From My Hard Drive: TechnoMan & Gadget, the Whiz Kid

A couple of decades ago, I spent a few years struggling with a super-hero project. It was a big, sprawling super-hero universe of my own invention, with dozens of characters and a big mega-arc encapsulating the whole thing. I didn’t have the resources to make it work as a comic book, so I considered turning it into a series of novels instead. Which is harder than you’d think, taking something designed to be visual and making it narrative.

Anyway, here’s the beginning of one of those novels, a story called Technoman and Gadget, the Whiz Kid . It’s basically Batman and Robin. But they’re Black. And Batman, well, he…

You’ll see.

PROLOGUE

ONE IN THE MOONLIGHT

The air was unusually warm that night in late August. Stone City’s summers tended to end early, no matter what the calendar said. It was a fluke of meteorology and geology, brought on by a seismic depression and Stone Bay, which jutted up into the city from the south, splitting the South Side in two. Except in June and July, cold winds blew off the bay and passed through the city, tracing paths through the streets and up and down the canyons of glass and steel and concrete. Tonight, though, was different. Only a mild breeze, rather pleasant, actually.

Gadget did not notice the breeze and the warmth, unless perhaps as another factor in his environment. He was crouched in perfect stillness thirty-four stories up, atop one of the few office buildings in the city that could still boast active tenants. So motionless was he that he could easily be mistaken for a high-tech gargoyle, vacuum-formed out of plastic and metal, perhaps, rather than chiseled from stone. The only movement was the almost-imperceptible flutter of his ankle-length crimson cloak, which moved in the breeze. Its wearer stayed still, eyes fixed on the street below.

With the ultraviolet filter in his goggles turned on and magnification turned up a notch or two, he had an excellent view of the front of the building across the street and thirty-four stories down. A crumbling façade, chipped and crooked like an old tooth. A broken streetlight stood at one end of the block, now useless. If the gangers didn’t break the streetlights, then there was usually someone on the take at Stone City Power who would be willing to shut down the lines selectively. When the Snarl was involved—as he was tonight—the favor would be done for free. The entire block was blanketed in darkness.

Chunks of old mortar and brick had either been chipped or blasted from the building at some point, leaving gaping holes of insulation and framing material to show through. Glass double doors, patched over innumerably with so much plasti-seal that they seemed more opaque than transparent, allowed ingress.

Pacing back and forth in front of the building were three men, all of them wearing jackets that bulged just a little bit under one arm of the other. Two of the men were smoking.

TechnoMan, though, hadn’t gone in through the front doors. No. Gadget had dropped him off on the roof with the TechnoSkiff, and his mentor had stolen into the building from above. Gadget waited patiently (much more patiently than any 13-year-old had a right) for the signal that would crackle over his headset, the signal to get into the ‘Skiff and swoop down from the sky to rain terror on the bad guys.

As he watched, the men standing post suddenly startled, then turned to look at one another. Almost in the same instant, he heard gunfire and a concussion grenade.

Gadget fidgeted. That could only mean one thing—TechnoMan had begun his assault. But why hadn’t he called on Gadget?

What do I do now? Do I go in? Maybe he forgot to call me. Maybe his communicator’s out. But maybe there’s a reason why he wants me out here.

More gunfire. Then the three men drew their pistols as one and started to move towards the door.

Gadget considered hailing TechnoMan on his headset, but stopped. What if he was focused on something? What if Gadget’s hail distracted him at a critical moment?

Just as the first man reached out to touch the door handle, the door was flung open from within. Two figures dashed out into the night.

Strict-Nine? Gadget thought. He cranked up the magnification on his goggles. Is that Strict-Nine? What’s he doing here? Who’s that with him?

The three guards seemed surprised by the appearance of the other two men. The five of them clustered around for a moment, speaking animatedly. Gadget squinted, trying to get a clear look at the two men from inside. Before he could focus, though, a van skidded and shrieked around the corner and pulled up to the curb. When it pulled away, the two mystery men from inside were gone.

“Gadget—” the word came over the headset, sudden and surprising and cut off. Gadget strained his ears, as though perhaps the volume on his mentor’s unit had simply dropped, and he was still speaking. He listened, but heard nothing else.

“TechnoMan?” he asked his microphone tentatively. “TechnoMan?”

He waited for a moment. Still nothing. Another van pulled up and the Snarl emerged from the building. His blue hair stirred in the breeze. He glanced around the empty street, and Gadget caught the flash of his yellow eyes for a moment. He suddenly needed to urinate very badly.

“TechnoMan, do you copy?” he asked, urgency creeping into his voice. He watched the Snarl get into the van, followed by two of the guards. A few more men came through the front doors, choking and crying. They stumbled into the van as well.

“TechnoMan, are you reading me? Do you copy?” he pleaded. This had never happened before. Never. He thumbed a control on his belt. Behind him, on the roof, the TechnoSkiff quietly came to life and glided over to his position, its dull gray, boomerang-shaped hull drifting on silent nitrous jets.

“TechnoMan!” he almost shouted. “TechnoMan, come in!”

Finally, he saw Alex Hawkins come out. He carried some sort of gigantic rifle, with all kinds of strange protuberances sticking off of it. He was choking and spitting, and seemed quite eager to leave the scene. Gadget recognized the symptoms—TechnoMan’s own homemade recipe for CS gas. As soon as Hawkins got into the back of the van, it sped away, its open back doors flapping like wings before being pulled shut.

“TechnoMan!” Gadget cried into the microphone. He was up now, leaping into the ‘Skiff, rules be damned, his own safety be damned. If there were more men inside, he’d, he’d kill them.

He slid into the pilot’s nook on the ‘Skiff, one of two shallow depressions on the top of the vehicle, protected by a low, curved windshield of plastisteel. He triggered the main engine and sent the ‘Skiff into a dive over the edge of the building. The air roared in his ears and g-forces clutched at him.

He wasn’t supposed to dive like this, but he didn’t care.

On the ground, he vaulted out of the ‘Skiff and sent it back up to the roof with another button. All of it was done reflexively, the result of years of training. His conscious mind was focused on only one thing as he burst through the doors.

“TechnoMan!” and as the silence in his ears only grew longer and somehow louder, his heart pounded wildly and as he burst into the building, he screamed into the microphone:

“DAD!”

**********

TechnoMan lay on the floor. Around him were six bodies, men rendered unconscious by his assault and left by the Snarl during his escape.

So he lay on the floor. He felt something cold, something frigid, sitting on his chest. There was a voice in his ears, but it was so small and so far off, compared to the vicious pounding waves that seemed to fill his skull. And that coldness in his chest, which now crept into his extremities, demanded his attention.

Gadget turned the corner and his final scream went stillborn on his lips. TechnoMan lay on the floor in a pool of blood, almost faint in the haze of gas still in the room.

Gadget approached him quietly. This couldn’t be happening. It was a test. It was another test, like the ones he’d gone through years ago, in order to convince his father that he could be his partner. It was a test. It was a—

It was a hole the size of a grown man’s fist, blown straight through the center of the armor’s chestpiece. Bits of the high-impact plastic were scattered on the floor nearby and a few large shards of it lay on TechnoMan’s chest. The gold threads of steel running through the plastic were twisted inward. Beneath, the Kevlar armor was shredded, and blood welled up from the wound. The pool of blood, though, widened from the back, promising a large exit wound there.

“Oh, God,” Gadget started to say, but his breath hitched in his chest and he got out nothing more than a strangled whisper.

He knelt down by his mentor, his partner, his father. TechnoMan’s lips were fluttering. Gadget lifted the visor so that he could see TechnoMan’s eyes. His own eyes were welling up with tears and he had nothing with which to wipe them.

“Armor…piercing…” TechnoMan rasped. “Matter…of…time…”

Gadget felt tears run down his cheeks. TechnoMan lifted one hand with great effort and touched one of them with his heavy, gloved fingers.

“Don’t…” he said.

“I can’t—I can’t help it—” Gadget started, snuffling back mucus.

“The city…” TechnoMan said. “Strict-Nine…marks…”

It had been Strict-Nine!

“What do I do!?” Gadget cried. ”What do I—”

“There’s…” TechnoMan said, and then fell silent. Gadget watched him carefully, expectant and anxious. The pool of blood widened a bit more, spreading enough to touch Gadget’s knees. Gadget grasped TechnoMan’s hand in his own small hands and waited for his mentor to continue.

And waited.

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