Electromancer

by Daco

  Chapter 11

  On that fateful Friday ...

  At his secluded mountain estate in the Mullgany Mountains, Momo woke from his afternoon nap. The long-awaited day had arrived. If all went as planned, Momo would have control over the Manchester fortune by five o’clock this evening. This meant that tonight would call for a celebration like no other.

  He tossed his nightcap onto the bed, rose, and found his maroon-colored lounging robe. Then he slid into his slippers and barreled out of his bedchamber toward the elevator that led down to the secret laboratory. He thought briefly of stopping at the kitchen first for a quick, hearty snack before dinner, but forged on to check on the repair status of The Big Zapper. He had deadlines to meet, cities to destroy. Delay was intolerable. If there was one thing in the world Momo simply could not tolerate, it was a nincompoop, which meant Professor Slipter had better have his weapon ready. Or else. When Momo entered the room, he immediately saw the gangly legs of Professor Slipter hanging out from beneath The Big Zapper. Half a dozen men raced to and fro doing their best to keep up with Professor Slipter’s instructions.

  “Does this aimless scurrying around mean that my weapon of mass destruction isn’t ready yet?” Momo bellowed.

  Professor Slipter, who lay prone atop an automotive creeper, rolled out from underneath The Big Zapper. “Sir! I was just about to tighten the last wing nut. We’ll be ready to go in five minutes, tops.” He grinned up at Momo with pride.

  “Don’t just lie there smiling like a fool,” Momo said. “Tighten the damn wing nut!”

  Professor Slipter shuddered visibly and, in a quavering voice, ordered his assistant to hand him a molecular screwdriver.

  The assistant shakily stepped forward, all the while looking at Momo. At the same moment, Professor Slipter repositioned the creeper three inches to the right. The assistant tripped over it, and down he went. The impact caused Professor Slipter to roll back under The Big Zapper. The molecular screwdriver flew from the man’s hand, struck the floor, and bounced up and into the air. A steady stream of electron particles shot from the nozzle and struck a control board on The Big Zapper. The board sizzled and erupted into hot amber sparks worthy of a Fourth of July fireworks display. The room filled with the acrid odor of flaming circuitry. A burning ember flew at Momo and singed the ends of his hair—what little he had left. Momo stumbled backward, but was caught just in time by another assistant rushing to his aide.

  Momo pointed a finger at the assistant. “You nincompoop,” he snarled.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the assistant said in a frightened, sniveling voice.

  Momo pointed to the molecular screwdriver. “Someone hand me that tool. I have some things that I need to repair.”

  There was an audible gasp. One of the other assistants, a large man, broke out into sobs.

  “Please,” the clumsy assistant said. “It was a mistake.” The man backed away in fear, only to step directly into the stream of supercharged flames spewing out of the damaged control panel on The Big Zapper. The poor man didn’t have time to scream before he was disintegrated, leaving not a trace of him behind.

  “Hmm,” Momo said. “Why was he so panicked?”

  Professor Slipter rolled out from under The Big Zapper. “With all due respect, sir, I think he feared that you were going to shoot him with the molecular screwdriver.”

  “Where would he get that idea?” Momo said. “Everyone makes mistakes. I was only going to take a stab at putting out the electrical fire.” He aimed the screwdriver at the control panel, pushed the button, and the flames were immediately extinguished.

  Professor Slipter got up and went over to the damaged panel. “Not to worry, we have a replacement.” He snapped his fingers. “The backup panel!”

  Three assistants hurried into a back room.

  Once Momo was satisfied with the Professor’s progress, he returned to his study and ordered his chef to bring him a snack consisting of a loaf of rustic bread, a wheel of Camembert, two pounds of prosciutto, and a pint of Kalamata olives. Then he buzzed Biggie Bitterman, who appeared at the door in ten seconds.

  “Ring me up those Dowdy twins you’ve been telling me so much about,” Momo said. “It’s been too long since I’ve had the pleasure of the company of the fairer sex.”

  “What’ll I tell them, sir?”

  “Tell them that I’m a wealthy industrialist just arrived back in the area from my world travels. If what you’ve told me about them is true, that’ll be enough to get them here. Tell them they’re invited to dine with me tonight on the veranda. There will be a string quartet and a rock band. You said they like to dance. I intend on some private sessions with the sisters.”

  When Bitterman left, Momo settled back into his chair, munched on his snack, and looked at a photograph of the twins.

  Two girls are better than one, he thought. He stared at their chests and added, four melons are better than two!

  A loud knock at the door jolted him out of his erotic fantasies.

  “Who is it?” Momo asked.

  “It’s Professor Slipter, sir.”

  “It better be good!”

  Professor Slipter slowly opened the door and poked his head inside. “I just wanted to let you know The Big Zapper is ready.”

  Momo rocked forward on his desk chair and sprang to his feet as though performing a vault by an Olympic gymnast, a remarkable feat for a man of his size and brawny build. “Finally.” He glanced down at his watch. Twenty minutes and counting. He picked up the telephone and buzzed Bitterman again. “Biggie, what’s taking you so long? Inform the Dowdy sisters that I’ll send the helicopter. They’re to be ready by seven.”

  Shortly after Momo hung up the phone, Bitterman came barreling into the office and came to a sudden stop.

  “Well?” Momo asked. “What are you doing just standing here?”

  Bitterman began to stammer. “Aa ... ah, sir.”

  “Before you pick up the twins, get to the drop box. I want the keys to the mansion. I can’t move in right away, of course. But it will be symbolic.” Momo licked his lips as if tasting prime rib, one of his all-time favorites.

  “I’m, well, I’m afraid ...”

  “Get to the point, Biggie.”

  “There’s a slight ...”

  “What?”

  “Problem. You see, the twins have headaches. It was hard to make out exactly what they were saying. I asked about Saturday instead, but they said they were already committed for the evening.”

  “Didn’t you tell them to take an aspirin? Cancel their Saturday plans?”

  “I strongly suggested that they do so, but it seems that the Dowdy twins—or one of them, I don’t know—have been jilted. Della said something about having to be at the Manchester mansion on Saturday for a celebration dinner. They’re going there to try to break it up.”

  “Break what up?”

  “Seems that Mayor Bobby Baumgartner has gone and got himself engaged to Ms. Alexa Manchester.”

  “My ...” Momo caught himself, his mouth agape. He couldn’t possibly say what he wanted. There were some things that had to remain private.

  “Dani means to get him back,” Bitterman said. “And if not Dani, Della.”

  “I don’t care one whit about that idiot mayor’s love life,” Momo said. “If there’s a party at the mansion Saturday night, it must mean that Alexa Manchester doesn’t intend to transfer the Manchester holdings as planned.” He shook his head. “Foolish girl. She’ll just have to be taught a lesson.”

  Bitterman cleared his throat. “Out of curiosity sir, why the Manchester estate? You could have any mansion in the world. Any palace.”

  “Because it’s mine for the taking, Biggie. Now mind your own business.” He turned to Professor Slipter, who looked as if he’d been trying to melt into the walls. “Set your targets on The City of Angels.”

  Professor Slipter hunched his shoulders and lowered his neck like a frightened turtle. “I hope it won’t be too devastating.
”

  “What do you mean?” Momo asked.

  “The drought. The terrain is susceptible to deadly brushfires. If we zap the city, we can cause a fire worse than the Chicago and San Francisco fires combined.”

  Momo nodded. “Exactly, Slipter. Now, what’s your point?”

  “If you destroy the city, you’ll kill thousands of people.”

  “I’ll do what’s necessary to convince Alexa Manchester to convey all the Manchester holdings. If she doesn’t, then she’ll be the one to blame for causing all of the death and destruction. Not us. So don’t worry, Slipter. Your conscience can be clear. I know mine is.”

  Chapter 12

  Erstwhile ...

  In the days leading up to the fateful Friday and Momo’s deadline, Alexa spent her time learning the secrets of her new powers. The moment she’d embraced her identity as Electromancer, controlling her powers became easier. She could fly, direct electricity, and even transform her body without burning off her clothing. In the nanosecond before her body transformed into Electromancer, she could elongate, slip out of Alexa’s clothing, and don her platinum suit—so fast that the naked eye would never see her nude.

  There also seemed to be another power lurking, but she didn’t understand it. Occasionally, she felt as though she had a kind of telepathic perception, the ability not to read minds, exactly, but to understand the emotions of others. The impressions came only in fragments and were often disjointed. With no real clarity about it, she considered that what she was sensing might only be the by-product of erratic electrical currents that had affected her own thought patterns, which only made it seem like these were the emotions or thoughts of others. The ability to fly and control electricity was enough to keep her busy in the following days.

  Finally, Friday arrived. It was ten minutes before five in the afternoon—Momo’s deadline. Alexa Manchester didn’t welcome the deadline’s arrival, but in a strange way, Electromancer did—she would have the opportunity to fight evil. Or better yet, Momo would turn out to be all bluster, and there would be no more evil to fight.

  Alexa hurried from one window to the next to see if anything unusual was happening outside of the mansion, and then she would look at the television screen and check the Internet for reports of unusual activity. So far, nothing.

  From outside on the back veranda, Miss Marbletop meowed. Alexa opened the door and let the cat inside, then shut the door again, and stayed on the veranda, scanning the grounds of the Manchester estate. Nothing seemed amiss.

  All too soon, she heard the clock inside the house chime five times. She stood on the porch and looked out in the distance at nothing, hoping for the best but fearing the worst.

  Miss Marbletop sprang up on the railing beside her and meowed. It was as if the cat had appeared out of nowhere.

  “How did you get out here?” Alexa said to the cat. “I thought I shut the door.”

  Miss Marbletop began slinking back and forth as though walking a tightrope. Suddenly, the cat arched her back and hissed.

  “What is it?” Alexa asked.

  The doors of the gardener’s storage shed had slammed shut, eerie, because there was no breeze at all. A shiver went up Alexa’s spine, the electricity of fear, not heroism. She glanced over her shoulder, but no one was there. She turned to pick up the cat, but Miss Marbletop had disappeared. When the cat didn’t respond to her call, Alexa decided it was time to go inside. Just as she’d thought, the door was closed. Oddly enough, Miss Marbletop was now waiting inside.

  “There you are, you funny bird,” Alexa said, and for the hundredth time in the past few days, she wondered if she was losing her mind.

  Gladys entered Alexa’s quarters. “You’d better come have a look at the television.”

  Alexa felt her spine curl with electricity, but she refrained from transforming. They hurried along to the media room, where Sigfred had his eyes fixed on the jumbo screen.

  There was Momo, hiding behind that gold mask, his massive, muscular arms folded over his chest.

  “You have defied me, Alexa,” Momo said in his booming voice. “Behold what your stubbornness and foolishness have wrought on innocent people. Their blood is on your hands.” The scene shifted to an aerial view of what was unmistakably The City of Angels.

  Alexa studied the screen. So far, nothing untoward appeared to be going on. She left the room, and in a flash, transformed into Electromancer. She shot into the sky, leaving a wake of electricity. Soon she was flying over The City of Angels, taking in the identical panoramic view that she’d seen on Momo’s screen.

  She raced along the coast, scanning for trouble. Nothing so far. She soared over the foothills and the higher Archangel Mountains, then back over the valleys. Nothing.

  Then a huge burst of electricity split the sky, its voltage a thousand times greater than Mother Nature’s most powerful lightning bolt. It struck land in the hills above the Angelus Bowl, the world-famous outdoor amphitheater nestled in a highly populated residential area above The City of Angels. A brush fire immediately ignited. Too late for Electromancer to quash.

  Then she saw—no, she sensed—an even larger bolt about to strike on the other side of town.

  She thrust out her arms and shot a beam of electricity directly at the lethal dart of energy. When the two bolts met, they connected and changed course. She flew under the stream of electricity and made contact with it. With all her might, she began fighting to control the force. When she had it in her grasp, she carried the bolt up into the atmosphere and released it inside an enormous thundercloud, where it burst into a gazillion highly charged particles and combined with the energy of the cloud’s electrons.

  Another bolt appeared on the horizon. Then another. All she could do was to fight one beam after the other. She battled valiantly, but there were too many. Several bolts made it to the ground, igniting more fires.

  Soon she was fighting a maelstrom of bolts, clinging to each that she captured with only her fingertips and toes. Before long, she’d run out of fingers and toes.

  She had to do something, fast. But what? Then she got the idea of pitting the offending spears of lightning against themselves. Like a top rodeo performer, she used the bolts that she held in her hands as a lasso, encircling the enemy charges of electricity as they came in. The electrical strands whipped erratically around the sky like Medusa’s snakes gone wild, which produced a gargantuan electrical storm of a magnitude never before seen. If she lost control of all the bolts, she would destroy the city.

  On the horizon, a brilliant blue cloud suddenly appeared. Its color was piercing and seemed to change from indigo to royal blue as it raced toward her and the storm. Electromancer feared that Momo had unleashed a far more destructive weapon, one that she couldn’t overcome. But the closer the blue cloud came, the more she realized that there was something strangely familiar about it. Then she realized that it wasn’t a cloud at all. It was Blue Arrow—the very Blue Arrow who had appeared in The Big Apple at the power plant when all had seemed lost.

  Blue Arrow stopped abruptly before reaching her and the storm. He spoke in a deep masculine voice, and yet he wasn’t speaking—perhaps she truly could read thoughts.

  “You are the power,” Blue Arrow said. “Control it. Make it succumb to you.”

  Electromancer struggled to understand. How could she do any more than what she was already doing? She was nearly overcome by fatigue and frustration. The ever-growing number of electrical currents crackled and twisted in her hands. She felt as if she were trying to hold on to a slew of F5 cyclones.

  “Only you control the electricity,” Blue Arrow said.

  “I can’t,” she cried. “Momo’s electricity is never ending.”

  “Then fail,” he said. “That way you prevail.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “Help me!”

  “I cannot safely enter the electrical field. My powers are different, weak here. Yours are strong. You are the electricity.”

  I’m Elec
tromancer; I can do this, she thought to herself. But she was losing the battle. More bolts were escaping her grip. “Can you tell me what to do?”

  Blue Arrow elongated his form. From the head of the arrow to his fletching, he formed a circle around Electromancer and the electrical storm, making sure to keep his distance. He flew around and around, his speed increasing. It all seemed meaningless, but suddenly she remembered his words: then fail.

  There was no need to fight the current, not when she could control it. So she submitted to the electricity and became one with the other bolts of energy, until they merged.

  “Obey me!” Electromancer cried in her crystalline voice.

  The wild electrical currents instantly became tame. She whirled her arms over her head. Without any resistance, the strands began circling in unison above her arms. Electromancer had figured out how to harness the force and was now forming an electrical wheel. Any new incoming bolts of electricity simply changed course and joined the wheel, drawn to it by electrical force.

  Before long, there were no more incoming bolts of electricity. Momo must have given up or run out of ammunition. No matter, it was time. Electromancer flew through the center of the electrical wheel and rose high into the atmosphere. There, she whirled the wheel around, and in one giant heave, she released it from her being and sent it sailing into outer space like a quasar taking a one-way road to oblivion.

  By the time Electromancer returned to earth, Blue Arrow had gone. There was no trace of him. She felt disappointed—no, she felt like a lovesick puppy set to the road. But she had to put those feelings aside—she had work to do.

  She flew to the hills above the Angelus Bowl, where firefighters were busily fighting the blaze. The fire was spreading too quickly for them to contain it. With her fingers and toes, she blasted the earth with electrical sparks, creating controlled perimeters around the wild blaze—literally fighting fire with fire. She moved from one fire to the next until all of the fires in and around the city were extinguished. When the job was complete, she rose above the city and landed on the “L” of the TinselTown sign. From below, she heard the roar of the people of The City of Angels, and what she heard were not cries of anger, but cries of elation. The people of The City of Angels were thanking her.