Superheroes

by Margaret Ronald

  Bless Mama. Because of her I was never short of equipment. When she saw that a cake mixer or a waffle iron had migrated to my corner, she simply bought a new one. Because of her, a week after my eleventh birthday, I created a brownie with a heartbeat. “Look, Mama, look!” I cried as it thumped its way across the counter. Mama was dressing a chicken for dinner.

  “That’s lovely, dear,” she said absently. “You ought to patent it.”

  I knew right where Papa kept the forms for the Patent Office, so I took her advice. After that, it was only a question of who would get to me first: MIT, or the FBI.

  Fortunately MIT moved fast in those days.

  I don’t remember much about my undergraduate years, except that dating was difficult. Mama had warned me that men didn’t like smart girls, but I pointed out that it didn’t matter much what they liked, since I was only twelve. “Let me get my Ph.D. first, Mama, and then we can worry about all that,” I told her, and she shrugged and said, “Of course you’re right, dear. I don’t know what I was thinking. Are you sure you want to link that spatula to the cathode ray tube?” But after my Ph.D., I discovered that Mama was only partly right about men. Once I could get them to look up from their experiments, everything went like cell division.

  MIT gave me my own kitchen and a teaching post, with the help of a grant from the Department of Defense, where a few scientists were interested in ballistic baking. At the time, I regret to say, I did anything I could to get funding, even help the Army pack death into macaroons. I also created numerous best-selling cookies on university time, shamelessly courting Pepperidge Farm and Sara Lee, but since I brought in money and fame, I suppose my alma mater did well out of it.

  Not all of my cookies succeeded in the market or on the tongue. My Frosted Tesla Coils had to carry too many health warnings, and even today no one with a pacemaker should attempt to eat one. My self-replicating chocolate chips presented too many challenges for the human digestive system. But the Unexpected Oreo, with its tingling, mildly hallucinogenic cream center, paid for all. In 1967 we brought out a stronger version, but you won’t find it in stores now—some very pleasant men from the government showed up for tea in the early ’70s, and we agreed that I should avoid the expense of a court case.

  About this time Papa ran into difficulties, as you may remember. Most people believe he died in his burning lab, shouting defiance at the National Guardsmen trying to control the Hydra in the front yard. In fact he was quietly led away to an asylum, someone shot the Hydra with a tranquilizer dart and took it away to Area 51, and the lab burned a week later, largely because Papa was always a terrible electrician and couldn’t wire his way out of a paper bag. Fortunately for Mama, the Unexpected Oreo had already made my fortune, and I could look after her and pay the asylum bills.

  Poor Papa, always wanting to rule the world. In his lab, Papa was King of transformation, General of the army of ideas, Admiral of a fleet of swimming creatures in tanks, Supreme Tyrant over nature. I know now that lots of people want to rule the world. I wanted to too. Like Papa, I thought I knew the best way to do everything. In my kitchen in the early days, I commanded legions of cookies, and in my lecture hall I earnestly formed thousands of minds, seducing row upon row of students with my rhetoric, like a dictator inspiring her armies. I wanted to rule the world with my ideas and theories. I dreamed of succeeding where my father, with his diseases and tentacles and time machines, had failed.

  Papa often neglected to notice that the mailman had delivered the wrong brain. His time machine had rusty gears. And his little daughter, before he sent her away from his side, liked to drop dry pinto beans in the growth tanks, ruining his chances of creating a super race. In the same way, when I demonstrate during lectures, my batter blows up and my sugared violets crawl away, as often as not. I still command legions of cookies, but while I am busy marching my armies out of the oven I sometimes trip over the cat. Perhaps we cannot really rule anything, let alone the world. Perhaps nothing we do will ever be perfect. Perhaps this does not matter at all.

  When I was seven, I exchanged the flashing buttons of the formula tanks for the speed buttons on a stand mixer. Instead of growing limbs, I grew yeast. I went back in time, not by setting a badly calibrated clock in a frail metal box, but by opening a frail metal recipe box. When the women around me began to demand better pay and equal rights, I began to read the books they were reading, and I decided my parents had made me a poor bargain and forced me into the classic cage for a woman. “For how long have we had to pour all our capacity for calculation into measuring cups?” I raged in my papers. “For how long have we had to feed our famished desire for knowledge with muffins? Why do we only get to pickle cucumbers and never brains?”

  I asked all these questions and poured my feminist rage into batch after batch of electric cookies, powered by lightning and GE. When men ate them, they got a shock, and when women ate them, they got an orgasm—or the solution to a physics problem, depending on the frosting.

  Then, one sweet and thunder-free afternoon, I sat at my kitchen table with a cup of tea and a phosphorescent meringue, thumbing through Feynman’s lectures. The sun slanting through the window warmed my back and picked out motes of dust on the old hotwired toaster-blender combination. I had a moment of quiet, empty of stuttering lab assistants and free of the smell of burning sugar. I turned one page. I turned another. I looked up and stared at nothing. In that moment, I remembered a soldier I saw at Quebec when I first stepped out of the time machine.

  She—for this soldier was a girl—wore what was probably her brother’s uniform, which didn’t fit all that well. I think I was the only person on the battlefield who knew why. People don’t see what they don’t expect to see. But I had no idea what to expect, being only five, and being used to much more unusual things than a woman holding a gun. She knew exactly how to hold a gun, by the way. I didn’t know this at the time, but when I saw soldiers in newsreels later, I recognized her confident grip on her weapon. At the time, though, we simply stared into each other’s startled faces while she stood over me for a brief moment in the thick of battle. And then she stepped back into the dust and the powder smoke and the shouting and the squeals of horses that sounded like monsters being born.

  Too many women, I think, get lost in the measuring cups, but not all of us. When I think of that soldier, I wonder whether she wanted to be out there. I never had time to ask her, “Do you like the blood and the bullets, or would you rather be laying brick or baiting bulls—or even baking cookies?” But I have learned much, while strapping extra lightning rods to my chimney or cheerfully ignoring the doubts of my colleagues. I know now that there are a hundred ways to become the mad scientist you need to be.

  DOWNFALL

  JOSEPH MALLOZZI

  He was pummeling the fourth one into submission, raining a barrage of bare-fisted blows down on the combat suit’s delightfully malleable helm, when he realized that a large section of the bank’s west wall had collapsed, allowing onlookers an unobstructed view of the proceedings. From their vantage across the street, he reasoned, any cell phone videos would prove spotty at best. Still, the optics were bad and he couldn’t chance a fresh YouTube fiasco. His publicist would have another meltdown and that would mean one more round of morning show apologies and children’s hospital visits. The very thought made him ill.

  Abandoning his long-unconscious opponent, he threw a look to the remaining three as they crawled out from under the rubble. In their diamond-thread virinium-reinforced battle armor, they were more than a match for any hero. But, unfortunately for them, he wasn’t just any hero. He was The Imperial, “Vanguard of Justice,” “The People’s Protector,” and the only reason they were still standing was because he’d been holding back, toying with them, partly out of a desire to deliver a powerful lesson (Stay in school, kids! Don’t rob banks!) and partly in the hope that an extended skirmish would help snap him out of his present funk, an inexplicable lassitude that had descended on him that morn
ing like some ponderous blanket sodden with ennui and the lingering odor of last night’s chicken shawarma. However, six minutes into the fray and some considerable structural damage later, he still wasn’t feeling any better. That fact, coupled with their ever-growing audience, simply curdled his already sour mood. As much as he would have enjoyed the cathartic release of an elaborate beatdown, he knew that present circumstances would not allow it. Time to wrap things up.

  His adversaries seemed to come to the same conclusion and simultaneously launched into action. One spearheaded the attack, vaulting over the information desk and coming in with a driving double-legged strike, while the other two moved to close. They may as well have been moving in slow motion. The Imperial pivoted, rolling the lead blow off one shoulder, and followed through, clapping his hand around a booted ankle and swinging his opponent round, sweeping the area clear of obstructions: a deposit station, some promotional displays, and one of the other battle-suited thugs. Their helms connected with a resounding clang, and a piece of someone’s faceplate ricocheted off a teller’s window, nicking a silver dollar-sized chip out of the thick plastic surface.

  The first attacker went cartwheeling across the room, obliterating an enormous placard depicting a happy couple and an equally happy malamute taking possession of their first home. The other simply folded in on himself, buckling to a cross-legged sitting position, head bowed, looking as though he’d grown suddenly weary of the skirmish and decided on a meditative interlude. You guys go ahead. I’ll sit this one out.

  The last one demonstrated an impressive burst of speed, covering the distance between where he’d been standing and the exit in less than half a second. But The Imperial was already there, intercepting him with an outstretched hand that stopped him dead, collapsed his chest plate, and broke almost every one of his ribs. Then, before gravity could lay claim, the Vanguard of Justice swept him up and slammed him down, one-handed, in a thunderous finishing move that shattered the concrete floor, shook the building, and, more important, set the bystanders buzzing. Upload THAT, bitches!

  He opted for the more theatrical exit through the hole in the west wall, striding over the debris to take full advantage of the photo op presented by the local press who had finally arrived on the scene. Shouts were raised. Photos snapped. The Imperial acknowledged his many fans with a wave and his trademark self-effacing grin. A quick scan of the crowd revealed Eliana Herrera, KDVB Action News reporter and host of the top-rated Herrera’s Heroes, desperately trying to draw his attention. She was one of his favorites: smart, syndicated, and a spitfire in the bedroom. Acknowledging her with a nod that let her know she’d just landed herself an exclusive, he started toward her.

  At which point the nausea struck. He held up, his stomach roiling, his head swimming with the enormity of what he was experiencing. He was feeling sick. Sick! How the hell was that possible? His enhanced constitution ensured this sort of thing didn’t happen. He’d never had so much as a cold in his life. His body metabolized alcohol as fast as he could down it. And yet, here he was, in full view of his adoring public, suddenly as queasy and lightheaded as a post-prom princess.

  Nightly News segment be damned. He couldn’t let them see him like this.

  Without so much as a parting sound byte, he abruptly spun on his heels, away from a surprised Eliana Herrera, took a running start and jumped, clearing a row of parked cars and a high-end chocolate shop before initiating his jet boots and shooting skyward. Up and away.

  Two seconds later, he passed out.

  On the other side of town, having concluded their high school presentation on the joys of abstinence, the cybernetic duo known as Twin Atomica powered up their nuclear cores and took flight. They left St. Ignatius at 10:03 A.M., headed west toward their Inner Sanctum Headquarters in Little Italy.

  While an unconscious Imperial streaked north at a little under the speed of sound.

  Their paths crossed approximately two and a half miles over Midtown.

  The ensuing explosion and fallout forced the evacuation of twelve city blocks.

  Their walk along the foot trails of the arboretum took them all the way around Lancaster Lake, by the bird sanctuary, then circling back past the school and the rec center still under construction. Remy stayed close, occasionally straying to sniff a suspicious bush or mark his territory, but the second they passed the tree line bordering Miller Park, he was off, tearing across the open field toward the playground. By the time a breathless Marshall caught up, the black lab was sprawled on his back, basking in the attention of a group of children.

  “Bad dog,” scolded Marshall in a face-saving gesture that convinced no one. “Get over here.” His bad dog responded by scrambling up and bounding off, much to the delight of the kids who hooted, hollered, and gave chase.

  “Now you’re never getting him back,” offered Jennifer Hollins from one of the park benches where she sat alongside some of the other neighborhood parents. In her faded blue jeans and halter top, he pretty, raven-haired former model was the unabashed standard for the term “hot mommy” as it applied in most erotic fiction. Her husband, by contrast, a former shortstop for the local Triple-A affiliate whose one and only call-up to the majors was cut short by a line-drive nut shot that had made ESPN’s Not Top 10 Plays of that year, was the quintessential lout. How he’d managed to land her was a mystery that had haunted the town for years.

  “If I go back home without Remy, I’ll be the one sleeping in the doghouse,” Marshall informed her, watching the merry pursuit.

  “You and Allison coming Saturday?” asked single father Ramesh Dosanjh, the only male in the group. “I hear Tony is bringing his new girlfriend.” Recently-divorced Tony Salazar was reputed to be dating a stripper from Sweet and Sassy, a gentlemen’s club in nearby Fielding County, positively scandalizing the local community. Durham Falls hadn’t been rocked this hard since that time Mrs. Obershon, the town librarian, had had her secret Hustler subscription inadvertently delivered to her place of work.

  “We’ll be there,” Marshall assured him. “Here’s hoping she brings her tassels.”

  Jennifer threw him a look of mock disapproval. He smiled and watched Remy fake out the fast-closing kids, feinting left then darting right. Devon, Marcie Krutzen’s eldest, pounced and came up short, hitting the ground face-first. A sharp gasp from one of the mothers and, as if on cue, all the parents rose as one. But Devon was quickly back on his feet, spitting up grass and resuming the chase undaunted. Relieved, the adults exchanged smiles and headshakes, retaking their seats, catastrophe averted.

  And suddenly, Marshall felt acutely self-conscious standing there, the outsider in their midst playing at fatherhood, doting over his four-legged fur baby while they good-naturedly humored his paternal affectation. Mid-thirties, married, yet childless. Did they ever wonder? Did they even care? Or was he simply allowing his own self-doubt to fuel paranoid imaginings of them, gathered at the local Starbucks, speculating about the relative strength of his swimmers over macchiatos and carrot cake? He tried to dismiss the thought but, once considered, it ate at him like some shameful secret.

  In truth, the decision to not have children had been a mutual one, a logical and ultimately difficult sacrifice, and yet, while he had been able to make peace with the situation, he wasn’t so sure about Allison. It wasn’t anything she ever said or did but more the notable omissions—her increasing disinterest in neighborhood get-togethers, her self-imposed exile from family events. Doubtless his wife already had an excuse in mind for why she wouldn’t be able to attend the Dosanjh barbecue.

  “Remy!” he snapped. The tone of his voice instantly commanded the lab’s attention, let it know he was no longer kidding around. Remy trotted over, tail down, chastened. Marshall gave the dog a pat on the head. “Time to go, buddy.” Buoyed, Remy bounded off again, this time toward the boxwood-lined sidewalk of Sumac Avenue. Marshall followed.

  “See you Saturday!” Ramesh called after him.

  “See you then.” And
they headed home.

  Marshall spotted the black SUV in the driveway as he turned down Spruce Crescent. Black, tinted windows, government plates. They may as well have landed a helicopter on his front lawn. As he approached, he was suddenly seized by the urge to turn and retrace his steps, wait out the day at the park, and come back after dinner once they’d left. But he knew they weren’t going anywhere.

  They met him as he made his way up the walk, two of them in dark suits and standard-issue shades. And it wasn’t even sunny. They flashed their badges and invited Marshall inside, into his own home. They needed to talk to him.

  They introduced themselves as Agents McNeil and Bryerson. McNeil was the talker. Slim and youthful, he struck Marshall as atypically warm for a fed, almost amiable in his approach. Bryerson, on the other hand, was more of what Marshall had come to expect from the bureau. A buzz-cut bruiser with a sour disposition, he kept his shades on.

  A clearly concerned Allison set down the coffee tray and biscuits, then excused herself and headed upstairs without so much as a backward glance. Marshall watched her go. She was no doubt dreading the prospect of another move, and the thought of putting her through the process yet again filled him with a deep regret that instantly gave way to anger. It wasn’t fair. They should have been free and clear. What now?

  McNeil waited until he heard the bedroom door click shut before starting: “Mr. Mayhew, do you know why we’re here?”

  Ten years ago, that question would have garnered the type of smart-ass response that usually resulted in an interrogation room beating. But, of course, a lot had changed in ten years. For one, his clothing was no longer fashioned from oscillating molecular fabric, meaning it could tear and stain. So, instead, he asked: “Where’s Agent Palmer? I usually deal with him.”