//|| //^^\\ || || .|. COHERENT COMICS UNINCORPORATED PRESENTS // || \\ || || --X--------------------------------------------- //======================= '|` ACADEMY OF SUPER-HEROES SPECIAL // || \\ || || "Ash Wednesday" // || \\__// || || Copyright 2003 by Dave Van Domelen ___________________________________________________________________________ [cover shows a man of indeterminate age walking down a dismal, gray street in the early morning as wind blows a few dead leaves around. The rising sun throws half of his body into deep shadow. A cross from off-panel casts its own shadow at his feet.] =========================================================================== [March 5, 2003 - Manhattan, Kansas Sector] Al O'Ryan walked west on Anderson Avenue in the chilly pre-dawn wind, sparing a glance north towards the "non-denominational" campus chapel. He paused, once again considering going in there for Ash Wednesday services, but he discarded the idea firmly. Maybe it was only a short walk from the hotel he'd been put up in, but he'd been tipped off about it the night before. There were no neutral benches in that church, you didn't step foot inside unless you were willing to deal with the sometimes vicious inter- denominational rivalries on campus. Not to mention, the atheists watched it pretty carefully as well, and Al wasn't ready to join THAT battle either. Not when he hadn't even been assigned a job at the university yet. So he kept walking. He'd put in thirty mile days on foot back during his special forces days, and this late winter morning was no colder than a desert night in Iraq during Operation Stormfront. For that matter, he'd had to do a lot of walking in recent years. Wandering, really, even when he'd had a specific destination. Walking was good for the soul, though. Maybe it'd help him get a suitably humble attitude before going in for services, assuming he could find a church that was still in operation. It was odd, considering how insulated Kansas had been from the turmoil of the past few years. None of the raiding parties from Mexico had made it this far north before the army got its act together and annexed that country. Relatively little impact from the whole Godmarket thing had touched this little university town. Then again, there WAS Wichita. Nuked during the whole Soviet hardliner coup over a decade ago, it had started a slow decline for much of the state. Al couldn't really blame them. Even as a trained biophysicist who knew that the radiation from that blast had no more effect here in Manhattan than radon from the groundwater, he still wasn't too comfortable living so close to something that had once glowed in the dark. He'd heard of some efforts underway to clean it up, but it was perhaps a case of too little, too late. The slide had started, it'd take more than "nothing horrible has happened lately" to reverse it. He passed a few vacant lots in a row as he climbed a shallow hill. A few smudges here and there testified to the fact the houses once on these lots had been burned down, then quietly cleaned up and left fallow. Probably burning the infidel. Al shuddered, and not from the wind. He'd seen a modern day witch burning once, a couple years ago in Texas. It was NOT pretty. Even joking about being a pagan these days could get you killed...those old gods had left the world in ruins, and no one left really had any love left for them or anyone suicidal enough to worship them. Of course, that brought back memories of Maria, and Al hunched his shoulders against a cold that came from within as he crested the hill and walked past a school that had seen better days. He'd met her at Baylor, during a cross-disciplinary course offered by the Biology department. She was AgSci, he was BioPhys, they ended up married less than a year after meeting. He ended up following her to Texas A&M for grad studies, although they spent a year apart thanks to the fact it took him longer to finish his undergrad work. During that year she'd joined the cult of Demeter, which had established itself in the Ag department at TAMU. His Catholic parents freaked out, of course...usually it was brother Thom who gave them screaming conniptions, so they weren't really ready for this. And to be honest, Al admitted to himself as he wound his way down the hilly road, he was still Christian enough to be uncomfortable with it. But he'd claimed to be enlightened enough that a mixed marriage could work, and Thom distracted their parents again soon enough. Then it all dropped in the pot and he never saw Maria again. She was just one of the billions who vanished into thin air on July 6, 1998. He'd gone a little nuts after that. Tore up his sheepskin and threw it into a bonfire, he'd never wanted anything to do with the life sciences again. He just joined the wandering masses of the uncertain, the scared, the angry, ending up herded into useful menial work by one of the FEMA task forces. A few years helping keep things running without having to think too much had helped a lot. He'd reverted to army training, just followed orders and kept his nose clean. Of course, it couldn't last. Things had finally gotten organized in the past year, with FEMA setting up a new continental government and fixing the last of the holes in their data nets. Someone had discovered he was good for more than hammering nails and sweeping streets, and he'd been flown up to Fort Riley, issued a car and told to report to Kansas Sector University in Manhattan for job placement. He stopped on a small bridge and looked down into the gully below, hidden in shadows. It was so weed-choked he couldn't tell if there was a creek down there or not. There were more abandoned houses and empty lots out this way, maybe he should have gone east instead. Once past the bars, he'd have entered the older part of town, where a little more life still clung to the skeleton of Manhattan. Job placement. Wasn't even a real job interview...he'd been assigned to work here, they just needed to see where he'd fit in best, with his rusty skills and lack of post-doctoral experience. A new work ethic was sweeping the nation, probably helped by propaganda both subtle and blatant: everyone works, everyone contributes. They had a nation to rebuild, and slacking off would hurt everyone. Al agreed with the sentiment, and grudgingly accepted that he'd have to put that long-gone sheepskin to use. He hoped he could convince them to let him do "hard" physics though, he didn't really want to work with the Bio department. Five years hadn't been nearly enough to seal that gash in his heart. A flickering lighted sign announced he was now in Westloop Shopping Center. A 24-hour grocery was about the only business that seemed to still be IN business, although the pizza delivery place and the liquor store would probably be open once the day really started. Yeah, this was gonna be a vibrant and happening place to live. Manhappening, yay. He'd have to call Thom later and see how life in Dallas was treating him...it hadn't been much better than Manhattan when Al had last seen it, just bigger. But Thom was bound to be making things interesting. Then he saw the cross up on the hill to the north. It looked a little odd, but it was lit up raggedly with incandescent bulbs, so someone must have been looking after it. As Al got closer, he chuckled. The reason it looked odd was that it wasn't really a cross, not originally. Once it had been a cactus for a taco place, but someone had sawed off bits until it looked mostly like a cross. A church built from a fast food place would probably welcome a weary traveler, Al decided, and set out up the hill. Maybe he could get breakfast after the services? And heck, it might even be a Catholic church.... ============================================================================= Author's Notes: I decided that this year I'd finally do something special for Ash Wednesday, not just try to make sure a story was posted. After a little poking at the old noggin, I decided that a story set on Ash Wednesday 2003 might be interesting. It would let me fill in a few more details of that time (although I still left a lot deliberately open), and I could even set it in Manhattan, have the viewpoint character walk through town. Manhattan isn't as dour in real life as portrayed here, of course. After all, Wichita hasn't been nuked in the real world, and we still have six billion people on the planet, not two billion. Initially, I was going to use a new character for this, but when I looked through ASH #11 to see what I'd established about 2003, I realized I'd left Thom O'Ryan's brother Al dangling for six years. Why not use him? Well, I'd wanted a biologist for the focus character, and I'd established that Al went into physics...so I fudged it and made him a biophysicist. And as he rambles through town, I had him ramble through memories. Cloudy cold mornings tend to inspire that sort of thinking, and it all ended up tying together nicely as a sort of metaphor or allegory: wandering through a place that has been hurt, but not killed, seeking meaning and finding it in sometimes off-kilter places. Al's life and his morning (mourning?) stroll come together. A note about the weather. I wrote this on Monday, using the prevailing conditions at that time. Wednesday morning saw Kansas covered in a sheet of ice, with "you could die out there" temperatures. But I figure enough happened differently in the ASH Universe that the weather patterns wouldn't be exactly the same, so I didn't rewrite the story to fit the weather. }-> Finally, a reminder about some new resources for ASH. 1) The new Yahoo discussion group for ASH, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ash_stories . Join today, and discuss! }-> 2) http://wilsego.com/racc/ now presents a graphical interface for reading stories from rec.arts.comics.creative, as well as a ratings system that lets you give from zero to four stars to a story. This page is still in flux as Wil decides what it will have in the final analysis, so check it out and see if you have any suggestions. And yes, this is the same Wil who is in the ASH Fan Art Gallery.