[The cover shows a long-haired glowing blonde man manacled to a table with a shadowy labcoated figure in the background. The cover copy proclaims, "That's No Lady! So Who's The Doctor?"] ____________________________________________________________________________ .|, COHERENT An ASHistory Series --+------------------------------------------------------------------------- '|` SUPER STORIES #22 - In Vivo, Veritas Featuring Balder copyright 2010 by Dave Van Domelen ____________________________________________________________________________ [October 20, 1994 - San Francisco, California] "Balder?" "You bet I did! -KAFF KAFF- Sorry, gallows humor. What's the verdict, doc?" the fair-haired superhero asked. "Space plague? Something whipped up by a mad scientist? It's gotta be nasty for me to feel this crappy...even before I got my powers, I never got this sick." "While I can't rule out something magical being involved, Mr. Balder, it appears you have a quite prosaic infection. Unfortunately, that infection is the Human Immumodeficiency Virus." Balder's jaw dropped. "Wait. I have AIDS?" The doctor shook his head. "AIDS is what happens once HIV has gotten established and started attacking your immune system. It can take years to develop. No, your immune system seems to be destroying the HIV quite handily, accounting for the flu-like symptoms you're experiencing. So that's the good news...odds are your superhuman immune system will win this battle, and you won't develop AIDS." "The bad news is that I have HIV and feel like my namesake. Who, you know, is dead," Balder croaked. Actually, he'd started to suspect lately that tales of the god's death were greatly exaggerated, and it was more than the luck of the genetic draw that he'd manifested the powers he had, but that mystery wasn't exactly a priority at the moment. "And you're going to need to contact any sexual partners you've had recently," the doctor added. "At least one of them is probably a carrier, and depending on how long the HIV lived in your system before your body noticed and attacked it, you may well have passed it on." "I always use protection, though," Balder protested. "Oh, not worried about catching anything, I just don't want to be having any kids yet." "What about partners who can't get pregnant?" Balder blinked. "Hey, I may look androgynous, but that doesn't mean I swing both ways. Okay, there was that one time in college, but that was years ago, and...never mind. That one time I did use protection just in case, so not an issue." "And there's no change you were less careful due to intoxication any time in the past few months?" Balder shook his head. "Downside of superhuman metabolism. I can get buzzed, but not smashed. And I don't bother with harder drugs, not enough extra effect to be worth the trouble, so it wasn't shared needles or anything like that. Oh, wait," dawning comprehension flickered in his eyes. Literally, given his power over light. "Yes. If you didn't get infected by any of the normal vectors, it might have been an attack. After all, you do have something of a reputation for sleeping around, if you were to die of AIDS a few years down the line, would anyone be all that surprised? Other than those who know you well enough to know you always use protection, that is." "And the person behind this might not have known I'm more careful than my rep suggests," Balder nodded, then collapsed into a coughing fit. "I recommend you get plenty of bed rest and fluids, Mr. Balder." The doctor was probably cleared to know his real name, but either hadn't availed himself of the opportunity or didn't choose to use the name. "Most of the drugs I could prescribe would probably get negated by your own body before they could do their job, so stick with the pallatives like cough drops or mom's chicken soup. And, obviously," the doctor frowned, "try to avoid anything strenuous like superheroing. If you feel up to it, work the phones to try to doublecheck any of your sexual partners, just in case one of them sabotaged a condom because they wanted a super-baby or the like. And if you're still on good terms with your old hero team, you might want to ask them for protection. If someone did deliberately infect you, they might decide to change their mind about letting you die slowly...." * * * * [October 21, 1994 - San Francisco, California] "Yeah -KAFF- sorry about this, Erika," Balder wheezed into his phone. "No, don't -KAFF KAFF- worry too much about me, I feel like hell but the doc says I should be okay in a few days," he offered up the same white lie he'd been telling other women all afternoon. Truth was, it might be more than a few days, and it might not be okay, but no need to worry them about HIM. They had enough to worry about for themselves now. "Just be sure you get yourself tested, just in case. Okay? -KAFF- Bye," he hit the end call button and slumped back in bed. Then the two men in matte black power armor burst in through the window and Balder's world exploded in bright pain very briefly before going completely dark. * * * * [Later that day, unknown location] As consciousness slowly returned, Balder decided that the one time he'd been punched by Herr Stark hadn't felt this bad. Of course, he hadn't been fighting off HIV when the teutonic strongman gut-punched him. Whoever the two armored goons were, they weren't as strong as Stark, but they were strong enough to do the job. "Ow!" Balder opened his eyes as something jabbed into his arm, reflexively trying to swat at it and finding he couldn't move either arm. "Whaddafu-KAFF- Gah!" "Finally!" sighed a nearby figure, who had moved just outside the range of where Balder could see. His head wasn't strapped down, but he was flat on an inclined table of some sort, and the voice came from behind. "Do you know how hard it is to make IV needles out of mistletoe? And then to have them all shatter anyway? I'm glad I had a backup collapsinum needle." Balder tried to laugh, but it came out as a coughing fit that made him involuntarily strain against his metal bonds. Once his vision cleared, he could see through his tears the two armored goons, but still no sign of the speaker. "I'm not really the god, you -KAFF- know. The only vulnerability I have to -KAFF KAFF- mistletoe, ow my throat...is if a pretty lady's standing under some." "Live and learn, I suppose. At least the main part of my plan seems to be working well enough. And once I isolate the antibodies your system is making to fight the HIV infection I'll be able to make a mint marketing a cure to certain wealthy-but-careless individuals. And another mint creating a resistant strain to sell to other wealthy-but-ruthless individuals." "And you're telling me this be...because," Balder's voice started to give out, so he paused and swallowed a few times. "Because you don't plan to let me live?" "Well, how do you expect me to create a super-HIV strain? I'll just keep mystically altering the virus until it kills you, then I'll know it's nasty enough." "Good to know I'll be dying -KAFF- to help expand the frontiers of knowledge," Balder croaked as sarcastically as he could. "Who are you, anyway?" "My trade name is Bacteriomage," the voice behind him replied. "The gentlemen who brought you to me are members of the Dark Brigade, on retainer from the new Darkshield. I felt that anyone equipped to deal with Brightsword's strength and laser torch would be able to handle your powers as well, especially if I waited for the virus to weaken you." "Full electromagnetic shielding and zero albedo," one of the armored goons tapped the chestplate of his armor. "And lens filters, so don't bother trying to blind us." "I doubt he can do more than throw up on us right now," the other goon chuckled. "And our kinetic dampers should be able to handle THAT." "Wait...BACTERIOmage? HIV is a virus, not a bacteria," Balder rasped. The figure behind him sighed. "BacteriUM. And I deal with all pathogens, okay? It's just that if you put 'virus' in your name these days, everyone assumes you're a computer geek. Which I am, but that's not the POINT. I tried 'Pathogenie' but no one took me seriously." "I don't take you se..." then Balder was seized with a massive coughing fit, his entire body thrown into spasms. PTANG! "Watch out, he's broken one of the restraints!" Bacteriomage shouted, although Balder could barely hear him over his own coughing. KRING! Balder's back felt like it was going to burst into flame, but he had both hands free, and quickly got his legs out of the restraints as well. The Dark Brigadiers seemed taken aback by the coughing fit, despite what had to be sealed systems they still had an instinctive aversion to getting coughed on by a sick person. Especially when that person had HIV. The IV had come loose on its own, and blood ran down Balder's arm for a moment before the hole sealed itself. He could tell he was healing more slowly than normal, though. Well, normal for him. He flicked the blood at the armored goons as they started towards him, and one flinched back again. "Let's see how -KAFF- good your armor is!" Balder fired a beam of golden light from his fingertips at the mercenary who was still advancing, but it was swallowed up like sand poured into a river. "Pretty damned good," his opponent sneered, gesturing and sending a wave of magnetic force into Balder's body. The water in his body tried to get away from the field, and the effect was like being hit by a baseball bat wrapped in a blanket...dull, more pushing than hitting, but still something that would've been hard to ignore even if he'd been in tip-top condition. Somehow he doubted the physical side of the armor would give out from punches before the two of them could batter him senseless. And his main attack power was useless against them...their electromagnetic shielding was too good. "But your light is no mere scientific effect," a voice whispered from all around. "What?" Balder looked about, wondering if Bacteriomage had returned to taunt him. "I said, pretty damned good," the bolder of the armored mercs repeated, and his partner had overcome his own squeamishness by now. The two were moving to bracket him, not quite a crossfire but far enough apart he couldn't try to physically attack both at once. "It is the pure light of your own soul," the new voice continued. "The body may weaken, but the soul does not. Believe in yourself, and their toys will have no effect on your light." "Sorry, guys, I think I'm starting to hallucin-KAFF-ate," Balder gasped, slowly backing up. "I wouldn't want you to think I'm ignoring you." "I am no fever dream," the voice replied, still quiet and yet drowning out whatever it was the armored figures were saying in response. "Believe in your light, and prevail." Balder's vision was starting to swim. Maybe the voice wasn't a fevered imagining, but reality itself was starting to go wobbly. Still, what did he have to lose? All superpowers were supposedly magic on some level, maybe his were more magic than he'd thought? "Feel the light of my soul!" he gasped, shining forth the brightest white light he'd ever emanated, from his hands, his eyes, his heart. "I can't see! Something's wrong with the helmet!" one of the Darkshield agents shouted. The other was simply screaming incoherently. A moment later, the two suits of armor crashed to the ground as their operators lost consciousness. Balder joined them an instant later. * * * * [October 22, 1994 - San Francisco, California] "I told you to avoid superheroics," the doctor scowled. Not really the first thing he wanted to see and hear on awakening, but there you had it. "They started it," Balder whispered. His cough was gone and he felt a lot better, but he couldn't make his voice work above a whisper. "Who brought me back?" "New local hero, Brightsword. She'd been tracking down Darkshield's men, but when she got to the warehouse all she found was you and the two armored mercenaries lying unconscious. Then some sort of recall activated, and the armors flew off on their own...she decided to help you instead of chasing them." "Bacteriomage mentioned Brightsword, but I thought he meant the old Second Age guy. Got himself a female replacement? Maybe I should thank her personally," Balder mused. "AFTER I'm sure your system has cleaned out every last bit of that HIV. And this time I'm not sending you home, you're staying here with DSHA guards outside the door. They have orders to stop you from leaving, not just to keep others out." "Party pooper," Balder sighed, then fell asleep. ============================================================================ Author's Notes: Written for High Concept Challenge #12, "Under the Weather". I'd originally planned to set this story in 1990 or 1991, but once I decided I wanted to have the Dark Brigade working as muscle I had to push it forward a bit since I previously established that the new Brightsword and Darkshield became active around 1994. The title is a pun, naturally. It mixes "in vivo" (i.e. growing a disease culture in a living organism, as opposed to "in vitro" where it's grown in a glass container) and "in vino, veritas" (in wine, truth). Balder was one of the "blink and you miss him" player characters in the original ASH campaign, I think the player used him once or twice before making up a different character. (The player also played Hellbound, which is what Johnny Angel turned into after being trapped in a hellscape for fifty years.) Balder's other ASH Universe appearance was in WarStar #4, as part of the "God Squad" version of ASH. By 1998, he had fully embraced his nature as Balder's avatar, gaining significant power by tapping into the old myths but also picking up a rather inconvenient vulnerability to mistletoe that he didn't originally have. Bacteriomage has been mentioned several times in ASH and CSV, and he created the Ebola variant that was used as the core of the Anchor Plague. After I started writing this story, I read an article that revealed the discovery of three new human antibodies that fight HIV (including VRC01), and that might be the key to a cure. The antibodies are rare, and almost no one seems to manufacture enough to make a difference in the long run, but a paranormal would certainly have a better shot at it. So my handwave wasn't quite so handwavy after all. :) In Hero System terms, in this story Balder spent some saved up XP to buy a new slot in his multipower, either a Mental Blast or NND (Mystic-based defenses). So the high ED and hardened Flash Defense on the Dark Brigadiers didn't help them against it. And they're just minions, their STUN scores weren't that great. Later Science Note: This came up in discussion of the story, so I figured I'd add it on. Water is a diamagnetic material, which means it's repelled by magnetic fields. Strictly speaking, it tries to exclude the field, but thanks to Newton's Third Law and so forth, the end result is that a magnet will push water away. It's a VERY weak effect, though, so you need an extraordinarily powerful magnet to get a measureable effect. It's been used to levitate small animals (frogs, spiders) and simulate microgravity conditions, but the power demands make it impractical for levitating people. Even levitating a frog is pretty expensive, but it's a lot cheaper than sending the frog into orbit. "Attracting the iron in blood" is the usual comicbook handwave for magnetism affecting people, but iron bound into hemoglobin is not ferromagnetic. It may even be diamagnetic, but in any case there's not enough of it to make much of a difference either way. But you can always "attract" a person by creating a strong field opposite the direction you want them to go, and they'll be repelled in an attractive direction. Or something along those lines. If you can create 100 Tesla fields of arbitrary gradient, you can hurl people around like toys too. (Of course, if the field is anchored on you, then you get pushed around as well, as Cosmic Boy found out in Adventure Comics #517!) ============================================================================ For all the back issues, plus additional background information, art, and more, go to http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/ASH ! 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