That was my spring 1985 semester in a nutshell, completing my first year of grad school.

It wasn’t the entire semester of course; just the main highlight. I still had several weeks of finishing up my classes, both those that I taught and those I was taking, along with seminars. But grading papers and all that stuff is boring, so you get the gist of it.

I did get a nice present from Imelda: she sent me a box of books curated from her collection, or came from the Border Worlds Used and Slightly New Bookstore. I don’t imagine she shoplifted them—hopefully she got a good employee discount. Still, I would have to buy her dinner next time I was in Ann Arbor, or get her a nice gift. The books were spooky, kind of frightening, in fact—all on the occult and comparative mythology and angels and demons and stuff. “I find a corollary between the notion of Multimensionals you mentioned in your talk,” she wrote in her accompanying note, “and the Bodhisattvas who stand guard between the dimensions. Let’s talk some more soon, after you read up on it.” Great, more homework.

I had a debriefing of sorts with Michele over at the Charles Merrill Ferry house; it was midweek and school was out so she closed the gallery with the Egyptian antiquities collection—technically the Helen Merrill Ferry Philological Institute of Oriental and Occidental Studies at Warren Woodward University—and we sat down on a Persian rug she rolled out right there in the middle of the gallery. She lit some incense and we sat down, cross-legged, Indian-style. She wore biker shorts and a loose-fitting tank top, no bra, I wore athletic shorts and a halter top. She had taken off her sandals, I my tennis shoes.

“I feel kind of left out,” I told her. Her eyes were closed; she was meditating, but listening intently.

“What makes you say that?” she asked.

“I just get the eerie sense that there are things going on that I’m no privy to, that I’m not being told about, because I’m so busy with school. I hardly had a megaheroic adventure at all this past semester, and I hardly get any news from the Troy+Thems—even Fanny, and they are all supposed to be my friends. Even Avie hasn’t mentioned the West Forest Knight Rangers for months.”

“Perhaps they just realize you’re busy with school and don’t want to burden you.”

“Yes, but I’m an auxiliary member,” I said. “I’m America’s Nuclear Powered Hero—by default, if nothing else. My real father’s gone from this dimension, and Trent’s retired …”

“You have your role to play,” said Michele. “We need more educated crime fighters, not another over-muscled, costumed goon.”

“Yes, but …”

“I don’t hear from them much, either, Clarissa, if it makes you feel any better. I could find out, telepathically, what they’re up to, but why bother? They’ve got it taken care of.”

“Did you know the they’ve fought UFOs and robots and a gang of megavillains from Jackson State Penitentiary?”

“I suppose I’ve heard rumbles to that effect.”

“It seems like my only interaction with megaheroes or the megaheroic life at all is when somebody comes to me on a personal level, needing a friend or whatever.”

“That’s a blessing, isn’t it? You’re trusted; they know you’ll understand. You’re one of them.”

“But I feel kinda underutilized in the adventure department. Not that I want to get my ass kicked all the time—it’s exhausting.”

“You’re being spared the rigors of a full-time megahero career,” intoned Michele. “Be thankful. There’s more where that came from; you’ll have plenty of adventures in the future; I can feel it.”

“I’m being saved for a rainy day,” I said. “Even Gene doesn’t tell me what going on …”

“Gene’s not a Troy+Them,” Michele pointed out. “Megaheroes don’t hang out swapping gossip all the time. There’s no newsletter you’re missing out on …”

“Except the Origin Legion,” I pointed out. “The retirees who hang out at that bar in Tudor City.”

“Let it go from your mind,” counseled Michele. “Relax, enjoy your time of tranquility. You’re a peripheral character in their world right now, but you’re the main character in your own. Don’t worry about other people’s realities; let them work it out. You’ll be involved soon enough.”

It was true; I didn’t know on a day-to-day basis what was going on in Troy, or Megatropolis, or with my next-door neighbor who was a premed student, or the accountant three blocks away.

“You don’t have to be in an alternate dimension to have separate realities,” said Michele. “Each of our lives is a separate reality, and here we all are, in one shared universe.”

***

I supposed the Asp was right—after all, she must have accumulated some wisdom after five-thousand years of reincarnation or whatever. As I walked the several blocks back to my apartment—after making love with Michele for over an hour—I realized I was just working though my typical post-semester let-down, the melancholy that always hit me after final exams.

It was a warm, hazy summer afternoon, overcast enough so as not to need sunglasses, and not yet the full-on humidity of summer. The Museum of Fine Arts, the public library, and Warren Woodward campus were all sparsely populated; it felt like off-season in the University-Cultural Center, typical of Midtown Detroit as summer fast approached.

When I walked in the front door of my apartment, acrid cigarette smoke hit my nostrils.

Secret Agent Preston Percy, in his dress shirt and tie, slacks, and polished shoes was using some sort of ceramic art thing Avie had bought at the last Ditty in the City as an ashtray.

“What the fuck are you smoking now?” I asked. “Cinnamon-flavored bidis or some shit? Christ, it’s acrid.” I cracked the window behind the sofa and looked about for the box fan.

“Nice seeing you, too, Clarissa,” said Preston. “Aren’t you wondering what brings me to your neck of the woods?”

“Didn’t I just see you in Troy? You could have debriefed me then. I just had a check-in with Michele—I’m still in the afterglow.”

“Mostly Preston’s here to drop me off,” announced Kozmik Kat, who marched into the living room from the hall leading to the kitchen. He had a plate of fried chicken he’d reheated and a bottle of Faygo Red Pop, and a tea towel wrapped around his neck as a bib.

“Hey, those are my leftovers!” I said.

“Don’t worry—you can order pizza later,” said Koz, plopping down on a beanbag chair my sister Avie had just acquired from a graduating senior in the theater department. “Where’s that slinky chick, Saxie? I haven’t seen her around.”

“You mean Dr. Sax?” I said. “Haven’t seen her for weeks. Don’t tell me you came back to Detroit because you’re hung up on a black cat that doesn’t even talk? That’s pervy.”

“A man has needs,” said Koz. “Even if that man happens to be a cat. But no, I came back to this rusty dump of a town because I’m outta the Megatropolis Quartet, and hanging around Bing has become insufferable. Yarn Man’s just tending bar full-time at the Origin Legion. He took an early retirement from the Quartet and gets paid under the table at Tudor City so he can still collect Social Security.”

“He’s not that old,” I said. Then, calculating in my mind, “Well, maybe he is. Rex is the only original member still in the Quartet, then?”

“There’s been a shake-up all around,” said Preston. “As you know, Rubber Brother and the Phantom Jungle Girl returned to Michigan; they’ve joined the Troy+Thems. Liquid Man has some new recruits—the Megatropolis Quartet now consists of Dana, the Quantum Leaper, and Big, Blue Bulky Guy.”

“Dana Dorman has gone to New York?” I said, surprised. “No wonder the weather in the Midwest is so tranquil.”

“She calls herself Dark Domina now,” said Preston. “Somehow, that strikes me as redundant. In any case, the four of them wear black costumes now; there’s a concern that Rex is rebranding them as a vengeful megavillain team.”

“You wouldn’t recognize Big, Blue Bulky Guy now,” said Koz, wiping fried chicken grease from is whiskers onto the tea towel. “He’s still big and blue, or course, but now he wears thick, black-rimmed Ray-Bans. He’s somehow learned to retain the intellectual side of his Mervyn Goldfarb persona when he’s all bulked out.”

“I was just talking to someone about how I’m out of the loop when it comes to megahero gossip,” I said. “Now I can see I’m not missing out on much—news from the megahero world is fairly boring. Is there anything I really need to know?”

“There is one thing,” said Preston, snuffing out his cigarette in the ceramic art thing. “We’ve picked up an object orbiting the earth …”

“You mean like the ICHHL killer satellite? The Blow Dryer? That isn’t exactly news.”

“Something else. Something just as big, but cloaked. We can’t get a good read on it …”

“Maybe the Soviets have caught up with America,” I conjectured. “Maybe they built an orbiting space station for their secret agents, too.”

“It’s not terrestrial,” said Preston.

“I told him it was from the Forbidden Future,” said Koz.

“Run into it with the hairdryer,” I said. “Even if it’s invisible …”

“First, we’d never use our multi-billion-dollar satellite as a battering ram,” said Preston. “And second, I told you, we can’t get a bead on it—it keeps projecting phantom images thousands of miles away. We don’t know which one’s which.”

“A starship from another galaxy,” I said. “I guess with the Partyers from Mars in the neighborhood, I shouldn’t be surprised. You’re not asking me to put on my Ms. Megaton Man uniform, fly up there, and check it out, are you? Because the last time I was up in the stratosphere—in fact, the only time—and you guys sucked me up with a tractor beam into the Blow Dryer, I nearly died from lack of oxygen, remember?”

“I’m not asking you to do anything,” said Preston, who set the ceramic art thing down on the coffee table and stood up. “It would be a fool’s errand—didn’t you hear me just say? We can’t even locate the darn thing for sure; we just know it’s there. I’m just giving you a head’s up.”

“What do they want?” I asked. “Are they just observing earth?”

“How the hell would I know? The point is, we’re keeping an eye on it, and if things change, it might be all hands on deck. You might actually have to earned that retainer you enjoy, courtesy of your grandmother, Clarissa.”

“Well, Kozmik Kat and I will remain alert,” I said.

Preston said goodbye to us and left, walking out the front door. We didn’t hug.

“You have a warm, friendly relationship with your secret agent handler,” Koz observed. “Can you get me another Red Pop?”

“Is there anymore chicken left?” I asked. “I’m hungry.”

***

That, my friends, is how my summer of 1985 began, what I’d later refer to as my Starship Summer. For all intents and purposes, I had long since become a peripheral character in my own megahero saga, more or less the narrator of other people’s adventures. Although, as you can tell if you read this far, I had a lot more going on in my life than megaheroics. One year of grad school down, one left to go. Strange objects orbiting the earth notwithstanding, I expected it to be uneventful, and for the most part, it was. But I’ll let you be the judge of that.

End of Volume V