Big Superhero Action (7 page)

Nell: “That’s where this world led us.”

Her Blue Majesty: “You two went completely off.”

Nell: “That’s what we thought at first, but we found ourselves compelled to take it further.”

Neal: “It was unavoidable.”

Nell: “The curve was rising to a new peak. We had to follow.”

Neal: “We had to.”

Her Blue Majesty: “Killing people?”

Neal: “Here’s the thing. The drug you give us…it…it pumps up the sex drive, makes you need more and more until it’s never enough. It’s like a drug habit. Just having godlike ritual sex wasn’t enough anymore. As our power grew, we needed more.”

Nell: “We’re gods here.”

Neal: “Power corrupts.”

Her Blue Majesty: “Your cast went along with this insanity?”

Neal: “Everyone was into it.”

“Do you,” she began, “realize what you’ve done?”

Nell: “I’ll admit, we may have gone too far.”

Neal: “Yeah … “

Nell: “Mistakes were made.”

Neal: “Maybe we can keep this among us…”

Her Blue Majesty: “This world is shot from every angle by six cameras. Hours of footage record what goes on during here. That’s it. You’re dropped. It’s over.” She picked up a cell phone. “I’m reporting this insanity to the authorities. Good luck.”

Neal said, “Listen. You don’t want to do that, Blue Majesty.”

Nell: “No.”

Neal: “You really don’t.”

Her Blue Majesty: “One fucking reason.”

Neal: “You’d be destroying your edgiest world.”

“How so?”

“I don’t know,” Neal replied. “But we are breaking new ground here.”

Nell: “And … and … this is something special. We may have actually redefined sex.”

Her Blue Majesty began to nod a nod that turned into a raised chin with a thoughtful expression. Then she looked back down, pitched her voice down to a confidential murmur.

“Maybe you’re not dropped,” Her Blue Majesty said.

Neal and Nell said nothing, watching her.

“You are a power couple after all,” she said. “You need more room to play in.”

Neal: “Absolutely.”

“We will continue the world. Along with a fresh supple of sacrifices.”

“Thank you very much Your Blue Majesty.”

Her Blue Majesty said, “Would you like the OSD to handle this?”

The Newports nodded.

Her Blue Majesty said, “Say nothing.”

The Newports nodded.

Her Blue Majesty said, “Do nothing.”

The Newports nodded.

“Nothing.”

The Newports nodded.

“The OSD will handle everything.”

The Newports nodded.

“It is recommended you leave New York for a short time,” Her Blue Majesty said. “The recommended city is Brutalia. You will need a residence there. The OSD will contact you to discuss that and to discuss the future of Brutalia.”

T
he
60 Minutes
intro painted him with broad strokes, showed a clip from the
SNL
sketch with Andrew Thorne played by Alec Baldwin.

The stone-faced
60 Minutes
guy held up the photo of Mayor of Brutalia Andrew Thorne in mask and cape, a Bible in either hand. “This has become your defining image. Any comments?”

Andrew Thorne was prepared for the
gotcha moment
. The tight face shot showed him flash a confident smile. He answered, “It’s a good shot. I think it’s overused but I understand how mass media works. One picture is easier than a thousand words.”

“You have said that Brutalia is a city created by God.”

“Do you know what ‘God’ means?
Getting Onto Destiny
. This is a city created by God. God’s hand is in the functioning of this city.”

“How so?”

“The success of this city is due to God’s will. We operate this city with God-consciousness.”

Past that point Thorne set up a verbal checkpoint. It was to not-say too much about the functioning of the city.

Privately Thorne spent one hour each night typing his memoirs. It began with the existence of his administration. The exact point when he had become mayor. It was the day God appointed him.

Before that…in the year 1999 two rented tour buses left the church in Amarillo, Texas. He was the pastor and the driver, behind him 23 pilgrims going to see the Coming of the Lord for the new millennium. The first bus had the pilgrims, the second carried the dead, from ages 15 to 97, eleven loved ones to be resurrected in God’s city. Back then you could drive to Brutalia by freeway without Army checkpoints. Busloads of pilgrims headed there. There were pilgrims from churches, there were the handicapped and the sick and the dying. You saw it and drove toward it, a skyline that lined the horizon with skyscrapers without end. The sight filled your bones with terror and thrill as you rode toward God’s judgment made more vivid from the distance of a freeway, a vision beyond the steel girders of a bridge. It affected the people around you on the bus. A head rocked then the hair turned white. Someone started speaking in tongues. More heads turned white. Grown men rocked in the aisles crying.

“The federal government is seeking to shut down all travel to and from Brutalia. It classifies the city as unsafe and a risk to public health and safety.”

“That is only a fear-based reaction to the unknown. We are in a dialogue with the government to avoid such measures and keep transit and air travel open. We work to create the understanding that there is nothing to fear from Brutalia.”

“Are you saying the coldwave power plants pose no danger to the public?”

“The NIH has confirmed that.”

“The State Department sees Brutalia as a rogue entity run by the OSD.”

“Completely false. The OSD is contained. Legal authority rules.”

“How do you account for the paranormal activity occurring here?”

“These are various forms of direct experience with God occurring. You see it in the rise of enhanced human abilities and medical and scientific innovation.”

“Yet these effects only exist inside city limits. The Brutalia Limit. Why is that?”

“That is one of the mysteries of this city. I would venture it is not a ‘limit’ as much as it is a defining perimeter. It exists to make clear this city is the source of these effects. The people in this city are the language God uses. This city has been chosen as God’s medium of direct communication to mankind.”

“Why Brutalia?”

“To be honest, it is a mystery. Why this city? It was put here to serve a purpose.”

The city was vast. It spoke to you with the voice of God. It told you it had always been there. If as some said the city had appeared from out of nowhere it was a story as Biblical as the parting of the Red Sea.

The city was vast yet it had no money, collected little revenue, the reason for his high tax measures. The population was undersized and shrinking for a city twice the size of New York. If you worked for the city you kept things from the public, like how somehow the water and power and gas seemingly ran themselves by unseen computer systems. You left out the men in blue suits who went around the city collecting people. They were not policemen. They were more like career counseling tour guides. Over time people appeared in the vast empty offices. They showed up like campers putting up tents.

Thorne had been holding a morning prayer service at the foot of a downtown statue when the men in navy blue suits came for him. They surrounded him like a river of suits, flowed him toward the city hall building.

That was how he had become mayor.

It was too hallucinogenic an account to share publicly. He typed it into his private memoirs. It was too hallucinogenic for even him to believe. It was dreamlike, in the shape of parables. It was a sacred mania. Whatever it was, he had touched the Hand of God.

“The city of Brutalia has a massive public relations problem.”

“God and the city will prevail.”

Brutalia had an imaginary industrial core. Factories stacked smoke like a 1940s industrial film. There were more jobs than people. Men in navy blue suits and their computers set up the city government. They installed people into offices. Then you didn’t see them again. The operations and their budgets drew themselves up and you followed them. The following year you could imitate the budgets and draw them up. Your brain filled with the capacity for details. God told you it had always been that way. You invested your faith in whatever God told you and it was so. Over time the people came to assert order. Now there was a city council and elections and mayoral races. Thorne always won and in Brutalia there were no term limits.

“Does God speak to you directly?”

“I’m not an evangelist. I don’t claim to speak to God like we’re speaking here. This is communication beyond the use of symbols. God makes Himself known. It is for us to understand Him. That said, this about God bringing us to God consciousness through direct experience. You don’t need me to tell you anything, you can see it for yourself.”

“Some say the US government is somehow behind the paranormal activity in Brutalia. Some say the origins are extraterrestrial. What do you say to them?”

“I say prove it. I say this city is where the guesswork ends.”

“How do you see your future in politics?”

This is where Thorne’s tight face shot delivered the segment closer, the cut just before the ticking watch: “This is larger than politics and today is the future.”

There was no telling
60 Minutes
that God was directing Thorne to run the country. God had made him mayor of Brutalia to rise to the Presidency. With little effort he had gotten this far. All he had to do was follow the path made for him.

O
pening music: trip-hop remix of the ‘50s TV Superman theme.

Dig it, my geeks. Welcome to
The Cape Report podcast. I am your host, Clark Kant. Sponsored by the Fleshball and Shroomtropic Labs. Show them some love, my geeks and buy their really good stuff. Your body will thank you.

Next week I’m off to an unnamed east coast comics convention. In the real world live artifacts from Brutalia are hot, the geeks eat up anything to do with real superheroes, so I expect to make out large. Thank you Blue Boss. Thirty seconds of you tooling through Deltville last week: three digits.

Plans continue to launch a new comics convention in Brutalia. The PR nightmare that is this city scares people but real geeks want it to happen. This city is a comics convention 365, Vegas for capes and geeks.

Last week saw major action from AXIS. Martian Justice decimated the Motorchrists outlaw biker gang. Does “decimated” means totally wiped out everybody or every tenth of everybody? Whatever, the Motorchrists no longer exist except for the handful who missed out.

On the OSD side it was also a busy week. Man Mafia 3 on video confessing to the Customizers serial killings. Eight homicides contracted by a wannabe serial killer now in maximum security. Mafia 3 was wiped out by the Blue Boss in a stealth operation that leveled half a city block.

The Corpus continues his personal mission to heal the city. He continues to reject offers to join AXIS or the OSD. Last week he was seen in Alphaville performing curbside street surgery.

In amateur news, a car door was torn off a car by the transgendered amateur team JKM and the Halo. That one was all JKM. The Halo isn’t yanking off any car doors. Holy fuck, Batman, with amateurs like these who needs the Tick?

Name checking the more credible amateur October Revenge, who will be on this podcast in two weeks. Shout-out to another of the serious amateurs, the Human Human. It’s amateurs like these who close the gap between what exists here and what here exists.

So let’s look at the big picture. Most people here who gain enhanced abilities never turn them into superpowers. Super powers as opposed to superpowers. They only become superpowers when they get a mask and a cape. Most people ignore their super powers and only use them in emergencies. Maybe they become better at their job. They avoid attention. Some get super religious, think they’re touched by God. Psychic people used it to play the NY Lottery. Today by law NY ticket vendors check driver’s licenses. Boring. The Cape Report is not about them. It’s about the archetype of the superhero.

Before the existence of real superheroes the only superheroes that existed were in comic books. You had comic books and the people who imitate them. Amateurs are the self-made crackpot vigilantes who walk the streets in imitation of superheroes. Their number has exploded into a growth industry. They are all over the U.S. but Brutalia grows them like L.A. grows development deals. They rescue cats stuck in trees and buy doughnuts for the homeless. Some track the street drug trade on their beats; every blue moon the police find use for their information. Actual crime fighting they rarely get to attempt. There are amateur superheroes and there are the amateur supervillains who pick up dry cleaning for the OSD. We know where amateurs come from and it’s usually the Greyhound station.

Only in comic books do you have the all-natural self-made superhero, the amateurs who with enough skill set and slick toys reach a level to cross over into real superhero. They pass the Batman test. But no such superhero exists or is possible. Me, I say it takes a superhero to become a superhero, therefore “Batman” began as an enhanced human. So there are only amateur superheroes and pro superheroes.

The big question is where did the real superheroes come from?

This is Brutalia. The city of Brutalia is big and dangerous, lurking outside the velvet ropes of Manhattan like its bouncer. Kind of big kinda industrial-looking, a big dirty city. Get this: superheroes don’t exist anywhere else. They don’t appear anywhere else. The Brutalia Limit holds. Therefore they never leave Brutalia. Therefore what? Either their powers do not exist outside of Brutalia….or they just can’t cross the city limits. If they could they could save the world or take it over. So maybe this is a good arrangement. Whatever. Bigger questions for a bigger time.

So where did the superheroes come from? In the real world superheroes aren’t like in the comics. They don’t come into being from a whole bunch of different causes invented by comic book writers where one guy comes from the planet Krypton, another guy gets bitten by a spider, another guy finds a magic ring—forget that. In the real world, superheroes are created by one thing: the same thing. The same thing brings them into existence, the same cause produced that effect, the same source brought them into being. What that is has yet to be determined. I’m just saying that’s where to look for the probable answer, geeks.