Cover shows Dragonfly in a view from above. He's falling towards the city below, his wings tattered and his costume shredded. A few hawk feathers also swirl around near him, but Ladyhawke herself is nowhere to be seen. ____________________________________________________________________________ .|, COHERENT An ASHistory Series --+------------------------------------------------------------------------- '|` SUPER STORIES #3 - Turbulence Featuring Dragonfly copyright 2007 by Dave Van Domelen ____________________________________________________________________________ [May 12, 1974 - Detroit, MI] Even from where I was flying, I could hear something snap as the man in the green outfit was thrown against a wall by Graybar. A career criminal turned into living pigiron by the experiments of an unscrupulous prison doctor, Graybar had clearly only been annoyed by the sword I could see glinting from among the rubbish in the alleyway. And he was expressing his annoyance in the only way he knew to express anything...with his fists. "Everyone...has a weak spot!" I heard the man in green gasp as I dove towards the fight. He pulled out some sort of dagger-looking thing from out of a chop-socky movie and jammed it into Graybar's ear. The once and future inmate howled in pain and lashed out, but this time his opponent was actually able to evade the blow. Good thing, since when it connected with a nearby wall, it crushed a foot of cinderblock. "Some more than others, mister," I quipped as I finally reached the pair and grabbed the man in green, pulling him out of harm's way. Even being careful about likely broken bones, I could see him grit his teeth in pain. "Dragonfly!" he said, a trace of awe mixing with the pain in his voice. "I've been...ow...hoping to run into you! I'm Weapons Master." "Good to see another new face," I replied, setting him carefully on a rooftop. "Haven't been a lot of newbies lately." In fact, while a couple of heroes would surface a little later, Weapons Master was the last one to start a career in the so-called Second Heroic Age, as near as anyone could tell. Of course, two years ago when this all happened I didn't know that. "Would've been one less newbie if I hadn't come along, though. You really know how to pick a fight, Weapons Master." "I'd have...oog," he swayed a little. "Okay, maybe I wouldn't have. Who was that guy, anyway? Other than big and tough?" "He goes by Graybar, as in graybar hotel. I've got a little something that should take care of him, though...been saving it for a different dance partner of mine, but it should work," I pulled out a small box and peeled away a strip of paper from one side. "YOU stay HERE," I pointed to the rooftop's gravel for emphasis. Taking to the air, I could see that Graybar had recovered from that ear-poke trick and was starting to run away with the bags he'd stolen from, well, wherever Weapons Master had caught him being a badguy. Unlike Powerhouse, Graybar wasn't quite smart enough to realize that as soon as I showed up, the smart move was to go into the sewers. Or maybe he just worried he'd sink. Either way, he was a sitting duck. "Heya, big guy! Come on up, the view's great!" I mocked as I swooped in and used my tail laser to cut away the bags where he was holding them. They dropped, spilling a large number of what looked to be portable 8-track players. "Huh," I said as Graybar turned around and snarled at me. "I prefer vinyl myself. Warmer sound." "Go eat a bug, hero!" Graybar shouted. "Yer lightshow can't hurt me any more'n that punk's pigstickers." "Oh, I know that. You're not the only invulnerable skel out there, though, and I used to be a Boy Scout. Be prepared!" With that, I dove down, narrowly avoiding his flailing fists, and slapped my special package on the small of his back. Right where he couldn't reach it. The telltales on the box started to blink. "What was that? A limpet mine? HA! I eat anti-tank shells fer breakfast!" Graybar boasted. "Yes and no. Limpet mine, more or less. But not the exploding kind." "Huh? What's that suppo...HEY! Let me down!" Graybar shouted as he started to float up into the air. "Antigravity limpet mine. Now you'll just drift there until someone comes along with your special magnetic restraints...I've already called the police, so you shouldn't have long to wait. Ta!" And, as Graybar tried in vain to reach the limpet with his overmuscled arms, I went back to check on Weapons Master. "That was cool," he said, nodding towards the floating criminal. "I don't suppose I could get some of those from you?" "Actually, that might not be a bad idea," I nodded. "First, though, what's your power? Or powers...innate knowledge of weaponry or something?" Weapons Master shook his head, wincing at the pain the motion caused. "No powers. Just a lot of training under Eastern masters of the esoteric fighting arts. And, fortunately, some training in dealing with pain," he added, fishing a roll of medical tape out of one of his beltpouches. "Mind helping me tape up these ribs? Pretty sure Graybar cracked one." Nodding, I went to work on the first aid. Lord knew I'd done it enough for Amy, and she for me, over the years. "There could be a problem, though. If you really don't have powers, you might not be able to make my gadgets work." "How so?" "Well, I've been doing this for a while, and while I'm not sure yet how it all works, it seems like people with powers have something special going on for us in general. We can make stuff work that shouldn't. For instance, I've tried lending my flight harness to regular folks before, and it either works poorly or not at all. And some people...just being *near* 'em makes my gear break." No need to go into details of how I knew, or throw out the technical jargon being developed by people like Wilson Blair, Lady Lawful's husband. "But you're definitely going to need an edge against people like Graybar, people who aren't cuttable." "I've got a few other tricks up my sleeve for that," Weapons Master grinned. "Unfortunately, most of them don't work so well when my opponent is ten times heavier than I am...." "Well, *that* I can help you equalize," I grinned behind my helmet, jerking a thumb towards the still floating-and-cursing Graybar.... * * * * [September 29, 1974 - Lansing, MI] "Okay, how did Bingo get loose?" Ladyhawke asked as we swooped over the Potter Park Zoo. Fortunately, we'd both been on campus and had the radio on, so we caught the news right away and had manageed to get out to the nearby zoo before things had gotten totally out of hand. "I don't think that's Bingo," I pointed out. "My Z-tector is going nuts. That may look like an elephant, but it's almost definitely one of Quixote's aliens!" "Well, I hope Bingo's okay then," Ladyhawke frowned. The zoo had gotten Bingo, its first elephant, only a couple years ago, and it was something of a local celebrity. "We can check on that later. Now we need to keep our pal from Dimension Z from hurting anyone...you take snatch and grab, I'll see if any of my weapons can stop 'Zingo' here." Ladyhawke nodded and started diving low over the small Sunday afternoon crowd to help get the small and the slow out of harm's way. "Too bad we don't have Quixote's magic sword here," she added over our radio link, setting a child down while I tried burning the Z-lian's hide with my laser. "I don't know if we'd want that this time," I replied. "It makes the Z-lians permanently assume their false form while killing 'em, and then we'd have to explain the dead elephant. Not everyone believes in Dimension Z yet, after all." In fact, most didn't. Even most of the other heroes thought I was nuts for believing in Quixote's claims...at least Lady Lawful believed me, but she'd retired the month before and wouldn't be much help now. "We have to stop it AND make it assume its true form, if we can." "Lotsa luck with that...here you go, sir," Ladyhawke split her attention between me and the old man she was rescuing. "Let's see if you like to fly," I dropped down and tossed one of my new antigrav stingers at Zingo, a more throwable version of the limpet I'd used on Graybar a few months prior. Demonstrating both impressive agility and quite a bit of intelligence for an elephant, it turned and swatted the stinger away before it could land on the beast's body. It hit a trashcan with a gluey CLANG, and the can started to drift upward. "But I think I will have seen everything, when I see an elephant fly..." Ladyhawke sang over the commlink. "Maybe I could lend you my magic feather?" she joked. "Okay, Plan C," I sighed... In the end (and after I'd gotten to Plan G), no one died or was even seriously hurt, but Zingo fled back to Dimension Z where we couldn't follow. Not that it would have been a really good idea to have tried, as we later found out. * * * * [February 2, 1975 - Saginaw, MI] In the temporary solitude of a warehouse rooftop, Amy splinted my left arm. Definitely broken this time, but at least we'd cultivated a reputation around campus for engaging in high-risk sports, so it wouldn't be too hard to explain how a professor got his arm busted. I'd just leave out the part about the robots. "Is it just me, or was Antiochus V not really trying that time?" Amy frowned as she tightened a bandage around the splint. "Would you rather he tore my arm off entirely?" I winced. "No!" she scowled. "I mean, though...what was up with this one? Even his first couple of shots at world domination were better thought out than this one. It's almost like he's, I dunno, BORED with it all. Just going through the motions." I sighed, moving my arm a little at the shoulder to make sure nothing else had been broken by the impact. "Sometimes, I think we all are these days. It's just not...fun anymore." "Would it have been more fun if he did tear your arm off?" she shot back. "No, no...but don't tell me this all isn't feeling more like a job. I know I'm actually looking forward to giving my big classroom lectures now, because it means there's at least that hour where I'm out of touch and can't hear about something that needs Dragonfly." Amy sighed as well. "Maybe I'm not *that* bad off, but yeah. I mean, we're doing good. And I think we're really making progress proving that Dimension Z is real, which could end up saving the whole world if Quixote's right about their intentions. But. But...it's not as fun anymore, no. Even the flying isn't. The novelty's worn off, and I never thought I'd say that. Ha! Flying becoming boring and run of the mill! But it's the few times we get to do *normal* couple things these days that I really look forward to. Shopping for furniture. A quiet evening out at the movies. Hell, yardwork is more appealing than this," she gestured around the rooftop. I chuckled wanly. "As much as it scares me, I have to admit you're right. Weeding the yard looks pretty attractive right now, although I'll have to wait for this to heal," I nodded at my arm. "Shirker. Why, my granddaddy plowed the back forty with both arms broken and a case of rubella!" "I thought both of your granddaddies were shopkeepers." "They were. But one of 'em supplied his own shelves with produce, according to how he told it anyway," Amy smirked, then pulled her cowl back up. "Come on, police should be showing up any minute now, we don't need anyone knowing Dragonfly got a broken arm the same day Bobby Baines busted a wing...what, rollerskating?" "Rock climbing, this time, I think...." * * * * [October 30, 1975 - Detroit, MI] In retrospect, testing the Z-ruptor on Devil's Night could be considered Asking For It. Oh, it worked. It worked great. The Z-tector told me there was a Z-lian in the area, so I sent out the cancellation pulse derived from my analysis of the waves given off by Don Quixote's sword. It seemed simple enough: if the sword forced its target to permanently become that which it was disguised as, some sort of inversion of that effect would turn the disguise off. There were five distinct Fourier transforms that seemed promising once I'd studied the waves, and...well, no need to bore you with more details. I used 'em all, just in case. Thing is, we didn't really expect there to be half a dozen Z-lians in the middle of downtown. Nor did we expect them to be so BIG. "Faster, Don! Two of 'em are catching up!" Ladyhawke shouted over the rushing wind. Quixote's modified muscle car was fast, but so were the giant aliens, and they weren't nearly as concerned about things like traffic or lampposts or pedestrians. She and I could have escaped easily enough, as far as we could tell the undisguised Z-lians couldn't fly. But we needed to run interference for Don and Sancho, and try to keep innocents out of harm's way. Besides, while they were definitely smart enough to know I was behind the Z-ruptor, Don Quixote was their ancestral foe...they were really after him. Me, they'd save for later if I ran. "I am letting them, my friend," Quixote replied over radio. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised that he had the private and scrambled frequency Ladyhawke and I used. We'd been working together on and off for months, after all. "But we're almost to the right spot." "What...oh, I see! The WJBK studio!" Ladyhawke realized. "You want them caught on camera!" "Exactly. I have a trick under my hood that should let us defeat these two, but I want them in position first," Don Quixote replied, grunting as Sancho pulled them tightly around a corner. "Sadly, it will not fool them twice, so we will have to flee in earnest once we have accomplished this task." Moments later, the big green TV2 logo came into view. I could see a camera crew stumbling out onto the street, no doubt alerted to the chase by panicked phone calls by people along our route. "We're live!" I shouted. "And IN the air!" Don Quixote whooped. "Do it, Sancho!" With a roar, the gold and red car leapt off the road, extending stubby wings made of memory plastic for guidance. "I hope you do not mind my borrowing some of your technology, Dragonfly!" Quixote apologized as the car executed a loop that put it right over one of the giants. As the giant paused in stunned surprise, Quixote jumped from the passenger side, driving his sword right between the invader's eyes. Before his target could begin to fall, Sancho buzzed the other, distracting it just long enough for Quixote to trigger an antigravity belt much like the one I'd made for Weapons Master and bound over to the other giant. All was silent for a moment as the two titanic aliens slowly toppled to the street. A collective gasp went up, and I could hear someone shout, "DAMN! He's not crazy after all!" "Ah, sweet vindication," Quixote said over the radio as he jumped back into his car. "Now, if we can just live long enough to savor it. Let us away!" * * * * [October 31, 1975 - Detroit, MI] It felt rotten to be in hiding while the city burned, but there were a lot more Z-lians out there than even Quixote had suspected, and they'd all pretty much given up on disguise. We needed a plan, and we needed allies. We'd run into Weapons Master on the way from the TV station, and I'd managed to find a phone and call Delta Rose, but I couldn't get in touch with anyone else I knew in the superhero community. To judge from the news on the radio, though, Detroit wasn't the only place with Z-lians popping out of the woodwork and going on a rampage. "This place should be safe enough for now," Don Quixote assured us, opening the door of a warehouse. "I own it indirectly through several shell layers, so no one should suspect I'd be here. We can plan here, and wait for Senorita Rose to arrive." "Just the five of us against all of those, though?" Weapons Master raised an eyebrow. "Sorry, Sancho...just the six of us?" Don Quixote's driver and partner didn't seem bothered by the omission. He seemed to prefer being ignored...maybe he still just found the job a little embarrassing even now. "Seven," came a voice from inside the warehouse. "Quien?" Quixote drew his sword and hit the lightswitch by the door. Standing in the middle of the half-empty building was one of the more incongruous things I'd seen that day, and it was already an odd day. She had long black hair and a definite Latin cast to her features. Maybe South American. But her garb was that of some sort of Wagnerian character, better suited to someone with much paler skin, preferably with blond hair and blue eyes to go along with it. In one hand she held a massive spear with a wavy bladed tip, and in the other a shimmering shield with a golden face embossed on it. "You may call me Valkyrie," she answered, a faint hispanic accent to her speech. "And I have been fighting these giants in my own way for some years now, on the other side of the wall between worlds, at the behest of my lord, Odin. While I cannot tell you all I know, what I will tell you is vital to defeating them and keeping them from destroying this world!" * * * * [October 31, 1975 - wilderness, Dimension Z] Dimension Z was a real hole. Literally, in some respects. Our own reality is, in theory, infinite. In practice, there's only a finite amount of stuff filling it up, so anything beyond the farthest reaches doesn't really matter, but the empty space is there if you want it. And the volume filled with stuff is always expanding. Dimension Z takes that idea and turns it inside out. The ground you walk on is the boundary of the universe. "Up" is towards the center, and we were told that at night you could even see across to the other side. Periodically, the world would shrink just a little, compressing the air and making it catch fire at the center, creating a temporary Sun that cast a wan and unfriendly light over all the land. The shrinkage also made the land itself crumple into ever-taller mountain peaks, and the oceans flowed in between them, splitting the world into a vast network of fjords...a landscape that fit the harsh cold of the world. "If it weren't for the fact everything looks like it's in a bowl, I'd feel right at home," Delta Rose sighed as we all flew over a stretch of sea. Valkyrie's rune gate had put is near where we needed to be, but she claimed that the defensive magics of the Z-lians kept her from dropping us right in their midst. "So, you're Norwegian?" Weapons Master asked, drifting alongside me. Gravity was just a little weaker here, so his jump belt let him stay airborne as long as someone towed him. Quixote and Sancho were being pulled along by Ladyhawke and Delta Rose, while Valkyrie was using some sort of magic to fly along with us. Delta Rose's mask crinkled up with a smile. "Something like that," she replied. "Mountains, wind, cold...I wonder if the Z-lians are interested in renting out for vacation homes?" "They're more interested in a little real estate deal in Michigan," Valkyrie replied. I'd finally managed to place her accent as Argentinian. Given the political problems I've heard of happening down there, it wasn't surprising to find someone from there so far from home. She hadn't, however, explained how she'd ended up working for a Norse god, and didn't seem inclined to go into her personal life. "This world shrinks a little bit every day. Soon it will begin to heat up, as the distance from ground to sun gets smaller and smaller. The mountains will get too tall to sustain themselves, and will crumble. The world will break and all in it will die. Before that happens, the inhabitants hope to use what they call a Dimensional Inverter to save themselves. This unnatural mix of science and magic will require a great deal of spiritual energy to power, so I do not believe that can attempt using it more than once...if we can destroy or even disrupt it now, it will save millions in Midgard." "Couldn't we work something out with them?" Ladyhawke asked. "From what you told us, this whole dimension is about the size of a medium state. We could help them invert the dimension somewhere else, where it wouldn't land on top of human cities." Valkyrie shook her head. "These...creatures...come from a lineage older than humanity, and are full of wild hatred for us. They do not merely seek to save themselves, they wish to destroy us. Destroying Detroit and all the land around it would only be the first step. Their ocean would flood the Great Lakes and kill millions more. They would ride it down the St. Lawrence Seaway and conquer the most populous portions of Canada before taking the Eastern Seaboard. And their agents in San Francisco are prepared to use mighty earth magics in conjunction with the shock of the inversion to trigger quakes that would destroy much of the Western Seaboard. As Don Quixote has discovered on his own, they have also sought to assassinate key persons who they thought could organize government and industrial response to their invasion." Daylight dimmed slightly. "The Sun's going out!" Weapons Master's eyes went wide. "Day's end," Valkyrie nodded. "We are almost to the complex where the Dimensional Inverter is kept. Darkness will help cover our entry, and the fact that much of their might is in Midgard preparing the way will also aid us. But these are canny old giants, masters of both magic and science. If we fail, we will not be granted a second chance." After an ominous pause, she added, "Nor will Earth." * * * * [October 31, 1975 - Dimensional Inverter, Dimension Z] The door slammed shut. "I didn't see anyone out in the hall," Sancho grunted. "We probably got a couple minutes." "Have you deciphered the controls?" Valkyrie asked, sketching a rune on the door that was doubtless intended to reinforce it against any Z-lians who might be coming. "I think so," I nodded. "These guys bought some second-hand T!rir systems through a Pranir trader," Delta Rose pointed out. "There's a lot of their own operating stuff loaded on top of it, but between the two of us I think we've got it hashbrowned." "Hashed out," Ladyhawke muttered. "The good news is, the Dimensional Inverter is designed to use the natural universal contraction at 'dawn' to run things. If we can turn it on before dawn, all it'll do is shred the immediate vicinity. Blow itself and this complex up really good." "Then fire it up!" Weapons Master insisted, pulling one of his depleted antigrav spikes out of a fallen Z-lian. "And then there's the bad news," Delta Rose frowned behind her mask. "The magic part of it requires someone here to operate it. Might be a failsafe, might just be a design flaw that they never saw a need to fix." "I could probably find a way around it if I had, oh, an hour or two," I said immodestly, "but even I can't pull it off in the time we have left before enough Z-boys show up to break down the door and take us down. It's times like this I wish Ladyhawke and I still used atomic power packs, I could probably rig a mini-nuke to blow this room up." "No, switching to batteries was the right move," Ladyhawke shook her head. "Antiochus V got way too close to cracking my containment back in late '73." Don Quixote quirked an eyebrow. "I will not ask how you even acquired such things in the first place. But, if one must stay behind to activate the device, it shall be me." "No, boss, I'll do it," Sancho insisted. Quixote held up a hand. "I know where this is about to go. Everyone will volunteer, pointing out why they are the most expendable, or the most likely to succeed if left alone. But that is all missing the heart of the matter." He unstrapped his sword and handed it to Sancho. "You have all been a great help as allies in this battle, but it has been my family's sacred trust for over five hundred years to face these giants. I have known since my father left me this sword that I might die in prosecution of my duties, and have always lived my life prepared for such an ending. Sancho...Joaquim... you know what to do. It will be easy enough to have me declared dead as just another casualty of the brutal invasion. I trust you to decide which of my children to trust with the blade, should my actions today be insufficient to stop the giants for all time." Sancho hung the blade reverently from his own belt and nodded sadly. "Dragonfly, Ladyhawke...you each have the other to live for," Quixote declared. "Go home and help the world rebuild. Delta Rose, Weapons Master, I know you think you are also prepared to die, but I know enough about how this mad world works to say with confidence that you could not make the device function. My faithful Sancho is also, sadly, a normal man, if brave. Bravery enough is not sufficient to the task. And Senorita Valkyrie...you might have as strong a claim as I do in this matter, but I can see in your eyes that you have your own geas that you may not yet lay down." "We'll...make sure the world knows what you did, Don," I promised. "HA! Do that, my friend! And tell all who will listen...tilting at windmills may be a fool's errand, but for some errands only a fool will do!" * * * * [November 12, 1975 - Lansing, MI] There was a knock at the door. "I've got it, honey," I shouted up the stairs as I limped to the foyer. I'd gotten beaten around quite a bit in the aftermath of the Z-invasion. Valkyrie had had no problem erecting her rune gate out of the complex, and we'd escaped just ahead of Don Quixote bringing the whole place down around himself. But that dropped us back into a city swarming with dozens of angry giants who knew they'd lost and meant to take out their frustrations on humanity before retreating. I couldn't remember getting hit in the leg hard enough to still hurt weeks later, but it had been a hectic day. "Coming," I said as the knock was repeated. I opened the door. "May I come in?" Bennett Rush asked. "Of course," I nodded, pulling the door wide and motioning for him to enter. The storm door banged hollowly behind him, and I made sure it has latched before closing the main door. It was windy out, and I didn't want the outer door banging around. "Things finally settling down?" I asked as Bennett walked into the living room and slumped down on the couch. "Honey, Ben's here!" "Pretty much," Agent Rush nodded. "No more Z-lians around as far as anyone can tell. It looks like Union Label will survive, but he's told his DSHA contact that he and Flower Power are retiring for good now. Ford's signed some emergency orders that are helping with the rebuilding, but Detroit's gonna have a hard winter ahead of it, a lot of people are being temporarily relocated to Akron and Flint. I hear at least a hundred thousand are just giving up on the rust belt entirely and spreading out across the country." "Sounds like things are going as well as can be expected," Amy said as she came into the room. She still had a bandage on her forehead from where a bit of debris creased her brow, but she'd otherwise gotten out of it pretty well. Weapons Master was still in the hospital...at least Rush had managed to keep them from unmasking him. "So why the glum look?" "Personal crash and burn. It hasn't made the news, what with bigger stuff going on, but it'll come up eventually. Especially since the Senator in question's up for re-election next year," Rush frowned. "Oh, THAT doesn't sound good. You piss in someone's Wheaties?" Amy asked. "So to speak. I've...been involved with a married woman. Your basic Washington trophy wife." "Oh, hell," I hissed. "And you got caught?" "Not exactly," Rush made a sour expression. "Trish nearly got killed during the invasion, got missed by a bit of flying building by a few yards. She got all scared about the state of her soul and confessed everything to the Senator. Now he wants my balls on a spit, but since I'm one of the heroes of Halloween thanks to my 'selfless duty' against the Z-lians, he can't have 'em. So he's settled for the old Roman trick, 'Let him be promoted and thereby removed.' I'm now in charge of our supertech depot in Nevada, Warehouse 51. On paper it's a promotion, but it gets me out of the field, out of Washington, and out of the Senator's sight. It also means you two are getting a new liaison, and don't bet on the Senator not trying to get back at me more by appointing someone unfriendly. Make your life hard just to get a little petty shot in at me. You might want to consider retiring... there's a lot of that going around anyway. Not so many supervillains around anymore, and several of 'em got killed off by the Z-lians as possible rivals. A couple died trying to save their cities, in fact. Maybe they weren't such bad guys after all, maybe they just wanted to keep the turf to themselves. I think Graybar was just being ornery...you really don't want to see what they did to him." "I'll think about it, Ben," I nodded. "I'm out of action until my leg heals up anyway, and Amy's still getting dizzy from her head wound, so she's not good to fly. Sorry about your promotion, though. I know how it feels, to be honest. Not the getting caught cheating thing," I hastily clarified, looking at Amy, "but sometimes the worst thing that can happen to someone in my sort of day job is to get promoted to administration. A lot of my older colleagues miss doing the actual work they trained for, they spend all their time managing grants and herding grad students. The fact that your promotion is clearly meant to be punishment only makes it worse." "Maybe it's time we settled down and thought about having a family," Amy sighed. Joaquim Panza, AKA "Sancho", had introduced us to Don Quixote's wife and kids the other day. The story for now was that we'd been too late to save him from a Z-lian...they'd get told the truth eventually. I was pretty sure Mrs. Quixano knew already, but the kids were too young yet. In any case, meeting the kids had gotten Amy thinking about our own legacy. "You might want to do that. From what I hear, it's too late for Union Label and Flower Power to do that now, given the nature of his injuries," Bennett frowned. "Anyway, fair warning...you probably won't see me again for a long time, unless you have business out in Nevada. Senators have long terms and longer memories, I don't think I'll be back out in the field again." * * * * [January 1, 1976 - Lansing MI] It was a new year, full of new hope. The Bicentennial. Two hundred years of America, and everyone was looking forward to finishing up the rebuilding and moving forward into a glorious third century. Of course, you know how disappointingly that turned out. We didn't go back to the Moon. There were a few more flags around than usual, but the only big thing to happen on July 4th was...well, where you came in on my little story. Antiochus V and his robot army marching on the Mall in Washington today. But, on a personal level, the hopes of the year got dashed against the rocks pretty much right away. "Bobby, phone for you. It's the doctor," Amy said in a worried tone. My leg hadn't gotten any better, so I'd seen a doctor. Then another. Then a specialist. Then...most ominously...an oncologist. A cancer doctor. And if he was calling on New Year's Day...? The conversation was short, to the point, and hit me harder than Powerhouse's diamond fists. I hung up, feeling my stomach clench. "Bad news," Amy said flatly. I nodded. "Bone cancer in my leg. He thinks he can save my life, but he has to operate immediately." I paused, not wanting to say the next word, but Amy deserved to know. "Amputate." ============================================================================ Next Issue: Dragonfly's story comes to an end, as he comes in for a "Hard Landing"! ============================================================================ Author's Notes: And here we see the other half of my answer to the question, "Why isn't a world with superhumans completely unrecognizable after a generation?" After all, with all the super-scientists running around in the 60s and 70s, you'd expect that everyone would have jetpacks and personal robots by the 90s (well, everyone with enough cash). The Magene is the first half of my answer, but it doesn't completely deal with the issue. After all, just because Joe Normal can't use Dragonfly's flight pack doesn't mean he can't benefit in some indirect way. In Watchmen, for instance, the country has moved to an electric car economy in part because Doctor Manhattan was able to create enough lithium to make high density batteries economical. So, maybe Quality Motors can't sell a car that uses Widget X due to its supertech nature, but what if Widget X isn't something they sell, it's something they use to make manufacturing cheaper and faster? Then they only need a couple of people capable of making Widget X work, and everyone benefits. And what if Beacon had made more of his work on lasers public? The ASH Universe might have skipped 8-tracks entirely and gone to CDs in the 1970s. The other half of the answer is events like the invasion from Dimension Z. Sure, there's lots of indirect benefits of having superhumans around, but there's also lots of direct penalties. A few details may be shuffled about, but for the most part things develop at about the same average rate in the ASH Universe as in real history, at least up until the mid 1990s. For every normal-usable advance there's also an invasion or half-successful doomsday device to deal with. People who are directly involved in construction or manufacturing would notice more of the differences in worlds, but the average person living in a city without heavy superhuman activity would see things pretty much the same as in the real world. Maybe their TV was built using highly advanced tech, but it costs the same because of the rebuilding cost hidden in everything. Maybe they get slightly better gas mileage, but the fact that Devastator blew up that refinery means their total fuel budget is going to be the same. And so forth. On the plus side, this also meant that when the big disaster hit in 1998, the world was already somewhat accustomed to the cycle of destruction and recovery. Losing 2/3 of the world's population in one stroke would pretty much end civilization for centuries if not permanently in the real world, but in the ASH universe it was just a bigger version of what they were already geared up to deal with. A critical blow, but not a fatal one. Thanks to Wikipedia for little things like Detroit TV stations in the 1970s and the bit about Bingo at the Potter Park Zoo (I've been to the zoo, but if Bingo was still alive in 2001, I don't remember seeing him). I came up with the bit for how Dimension Z's Sun worked as I was writing the scene in which I mention it...I'd initially planned to have "their Sun will also be tossed into low Earth orbit" as part of the looming disaster, but I liked the compression-ignition idea better once I had it. :) The contracting universe also helped tie several other things together, and I ran with it. Look for the upcoming CSS Sourcebook (to be posted after CSS #4) for a bit more about the secrets behind Dimension Z. ============================================================================ For all the back issues, plus additional background information, art, and more, go to http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/ASH ! To discuss this issue or any others, either just hit "followup" to this post, or check out our Yahoo discussion group, which can be found at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ash_stories/ ! ============================================================================