We interrupt our regularly-scheduled first-person narrative by Clarissa James to bring you this third person (omniscient) flashback from the life of Trent Phloog. Enjoy!

The District Universe—May 1976

Golden, late-afternoon sunshine spread across the verdant cornfields surrounding Microville Senior High School as their Bicentennial graduation ceremony came to a rousing conclusion. There was hardly a dry eye as the sixteen-piece Mudcat marching band offered a very out-of-tune rendition of “Pomp and Circumstance” while a score of administrators, faculty, and other dignitaries filed off the plywood platform set up in the Mudcat’s football field—actually, a pasture behind the school building surrounded by cornfields. These joined the crowd of a hundred or more family and friends who were still congratulating their twenty-three members of the Class of ’76, a bumper crop for the rural school district, arrayed in their navy-blue robes and mortarboards.

The crowd seemed in no hurry to make their way toward the parking lot, where pickup trucks and station wagons decorated with “School’s Out Forever!” and “Mudcats Do It on Dirt Roads!” awaited. Drunken celebrations and high speed collisions that evening would reduce the effective number of diplomas to a more reasonable seventeen. While the crowd lingered, a brigade of volunteers pushed long dollies out from the back of the school to the end of the blacktop and began folding up chairs, paying little notice to the dark Lincoln Continental that had just pulled up, late to the affair.

The license plate read, “u.s. government—official use only,” and bore the ominous letters “PENT 17a.”

A bald man in a dark grey suit and sunglasses got out bearing a briefcase. He made his way determinedly toward the crowd. Spying an older farm couple and their oversized graduate, he headed in their direction.

“We’re so proud of you, Trent,” said Ma Phloog, wiping her eyes on the apron of her Depression-era smock. “Finishing high school in less than a decade … not many Phloogs can say that!”

“I’d pat you on your enormous shoulders if I could reach them,” said the diminutive Pa Phloog, blowing his nose on a rag and tucking it into the back pocket of his dusty overalls. “What are your plans, now, son?”

“Woo!” said Trent, still clutching his rolled-up diploma. He was head and shoulders above the crowd, and almost as wide, covered in a gown the size of a small tent. “I suppose I’ll continue being Megaton Lad for the foreseeable future, and help you out on the Phloog farm, Pa. You and Ma have been carrying the load; now it’s my turn to pitch in.”

“Cain’t do that,” said Pa Phloog. “We sold our lot to some developers. They plan one of them newfangled subdivision. Soon these old cornfields will be one big suburban sprawl clear to Detroit, I reckon. Ma and me’ll be goin’ on a Caribbean cruise, just as soon as we kick you out of the house!”

Before Trent could say “Woo!” again, the gentleman with the briefcase had emerged through the crowd, clearing his throat.

“You must be Trent Phloog,” he said. “No one but Megaton Lad could need so much blue fabric. I’m Finlay W. Greeley, with Office 17A.”

“Wha-what makes you think I’m Megaton Lad?” protested Trent. “I’m just a normal civilian teenager in my mid-twenties—belatedly earning my high school diploma. And that’s no made-up secret identity or anything.”

“Don’t be alarmed, young man,” said Greeley. “You work for us—the Pentagon, I mean. I was the handler—that’s government spy talk—of your Grand-Uncle Farley, the Original Golden Age Megaton Man.”

A glimmer of recognition appeared in Trent’s cyclopic red-lensed goggles, which he wore along with the cowl of his Megaton Lad uniform under his graduation gown. “Oh, you’re the kind person who sends me a ‘Property of Uncle Sam and Don’t You Forget It’ T-shirt every Christmas,” said Trent. “Those are very comfortable; thanks.”

“That’s me,” said Greeley. “We have a hell of time getting twelves-times-extra-large manufactured, let me tell you. As you know, your uncle Clyde Phloog—the Silver Age Megaton Man—has been missing for most of the 1960s. Lo, these many years, the country’s had to do without a Megaton Man. That is, until you came of age, Megaton Lad.”

“I’ve had some awfully big shoes to fill,” said Trent.

“Not really,” said Greeley. “The Megaton Men before you were pretty much duds.”

Greeley opened the flap of his briefcase and searched for something within.

“Now that you’ve graduated high school,” Greeley continued, “at the age of twenty-four, the President has decreed the country shall be without a Megaton Man no longer.”

He pulled out a document from a file folder and handed it to Trent. It was decorated with an official-looking seal.

“Woo! A second diploma!” said Trent. “And this one’s even fancier than the first. This must be my lucky day!”

“Read it,” instructed Greeley.

Trent cleared his throat. “Ahem. ‘By the power vested in me, I declare you, Trent Ronald Phloog, hitherto known as Megaton Lad’”—Trent took a hard swallow—“‘the Bronze Age Megaton Man! Signed, Harry Foster Lime, President of the United States!’ Woo!”

“Congratulations, Megaton Lad,” said Greeley. “I mean, Megaton Man! You are now officially America’s Nuclear-Powered Hero. Although that’s what you were when you were just Megaton Lad, too.”

Pa Phloog pulled the rag from the back pocket of his overalls and blew his nose again; Ma Phloog wept openly, soaking her apron.

“This is the happiest day of our lives!” said Ma. “Now we can sail the Carribbean secure in the knowledge that the homeland is in good hands!”

“What’s a ‘bronze age’?” asked Pa. “Is that a kind of sun tan?”

“I don’t know what to say,” said Trent. “Megaton Lad—no more! Megaton Man—from this day forth! If this be my destiny …”

“Save the speeches, kid,” said Greeley, reaching into the inside breast pocket of his suit coat. “Here’s your train ticket—you leave tomorrow for Megatropolis—in your civilian identity, you’ll be working as a reporter for the city’s leading newspaper, the Daily Polis. Here’s your letter of introduction to editor Peregrine Weiss—the address is on the envelope.” He slapped the documents into the palm of Trent’s hand.

“A big-city newspaper reporter?” said Trent. “But sir, I can’t write my way out of a paper bag! Why do you think it took me nearly a decade to graduate high school?”

“Don’t worry; everything’s been arranged,” said Greeley. “We have a long-standing agreement with the Polis. Farley and Clyde … well, they weren’t exactly Ring Lardner or Ernest Hemingway themselves. Luckily, journalistic standards don’t seem to apply when it comes to megahero secret identities. But watch out for the girl reporter, Lois Alamos … she can be a real ball-breaker.”

“Woo!” said Trent. “The Megatropolis Daily Polis! Try saying that three times fast!”

Greeley shook Trent’s hand. “Good luck, kid.”

***

Back at the tiny, ramshackle farmhouse, Trent’s suitcase sat open on his bed, filled to the brim with his civilian clothes. He now wore a green suit over his primary-colored Megaton Man uniform, which was the same uniform he had worn as Megaton Lad. He straightened his maroon tie and checked the tilt of his wide-brimmed Fedora over the blue cowl and goggles in the full-length mirror on the back of his bedroom door. He looked like a caricature of Robert Mitchum circa 1949 if Robert Mitchum had stuffed a mattress and several pillows under his already amply-padded shoulders.

Ma Phloog knocked on the door. The room was so tiny Trent had to move out of the way to open it. Ma entered with a basket of folded underwear which she added to Trent’s suitcase. With effort, she closed the lid. “In case you get murdered in the big city,” said Ma, “you want to be wearing clean underwear.”

Pa Phloog crowded in. He handed his son a brittle, yellow Pennsylvania Railroad schedule; it was dated 1931. “Now, there’s a trick in taking a train into Megatropolis,” counseled Pa, “’cause those coal engines can’t go under the Hudson River … too much smoke for the tunnel. So ya gotta switch to an electric train in New Jersey. At least, that’s the way they did it in my day.”

“The Pennsylvania Railroad?” said Trent, studying at the brittle timetable. “But I’m taking Amtrak!”

“The stop’s called th’ Manhattan Transfer,” said Ma, taking Pa’s arm. “It’s very romantic; your Pa and I spent nine and a half minutes there on our way to Megatropolis for our honeymoon.”

Trent found ‘Manhattan Transfer’ listed between Newark and Penn Station. “Woo!” he said. “It must be an architectural marvel, the way those jazz people sing about it.”

“Actually, it’s a couple platforms in the middle of nowhere,” said Pa, “Ya can’t do nothin’ there but switch trains or wait until they swap engines on the train you’re on. But you won’t have more than a few minutes to wait. Just make sure the conductor lets you off at Manhattan Transfer—if you miss that connection, or sleep through it, you’re liable to end up in Poughkeepsie.”

“I promise,” said Trent. “I won’t miss it. Manhattan Transfer.”

“To get from one platform to the other, there’s a passenger tunnel under the tracks,” said Ma. “That’s what we had to do, run like hell with all our luggage through that darn tunnel.”

“Is it dark and scary?” asked Trent.

“No, it’s very clean and well-lit,” said Pa. “One of the prettiest durn tunnels you’ll ever see.”

“No wonder they still sing its praises!” said Trent.

Trent wrapped his enormous arms around his farmer parents, who were already crushed against him in the tiny bedroom, nearly smothering them.

“You’re the greatest earthling parents an alien orphan could ever ask for!” he sobbed.

“Actually, we’re your natural parents,” said Pa Phloog, gasping for air under the enormous sleeve of Trent’s suit. “That alien business was a bunch of bullshit those fellers at the Pentagon dreamt up, along with the radioactive frog.”

“You’re my real parents?” said Trent, a lump in his throat. “You stumpy little old people? That means I wasn’t raised by a tribe of sentient kangaroos, either!”

“I told ya he was too dumb to figure out we was fibbin’, Pa,” said Ma Phloog.

“What about the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus?” asked Trent.

“That was us too, I’m afraid,” admitted Pa.

“What about the tooth fairy?”

“No, that’s real,” said Ma.

Trent let his parents go and grabbed his suitcase from the bed. He tucked the train schedule into his breast pocket, along with his train ticket and letter of introduction. He was halfway across the lawn when Ma Phloog called out from the porch:

“Remember, cross under at Manhattan Transfer!”

***

On the way to the train station, Trent stopped at another small farmhouse. Stepping up to the porch, he set down his suitcase; in his other hand he clutched a bouquet of flowers and knocked. Nervously, he knocked on the screen door.

Several dogs barked from the rear of the house. In the distance, tractors made their way across the rising corn fields, stretching as far as the eye could see.

A woman carrying a toddler in her arms came to the door. She looked at Trent in his green, oversized Robert Mitchum suit.

“Yes, what is it?” she said. “You’re not a door-to-door salesman, are you? We don’t need no more damn brushes.”

“Suzy!” said Trent, holding out the flowers. “Suzy Saccharin, school sweetheart! It’s me, Trent Phloog! Don’t you recognize me?”

“Who?” said Suzy. “Look, I kinda have my hands full, what with three kids …”

“We went to Microville High School together, class of ‘69,” said Trent. “I just graduated, and now I’m leaving for Megatropolis to become Mega … I mean, a reporter for a big-city daily newspaper … and I thought I’d stop by say goodbye.”

“We went to high school together?” said Suzy. “And it took you this long to graduate?”

“Who is it, Sooze?” came a gruff voice from inside the house. “If it’s a Bible salesman, tell ‘em we don’t want any of that religious crap!”

“It’s somebody named Trevor Pflug,” said Suzy. “Says he went to high school with us.”

An unshaven man in a wife-beater undershirt and a pot-belly came to the door, along with one of the barking dogs; he had a folded up sports section under his arm and a can of beer in one hand.

“Woo! Bullet Bumpkin, school bully!” said Trent. “Are you and Suzy Saccharin married? … or just shacked up?”

“Trent Phloog?!” said Bullet. “The punk we used to stuff into a locker during gym class?” He eyed Trent menacingly. “What do you want?”

“I—I’m leaving town,” said Trent, “and I just wanted to … gulp! … tell Suzy …”

Bullet pushed open the screen door with the can of beer and stepped out onto the porch; he held the ferocious barking dog by a slip-chain collar. “Tell Suzy what, exactly?”

Trent picked up his suitcase and took an unsteady step backwards.

“I, uh … I’ll just, uh, write you a postcard when I get settled into Megatropolis,” said Trent. “I think I hear the train whistle now.”

Trent tossed the flowers, which bounced off of Bullet’s chest, as he backpedaled off the porch. Bullet caught the flowers but let go of the dog. Trent kicked up clouds of dust and he raced clear across the patchy front lawn and down the dirt road, the dog in hot pursuit.

“You do that, Phloog,” shouted Bullet, sniffing the flowers and finding the aroma pleasant. “Send us a pretty picture postcard … loser!”