Chapter Forty-Seven: Apocalypse Incorporated

Chapter Forty-Seven

Apocalypse Incorporated

All single goal algorithms will lead to destruction.  It is, very simply, the nature of things.  Just like Mickey’s water-carrying brooms from the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” portion of Fantasia.  Or Nick Bostrom’s Paperclip Machine (or Universal Paperclips, the computer game that seems to be based on Bostrom’s thought experiment).  Now imagine an ever-increasing number of economic engines designed to convert scarce resources and labor into profit.  Short term profit, because investors like that best.  So, you release a million economic Frankenstein’s Monsters on the world.  What did you think was going to happen?  Stupid fucks.

Our company was different than everybody else’s.  We got rich destroying capitalism.  And destroying the world.  You’d be surprised how much money there is in destroying the world.  And capitalism.  I know, it seems, counterintuitive. 

(c) Copyright 2020 Diana Hignutt

Chapter Forty-Six: Close to the Edge

Chapter Forty-Six

Close to the Edge

I hadn’t even bothered to take my super suit off.  I was on the folding chair, Jill and Jackie on the couch.  I had the bong, having just blown out my hit.  Peanut Butter Cookie strain tasted just like goddamn peanut butter.  How?  We had the Pandora running on the tv, and Yes’ 1972 epic, “Close to the Edge” was playing.  It was just starting.  The nature sounds built up and then the chaotic, jumble of notes and percussion exploded manically into the song proper.

“What’s wrong, Alex?” asked Jackie.  She knew me.

Jill grabbed the bong out of my hands, as I was about to explain my mood.  “It’s not a microphone,” she said.

“The shit I saw tonight,” I said.

“Like what?” Jackie inquired.  Jill took a hit off the bong.

“Nemo tricked Zorro into figuring out Platinum Man’s weakness for Mirsk.  Then fucking Russian murdered him.”  I spoke evenly and plainly.

“I thought he was invulnerable, or something.” Jill said, blowing out her hit.

Steve Howe’s lead introduced the theme in a clean, light tone.

“Fuck, dude!” Jackie exclaimed.  “No, killing!  Remember?”

“I didn’t have anything to do with it.  I just watched that shit go down.” I turned to Jill.  “Yeah, so did I. Apparently not”

“You couldn’t have run him out of there?” Jill wondered.

I was speechless for a moment.  Why would I even consider something like that?  And have the Secret Society of Supervillains on my ass?  The Faster-Than-Light Assassin was making things hard enough for me as it was.  I didn’t need that kind of heat.

“Why would I?” I demanded.  “What has that pompous fucker ever done for me?”

“He’s saved the planet from invasion twice.  Stopped a world-ending nuclear war.  I’m pretty sure, he’s saved you personally once or twice, if I recall correctly.” Jill listed matter-of-factly.

“That’s his goddamned job.”  That’s all I had.

Look, I felt terrible about it, obviously.  The guy was a righteous douche, but he didn’t deserve to be beaten to death.  I noticed even the Prankster looked away at the end.

There was a feeling I was feeling.  I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.  I was close to something.  Something inside me.  An understanding or something.

I took another hit of peanut butter cookies from the bong.

I was close to something.

Close to the edge.

(c) Copyright 2020 Diana Hignutt

Chapter Forty-Five: Zorro V Platinum Man

Chapter Forty-Five

Zorro V Platinum Man

It happened about a year after Prankster had killed Wonder Boy.  Zorro lost his shit.  He started killing his villains, sometimes torturing them first.  At first the Hero’s Guild tried to ignore the news out of Chicago, but even the world’s mightiest heroes couldn’t overlook their own member’s ever-growing death count.  Will told me that he was ashamed to be a part of that organization after the meeting where they debated what was to be done with their rogue colleague.  Too many members wanted to keep ignoring that numbers.  They pointed out that these were very bad people Zorro was killing.  That, he was, essentially saving lives proactively by killing them.  That Zorro was just too valuable, as far as his tactical knowledge, his detective skills, and, frankly, his considerable financial resources and donations made in his name.  Fucking money-grubbing fascists.  Will quit.  Good for him.  It was the right thing to do, I later assured him.

Anyway, after the Golden Speedster left in his righteous huff, the remaining Guild members decided that Platinum Man would be dispatched to have a word with their founding member’s difficult PR situation.  And this set up that famous conflict that took over the media all over the world.  The ancillary philosophical debate raged on in the newspaper editorials, and blogs.  Zorro had to be stopped.  Maybe, Zorro was right after all, maybe, some villains needed killing? Maybe the ends did justify the means?  In the end, a lot of people outed themselves as authoritarian assholes, but that’s fucking history for you.  But, in the end, a crazy dude, who had been on an obsessive quest for sublimated revenge, discarded the pretense of his heroic code of conduct, and his always thin grasp on reality, and started going nuts on people.  It was always just a matter of time with that guy, right?

We’re all seen that Time Magazine cover, right?  You know the one.  There’s Zorro standing his ground defiantly in his battle armor in front of the ruins of a bombed-out nightclub.  There’s Platinum Man levitating just above him, his cape fluttering majestically.  Where exactly was the photographer standing to get that picture?  Dude had balls.  Looking at that picture, you could tell that shit was about to explode.  He had to feel that through the lens.

That was the fight that changed everything.  It changed the world in ways few people could sense.  And it was all part of Admiral Nemo’s plan.  The plan.  I knew as much of the plan as anyone, and even I was still surprised to see it work out perfectly in every detail, like a complex maze of dominos falling in amazing precision.  In the end, one hero was dead, and the other side-lined, the Guild in tatters, and the last impediment removed.  Just thinking about it, I’m moved to give a standing ovation.  Encore!

(c) Copyright 2020 Diana Hignutt

Chapter Forty-Four: Proust

Chapter Forty-Four

Proust

There’s this old French book, by this guy Proust.  Remembrances of Things Past, I think it’s called.  In it, Proust, paints vivid pictures of his every memory, from childhood on, in painstaking, lavish detail.  He would recall the hour he spent as a child playing in a sunbeam streaming through a window.  How the dust hung there, or rose up, in that magic light.  How the hands of the clock crawled across its face to mark the passage of time, somehow both imperceptibly and obviously.  Something, like that.  I’ve never read it.  My book is the opposite of that one.

But memories were starting to flow.  I was sitting on the sofa in the apartment in Albany (Jill was at work and Jackie was doing transcriptions at her desk in their bedroom).  I was scrolling through Netflix trying to figure out what to watch.  And for some reason I remembered a moment:  I was on the couch at my father’s house in South Jersey, alone, watching Hogan’s Heroes on the big, old television set.  I was eating Doritos and a fried Spam sandwich.  Schultz, as always knew nothing.  Klink was vaguely suspicious.  Hogan’s eyes twinkled.  A crunch and a zesty splash of Nacho cheese flavor exploded on my tongue.  I smelled the familiar smells of my dad’s house. I was safe and comfortable.  A blue jay flew by the window with a call.  The sun glistened on its wings.  The telephone in the kitchen rang with alarm.  Not the new kind of phone ring, this phone was seriously old school…rotary.  I remember being pulled out of my comfortable meal by the phone’s urgency.  And that detail of memory pulled me out of my reverie.  And I was back in Albany, on the couch.






(c)Copyright 2020 Diana Hignutt

Chapter Forty-Three: Epitaph

Chapter Forty-Three

Epitaph

Lyrics to King Crimson’s song Epitaph, by Peter Sinfield.  You should listen to this song now.  Greg Lake’s voice is the perfect delivery method for these lyrics.

The wall on which the prophets wrote

Is cracking at the seams

Upon the instruments of death

The sunlight brightly gleams

When every man is torn apart

With nightmares and with dreams

Will no one lay the laurel wreath

When silence drowns the screams

Confusion will be my epitaph

As I crawl a cracked and broken path

If we make it, we can all sit back and laugh

But I fear, tomorrow, I'll be crying

Yes, I fear, tomorrow, I'll be crying

Yes, I fear, tomorrow, I'll be crying

Between the iron gates of fate

The seeds of time were sown

And watered by the deeds of those

Who know and who are known

Knowledge is a deadly friend

If no one sets the rules

The fate of all mankind, I see

Is in the hands of fools

The wall on which the prophets wrote

Is cracking at the seams

Upon the instruments of death

The sunlight brightly gleams

When every man is torn apart

With nightmares and with dreams

Will no one lay the laurel wreath

When silence drowns the screams

Confusion will be my epitaph

As I crawl, a cracked and broken path

If we make it, we can all sit back and laugh

But I fear, tomorrow, I'll be crying

Yes, I fear, tomorrow, I'll be crying

Yes, I fear, tomorrow, I'll be crying

Crying, crying

Yes, I fear, tomorrow, I'll be crying

Yes, I fear, tomorrow, I'll be crying

Yes, I fear, tomorrow, I'll be crying

Crying

Chapter Forty-One: Morphic Resonance

Chapter Forty-One

Morphic Resonance

I do apologize for the fact that some of these chapters in my story are merely short essays on various, seemingly unrelated, topics.  Everything is connected.  And to really understand what happens, you have to have some basic conception of a lot of different obscure things and ideas.  Morphic Resonance is another of these ideas.  After all, you need all the pieces to put the puzzle that is my story together.

Morphic Resonance is a neat idea.  It suggests that the laws of nature are more like habits.  That that similar forms and activities affect subsequent forms and activities through a mechanism of fields that transcend locality.  That’s why test scores tend to trend higher over time.  Why once chemists first crystalize a substance, it is then easier to crystalize in other labs around the world, and why a doomed man would have certain similarities across various universes.

The idea is considered pseudoscience, at best, but I know someone who took over the world using the idea, so…

(c) Copyright 2020 Diana Hignutt

Chapter Forty: The Three Amigos

Chapter Forty

The Three Amigos

On the smaller jobs for the Secret Society of Supervillains it was always the Prankster and me.  But for tasks a little bit larger in scope, it was job for the Three Amigos:  The Prankster, me, and Psychonaut.

Psychonaut is an interesting dude.  He’s from another universe, which is pretty freaky.  One of the parallel ones that are very similar to ours, but different in some pretty extreme ways.  At least, that’s his story.  I’ve never actually travelled to his universe of origin, so I can’t really say for sure.  But, apparently, in his universe, Clint Eastwood was president from 2000 to 2008, there was no McDonalds, and there was some sort of bizarre cult based around Leonardo DiCaprio.  None of these things seem to make him any different from anyone else you’d meet, though.  He was pleasant enough, had a solid sense of humor, did his job efficiently and expertly.

The relationship between Psyhonaut and the Prankster was an interesting one.  They worked well enough together.  The druggie from another universe tolerated the insane dude with surprising ease.  And I got on well enough with both of them, despite often being unnerved by the Prankster.

We were in Chicago, pulling a caper for the Society.  If I remember correctly, it was early April.  Evening.  It was breezy and chilly.  We were lurking in the shadows of the bushes outside the Corycom BioLab Building.  We expected this to go without any hitches, I was just there to get those two in and out, but then the goddamned vigilante showed up.  Fucking Zorro.  And then shit got weird.

(c) Copyright 2020 Diana Higntt

Jackie's Drawing

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Rotten Meat, Tuberculosis, Baboons

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Rotten Meat, Tuberculosis, Baboons

In the 1980’s, in Kenya there was a forest troop of baboons.  This troop was led and brutalized by a group of aggressive males.  A raiding party of the most aggressive apes traveled some distance to a garbage dump.  This troop came upon another troop at the dump and battled.  Our aggressive, forest troop won the spoils, literally.  They feasted on rotten, tuberculosis infested meat they found among the refuse.  The food poisoning kept the raid party from rejoining the rest of the troop, and the tuberculosis killed them.

What happened next was amazing.  The forest troop became a baboon utopia.  There was no bullying, no hoarding, no aggression.  Instead affection and sharing were the order of the day.  New males that joined the troop quickly adopted to the new ways.  By all accounts, the forest troop still lives a peaceful existence.

Remember this story.  It’s the key to everything that happens. Or a lot of it, anyway.

(c) Copyright 2020 by Diana Hignutt

Chapter Thirty-Eight: The Origin of My Speed

Chapter Thirty-Eight

The Origin of My Speed

Like the lady said, “I was born this way.”

I didn’t know it at the time, though.

Just exactly like the other guy, at the age of 24, I was struck by lightning.  I was on the beach, just in the surf, in Ocean City, Maryland, paying no attention to the darkening skies and the frantic whistles of the lifeguards.  I didn’t notice the absence of the seagulls, or the smell of ozone the suddenly permeated the air.  I didn’t notice that everything froze, the crowd running for cover on the beach, the churning black clouds, the great flash of light that was exploding all around and through me.

It wasn’t the lightning, though.  There was something about my DNA, something different, some impossibly rare aberration that was somehow activated and instantly connected me to the Velocity Field.  Clarity can explain it better than I can, of course.

But the lightning kicked that shit into gear.

Lifeguards pulled me out of the Atlantic, and CPRed me back from the void of death that I never noticed.

I was born anew.  Alive with the power of speed.  




(c) Copyright 2020 by Diana Hignutt

Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Unsettling Dream

Chapter Thirty-Seven

That Unsettling Dream

One of the first things I remembered was a dream that I had as a kid.  I had the dream, or some variation of it quite often for a while back then.

It was night.  I was walking home.  It was my suburban development, but the houses weren’t quite right.  My house wasn’t where it was supposed to be.  I would search ever more frantically, but too no avail. It was like that old Blind Faith song, “I Can’t Find My Way Home.”

I had always thought it was a product of my parent’s divorce, and my bouncing between their houses in a quasi-nomadic lifestyle.  But, later, of course, I found out it was something else having to do with the nature of Place in our minds.  With how we can never really go home again.  That feeling of home is a time as well as a place, and it is lost to us.  Place as a concept is tied intrinsically to the people who were in our lives at the time, and Home is tied to our parents and siblings, of the safety we felt in their company, if we were privileged in that way.

So, there you are, wandering strange yet familiar streets in a quest for something you can never hope to find, because it is a state of mind tied to place that no longer exists.

Have you ever visited your old house years after you have moved out?  Your childhood home?  It’s weird.  It reminds me of this dream a lot.  There are people living in your house, strangers, and yet they are at home, and you are the stranger.




(c) Copyright 2020 by Diana Hignutt

No New Chapters this week

Sorry, extra busy at work, haven't had time to write this week.

Dr. Velocity and company will return next week.

Thanks for your patience and understanding!

Best,

Diana