Doc Masterson and the Prisoner of Time, Chapter 13

Doc Masterson’s been in the superhero game for most of his life. But his powers are more dependable than his mental health. Deep in Apparatus headquarters, Masterson meets with General Goff…

Chapter 13: Interjection

Soon enough, I was sitting in the unsurprisingly sparse office of General Alexander Goff, Supreme Commander of the Apparatus Armed Forces. I had known Goff for a long time, because he had been in his position for a long time, overseeing their response to the Mirror Man’s Terror War after 9/11 and the mess in Iraq with America’s Super People, but even before that he was central in the M-Men stuff and the Revenge Agenda. He hadn’t made the decision to kill Jenny, but he had executed that decision. He did not appear to take pleasure in it – something I did observe and never forgot. But he also had not hesitated. 

“I thought Paul was going to be here,” I said immediately. The thought of Paul’s secure mental web managing this meeting had convinced me to do it in the first place. 

“I’m not going to lie to you, Masterson,” said Goff. “That was not the truth.”

“Well,” I said. “Maybe next time, you can warn me in advance that you’re lying, so I don’t waste my time, and you don’t have to make such an elaborate apology.” I histrionically move to get up, a half minute after sitting.

“Please, Masterson,” said Goff. “You really are going to leave now? And take the train back? And ride the elevator up? After all you’ve done to come here?”

“I could leave by unconventional means,” I pointed out.

Colleen lifted her hands up. “Gentlemen. Things are as they are. It won’t happen again, John, I promise.”

I looked at Goff. “It was an oversight,” he said, which was as much as I was going to get out of him.

“What do you want with me?” I asked. 

Goff sighed. “We want your power, Masterson. Of course.”

“No,” I said. “You want my loyalty. You want it to be your power.”

Colleen threw me a two-ton grimace. “You’re being deliberately ambiguous, John.”

“I don’t know how else to be,” I said. “That’s who I am. Down to the atomic level. That’s a scientific fact.”

“People like you are such pains in the ass,” Goff barked. “You are given all this power and yet you don’t know what to do with it. If I had your power, I would not be choked with uncertainty.”

“Certainty and power are the cause of every problem in this world,” I glared at him.

             Goff shook his head. “You don’t know what you want.”

“I want see him,” I said. “That’s what I want. I want to see the Time Traveler.”

It was about that time, as we left Goff’s office and ventured towards another elevator to head deeper into the facility, that I noticed a loud hum in the back of my mind. I say ‘noticed,’ because it was one of those things where, once you discover it, you realize you had been blind (or in this case, deaf) to it to for God knows how long. It was not an electric hum, like static or a radio or other technological broadcast; and I also knew immediately that Goff and Colleen couldn’t hear it. As I followed them down the gray halls, I tuned them out and focused on the hum, and realized it was a babble of voices, thousands of them; but among that herd there was a dominant, stronger voice and language, that the other voices seemed to be clinging haphazardly to, like refugees onto the legs of a fleeing helicopter. 

Of course, I considered that I was having another schizophrenic break; but this was different, and I was different – I knew this was coming from outside of me, no matter how deep in my mind it sounded and no matter how silent it was to others. I looked at Goff and Colleen – their movements seemed to be slowing, their voices were lowering in volume, and the light of the facility seemed to be dimming and yellowing. The opacity of reality was diminishing, and another reality underneath was revealing itself. Goff and Colleen slowed to the point of being unmoving – frozen, but flickering. The Apparatus facility around me was as translucent as plastic wrap – and now I saw what was underneath, some kind of shadowed antechamber lit by burning torches and dripping candelabras of huge size. I could smell incense, and I could feel the traces of a mountain wind, exhausted after making its way through tunnels and corridors, but still quietly fierce. The Apparatus facility was gone. Colleen and Goff were gone. 

Among the shadows, I saw a robed figure, with long blond hair and a pointed, high-flying mustache like twin rapiers that would have appalled Salvador Dali in its radicalism, sitting meditating in a lotus position on a giant, glowing sapphire pedestal. 

I realized who it was. “Doctor Alan Weird!” I exclaimed. “But I thought you were dead!”

The Occult Magus opened his eyes and gazed at me, piercing into me with his cosmic stare. “Don’t be foolish, Masterson,” he said. “I am dead.”

TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 14