Michael S. Atkinson's Blog, page 10

Small Stuff

When you’re a superhero, sometimes you let the little things slip. If you’re trying to stop Confederate Connie from sending laser rifles back in time to General Lee, for example, you might not care so much that you didn’t put your soft drink can in the proper bin. This is especially true for flying brick type heroes. Gaseous Girl, for one, had survived a bus thrown at her head. She had understandably skipped her flu shot that year. Who needed a flu shot when she could breath fire?

In the same way, she had never been incredibly careful about her secret identity. So what if someone found out her real name? Her family wasn’t a problem. Gaseous Girl had come by her powers honestly. Her mom could resurrect in 17 seconds, and her dad was an A-level pyrokinetic. They could take care of themselves. She also didn’t have to worry about a supervillain using her lover to get to her, because she didn’t have one. There was an upside to being between relationships. Even her job wasn’t an issue. She wasn’t secretly competing against normals in the Olympics, like, oh, say, Speedfreak.  She was a freelance crime investigator. She got along well with the police already, in both identities.

So, some days, when she was in a hurry, she didn’t make sure that she had her mask on before she flamed up. Tuesday had been one of those days. Behemoth Bob had been spotted in downtown. Gaseous Girl dashed out of her apartment, charged down the rickety wooden steps, and was clear out into the parking lot before she remembered the mask. She tied it on with practiced speed and soared away.

There was this kid, however. Sam McClain. He was eleven, and just developing a crush on Madeleine Smith from next door. He was quite startled when he saw her flame up and blaze away. Sam still had the presence of mind to snap a picture with his phone. Then he Instagrammed it. The picture of Gaseous Girl, maskless, went moderately viral. Even Crudmuffin, not the most technologically savvy of superheroes, noticed it. He also noticed the street sign in the background, and deduced that she must live in the area. Crudmuffin promptly sent over a drone loaded with explosive biscuit bombs.

Madeleine, being a good neighbor, visited Sam in the ICU. She lied, and said he was sure to come through okay. “‘Course I will,” he said. “You’re Gaseous Girl. You’ll save everything.”

“Oh, crap,” said Madeleine.

 

Saved!

“Seventeen. And they’re all unity ones too, kinda sad really, but come on, Mac, there’s no time! The bomb explodes in ten seconds, and you can’t defuse it with seventeen unity-”

“Oh.”

“I didn’t know candles could do that.”

“You’re amazing, Mac.”

Missing

On the really cold days, I can’t feel my feet.

I can’t feel them on the warm days either,

Not the feet, not the eyes, not the elbows.

They’re for the monster, he says.

A new creation, he says.

And I lost the brain. Of course.

 

I am an Igor, and this is my job.

 

I got the right brain, no question.

Not an abnormal one, no sir – I’m not a moron.

Igor U, summa cum laude, class of ’92.

My diploma hangs on the castle dungeon wall.

Anyway, it’s a brilliant scientist’s brain.

Dude discovered some element or something.

But somewhere between the mob attack and the thunderstorm,

I lost the brain, and the doc will kill me.

 

I am an Igor, and this is my job.

 

What do I do?

Steal another scientist’s brain? No.

Takes hella time to swipe a brain.

Maybe I should just ask the doc.  Nice guy, the doc is.

It’s not like he would swipe my summa cum laude brain instead, right?

Right?

 

I am an Igor, and this is my job.

 

The poetry slam at Yeah Write for this month is the bop, a  form I had not heard of before. I don’t imagine there are many bops about the travails of a mad scientist’s assistant. But I couldn’t resist trying one.

 

Family Time

“Mommy, the world tilts!”

“Yes, dear,” Super Soccer Mom said automatically. Her voice had a faint buzz to it; it always did when she mentally interfaced with her electronically enhanced soccer ball robot Winston. “Justin, what about the Wombat?”

The Captain’s voice rumbled from Winston’s speakers. It was punctuated by small thuds. “Tasha, you cannot be serious! The one with the burrowing power?”

“Suppose the expedition finds something, like another planet?” Tasha said sensibly. “It might have something going on underground. We might need a good burrower. Hang on.”  She turned and yelled at another of her children, who was just about to set fire to a laundry hamper. “Sauna, don’t. Remember: no fires inside the house.”

“Moooo-oom,” the teenager whined, in the manner that teenagers usually do.

“But, mommy,” the first child, somewhat younger, said again. “The world tilts!”

“Yes, it does that,” Super Soccer Mom said. Then she divided her attention again. “Justin, I’m back. Wait. Saun a Aurora Case, you stop that right-“

“Sorry,” Sauna grumbled, and slammed her door. There was a faint whiff of ash.

“Back again,” Super Soccer Mom said. “How’s the battle going?”

She heard five or six thuds, each sounding progressively louder. Then she heard the Captain yelling “Son of a mailman!” and other innocuous expletives. “Right, then,” she said, switching away momentarily.

“Mommy, it tilts! Won’t we fall off?”

“That’s ridic-” she started to say. Then she looked into her child’s wide eyes, and realized he really was quite concerned that the tilting of the world meant that he and everyone he knew might plunge into the void of space. She thought very quickly how to answer. She did not have time for a lengthy explanation of gravitational and centrifugal forces, of axial tilts and the changing of the seasons. The kid would cover that in science class later, anyway. She settled for calm yet vague reassurance.

“No, we won’t fall off. No one’s fallen off yet, have they?”

A small nose scrunched up. “No, but…. couldn’t Daddy push it and make it straight?”

Again she had to think. Other kid’s moms could say no right off, and maybe even laugh. But Captain Happily Married was gifted with boundless strength. He might very well be able to tilt a planet. She’d honestly never asked. She made a mental note to ask, just out of curiosity, then returned to the matter. “If it was straight, it would change the weather. Mess with the seasons. It-”

“Why?” came the inevitable question.

She fell back on the inevitable answer. “Because I said so.” Then she spun to the hovering Winston. “Cartoon. Now.”

Winston beeped and immediately projected something from Looney Tunes on a nearby wall. The child was instantly distracted. Then Winston’s speakers buzzed. “Tasha?” came the Captain’s strained voice. “I might require some assistance here!”

Tasha sighed. She’d have to make another call to the babysitter. She prayed Hope didn’t have exams that night; otherwise she’d have to engage a civilian babysitter. Civilian babysitters and powered-up kids didn’t mix well. “On the way,” she said, reaching for her cape. Just once, she really did wish the world would stay saved. Just once.

 

 

 

 

Who?

“Sheila, dear, you look awful. Have you seen-”

“Yeah. Completely unhelpful. Didn’t give me meds or anything. Just blurted out something about aliens and time fractures and stuff, and then ran off.”

“Weird. Where did he go to medical school?”

“No idea.”

 

The Coming of Allergies

Snot runs from my nose,

Eyes water. Sinuses bloom.

God, how I hate spring.

 

This is the first haiku I’ve written on this blog since “Encounter” in 2013. That one was romantic, I thought. This one is less so.  I do like spring in some respects, but still, when one lives in an area of the country where the annual sinus infection is an event regular as the Kentucky Derby, it gives one an interesting perspective on the seasons.

A Missing Planet

“And I read ancient Venusian hieroglyphics! I write them too! No one else knows Venusian hieroglyphics! I learned them from the Venusian elf masters, and they never….”

“Yes, ma’am,” the otter ensign said respectfully. In his heart, he wasn’t entirely sure there were Venusian elf-matters, or elves generally, but the universe was a big place. He was only just beginning what he hoped would be a stellar career in the Otter Space Corps, and he was just realizing how big it was.

He had naively thought his first assignment would be something dashing. They might send him with Commander Morgan and the best of the Corps fleet ships to the planet whose name he couldn’t remember. It had amber oceans, though, he remembered that. However, in its wisdom, Corps Command had dispatched the bright-eyed ensign on a courier mission. Specifically, he was transporting an expert on hieroglyphics from her planet back to Corps Headquarters, so she could translate an inscription on some dusty obelisk that had turned up.

The expert, Rosemary Braxtin, wasn’t an otter.  The ensign couldn’t quite decide whether she was a human or a sentient space hedgegod and he estimated her age in the triple digits, though he didn’t dare ask to be sure.  Hardly had Braxtini boarded his shuttle when she had begun complaining about it.

She disliked the warp engines, and asked why in heaven’s name they couldn’t be quieter. She complained about the too-bright lighting in the shuttle, the quality of the replicated food, the angle of the seats. When the ensign had asked, desperately polite, whether she had enjoyed her visit to Earth, Braxtin had exploded in a rant about Earthlings, Martians, and everyone else from the Pluto colony to the observation post on Mercury. Then she had gotten on the subject of elves, and their presence on Venus, and their secret ciphers that only she knew. “Aren’t we there yet?” she abruptly said, breaking off a point about Venutian-Elvish musical recitals entirely lost on the ensign. “I have an obelisk to translate, you know!”

“Yes, ma’am,” the ensign said. “We’ll be shifting down into Corps space momentarily.”

“Hmph,” said Braxtin. “Warp engines. Why, when I was on Barnard’s Colony, we never-”

There was no warning. The shuttle dropped out of warp and into blank space. A planet should’ve sprawled out before them, but it wasn’t there. The ensign, stunned, automatically did a scan with the shuttle sensors. They didn’t even pick up bits of rock. The entire world, the headquarters of the Otter Space Corps, had been scythed neatly from existence.

The ensign fumbled for the button that launched the distress beacon. Then it occurred to him that whoever had wiped out the Corps homeworld might still be around. He paused. Braxtin noticed the hesitation. “Is that the atmospheric control?” she demanded. “You’ve got the controls all wrong; I’m about to freeze to death!”  Before the ensign could stop her, she reached over and thumped the button hard. The beacon disengaged with a clunk from the shuttle and went chirping off merrily into space.

The ensign had been right. Someone had waited around. Stamper, god of war, saw the beacon. He raised the red sword. His work wasn’t done.

 

 

The Shovel of Thor!

“Behold, great Odin! I have made this shovel from the metal of a dying star! See, as I lift it to smite your enemies-”

*CLANG*.

“Ow…”

“Perhaps,” rumbled Odin, “you should use a lighter material. Plastic, maybe.”

“Plastic?”

“Plastic.”

“Yes, great Odin.”

 

Red

The otter stood on the white-washed sand, staring out at the gently rolling amber waves. Beside him rested the red sword. He had stabbed it point down in the sand, and there it remained, quietly humming. Its hum sounded almost content. It had done a good day’s work, it felt. An entire fleet of starships had been quite thoroughly smashed. It couldn’t understand why the otter didn’t seem to be happy.

“Yellow water,” the otter said gloomily. “Usually not a good sign.”  A fish splashed lightly out of the water, and then plopped back into it. “Something’s living in it, anyway. Not fatal.”

He took a step towards the water. Then he paused, and looked back at the sword. The humming shifted one hopeful octave higher. “I don’t usually need a sword to go swimming,” the otter said. Then, as if he might change his mind if he waited a moment longer, he lunged forward and dived.

The sword shifted uneasily, sending little rivulets of pale sand running towards the sea. It wasn’t made for uncertainty. Strictly speaking, it was made for Armageddon, the ultimate showdown between good and evil. Until that happy time, it occupied itself with various wars big and small. It smashed other people’s weaponry, it amplified feelings of anger and violence, and it had a pretty good time doing so. However, the basic fact was that it remained a sword. It had a pointy end. It either stabbed people, or it didn’t. The sword had never had a problem with this. Now, however, the otter who held it apparently didn’t like stabbing people. The sword couldn’t understand, and felt almost hurt. It hummed in quiet bewilderment as the otter swam.

Then the new god of war burst out of the water and ran towards the sword. “That wasn’t the whole fleet!” he barked, snatching up the blade in a spray of sand. “They had other ships. Bases. Outposts! They must be destroyed. All of them. The entire Corps!”

He raised the sword towards the sky, and it chirped in excitement. It rocketed upwards, burning like a red star, carrying the otter with it. Finally, the sword felt certain again. For a pointed piece of metal endowed with powers of supernatural destruction, it felt almost happy.

 

Science!

I have done it!

With only a paper clip, electricity, and the mystical element padamantium, I created a wormhole to an alternate Earth!

Only one problem.

The portal? In my laundry room.

The evil me now holds my argyle socks ransom.

Oops.