,” Arthur said as he moved toward the table. He thumped the suitcase on the wood and shoved the chair away with his leg. With a flourish, he spun the case and opened it toward him. “I know you probably think I’m wasting your time, but this… this will have you begging me to join the ranks.” He pulled the device out of the case, removed a small piece of cloth from his pocket, and used it to conceal his invention.

  “Well, you’ve never ceased to amuse,” Jack coughed, “erm, inspire us.”

  Arthur hadn’t noticed the cover up. The two nearest members of the committee, the ones he could see in his peripheral vision, had leaned around, clearly piqued. He smiled and set the suitcase on the floor. A cocky grin crossed his face as he leaned on the table now, hands flanking the white sheet. “Alright… here it is…” He hovered a hand over the sheet dramatically. With a flourish, he yanked the cloth off and threw it behind him, yelling, “The single greatest invention mankind has ever seen!”

  He stood for what felt like an eternity but must have been only three seconds, tops. No one said a word, and Arthur felt that moving would jinx what he felt was a silence stemming from pure, unadulterated adoration. The quiet was shattered by a British twang. “I’m fairly sure the digital projector has already been invented, Mr. Lovelass.”

  Arthur smirked and finally relaxed. He was all too aware of what it looked like, and had sort-of rehearsed this part of the presentation with an attempt at casual charm. “Ah, yes, but this isn’t a digital projector. It’s…” Wait for it… “A death ray!”

  Mr. Cleese gurgled a noise halfway between choking and a wail and placed his head on the table. Arthur had expected this initial reaction, which was why he had already grabbed for his suitcase. “I know others have done this before. I mean, ‘death ray?’” Arthur said with faux-incredulity. He chuffed to continue the illusion of disbelief and cast a look at the nearest committee member, an unimpressed woman with the features of an angry terrier.

  “Where does this kid get off?” He opened the case and pulled out the blueprints and copies of his proposal, which he set on the table. “This kid gets off, gentlemen and ladies, on the fact that he studied every single design from the Wündermark IV onward.” Did I just make an orgasm analogy? Even if he had, there was no time to worry about it now. “Each one of them had a flaw, a glaring mistake which allowed heroes to thwart them at the last second.” He pushed the proposals toward the nearest committee member, who didn’t take a copy, but instead arched his eyebrows and shoved it down the line toward Mr. Cleese. “Most were technical considerations… an exhaust port, an all too easy to access reactor…”

  Jack picked his head up off the table and looked wearily at Arthur. “Mr. Lovelass…”

  The tone immediately sent a spasm of fear into his gut. Arthur recognized it. “I’ve tested it!” he shouted, unaware that his voice cracked. “The prototype is fully functional!” He half-sprinted and half-leapt toward his device. Yanking the suitcase from the floor and setting it on the table with a crack, he pulled a cord from a compartment and tried to attach it to the death ray. “It runs on a basic wall outlet now… but the final design…”

  “Mr. Lovelass…”

  He began to talk faster as he finally forced the cord into the prototype. “Solar power! It runs on cheap, plentiful solar power!”

  “If you just…”

  “Greener planet through destructive technologies, that’s my motto!” Arthur shouted, punctuating it with a laugh.

  “Please, stop talking…”

  Talk faster, damn it! “We’re talking easy world domination in a week once mounted on an orbital platform!”

  “For villains’ sake…”

  “It utilizes a three stage, oxygen ignition blast which…”

  “Mr. Lovelass!” The boom was authoritative without being authoritarian. Arthur stopped at the sound, suddenly very sheepish. “How many times have you approached us for approval?”

  The interviewee did not immediately respond to the question. “Eighteen… including today,” Arthur quietly answered.

  “I suggest you start preparing for nineteen. Proposal denied.” Jack slapped his palm on the table, generating a noise which sounded suspiciously like a gavel to Arthur. He was still struggling to process the words as his head sunk, defeated. Around him, the murmur returned, this time to the topic of lunch.

  With a great deal of effort, Arthur summoned his voice. “What? But… no…” It was softer than he wanted it to be, but he couldn’t muster the force. He looked up and offered a smile that was at once both pathetic and fake. “Why?”

  The word was loud enough for Cleese to end his conversation and look up at Arthur. He cocked an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

  “Why have I been denied?” Arthur approached Jack, surprised by the sudden strength of his voice. He gestured to the death ray. “I put my heart and soul into this… into everything I’ve ever presented to you. And…” He trailed off, trying to think of a way to continue. With the prospect of defeat merely offering self-pity, he turned to anger instead. “You gave Captain 1970's out there approval and not me?” It came out just the right mix of inquisitive and accusatory, aggressive but not enough to get him thrown out. “Do you honestly think that someone who wraps a towel around his neck is a better alternative to…” He gestured to himself.

  Cleese looked more amused than anything else. He clapped his hands, then rose from his chair. “Let me explain something to you, Alfred…”

  “Arthur,” came the correction from gritted teeth.

  The only pause came from an intake of breath as opposed to consideration for this mistaken name. “… the Super Villains’ Guild, and this may be a bit of a shock to you, is not actually in the business of winning.” Jack leaned over the table to the nearest smoldering cigar, picked it up, and gesticulated with it, as though the trail of smoke provided some kind of help illustrating his point. “We are here to provide a moderate challenge to heroes.” He smiled and drew the cigar to his mouth. The tip glowed an angry orange before he extricated it and puffed a gob of smoke out while he regarded the sausage-like object in his hand. “Nothing more.”

  “I know,” Arthur said flatly.

  Mr. Cleese peered at him with a cocked eyebrow. “No. No, I don’t think you do. Villains are the dregs of society. The scum of the earth, so to speak.” He gestured to the assembled, who nodded and murmured in agreement. “We’re antisocial, angry, or just plain crazy. And we’re allowed to be! The government of these United States, to keep us from murdilating the shit out of everyone, gives us a free pass to act out our animal aggressions against goody-two-shoes who do us no real harm.” He walked toward Arthur. “In exchange, we give the government our research and inventions for whatever purposes it desires.”

  Arthur rolled his eyes impatiently. This wasn’t new information, but that wasn’t going to stop the old codger from talking. “Fine. But the military could totally…”

  “Let me ask you something…” Clees
e interrupted. “Is there a… self-destruct mechanism?”

  Arthur scoffed. Who’d be so stupid? “No.” The word came out flatly.

  “A remote control? Perhaps one with a big red ‘STOP’ on it?”

  Arthur crossed his arms. What is he getting at? “No.”

  “Is there a hard-wired glitch in the countdown, giving a dashing hero the extra moments he needs to stop the death ray?” Jack took this moment to look Arthur in the eyes. There was no real effect other than making Arthur more aware that Mr. Cleese was toying with him.

  “No.”

  “But I am safe in assuming,” he turned away dramatically, continuing to gesture with the cigar, “that there are numerous safeguards and redundant systems which would stymie your nemesis should an attempt to stop the device be made.” It wasn’t a question this time.

  Arthur smiled. “Yes, sir. It’s been rigged so that every attempt to tamper with it makes it harder for even me to stop. A hero touches this baby,” he gestured to the device sitting innocently on the table, “and he might as well level a city himself. And the final design triangulates targeting data from third party satellites as well as utilizing a ‘death sentence trigger’.” He motioned to himself with his thumbs. “I tell the machine to go, and it doesn’t stop just because I’m getting a cup of coffee.” He looked into Cleese’s eyes, a desperate smile on his face. “Tell me the idea of having a hard-wired target doesn’t make you think of the good ol’ days.”

  “Yes, indeed,” Jack muttered with a verbal roll of the eyes. “Simply put, Mr. Lovelass, you are an anachronism.” He turned and approached Arthur, who appeared to not comprehend the word. “A throwback, the derelict soul of a Golden Age villain stuck in your Bronze Age frame.” He motioned with his cigar hand at Arthur, close enough that the stream of smoke made the younger man’s eyes water.

  “I don’t understand.”

  Mr. Cleese stared at him as though he were an exceptionally stupid puppy. “If we were to institute you as a villain, you would be too good.” He gestured at the prototype without looking. “This death ray of yours could not be stopped.”