Girl Reporter

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

  Griff took custody of the beanbag, napping. He’d wanted to bring a bigger crew along for the rescue mission, but we’d been lucky to secure two of Australia’s five current active superheroes, and Danni and Buckshot (former members of the superhero club who were still up for a decent fight most days) blew us off to go to a wedding fair together.

  The lack of connectivity with home really sucked. If ever there was a journey that deserved to be live-streamed, it was this one. I took some pics of sleeping Griff anyway, for posterity.

  “Hey,” said Solar softly, from the doorway. She crooked a finger at me. “C’mon.”

  Why yes, I was at her beck and call.

  The rec cabin at the back of the ship had an ever better view of the spiralling vortex. Here, you got to look back at the dizzy shapes of all the realities you had travelled through, instead of the nothingness you were moving towards, which felt weirdly more relaxing.

  A cushioned bench ran around the curved edge of the view screen, like an old-fashioned window seat. Whoever was in charge of the aesthetics of this Road Trip Funkymobile had placed candy pink and purple throw cushions against the wall.

  The lack of lava lamps was a grave disappointment.

  “Travelling in style,” I said with only a hint of irony.

  Solar sat down with her feet on the bench, her arms resting on her knees. “I’ve never done anything like this before,” she said wistfully. “I mean, this is space, right? Or the next best thing.”

  “Come on, you’ve totally gone into space,” I said, sitting near her, my feet brushing hers on the bench. “You’ve been to the moon.” I wasn’t going to stare at her arm—the one with what she called her curve, instead of a hand. She seemed so much more comfortable with her body she had been that first time I interviewed her. I guess there’s a big difference between comfort levels at 16 and at 20, regardless of disability?

  “Sure, the moon,” said Joey dismissively, drumming the fingers of her right hand against her knee. “But this is huge, and unknown and far.”

  I gave her my best sarcastic face. “To some people, the moon is pretty far.”

  “You think I’m spoiled.” She was delighted, like no one ever said shit like that to her face. I guess, being a super-powered celebrity, it could be true. Most of the criticisms of “Girl Solar” happened in the digital space and on TV, by anonymous assholes and paid pundits alike. Did she really never see any of that crap?

  Solar wasn’t smart enough, she wasn’t grateful enough, she wasn’t pretty enough, she wasn’t progressive enough, she was too feminist, she shouldn’t have let that photographer use the cover shot that made it obvious she had boobs, she should show more skin, she should fix all of the third world’s problems before daring to speak up about injustices at home, she should keep her goddamn mouth shut about anything that wasn’t superheroing, she should keep her goddamn mouth shut about superheroing.

  It felt like every other magazine or TV show or social media account was angry about how she dared to be a role model at all. Like being young and female and having something to say was a massive, unprecedented transgression.

  They all agreed it was weird that she didn’t have a boyfriend. They also agreed she was secretly dating a) The Dark, b) an Olympic swimming champion, c) some hottie on Neighbours, d) Jay Jupiter, aka Griff.

  I wanted to say something, about how great she was, without sounding stupid. I knew a tiny fraction of what it was like to be a woman in the public eye, mostly from observing my mother’s long history, not to mention moderating my own comments section.

  I liked being on YouTube because there was control there, and distance. I didn’t have to stand up in front of my audience every day and smile at cameras while saving the world. I had the luxury of glaring at the paparazzi if I wanted to, and saying bitchy things about them on Twitter.

  “Do you ever get tired of people looking at you all the time, wanting you to be their hero?” I asked.

  It was a question I had never asked my mother.

  “I live in a Sky Tower and little girls dress up as me for birthday parties,” said Joey lightly. “I know how lucky I am.”

  I felt like that was exactly the same answer I would have got from her if I was holding up my phone to record it, and tried not to look dejected.

  “Hey,” said Joey a moment later, in a low voice that didn’t sound anything like Official Public Statement from Solar. “It could be a while before we get anywhere. Do you want to make out?

  “Oh,” I said, stopping to recalibrate literally everything I thought I knew about her.

  Possibly I had solved the Solar Boyfriend Mystery. Go me.

  She raised an eyebrow, laughing silently, and I realised I hadn’t answered her question, too busy gaping at her pretty face.

  News just in: New Solar thinks she’s hilarious.

  Update at eleven: she’s really good at kissing.

  Fifteen minutes later, I was lying on the window seat of an extra-dimensional spaceship with an armful of superhero. Joey was warm to the touch, like she was running a slight fever.

  Her tongue tasted a little like electricity, and a lot like summer.

  We were still fully dressed, conscious of the fact that we were not alone on this junk heap, but that didn’t stop us getting to know what each of us felt like under a layer or two of clothing.

  This also didn’t prevent Griff freaking out when he walked in and saw us. He yelped and rushed out again, closing the door with a snap. “Seriously, Fry?” he howled from the other side of it.

  “See,” I said in a low murmur. “I told you he’d blame me.”

  Joey kissed the tip of my nose, making no move to put distance between us. “Sucks to be you.”

  Two minutes later, a calmer Griff knocked on the door. “Astra says we’re getting somewhere.”

  “Well, I was trying,” I huffed.

  Joey laughed, and rolled off me. “Later. We’ve got time.”

  “Megadethra’s Palace Zone is rife with cracks and warps in reality,” said Astra. “Probably because she’s used wormholes, Cosmic Eggs and a bunch of other portal technologies to invade other dimensions so many times. That means a bunch of hazards, the closer we get.”

  “Mum had the right idea,” I remarked. “She bypassed all this, by being kidnapped directly.” Why hadn’t I thought of that?

  Griff passed me a protein bar. I passed it back to him and made impatient grabby motions, until he passed me a packet of astronaut ice cream instead.

  We’d only been gone twelve hours. I don’t know why we couldn’t have packed sandwiches and cupcakes.

  The Dark silently judged Astra switching over to autopilot, while she prepped us. He loomed near the control, ready and willing to grab the reins at a moment’s notice. Despite the fact that there were no reins, and he didn’t have the dimensional whizzbang to be any use at it. Bless.

  “What kind of hazards are you talking about?” asked Joey, accepting her protein bar dutifully. We kicked Griff off the yellow beanbag so we could use it, which meant we got to sit very close. I offered her some of my astronaut ice cream, which earned me a very nice smile.

  “Rogue travellers who live out here, for the most part,” said Astra. “Dimension pirates—dimes for short. They attack other ships and break them down for parts and supplies.”

  “That sounds like a made up thing,” I said slowly. “Dimension pirates. You can’t just put the word ‘dimension’ in front of everything. Do they eat at dimension cafes and drink at dimension bars? Do they knit dimension socks for each other’s dimension birthdays?”

  “There’s also flying creatures that live out here, subsisting on broken fragments at the edge of dimensional portals,” said Astra.

  I gave her a flat look. “Don’t say it.”

  “They’re called dimesaurs.”

  “You are making t
his up!”

  “It’s in the manual,” The Dark confirmed.

  If we were in a horror movie, now would be the moment that a large, squawking, flying monster crashed into our ship and screamed at us. But it didn’t happen, because we weren’t in a horror movie, and dimesaurs weren’t a thing.

  Blondes Have More Dimensional Road Trips

  IF DANNI HAD COME ALONG on our dimensional road trip instead of The Dark, and I had thought to put platinum tips in my hair before we left home, it would be Kid Dark and four awesome blondes, taking on the universe.

  Actually, we don’t know for certain that The Dark isn’t blond underneath that cowl of his. Griff used to be a redhead. Anything is possible.

  My mother was blonde last time I saw her. She did it every now and then, threw a little unexpected yellow into the rotation. It didn’t suit her. Tina Valentina was a born brunette, a 21st century Rosalind Russell.

  “You can’t be a woman in the media these days without changing your look every twelve months or so,” she told me once, when I was thirteen. “It’s the only way to remind the audience we have new things to say. Madonna taught us that.”

  I dyed my hair black and shoved it under the same beanie for two years straight because what the hell kind of messed up feminism were they peddling in the 1980’s? Even now, when I change up my hair colour because it’s fun to look like a mermaid or an anime character, a small part of me asks the question “are you doing this to appear relevant?”

  Then I remember I’m a girl on the Internet, and literally everything I do will make someone angry, and I colour my hair however the frick I want.

  Audrey was getting closer to Megadethra’s Palace Zone, which we knew because there was a dot on Astra’s screen getting larger and larger. We were slowing down, so instead of a swirling space vortex around our cruisey dimension ship, we were starting to see glimpses of all those other realities.

  The pictures were indistinct. Unlike the Cosmic Eggs, they weren’t tuned to anyone in particular. It was incredibly unlikely we would see any familiar faces in the dimensions we swept through as we gear-changed down into a slow crawl.

  But that didn’t stop us looking.

  “Do you think there’s a dimension out there where you’re a superhero?” Griff murmured.

  I nudged him. “Do you think there’s a dimension out there where you’re not?”

  He pulled a face at me. “That’s not what I am, Fry.”

  “And I’m a middle-aged folk dancer.”

  Solar leaned against me on the other side, her warmth washing over my skin like a hug made out of kittens. “Maybe there’s a dimension where we’re all slime monsters.”

  “With my luck, that’s where we’ll end up,” said Griff.

  “The Dark is our resident expert on slime monsters,” Astra called out, laughter in her voice.

  His cowl and visor shifted in her general direction. “We agreed never to talk about that.”

  “So, not long after I first joined the team, Solar punched Megadethra’s Cosmic Ray to save me, and got sucked into a slime dimension,” Astra went on, her voice lilting into tease-mode. “Of course The Dark went after him.”

  “That man couldn’t be trusted to find his way home from the train station, let alone a slime dimension,” The Dark muttered.

  Griff and Joey had almost identical “my parents are so embarrassing” expressions on their faces. I also noticed that Joey winced when Astra said “Solar” without the “Original” qualification. How often did she get that little reminder, that so many people meant him when they said that name? (Even me, I had to admit)

  “It took them a week to get home,” went on Astra. “Only it was how long for you two?”

  “Two years,” said The Dark. “Two years, twelve different variations of the same slime dimension.”

  “I should be recording this for my vlog,” I suggested. The Dark’s visor lifted slightly. I knew a glare when I felt one. “That was a joke.”

  “Is that why you always tell me not to punch things?” Joey asked The Dark. “Because, you know. Punching things is my thing.”

  Audrey shook around us, shuddering for a moment. The world outside the port-holes came into sharp focus as something that had to be palace-shaped. Well, when I say palace, it looked like a giant robot space bee had eaten the contents of Aladdin’s magical lamp, a space station, and the Prefect’s Bath from Harry Potter, chewed vigorously, and then spat them all up together in a sticky mass of honeycomb.

  “Wow,” said Astra. “This is a bathroom, right? Or is the whole place like this?”

  “It’s so shiny, it hurts to look at it for too long,” said Joey.

  “And yet,” I said, filming on my phone again. “I totally want a go in that tub. Anyone?”

  “We have a mission,” said The Dark.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” I snarked back at him. “Did you think I had forgotten who we’re here to rescue?”

  He loomed over me, so imposingly masculine that I’m surprised the ship around us didn’t dissolve into a Sea of Patriarchy. “I don’t think you take anything seriously.”

  I gritted my teeth and smiled at him. “You’re not in touch with today’s generation, are you? Irreverent humour is the only way we get anything done. It’s that, or curl up under a doona of despair eating smashed avocado on toast.”

  The Dark hesitated, but only for a fraction of a second. “You’re a civilian, Ms Valentina. Stay behind the rest of us.”

  “All the better to document our quest,” I said sweetly, because I knew that would bug him.

  Hey, I’m more serious than I look, but that doesn’t make me mature.

  Solar was the first to step out of Audrey and into the giant mutant space spa. She staggered for a moment, almost losing her footing.

  “What is it?” The Dark growled, hurrying after her.

  “I’m fine,” she said, shaking it off as he reached her side. “I’m just—a bit far from our sun, that’s all. My battery’s starting to drain.”

  I wanted to ask if that was a metaphorical battery or actually a feature of… yeah, best not to ask that question. Anyway, there were more questions to be asked right now. “What are you two wearing?”

  Solar and The Dark turned and looked at us. Astra startled out a laugh, pressing her hands to her mouth.

  “Oh, I am not stepping off this ship,” said Griff quickly.

  “Too late,” I said, hip-checking him. “Not going to miss this.”

  When they stepped from the ship into the atmosphere of the Palace Zone, both Joey and The Dark had changed physically. Hers wasn’t so dramatic—she already wore a retro-style Solar costume, basically a bodysuit featuring the Aurora Australis in blue and yellow.

  Her boots had now changed into something more go-go than her usual lace-up hikers, and her hair… oh, her hair.

  Joey’s shoulder-length blonde bob had transformed into a high, tightly-curled Olivia Newton-John perm, topped off with a red headband that reminded me strongly of the “Will You Be Solar’s Girl?” advertising campaign of the early 90’s, the one my mother almost sued three magazines over.

  The Dark’s transformation was even more awesome. His swirling cape with bright gleam of a visor had changed over the years, in slight increments, building towards towards the vision of sinister power that he sported today. But this dimension had flashbacked him into a costume that I swear he only wore for about three weeks in 1994. It was everything that was awful about superhero costuming before I was born.

  So many pouches. His cape had transformed into a cropped black leather jacket over a grey bodysuit. Bulging pouches hung from his enormous belt, and pockets were sewn into every square inch of the jacket.

  There was still a hood and visor, because of course. Was his costume the world’s first threatening hoodie, back then?

  I’d se
en pics of this specific costume on Tumblr, but to be honest I thought it was apocryphal. I had never believed that The Dark allowed himself to be seen in public wearing such a thing.

  “I don’t want to look into a mirror right now, do I?” he said in a voice that hinted he was finally losing his composure.

  Griff took the last step down. Astra bundled after him, laughing in anticipation. Griff immediately found himself wearing an adult-sized version of the black and dark purple Kid Dark costume he had been stuck with, back when he was tapped for the role of pre-teen super sidekick. His natural hair flared out the top—carroty red, a look I’d never seen in person before. He even refused to strip off the brown hair dye when Billy Brett photographed him for Mum’s book about Jay Jupiter. They had to Photoshop the cover.

  Astra now wore something very like Astra I’s original outfit of white and silver sparkles: a flared mini-dress and way too much eyeshadow. Spacegirl chic; seemed appropriate.

  I scrambled after them. My hoodie and jeans transformed into a neat designer suit made out of soft jersey, very mod 1960’s. Griff snorted. Astra passed me a small mirror so I could check the damage. My hair was still purple but bobbed short, with an actual pillbox hat perched on top of it. I looked like an emo teen Jackie Onassis cosplayer.

  My mother rocked this very same look at an awards ceremony in 1988, when she was recognized for the writing she had done around Solar and the newly revealed Aussie Beaut Superheroes. I did not appreciate the callback. Weird enough if this dimension was causing our appearance to change—but the selection of my outfit suggested this was personal. Targeted. Someone found us hilarious.

  “You’ve been here before, right?” Griff asked The Dark in a low voice, as we looked around the giant, gleaming royal bathroom, searching for a way out.

  “Once. Decades ago. We hijacked an invasion fleet from the Tantaris Collective to rescue Solar and that news team after the android replica debacle.”