Doing What You Can't See

The Amazing Spleen [Brad Neilsen]: "The kids drive you crazy?"
I Have To Think of a Codename Now? Can I Get Back To You? [Vijay Singh Kumar]: "Yes, yes, and yes sort of no." [Vijay counts off in the air with his index finger for two "yesses," then does a curvy loop for the last: May.] "Are we going to do anything now, or just watch the Old Man talk to Colonel Future Constable?"
Brad: "Ah, when you've been in the superhero business as long as I have" [Brad gives a little grin to show that he's making fun of himself. Hopefully Vijay will get that. If not, Brad thinks, why did I put it that way? He'll think I'm a douche--] "I mean, not that I've been doing this for very long, but I've learned that once everything is taken care of and you're absolutely ready to go, something will come up and you'll end up standing around forever."
Vijay: "Hurry up and wait. I know about that. I'm from India. I thought I'd done with it when I came to America."
Brad: "Some day, I'm going to go to the country you moved to, Vijay. How are the girls handling it?"
Vijay: "So I'm your liaison with Team Pulchritude  now?"
Brad: "I have never, ever heard that word used in conversation. But yes. It's either that or pull my sister out of gigglecluster."
Vijay: "They're all very excited to be in the future. I think May likes me. May is mad at Rebecca for finking on her to her Mom, and Rebecca is mad at May for riding her about being Amochenian, wherever that is. And I think that May likes me."
Brad: "You repeated the last part."
Vijay: "I think May likes me."
Brad: "I get that."
Vijay: "So?"
Brad: "May's cute. A little young for me. Awfully young for you."
Vijay: "Five years. Five and a half. My parents are 20 years apart!"
Brad: "Did they meet when your Mom was just going into Junior, and your Dad was, uhm, starting his PhD at a very advanced age?" [But Brad's heart wasn't in it. He wanted to protect Jennie's little sister, but it was too late now, and Vijay was too much of a goof to hurt May intentionally. He hoped.] "You know what, never mind. Her brother has been dating my cousin since she graduated, and it's about the same thing."
Vijay: "But Rebecca doesn't look Amochenian. I think." [Brad could see the relief on Vijay's face at the subject of the age difference being dropped. How far into May was he? Probably a good long way. Well, I'm watching you, buddy.]
Brad: "Amagogenetic. Means "clone." Becky is her Mom's clone. They just say "amagogenetic" as a joke about being politically correct and not hurting Becky's feelings. But I think it does hurt her feelings, and that's probably why Becky finks on May."
Vijay: "About?"
Brad: "Mainly about her being a bad influence on boys by jumping off grandstands, rollerblading in heavy traffic. That sort of thing."
Vijay. "Yeah. So, uhm, is it true that the Old Man is going to be May's Dad?"
Brad: [Oh, crap.] "Keep it down, dude! The guy had plenty sharp enough hearing when he was, like, sixty! Will be? You have to keep stuff like that secret, or the universe will implode."
Vijay: "Seriously?"
Brad: "No. More likely, you'll have a heart attack just before you say it, and it actually turns out to matter. So don't say it."
Vijay: "So if he finds out, then he'll try to figure out who the mom is, and then he'll do something wrong in the courtship, and they won't end up together, and May won't have existed in the first place,but of course she exists because she's here in the future with us, and it doesn't make any sense, so the universe is, like, the proctor shushing the library, and you die? But he does know who the mother is! The 'half-Turkish traitor!'"
Brad: "Yeah. That's not very fair to Mrs. Wong, though."
Vijay: "How about 'Tatar bitch?'"
Brad: "That one's on the money."
Vijay: "So the Old Man likes his women a bit bitchy?"
Brad: "What can I say? I hang out with her daughter." [How could I say that? Now it will all go wrong! What kind of a douche thinks he's even worth being with Jennie?] "No. The thing is, at this point in his life, Mrs. Wong is a supervillain mastermind plotting to overthrow the world and restore the Tang dynasty. And, as far as the Old Man knows, doing it with the assistance of his Uncle Kwan, who killed his grandmother, betrayed his father, and stole the secrets of Eight Dragon Spirit Kung Fu."
Vijay: "So what actually happened?"
Brad: "What do I look like? Wikipedia?" [Please take that for an answer. Please. I don't know if I could manage to lie about what happens next.] "I'll tell you this, though. He already loves her. He just can't see it."
Vijay: "Oh by the Granth...Speaking of things I wish that I couldn't see, what are those?"
Brad: "Uhm, Aliens? C'mon. They're going for the Old Man and Captain Future!" [Brad can feel the Earth, or at least the grass, screaming. There are intruders everywhere, too small to see, latching hurtful hooks into the flesh of the Earth, and he channels the green Earth's fire into a flick of fire that catches from  one end of the sea of buildings in which this wide, perfect lawn stands, to the other. It doesn't burn ground or building, but where it touches the chitinous grey aliens, they klick and buzz with agony, their mouth mandibles waving. One leaps at Brad as three more grab the police officer and five, partially dissected, fly free of Mr. Wong. There's more coming behind them, but Brad can't afford them attention as he fires a green blast at the leader. A voice goes off in his brain, too alien to be a notion, too friendly to be an intrusion.]
EarthNet Instanced Crisis Control AI Partition "Fred": "Thank you for suppressing the nanites, Amazing Spleen. Now could you gentlefolk please rescue Superintendent Acharya? His supervisory link to EarthNet is still open, and I'd rather not have Xenovore malware uploaded through it."
[Brad thinks to himself that that would be a very nice thing for some of the others to do. He'd even help, as soon as he was finished not throwing up from the burning tired that made his legs all rubbery.]
The Furious Fist [Henry Wong]: "Tridel: protect the Spleen. Be prepared to teleport him if he can't run. Avenging Daughter. Take out Acharya's bearers. Gun Girl. Cover her. Vijay. With me. We're going to stomp bugs."
[Brad can only watch, helpless as things unfold. Mr. Wong has, indeed, taken on the lion's share of the work, and there won't be many of the horrifying aliens left in a very short time indeed. But he has sent May into the middle of the action to take back the aliens' prime target, and even with Jaime laying covering fire, that's just asking for trouble. For all their waving stingers and razor sharp claws and teeth, most of the aliens were just cannon fodder. If there were an exception, though, May was about to meet it. Girl, he thinks: your father thinks that you're the daughter of his two worst enemies. Please, please be careful.]
Brad: "Uhm, Fred, is it? Can you do something?"
Fred: "I'm very sorry, Mr. Neilsen, but I can't. For six hundred years-dead aliens, these Xenovores have very up-to-date ideas about how to fight wars. I've got nanites over half BosWash trying to upload. We'll be done purging them in a few minutes, but until then I won't be able to provide you with any support. The thanks of a grateful Earth for pointing them out. Now, if only you'd manage to do that an hour ago...."
[Thanks for the extra load of guilt, Brad thinks, as May grabs Superintendent Acharya and pulls him free, dropping her guard just as a particularly fast Xenovore comes up and puts its stinger right through her abdomen. Oh God, Brad thinks, as he turns to look at the hard-eyed man who will be her father fighting a full block away. Until the moment that daughter's eyes lock with father's, and the man is --at her side. Is it Brad's imagination that Mr. Wong is as surprised as he to find himself leaping across the battle to protect May?]
Henry Wong: "Get away from her."
[The stinger comes out in a rush of abdominal blood and whips at Mr. Wong far too fast for the eyes to follow. There's another spurt of blood. Mr. Wong's blocking arm is impaled. Oh God, Brad thinks. They're both dead. Who are the Mr. Wong and May I thought I knew? Agents of Yin Wu? We're all doomed.]
Mr. Wong:  "'Xenovore,' is it? I imagine you've eaten a few humans in your time. Ever paid attention to anatomy? Cracked a wishbone? There's two bones in the human forearm. And your stinger is lodged between them. I hope you don't mind going without it." [And he lifts his other arm and drops it on the stinger while ducking down. Three rounds from Jaime's absurdly oversized Desert Eagle (not that it fires real ammunition, mostly) lift it into the air as the stinger gives way with a loud crack, spurting surprisingly human-looking red blood --not acid, thankfully--  in its own bright, arterial pump. It seems disinclined to rise again, and the fall of their champion is too much for the rest of the Xenovores, who retreat.]

[By the time that Brad hobbles over, Mr. Wong has May stretched out on the bloody grass, and, with the rest of the team crowded around and Vijay crouched at her head, is thrusting his hands into her abdomen. The blood from his unheeded wound pools with hers as Brad's bizarre new sensory powers see his chi'i pulsing. Brad touches Mr. Wong's shoulders, and feels a presence, so like Jennie's that he could almost cry. Some gate is open, and he pours the borrowed energy of the lawn beneath him through Mr. Wong and into May.]
Brad: "Oh, live and touch the Sun! Grow and bear seed."
Gun Girl [Jaime Neilsen]: "The hell, Big Bro?"
Brad: "I was ....imagining what the grass was saying, sis."
Jaime: "You're weird enough already without cosplay crap. Oh, wow. May. You're awake!"
Henry Wong: "Don't, girl. Just lay quiet for a second while I tell you about the time I fought your mother in a grocery store. By the time I'm done, you'll be ready for a rematch."



****

This is the sixteenth installment in my Champions Universe fan fiction focussing on Philadelphia's Liberty Legion, and the fourth installment of the second arc that may someday go in between "Jenny's End, Part Two" and "Jenny's End, Part Two, Two," because inserting  a book or two between a cliffhanger and its resolution is the way that  G. R. R. Martin would do it.  Not that that's foreshadowing or anything.


The principal antagonist in this episode doesn't talk very much, but he's Maraud, the "Xenovore Captain America." Maraud appears in Galactic Champions, Darren Watt's awesome supplement that introduces us to the 31st Century, the Champions 3000, and villains such as Maraud and Sovereign. Unfortunately, Maraud, although an awesome character, is, at 660 points, a little underwhelming to be an appropriate enemy for "cosmic" scale heroes, or even The Furious Fist. Although the vagaries of Fifth Edition are such that he's probably worth more than many equivalently pointed characters due to the relative efficiency of a "stats monkey" build. For the purposes of the fan fiction, you can assume that Maraud has been boosted a little bit to make him a more worthy opponent. And, by the way, I am not the person who decided to introduce evil alien enemies who look just like Aliens into the Hero Universe. I do, however, applaud the way these things are done in "superhero universe" setting. It's  polysemenous. (Or, rather, allows a species of tropic polysemy.)

What To Do In A Nuclear Holocaust

What happens in a nuclear holocaust? Nothing pretty. Face-melted cannibal mutants will eat you and everyone you love.

Okay, something pretty. And it turns out that my memory of what happens at 1:12 in the trailer is a lot clearer than the actual plot of Empire of the Ash III. (I was 22. The defence rests.) Apparently it was a "virus" that made all the cannibal-people's face melt, and in an off-the-record deep background interview, eminent scientitians have informed this reporter that "viruses" are not the same thing as "radiation." But they are related, and radiation viruses from Fukushima will be blanketting Vancouver tomorrow by 3.


So you're thinking of escaping? Some possibilities can be ruled right out. For example, the viruses will act quickly to release trillions of tons of radioactive cobalt into the atmosphere, which will get to Australia as soon as the winds shift or something. (Fred Astair was in that movie? Fred Astaire? Did he do the "Slowly Dying of Radiation Sickness Waltz?")

No, and here I have the advantage of being a really old nerd, because in a series of highly controlled exercises, I had occasion in the early 1980s to test likely post-nuclear scenarios with a simulation study produced by Yaquinto Games.

Yes, beer and pretzels were involved

I can therefore report that by the time the catastophe goes to completion, all that will be left will be mutants (some more radioactive than others), a football team including the quarterback, a beautiful scientist and her scientist dad --And this is the most important part-- a transdimensional portal-device that will transport all the survivors to a nice, virginal dimension somewhere. (Human survivors: the original test scenario was developed in the 1950s, when radioactive face-melted cannibalistic mutants had to sit at the back of the bus and couldn't get into the nice dimensions because it would ruin property values.)

As may be statistically deduced from the parameters of the scenario (it's all stochastic: chi equals the standard deviation,and there's a big fat tail risk), the portal device breaks down, and it's a race against time while scientist-dad tries to readjust the amplidyne's commutator brushes to excite the distributor and fire the swashplate engine that drives the cams and the mutants attack the Nerd Sciences Building. They manage to kill all the extras, but are distracted by their attempts to abduct the beautiful scientist-daughter, resulting in the daughter and the handsome quarterback escaping to the alternate dimension.

So let's think about how that goes for a moment:
BSD: "How come we never talk anymore!"
HQ: "That reminds me of the big game against Central!" [Woah. Springsteen yaoi.]
BSD: "Oh. That's why."
HQ: "I'm going out to have a beer with the trees. Don't wait up."

Why are they doing this? On the one hand, this is clearly an emergency. Alternate dimension trees are going to have their night out ruined by some drunken frat boy talking about glory days! But there's got to be more to it. A close examination of the scenario suggests that the mutants' real main objective is to grab the beautiful scientist daughter and carry her off frequently and often. The scenario says that she always gets rescued, so it must be something that happens along the way. Some lucky mutant will get her cell number!

Sure, there are probably more straightforward ways of going about this, but what if the mutants are pathologically shy? They're certainly lacking basic social skills, what with the cannibalism and all.

Oh, come on, don't be so judgmental! Half the human race wouldn't be here if it weren't for the inhibition relaxing powers of alcohol. So what if you're too chronically tired for alcohol to work anymore?

Radiation. If there's one thing about nuclear holocausts that I do know for sure, it's that they lead to parties. Sure, there's a down side to being fatally irradiated, but also that upside.

So if you're in Vancouver tomorrow afternoon, look me up. I'll be the one in the lampshade.

Running Away

[Edit: I won't even mention how much of the afternoon I spent on this and still have to come back and edit it.]




The Furious Fist [Ning Lee Wong; Henry Wong]: "All I am saying, Officer, is that, past experience notwithstanding, this might not be the occasion to rely on time travellers."
Superintendent Ranjit Acharya: "Look, uhm, Fist. This whole "superhero" thing was ancient myth around here until six months ago. You know how that changed? "The Empress of a Billion Dimensions" invaded, and her superagents swept the forces of the Galactic Federation before them. I saw no way to win, or even survive. Many of my colleagues didn't. Then, seven superheroes saved the Federation. Three of them came from your era, and I doubt that we would have had the others without them. So pardon me if I have more confidence in your team than you do."
Henry: "I'm not seeing the problem here. Your officers mopped up the zombies without even calling in the army."
Acharya: "It's not the ...zombies I'm worried about. It's whatever raised them. I'm looking through databases from your era, and it's like concentrated essence of horror movie. With pictures. Lots of pictures."
Henry: "How do you do make that picture?"
Acharya: "Here: touch my finger. Okay, your phone is activated. Now you can do it, too."
Henry: "But how... Oh."
Acharya: "Yeah. It's pretty user friendly. Now. See what I'm saying?"
Henry: "Those are comic books!"
Acharya: "The database is incomplete that far back. Are they wrong?"
Henry: "No. Well, except Ma Tian. She's much prettier than that."
Acharya: "Oka-ay then. We'll be happy to back you up; but you have the experience and the abilities to make the difference."
Henry: "I have a high school field trip! Can't you get your Champions on the job? I'm sure they don't giggle every time their leader talks."
Acharya: "They're halfway across the galaxy, and your phone can fix your hair."
[Inside, Henry wilted, although he tried not to show it. He'd known that the Afro was a mistake. How could an Eight Dragon master succumb to peer pressure? But it was Beowulf who suggested it. Beowulf! And everyone back in 1972 liked it. For a second, Henry wondered what Ma Tian would say about it. Why was he thinking about her so much?] 
Henry: "That's not the point... Okay. What have you got?"
Acharya: "Forensics says that the zombies are all from one of the Xenovore livestock transports that Zhukov shot down in 2355 into the Adirondack Planetary Park and left as a war grave. There's similar sites in Blue Ridge Park, a third in Grand Coulee. And others, but those are the closest to human populations, so we think that that is where you will find your 'necromancer.'"
Henry: "This phone thing must have put Funk and Wagnells right out of business. There are no humans living in the Great Basin north of Shasta? Is the Earth completely depopulated?"
Acharya: "No. There's 17 billion of us. We just like living in cities. It's better for the environment."
Henry: "I own land in the Grand Coulee park."
Acharya: "You've got a time machine. Take it up with Empress Marissa."
Henry: "You want my help, or don't you?"
Acharya: "There's not much that I can do. The Grand Coulee Park was established by a Presence Edict, and there's a huge block of data behind a secure Imperial encryption. I'll get an archaeologist on it, but it typically takes a couple of weeks to get at anything an old-time emperor wanted kept secret."
Henry: "You do that. Getting back to cases, can you drop my team at the grave site? My teleporter can probably do it, but we're a little one-sided, and I would prefer to keep the fact that one of my three light fighters has something else under her belt a secret until I need her."
Acharya: "Sure. And don't you have a fourth hand-to-hand specialist?"
Henry: "No?"
Acharya: "Because we just picked up another 21st Century youth throwing scenery at zombies at the south end of the outbreak. Because if you don't want him, my daughter is doing her third cycle thesis on skateboard culture, and I'm sure she'd   love to interview him. No? I'll have him beamed right over."
[Oh great, Henry thought. A Kung Fu girl on roller skates, and a brick on a skateboard. If he could just get the Amazing Spleen onto a surfboard, the team would be made. Which brought him to the next item on the list.]

****

The Amazing Spleen: "No. No. Of course I can't be team leader. That's crazy! You're ...you're perfect for the job. You're nine years older than me!"
Henry: "But you know these kids. I don't. You're all from my future, and if you say the wrong thing there will be a metaphysical disaster and the universe will end. Like, for example, whatever you almost said there. You were doing fine back last stop before I showed up. You coped after Tateklys pulled me out."
Amazing: "That's different. Me and Sn...Snake...Snakes-On-A-Plane are...friends from sch....school. And we've, we've fought together. We have to trust Tateklys to maintain the integrity of the timestream. We would not be here if there weren't something important going on, and I am sure that he picked us all for a reason."
[Henry wasn't a mean man. He did not enjoy pushing Brad into talking about his crush, and he knew better than to comment on the flush spreading across the stammering boy's face. He also had to remind himself that the girls were only two years younger than the Spleen, and that he would probably be as hapless with them as he was at talking about Snakes-On-A-Plane. 


And come to that, it would probably be better for the Spleen if he did talk about his feelings with someone instead of running away from them. That, presumably, being what the grown-up of the group was supposed to arrange. And how had Henry become the grown-up, responsible for these timestrewn children? This was not the kind of life he'd been prepared for at Eight Dragon Monastery.


Amazing: "Uhm, who is that boy dressed in 21st Century clothes, and why is he fighting with the Avenging Daughter?"
Henry: "Don't just stand there gaping, this boy is strong!"
Vijay: "Who are you calling a boy? Just give me a second to figure out this hold and I'll...You're good at this, aren't you?"
Avenging Daughter: "Don't hurt him! He's got my phone!"
Henry: "I shouldn't hurt him? You punched him in the face. Five times. With the Eight Dragon Fist. Which, by the way, we are going to talk about right after we settle this."
Avenging Daughter: "I didn't hit him hard."
Vijay: "No. No, she did not ...sir."
[Henry caught the change of tone, the note of pennies dropping. What was going on here? Why did this girl look so familiar? Because of the family resemblance to Snakes-on-a-Plane? No. There was something more than that]: "You're Ma Tian's daughter, aren't you?" [The girl looked scared, but didn't say anything. It didn't matter, though, because it was obvious.


 It was like Mardoom Thah punching him all over again. Ma Tian had told him that she was a living Buddha, that she would never re-enter Maya, never take a lover or have a child. And of all the things that treacherous half-Turk had told him that day fighting across the Shop Rite, that was the one thing that he had believed. Willed himself to believe, he thought now. But she had. And why should he care? More importantly, who had been her Eight Dragon teacher? Probably his great-uncle. That this was a mere girl, a child trying to do right, was all that pulled Henry back.]


Vijay: "Oh, please step back now, sir. That was all so many years ago, and no-one needs to be hurt right now."
[Why was the Avenging Daughter crying? But then Vijay's hand crept to take hers, right in front of Henry, and he realised that, whatever he was feeling himself in this  moment, an Eight Dragon master could overcome it and be happy for these children. He could, he would, be a teacher, and a man.]
Henry: "I'm cool. How did you get free, anyway, Mr.... I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name?"
Vijay: "Vijay Singh Kumar. And freeing myself would have been my second clue that you and Ma Tian have issues."
Henry: "Indeed we do. That dragon lady is the lieutenant of Yin Wu herself, and a deadly fighter even before she recruited my great-uncle to teach her Eight Dragon Kung Fu. But 38 years is a long time, and your sister is a good woman, Avenging Daughter, and you seem to be as well. Although I will be damned if I let you go into our next operation trying to fight in roller skates."
Avenging Daughter [Suddenly smiling instead of crying]: "Sir!"
[Henry didn't even have to be looking to know that Tri-Del was rolling her eyes. Maybe managing three teenage girls wouldn't be so hard.]

Henry Wong will remember that specific thought again and again in years to come, and he will laugh and laugh.

****

This is the fifteenth installment in my Champions Universe fan fiction focussing on Philadelphia's Liberty Legion, and the third installment of the second arc that may someday go in between "Jenny's End, Part Two" and "Jenny's End, Part Two, Two." It depends on how much of a cliffhanger it ends up being. And whether I change those stupid titles. And whether the Lion Stallion turns into a typical Mary Sue pet. 


All new characters and malevolent alien races are from "future history" supplements published by Hero Games, including Alien Wars, Terran Empire, and, of course, Galactic Champions. It's not clear to me that they are part of the Cryptic Games license, but, for what it's worth, let's assume that they are. Eight Dragon Kung Fu, however, is introduced with Spirit Dragon, published in the Champions supplement Villains, Vandals, and Vermin. What can I say? I like his build: an Aid on one primary characteristic at any one time, plus a naked armour piercing advantage on his Martial Strike. So he can punch fast, accurately, or very hard  (roughly equivalent to the Thing's regular punch, with the armoured piercing advantage.) He is, however,  built on 443 points in Fifth Edition, 200 points less than Henry Wong, Senior, and almost 200 more than May Wong. Which doesn't really explain how May manages to throw an Autofire punch, but I figure it's because she's feisty. 

Keeping it Agamogenetic

Gun Girl [Jaime Neilsen]: "So at least headshots work."
Tri-Del [Rebecca Hirsch]: "Gross! The bits break off! Leave me alone! The Harajuku girl is over there!"
Avenging Daughter [May Wong]: "Chinese! Chinese, tall, and tasteful, clone-girl!" [May was 5'9 1/2", and had decided that she would grow just another half an inch, so that she would be exactly halfway between her brothers and her sister. She didn't mind being tall. In fact, she loved the way her legs looked in her skates. And if it didn't work out that way, if she ended up 6'4", like her brothers, she wouldn't drag it out and get all Gothy about it like some.]
Jaime: "And speaking of gross bits, we don't know how these zombies spread, so try not to, Jeez, punch their brains out all over your sharpshooting friends?"
Becky: "Eh. Ever watched a movie? The way Zombism spreads is this: if you're not the hero, you get infected. If you're the hero, you probably get infected, but only at the end. One of us is good for another hour. The other two need to find some Russian dressing."
May: "Hunh?"
Becky: "Thousand Islands with ketchup. Good on boiled brains."
May and Jaime: [Gag.]
BEcky: "It's no worse than chopped liver."
May: "Are  you sure you're the girl who fished all the meat out of her hot pot because you were afraid some of it might be tripe?"
Becky: "Deli food is different."
May: "You hurt DL's feelings, you know."
Jaime: "Shenanigans! DL has no feelings."
[May was tired of this game. There were times when she did think of her Mom as the "Dragon Lady," but she'd seen her mother emotional, mainly over the doofus and Magilla Gorilla lately. So she changed the subject. And knocked the heads of three more zombies in as she did it. These things really weren't much challenge.] "So who is going to last out the hour?"
Rachel: "The cute, sweet one."
May: "Bra-ai-ains!"
Rachel: "Bra-ai-ains!"
Jaime: "You guys are both prettier than me. Look! The zombies are all over you!"
Rachel: "They'd be all over you, too, if we weren't covering you. You getting tired yet?"
Jaime: "At this rate? No. A .22 size blast through their eye socket and these things fold. I can keep that up for ....I hope we run out of zombies soon. Can you twist us out, Rachel?"
Becky: "To where?"
Jaime: "The 21st Century?"
Becky: "I can't do that!"
May: "Isn't half the point of your powers that you can travel through time?"
Becky: "I can travel through time exactly as far as you can travel through space without lifting either of your feet of the ground."
Jaime: "Doesn't your Mom travel through dimensions that way?"
Becky: "No. Well, sort of. She jumps off Aunt Miriam's time platform and twists on her way down."
May: "That's a very colourful analogy that doesn't make any sense."
Becky: "Whatev, girl. You didn't get to go to Babylon last week."
May: "OMG. You went to Babylon? What did you do? Did you get anything?"
Becky: "Ah, it was mostly so my brother could sign papers and stuff, and Carnival was going on in his neighbourhood, so we didn't get around much. But I got this jacket. I was saving it for school, but I'll show you guys..."
Jaime: "Uh, guys? Across the street-thing? On that building over there? That's my brother."
May: "Hey, you're right. Magilla Gorilla!"
Jaime: "I wish you wouldn't call him that."
May: "What? He moons over my sister and doesn't do anything about it except lurch and lurk, and ol'Super Doofus Jen is all, like 'oh, Brad, if only...."
Becky: "Isn't Magilla Gorilla the purple ape? What's that got to do with anything? Brad isn't purple. He isn't even smelly, any more."
May: "Because he's tall? Like a gorilla?"
Becky: "Are gorillas that tall, though? I thought they were more, you know, heavy-set."
May:"Well, he's heavy-set, too. Not nearly so much as he got to be, though. What Jenny saw in him by last year...."
Jaime: "Leave him alone! I know he's a little strange, but it's only been since the divorce!"
Becky: "Blame your parents? You gametics are all alike."
May: "Can you get us over to him, Becky? I'm tiring out here."
[It was true. Brad was both clean and lean when they spun out of 5 space on his side of the open, grassy space below the building-terrace level, the one crowded with zombies from side to side as far as the eye could see. He still blushed and avoided eye contact, though. Even Mrs. Crudup had her limits.]
Jaime: "Hey, bro'. Lost some more weight on the H. G. Wells Diet?"
Amazing Spleen [Brad Neilsen]: "Holy Sh... Girls! May! You better have your costumes with you!"
Becky: "Because we'd be doomed if the 31st Century or whatever this is learned our secret identities. Doomed, I say!" [But the girls put their costumes on, anyway. Brad was a senior member of the Liberty Legion.]
Brad: "That's not it, Tri-Del. We picked up a hitcher in the Old West."
Becky: "It's pronounced 'Trey-Del.' Like Dreidel."
May: "Because she's Jewish-Agamogenetic-Queer American. You see." [May had not forgotten the Harajuku crack. And then her brother Henry bounced onto the roof, dressed, for some reason, in one of her father's old costumes, and with his hair done up exactly the way it was in the old photos. Only after a second, May realised that she wasn't looking at her brother. This was her Father. Only he was 25 years old. And his hair....]

Time Zombies

BC Provincial Highway 3A near Merritt from milebymile

When I was young, and I motorcycled, I'd ride early, and too fast. When I passed cars, I counted down the time to Quilchena and it seemed like I was riding a time machine, that I could get gain time and arrive before I left. It's a crazy thought, but if you're a morning person, maybe you'll understand. If not, I apologise. But speaking of passing time, check out the keyboard player's afro!

So let's see if I can put this together. It's about people, as time passes. Sometimes, time passes wrong, and you die before you can start living. That's why that terrible teacher in that movie about being a bad teacher is constantly telling us to "seize the day." Even if you haven't a clue how to teach poetry, you can still hook up with a good idea once in a while.*

For most of us, dying is the end of the story. Once time travel gets into the picture, things get complicated. You live after you've already died. You're a time zombie.



"Come with me if you want to live." Who doesn't? But this is the story of Sarah's son. And John Connor's father died long ago. Before the war.

This is Sarah's story. It should have been the last war, and it wasn't. Because of her son, and the way that she raised and protected him. And John Connor's father doesn't even exist yet.

This is Kyle Reese's story, sent on a mission to the past by a leader who cannot tell him anything. Because John Connor is sending his father to die  so that he can live. It's a sacrifice that a good father will make, but it is not the father making that sacrifice. Yet Kyle must die if he is to live, because to live is to love, and his love lies in the past: Sarah Connor.

Oh, sure, it's schmaltzy and, if you want to overintellectualise it, troubling. There's a word for people who fall in love with pictures, and that word is "crazy." Still, there's a reason that Terminator works and the sequels don't, so much. It's a story with a heart. It plays with the longing a time machine signifies, to go back and do it over, make it right. There was this girl who liked you, and you didn't even notice. Or  you couldn't accept that someone like that liked you.

And it realises that that's zombie territory. Life is to be lived forward. Kyle has to live in the now, where the girl  is, take that picture out and do some bloody seizing. And it works! You've got to love stories.

And yet....This is also the Terminator's story. Thinking about time travel just hurts the head, but it really seems hard to believe that you can change what has already happened in your past. Skynet rose, and was defeated. Now it is sending a poor peripheral to the past. In its longing for what could have been, Skynet demands that Terminator "make it didn't happen." All that it can accomplish is to add a  robot Cupid to the story of Sarah and Kyle, shooting 9mm bullets of love.

 At least we don't have to worry about Terminator's romantic arc. It's not that a machine can't find love, since in Hollywood anything, even robots, can find love. It's that it's already dead. It died before it could live.

This isn't right. Not even to poor Terminator. Trapping people in time loops is unfair to them. And here I speak as a historian.

Why? Historians time travel in a different way. We look back to the past and try to get inside its clothes. Its pants, even. But when you're interested in the longue durée, time has a way of moving into the future. Fernand Braudel spent the last part of his career worrying about the future, because his idea of how history worked told him he was in the middle of a long downward movement. Much as I admire Braudel, he was wrong about that. You don't, however, have to believe in his weird Kondratieff waves to see that the demography of the past has shaped our future. That age cohort bulge is working its way through the system, and for Generation X to live in retirement will take all the money that we are making now. We need to earn it, keep what fraction we can (since finance is hungry for every penny to replenish the funds that are supposed to meet the demand) and, since we'll never see those funds, send that fraction forward in time to fund that retirement.

The problem is that every dollar sent forward is a dollar that we can't spend now on what have you. Skynet wants to exterminate the human race, but it won't have to if we can't scrounge up some dollars for living life. No life, no babies. And so Gen X is trapped, dying before it can live.

 I'm hungry enough to eat some brains. Although today I'll settle for a Sausage McMuffin on my way to work.





*If you find this animus for Dead Poet's Society troubling, all I can say is that you need to hang out with a pervert teacher who quotes it all the time.

Strolling Through the Park

Avenging Daughter [May Wong]: "And that is why I come here!"
Gun Girl [Jaime Neilsen]: "They're so hot!"
May:  "These guys? You should see the captain of the batting-or-whatever team. The game starts at 4:30. He should be here any minute." [Oh my God. Listen to me. He's just some stupid jock. Yeah. That's not what you were thinking when you squeezed by him at the entrance to the park last week.]
Tri-Del [Rebecca Hirsch]: "Are you sure it's not because you've started to suck at figure skating?"
May: "Says the expert on sucking."
Jaime: "I can't take you two anywhere. But I've never heard of a tall figure skater, either."
May: "It's not fair. If this keeps up I'm going to be a freak like your cousin! At least it's not affecting my kung fu." [Or my boarding. But May didn't say that, because she didn't trust Becky not to tell. How was she going to tell Jaime not to bring Becky next time? If there were a next time. If she didn't tell about this.]
Becky: "Where are the Rugrats?"
May: "Oh crap. Well, it's only been a minute, and hopefully no-one's left the keys in a cherrypicker again."
[May reaches for her phone behind her on the bleachers. It's not there. Damn it! The Rugrats pulled this one on Jen three times already, and she's not going to be taken like Super Dork. Only she is. May vaults to the top of the bleachers. She skitters her skate wheels as she lands, to make it look more dangerous than it is. Rep. Even if was only with Miss Two-Faced Becky. Where were they? Where was he?


But it's not the Rugrats. He's there, on the sidewalk across the running track. He's holding her phone up in his hands like a cricket ball ready to be thrown. May puts her hands up to catch, but instead he kicks his skateboard down onto the street. To Hell with the secret identity --May jumps down the six levels of bleachers, hitting the sidewalk and kicking off a lunging start.] 
Becky and Jaime: "May, wait up!"
[May doesn't pay attention. What are they going to tell her? That it might be a trap, that she should let the big kids handle it, or go cry to her parents? She'd had enough of that worrying and moping and doing nothing just from watching Jen.]
May: "Bring your stupid, wetback ass back here before I kick it for you!" [Instead he jumps his skateboard high enough to land on the back of a passing semi, nailing the landing. Oh. Was this super business? That was another story. Now she could punch that smile off his face, no kid gloves. Another semi was following behind. Wait a second...]
Some Hot Guy Who Plays Cricket: "Just call the phone later! You don't want to get hurt!"
[Yeah. Like that was an issue. May vaults up on one semi, jumps over to the Hot Guy's, and lands her first combination in as much time as it takes him to  get his lame pickup out. She might get hurt?]
Veejay: "Crap, kid. Wetback? I'd like to see you graduate ITI. Stop that! I can't keep blocking forever!"
May: "Don't want to hit a girl?"
[Instead he kicks his skateboard over the edge of the semi and vaults down into traffic. May follows without a pause, although she has to bounce off a Honda hood to keep up. The driver didn't even have time to hit the brakes before she was skating beside him. This was fun! Then she was up on the sidewalk, and....
Becky and Jaime spun out of 5-space into continuum in front of her. May goes down in a heap avoiding them. By the time she's bounced back up, the guy is nowhere to be seen. Even if May is excited enough to think about trying to go through them. But only think about it. 
Jaime: "Down, girl!"
Becky: "Eh. Needs a haircut."
May: "He's just a boy. And he's got my phone!"
Jaime: "And you can call him."
May: "My mom will find out, and I'll..." [May wants to scream. This. Now. It's perfect. Now. I want it now. She lunges for space between Jaime and Becky, but Becky is there before May even moves, because that's what Becky does.]
May: "I'm not Jenny! I can't wait!"
Becky: "Oka-ay then. Crazy thought. Borrow my phone? You know? The one with the teleporting friend?"
[May blushes inside to be thinking that you're no friend of mine as she dials her own number.]
An Already Familiar Voice: "Veejay here. I.... Damn it! Don't! Leave it be!"
Jaime: "I've got a fix."
Becky: "And here we go.... To not Kansas? Ooh. No creepy touching." [Things fall off the would-be groper as he hits the shiny metal walkway thingie high above. Fleshy things.]
Becky: "Ooh. He's all Lolita for me. Think he knows your new boyfriend, May?"
Jaime: "The future is totally how I pictured it. Except with more zombies."
May: "Isn't time travel more your clone-mom's gig?"
Becky: "Zombies. Fight now. And it's Agamogenetic American."

Fever, February

The boy was too sick to go to work on Wednesday when I was over to visit. Too sick to play video games, even. Though he perked up in the evening enough to play the "virtual console" Wii game Legend of Zelda: Missing Link. (Which he described as an almost unbearable pun. So if you want to date the moment when puns stop being funny, go to midway through sixth grade, and push a little further on.)

The girl, meanwhile, is filling out her "Healthy Choices Journal," which includes entries for healthy eating, specifically, vegetables. Yeah. Like that's going to happen.  Way to not go, first grade health Gestapo.

As for what's beyond the barrier of puns, the boy demolished most of this during his sick day. Now I have to get another copy. And a short dark.