Volume III

The fall semester of my senior year had ended strongly, and it looked as though the year itself would end on an upbeat note. Moving back to Detroit had been a good move; I had successfully completed my senior thesis on urban cultural theory, and nearly all of the credits in my social planning major had been completed. I was looking forward to a spring semester much like the fall had been. My schedule—mostly electives—would be entirely in the University-Cultural Center, with classes held either at the Arbor State Extension across from the museum or at Warren Woodward University, where I had already taken several cross-listed courses and where I had applied and planned to go to grad school. Except for paperwork, I would have little need to visit Ann Arbor regularly until graduation—which I really looked forward to, because it meant walking in the ceremony with Stella Starlight, my old roommate and almost the first friend I had made there, who would be graduating at the same time.

The holidays, too, got off to a promising start. First, there was the pre-Christmas armed robbery attempt at the Civix Savings and Loan where my mama, Alice James, was the manager; this was foiled by Dana Dorman, the Youthful Permutation known as Domina, who happened to be cashing a check for some of her illicit nocturnal freelance activities, but not before the police cordoned off Woodward Avenue and I had to don my Ms. Megaton Man uniform. Afterwards, Dana and I wandered over to the Michigan State Fairgrounds, where everybody but the Partyers for Mars showed up, no doubt because the hostage standoff had been broadcast all over the afternoon news.

While Dana I tried to bury the hatchet—we had been lovers briefly and she had difficulty letting go, among other difficult adjustments she was making, being a transplant from Megatropolis—all sorts of people we knew descended upon us. First was the aforementioned Stella Starlight, along with her parental partner Trent Phloog and their son Simon, who had driven to Detroit in the old Megatropolis Quartet station wagon, the Q-Wagon, to see the light-up Christmas decorations they had spread all over the fairgrounds. I guess Dana told Stella how she felt lost and wasn’t getting along with the other exiled Y+Thems, being they were holed up in the First Holistic-Humanist Congregation of Cass City residence, a space hardly big enough for three people let alone four Youthful Permutations plus Rubber Brother and my sister Avie. So, Stella offered to rent Dana my old spare bedroom on Ann Street back in Ann Arbor on the spot. Dana took her up on the offer in a heartbeat, if for no other reason than because Dana had had a longtime crush on Stella, the former See-Thru Girl, from afar. Whether Stella knew what she was letting herself in for and what this might imply for Trent, the former Megaton Man, let alone their son, were open questions.

Then the Time Turntable showed up in broad daylight, right in the middle of the vacant fairgrounds, followed by Rex Rigid and Bing Gloom. They arrived in the flying Q-Mobile—not to be confused with the aforementioned Q-Wagon, which was strictly ground-transportation. Rex and Bing, also known as Liquid Man and Yarn Man respectively, had been tracking the turntable for some time; somehow Rex had predicted it would make a brief appearance in Detroit at that very spot. Rex, Stella’s ex-husband, and Bing, my old boyfriend, emotionally complicated the proceedings considerably, but before any of that old baggage could be unloaded, my biological father, the Silver Age Megaton Man, popped into our dimension—courtesy of the pluritemporal, multimensional platter—along with my mama’s counterpart from another reality, the Mod Puma, a psychedelic costumed crime fighter I only knew from old, coverless comic books.

This threw my real mama for a loop, after the police had taken their reports at the savings and loan and she walked over with my half-sister Avril—not only seeing the man who had loved her and left her, with me gestating in her womb, but meeting the person she might have been if she hadn’t had me and Avie. As if that weren’t enough, Secret Agent Preston Percy showed up in a big limousine with my Grandma Seedy. Dr. Mercedith Robeson-James was one of thirteen government scientists who had been there when our reality was split in two before World War II; my mama, just a little girl at the time, grew up believing Grandma Seedy was dead when in fact she had simply been pulled into the vortex of another dimension. Although my sister Avie and I had known Seedy was alive for some time—she had, in fact, manufactured my Ms. Megaton Man uniform—and had told our mama so, Mama had taken our report with a grain of salt. Now, after the passage of more than forty years, Mama was confronted with a new reality.

Well, I can only imagine what was going through Mama’s mind. First, she had just faced down an armed robbery at her Civix Savings and Loan branch that had threatened her life and that of all her employees. When one of her customers, Dana, stripped off her clothes to reveal a fabulously fit body and a studded, black leather thong dominatrix outfit, Mama conked one of two gunmen on the noggin with a fire extinguisher while Domina took care of the other one. Such a brush with violence would be upsetting for anybody, although Mama didn’t let on. Then, less than an hour later, Mama sees her old beau, Clyde Phloog, the Silver Age Megaton Man, accompanied by the Mod Puma—Mama from another life—stepping off the Time Turntable like nobody’s business. And this second Alice James not only appeared very friendly with Clyde—while Alice1 had felt abandoned by Clyde and forced to give birth to me on her own; Alice2 had also grown up knowing her mother’s love, whereas Alice1 had grown up an orphan from an early age.

Sure, Mama had two wonderful daughters—me and my sister Avie, who had been a comfort to her in this dimension but had since gone off to college, by the way, and left her and Daddy with an empty nest. But I couldn’t help thinking Mama was more than a little bit envious of her counterpart from another reality. Alice2 had grown up in Seedy’s household, remained single and childless in adulthood, had led the exciting life of a megahero, and was apparently still boffing the megahero who had broken Alice1’s heart twenty-one years ago, before I was born. This was bound to ruin anyone’s Christmas season.

If nothing else, this gave Daddy an opportunity to patch things up with Mama; naturally, he drove up in his pickup while we all stood freezing to death in the middle of the wintry fairgrounds. Mama and Daddy had been estranged for a while, the result of Daddy’s mid-life crisis-fling with Pamela Jointly, my other old roommate, who no doubt was interested in Daddy only for whatever background info he could provide on me for a book she was writing all about her megahero friends.

Of course, I had little time to consider this. For one thing, snow was melting into my Ms. Megaton Man boots, and my feet were freezing. When the Time Turntable disappeared and things finally broke up on the State Fairgrounds. Mama, Daddy, Avie, and Seedy went off in the pickup to have a nice dinner back at Mama’s apartment; Rex and Bing flew the Q-Mobile back to New York (which must have been a frigid flight with the top down); Trent, Stella, and Simon drove off with Dana, which delighted the Y+Thems, who had also shown up and then split; and Preston took me, Kozmik Kat, my biological father, and my mother from another dimension out to dinner in his big limousine.

“This is actually good timing,” said Preston on the way to the restaurant, cracking open a window as he lit another cigarette. I sat next to Preston and across from Clyde, Alice2, and Koz in the spacious back seat. “Clarissa’s grandmother, Seedy, is back in Detroit to supervise reconstruction of Megatonic University, the laboratory facility beneath Ann Arbor that your daughter Clarissa and her friends so conveniently trashed for us a few weeks ago,” he said to the Silver Age Megaton Man. “It took some convincing, but she’s agreed to come out of retirement, at least until we’re finished later this summer.”

I asked, “What about Dr. Joe?” Dr. Joseph Levitch was the creator of the Silver Age Megaton Man as well as the Megaton Man I knew, Trent Phloog. “Wasn’t it his lab before his evil nephew, Grady Grinnell, took it over?”

“Professor Levitch is in California,” Preston explained. “He’s been at work on the next generation of Megaton Men for some time. The Anaheim lab has run into…complications.” The secret agent declined to elaborate. “He left the moribund Ann Arbor lab in the hands of his nephew, which turned out to be a big mistake, so he doesn’t have much say in the matter. Anyway, he’s not expected back until we’re fully operational, which should be early this summer.”

“This Dr. Seedy,” said Clyde. “She was one of the Meltdown scientists, wasn’t she?”

“Careful, you’re talking about my mama,” said Alice2, who was stroking Kozmik Kat’s fur; Koz wasn’t having it.

“Yeesh, cut it out,” said Koz, squirming under the strokes. “I’m not a petting cat. Besides, your cat-ear costume has me all confused—from the standpoint of species identification. I don’t want to get all excited in front of company.”

The Mod Puma let Koz go, frowning. She pulled her cowl back to reveal a short afro; otherwise, she was the spitting image of my mama. “Hand me one of those cigarettes,” she said to Preston.

Preston offered a cigarette from his pack and leaned forward to gallantly light it for my mama’s counterpart. “True, when the split happened, Dr. Robeson-James got siphoned off into the Meltdown Universe and developed Major Meltdown,” he explained. “That was way before my time. Nevertheless, she was one of the original thirteen scientists who worked to develop the Atomic Soldier prior to World War II, as was wunderkind Rex Rigid, apparently. But Mercedith Robeson-James also happens to be one of the founding members of ICHHL, and still sits on our board of directors. Although they haven’t been the most active board in recent years, she is, technically, my boss. In any case, the president’s glad to have her taking a more active role in Megatonic University for the time being.”

“And I’ll get to hang out with my mama again, Clyde” said the Mod Puma. “She hasn’t seen me for ten years.”

“She thought you were dead,” I said. “She blamed Rex and his Time Turntable for it.”

“I hate that crazy platter,” said Koz. “I don’t know how many times it nearly killed me.”

“What are you say, that we should stay here in Michigan?” Clyde asked Alice2. “What about Megatropolis? “Rex and Bing are planning to start up the Quartet again, now that we’re back in this dimension. While we were all standing out in the field there, he made us a standing offer to join them, just as soon as they can find space suitable for a megahero team headquarters. Rex gave me this.” From his gauntlet, the Silver Age Megaton Man pulled out a business card. It read,

Professor Rex Quimby Rigid, PhD

To contact me, tap in Morse code

on any porcelain plumbing fixture or water pipe.

After the burble, please leave a message.

“With the tight Manhattan real estate market, that could take some time,” said Percy. “Since the old Megatropolis Quartet headquarters was destroyed, nobody in the city wants to rent to a megahero team. Luckily, the Doomsday Revengers are in New Jersey; I understand the Bronx Bombers are actually homeless—living on the streets. Even if Rex were to start rebuilding the Quantum Tower over that hole on Fifth Avenue right now, it would be years before a new skyscraper was finished, and even longer before another fully-functional Megatropolis Quartet Headquarters on the top floors could be fully operational.”

I didn’t mention that I had seen the hole on Fifth Avenue myself a year ago, along with a phantom image of the skyscraper through my Ms. Megaton Man visor. Something told me Rex might be able to make a new skyscraper a reality sooner than rebuilding from scratch would require.

“All the more reason for us to stay in the Midwest,” the Mod Puma said to Clyde. “I can get reacquainted with my mother, and you can get to know the daughter you never knew you had.” Alice2 smiled and winked at me. “And you can get to know your cousin, Trent Phloog.”

“That civilian pipsqueak?” said Clyde with distaste. “I never cared for him when he was Megaton Lad; he’s even more a scrawny weakling now. Which reminds me, who was the young lady with the child?”

“You don’t mean Kiddo?” I said. “The mother of the Original Golden Age Megaton’s love child is one of the Y+Thems. You met them all—Soren, the saber-toothed tiger named Sabersnag, and Kav Kleinfelter, whom we call Tempy, who manipulates time. They were at the fairgrounds along with Rubber Brother. They left in the white van.”

“No, I meant the shapely blonde,” said Clyde. “The one with the two-year-old.”

“That would be Stella Starlight,” I said. “She used to be the See-Thru Girl…”

“My point is, she’s a Meltdown, isn’t she?” said Clyde, distastefully. “One of Trigger Flintlock’s bastard kids. I hated Major Meltdown; I hated the Mortal Meltdown even worse.”

“Well, Simon Phloog is the illegitimate offspring of Stella and your cousin Trent,” I pointed out. “Simon’s a Megaton-Meltdown, which makes you in-laws, so to speak. Although, since he’s illegitimate, there’s nothing lawful about it. I guess you could say they’re your out-laws.”

The Mod Puma took Clyde’s hand. “Honey, don’t talk like that,” she said. “Clarissa’s your bastard child, if that’s the way you want to think about it. Life is a miracle, regardless of the circumstances for its creation.”

That sounded just like something my mama would say.

“I would have married you,” Clyde said to Alice2, “if I had gotten you pregnant. Or, I would have paid for your abortion.”

“Thanks, Dad,” I said. “On second thought, I’m glad you didn’t hang around this dimension after I was conceived.”

The Silver Age Megaton Man got very red in the face. “That’s not what I meant, Clarissa,” he said. “All I mean is that I would have done the right thing by Alice, whichever one you choose. It’s just that you can’t expect the public to accept an interracial megahero couple; besides, think of what the kids would have to go through…”

“Actually, I don’t have to think about it,” I said. “Believe it or not, Clyde, I know all about it.”

That shut my stupid biological father right up.

The Mod Puma patted the Silver Age Megaton Man on his arm. “Clyde, what are we going to do with you?” She looked at me. “He was a rock-ribbed reactionary when I first met him; it took him forever to face the fact that he was in love with a black woman. It’s taken a lot of effort, believe me, but I’ve gotten him to lighten up on his innate racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and every other bigotry known to old, straight, white males. But he still hates Meltdowns.” She said to Clyde, “Just remember, sweetheart, my mama is one of the scientists who created the Meltdowns.”

Of course, we were still wearing our megahero outfits when we arrived at the restaurant for dinner. Preston was right: With our colorful megahero costumes, the three of us and Kozmik Kat hardly seemed out of place in Detroit’s Mexican Town, a tiny block of restaurants to the east of downtown. The Spanish-speaking staff who served us—Preston ordered in flawless Spanish with a Mexican accent—brought Kozmik Kat a saucer of milk and got Clyde to wear a corny sombrero; the enchiladas were incredible, and the owners took Polaroids of all of us to hang on the walls after we’d had too many Margheritas.

Before he got too drunk, Clyde wanted to know more about Megatonic University. “It’s underground, isn’t it?”

“It’s part of a network of labs beneath several North American colleges and universities,” said Preston. “They were designed to survive a nuclear war; they formed the backbone of what became the Ivy-Covered Halls of Higher Learning. Our quasi-governmental research organization may have suffered from mission creep in recent decades”—Preston didn’t mention the orbiting killer satellite ICCHL operated that resembled a giant blow dryer—“but managing megaheroes is still our bread and butter. Lucky for you, we’ve already renovated some very nice living spaces down there.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Clyde. “I need the wide-open skies.”

“They keep thermonuclear warheads underground, in silos,” I said. I don’t think this won any points with my biological father.

“How about you?” he said to me. “How do you like being America’s Nuclear-Powered Hero, Clarissa? You have to be the first black girl in any dimension to hold the title.”

“I’m kinda busy being a senior in college,” I replied. “I really haven’t had much opportunity to use my Megaton megapowers at all.”

“Except wrecking Megatonic University,” said Preston.

“Missy did kick the Human Meltdown’s ass, you’ll be happy to know,” said Koz. “That’s Stella’s half-brother, Chuck Roast. Beat the living crap outta him, back to Paris. Otherwise, he’d be a contender for America’s Nuclear-Powered Hero.”

It was hard to tell behind his cyclopic goggles, but my biological father seemed impressed. “Hmm,” he mugged.

“Now that you’re back, Clyde,” said Preston, “I’m betting the president will expect the Silver Age Megaton Man to resume the title of America’s Nuclear-Powered Hero.”

“That’s racism,” said the Mod Puma. “What’s wrong with you, secret agent? You’ve got to give this girl some training, give her a chance to grow into the role.” She pointed a clawed finger at Preston over our table full of dirty plates. “I’m going to have a talk with my mama about you.”

Clyde laughed. “That’s the maternal instinct,” he said. “See how Alice is already sticking up for the daughter she never knew she had?”

“You mean Alice2,” I said. “My mama’s Alice1.” Again, maybe not the most diplomatic thing to say.

“Oh, no; I’m not this fine young woman’s mama,” the Mod Puma said to Clyde. “No thank you. I’m just saying…” Then she looked at me. “Why am I Alice2?”

“Because my mama was in this dimension first,” I said, perhaps a bit too strongly.

Clyde laughed. “Oh, ho—watch out. You two are too much alike. I’ll bet Clarissa doesn’t get along with her mama any better.”

“So that’s how things are in this dimension,” said the Mod Puma, folding her arms. “Whoever’s here first gets to be number one. I’m not sure I’m going to like things so much in your dimension, Clyde.”

“Don’t look at me,” said Clyde. “I never said this was my universe. I’ll grant you, I may have started in the same universe save Rex and Bing, but it looks like their universe fused with another one while we were gone.” His expression turned sour. “Meltdowns and Megatons—who ever heard of such a thing?”

Like I said, my year seemed to be set to finish on a high note. Although the appearance of the Silver Age Megaton Man and the Mod Puma certainly complicated things, it also presented some opportunities. Among other things, it would give my mama a chance to know her mama and my biological father after a long passage of time. It would also give me a reason to see more of Ann Arbor—and Trent, Stella, and Simon if not Dana, whom I’d rather avoid—during my final semester as a student at Arbor State.

Speaking of notes, I had recently taken up the clarinet and had practiced so much over recent weeks that I was at least as good as I had ever been in high school. Not only did Dana’s sudden evacuation of the church residence give Kiddo more room to raise Benjamin Franklin Phloog; it also meant that without the risk of running into Dana at the First Holistic-Humanist Congregation of Cass City, I could practice my clarinet in the church sanctuary to my heart’s content without fear of running into her. I finally had enough confidence to join the rehearsals of a small wind ensemble Reverend Enoch had formed of members to play before Christmas Eve service; our repertoire was only simple holiday favorites, but we sounded really good.

After service was over, I went home to my attic garret apartment, only two doors away. I trudged up to the third floor with my clarinet case, feeling good about 1983 coming to a close in such a positive way.

Then, I heard footsteps hurriedly coming up the stairs behind me.

Before I could open the door and get my key out, a voice said, “I want you out.”

I turned and found myself looking into the angry eyes of my landlord, a short, evil little man with an incredibly unconvincing black toupee perched on his head. He must have spotted me coming in the front door, whereas I usually came in and out using the back stairs.

“What?” I asked.

“You try to sneak in and out of here, avoiding me, these past few weeks,” he said. “But now I finally catch you. And I tell you—you are out of here!”

“What on earth are you talking about?” I said. “I always pay my rent on time, and I stay quiet. I keep to myself; I’m a studious college student. Most of the time.”

“You pay your rent on time,” said my landlord. “But you don’t keep to yourself.”

I could feel my face turning red at the insinuation.

“You heard me, Miss Clarissa James,” he said, pointing accusing finger at me. “Before New Year’s—I want you out of my building once and for all.”