I AM THE SUN by Sean Manseau

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I AM THE SUN: VIII

by Sean Manseau


People said it was a freak storm, lightning that raked from earth to sky. People said a missile test from White Sands had lost its way and crashed in the pine forest to unleash government-funded hell. People said the mountains gave birth to a daytime star that flared until the old Sol dimmed and shadows were cast to every degree of the compass.

For Shepherd it was a series of disconnected images: June’s eyes erased by a blaze of light, particles of One Man Army’s flesh fleeing his bones like sand driven before a windstorm, a blue van mired in melting tar, Behemoth imploding as gravity increased a thousand-fold in a space defined by his mass.

Shepherd was two atoms become one, he was the sun; he was a god in flight and the apotheosis of power. He was Hyperion.


Six months later, Shepherd and Nicholas sat on the rear deck, watching Sierra Blanca change from white to gold to purple in the setting sunlight.  Summer on the cusp of fall, the pine forest drowsing in afternoon heat, and fireflies that danced through the darkening trees. Shepherd with his left hand sunk in the melting ice of a beer cooler.

In the kitchen, behind the double glass doors, a Joni Mitchell song was playing on the radio. One of June’s friends had played “A Case of You” on the autoharp at the memorial service. After the insurance agent settled on “Act of God-Lightning Strike” the cabin had been rebuilt, even lovelier than before, though the bearskin rug and the player piano and June’s books were all forever lost.

He couldn’t stop seeing her eyes, the way they’d glowed as they’d reflected his transformation, the way they’d burned when he couldn’t control what he’d unleashed. He drank and drank and drank but couldn’t stop seeing. Or forget that he knew the vector of his fate.

After a while, something about the muffled music, the failing light, and the way the moon hung low over the mountain made Shepherd pose the questions that had pressed his heart for so long.

He spoke quietly, without looking away from the view. “What if I just took you back to Rt. 54 and dropped you off where I found you?”

Nicholas sighed. “You could…but you probably shouldn’t. Dr. Cosmos was right; the universe doesn’t play games. You’d live, but it’d probably hurt.”

“Who are you, Nicholas?” Reaching for another beer. Shepherd’s heart was breaking, again. He was Hyperion. He'd been handed the reins to the chariot of the sun. He couldn't deny there was glory in it...but even more horror. He wished that burst of light that had taken June and the house and half the mountain had taken him as well. “And why me?”

Nicholas didn’t answer at first. He sipped lemonade until he was sucking air through the straw. Then he put the glass down, picked up a grocery bag stashed under his chair, and set it in his lap. He said, “Because that’s your fate, Shep. And I’m fate’s tool. Please don’t be angry with me. I’m no more to blame than the hammer that drives the nail.”

After a while Shepherd said, “Did you do what they say you did?” Somehow this hurt the most. “Did you…what did he say? Mentally dominate me?”

“There have been times when I may have...encouraged you...to look the other way. When I was setting things up. But in the future? Never, Shep. Everything you do, you do out of love.”

Shepherd swigged from his can of Schlitz and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Then his eyes. His voice was ragged. “That might be easier if I could forget what hasn’t happened yet.”

Nicholas nodded. “I know. That's why I made this.”

He reached into the bag for his latest creation, the top hat that would someday belong to Dr. Cosmos. When he put it on his head, the hat slid down to his ears, so he had to tilt it back to see. He held out his hand.

“Are you ready?”

Shepherd nodded. He closed his eyes.


…and entered into the dream of the rest of his life.

~fin~

I AM THE SUN: VII

by Sean Manseau

Behemoth gathered the tarp into an improvised sack and began stuffing the bits of broken sentrybot inside. “We’re taking him with us. This crap I’ll get rid of on the mountain. You and Screwball can do some housecleaning. And Dr. Cosmos can memory wipe these two”—jerking a thumb at Shepherd and June—“so all they’ll know is Nicholas has gone missing.”

“We simply cannot do that!” Dr. Cosmos cried. “The possible consequences—”

“Cosmo! I know!” the giant bellowed. “But we have to have that information. We don’t have time to get it out of him now, but I’m confident you’ll succeed eventually. When you do, we’ll put him back just the way we found him, unable to remember where he’s been. It won’t even raise any eyebrows, because that’s how they found him in the first place. We’ve got to get back there before Hyperion destroys the jump portal and we’re stuck here for good.

“I know it’s horribly dangerous. I know that every step we take away from this house with him in our possession is tempting the universe to destroy us where we stand, but every step we do take is more evidence that this is going to work.”

Dr. Cosmos sighed and nodded, accepting defeat. “All right. Let’s get him bundled up.”

Screwball went out to warm up the cars. Behemoth shouldered his load of robot scrap, and Tango went to the closet by the front door to hunt among the coats until she found Nicholas’s green-and-orange goosedown parka. At first Nicholas, still groggy from Dr. Cosmos’s ministrations, allowed her to insert one of his arms in a sleeve, but he seemed to suddenly snap awake and began to yell in terror.

“I don’t want to go with you! Shep! Tell them to let me go!” His voice rose to a squeal. “Shep! Say it! Say I—” Tango shoved him through the open front door, and he was gone.

Shepherd writhed on the cold floor, trying to wriggle forward on one shoulder, his belly and his knees. He shouted for Nicholas, told him not to be afraid, he was coming, but the duct tape blocked his oaths and promises. June, who had been spared the indignity of having her wrists bound to her ankles, was doing better, gaining more ground with a frantic frog-kicking motion, until One Man Army halted her with a thick-soled boot on her throat. Dr. Cosmos walked over to join them, fingering his black top hat. But when he tried to bend down to touch her, the shorter man threw his arm out to stop him.

“You wipe them later,” he said. “When you bring Nicholas back.”

“Nonsense,” Dr. Cosmos said. “We cannot risk leaving a single trace of—”

“I said later!” One Man Army spun him by the shoulder, planted a boot on one skinny buttock, and shoved him towards the door, where Behemoth was waiting. Dr. Cosmos stumbled forward a few steps before catching his balance on the piano, the mashed bass keys sounding in ominous discord.

“How dare you!” he shouted, wounded and ridiculous. He turned to the giant, straightening his coat and tie. “If you will, Andre, restrain our compatriot until I can finish my work.” He turned back to One Man Army, his smug smile faltering when Behemoth failed to lurch past him and toss One Man Army into the next room.

“Go on to the cars, Cosmo.” The giant held the storm door open. Outside, the sun had broken through the low clouds, and melting snow was falling in clumps from the forest’s barren branches. “This isn’t any of your concern.”

Dr. Cosmos’s mouth worked soundlessly for a moment before he managed, “You’re not going to let him—”

“Just go!” Behemoth grabbed Dr. Cosmos by his ruffled Edwardian collar, lifted him off his feet and deposited him on the porch. The screen door slammed shut. Outside, Dr. Cosmos continued to rail. We are heroes! We do not take vengeance!

Shepherd watched this from the floor and knew their last chance was gone. The grim resignation on the giant’s slab of a face made it plain.

“We’ll leave you the station wagon,” Behemoth told One Man Army. “You do what you have to, but don’t tarry. Once we’re back in 2012, the portal is coming down, whether or not you’ve joined us.” He pushed the door open again, pausing on the threshold, his left hand on the knob of the oak inner door. “Duncan, I hope this helps you find some peace.” He closed the door behind him, killing the daylight, and leaving Shepherd and June alone with One Man Army.

"Okay," Lawless said. He looked around the room. “Okay. Okay.” He dragged the coffee table close and righted it. His good hand bunched in the shoulder of June’s work shirt and hauled her to her feet. “Up we go, sweetheart,” he said, then shoved her to sit. She was breathing heavily through her nose, as much from anger as fear, glaring up at him through the hair spilling over her face. Shepherd rocked violently from side to side, trying to get to his knees, which made One Man Army spit, laugh, and kick him so hard Shepherd toppled over on his back. June screamed.

“Here’s the thing,” One Man Army said, pacing between them. “The history books don’t have much to say about what became of Mrs. Lyle Shepherd.” He fished in his pocket for a lighter, sparked it, and puffed his cigar stub to life. “In fact, up to this point, I was always pretty sure there never was a Mrs. Lyle Shepherd, and it’s always just been you and pretty little Nicholas, you boy-loving motherfucker.” Another kick caught Shepherd under the short ribs. He rolled on his side, coughing up blood he was forced to swallow back down.

“I digress.” One Man Army blew a stream of smoke at the ceiling. “The point, Lyle, the point here is we really don’t have any idea of how your wife died. I mean, we’re pretty sure she did die, because she won’t be with you when you and Nicholas arrive in New York in 1979, and you seem too old-fashioned for divorce. So what happened to her? Breast cancer? Car accident? Eaten by bears? Nobody knows. But I have a theory. I just came up with it today. I’m willing to gamble my other hand that I happen to her.”

Shepherd pulling and pulling, tape stretching but not giving way. If he could just get a hand free, maybe grab One Man Army’s boot, yank him off his feet…

One Man Army drew his remaining sidearm and grinned his hard, joyless grin. He used it to part the picture window curtains and held it to catch the light, admiring the Maadi-Griffin’s lethal geometry. “If I didn’t find myself disabled, I’d pop the cartridge and show you the round this bitch fires. Big as my thumb, Lyle. Or your dick.”

The Maadi-Griffin spun in his hand, One Man Army running through a manual of arms to finish by pistol-whipping Shepherd across the jaw and then pressing the barrel to June’s temple. She shied away, whimpering. “Maybe I can’t kill you," he told Shep, "which, honestly, is all I really want in the whole wide world, but I am going to kill your wife. Your own true love, Hyperion, old pal. Right in front of you. Gonna get splashed with her blood, yes you are."

Shep groaned, struggled to sit up.

“And I’m gonna get away with it," One Man Army continued. "Because when they bring Nicholas back, Dr. Cosmos is going to wipe your memory. You know how I know? 'Cause I remember the first time I met you. Baltimore, 2003. You treated me like I was a good ol' boy, and I consider myself a bit of a student of the human condition, so I’m pretty sure I’d know if a guy I just met was holding a grudge about me executing his wife, you know?”

Panic flooded Shepherd’s mind with disjointed thoughts. Had they left with Nicholas yet? Was there a chance Dr. Cosmos might convince Behemoth to intervene? Could he somehow offer his life for his family’s? What was Screwball’s battle cry? Time to bring the heat! Shepherd remembered coming up with that one himself. Good times, he and Nicholas on the porch, shouting catchphrases at each other, laughing like madmen.

One Man Army crouched, gun still in place, so he could address Shepherd more intimately.

“But here’s where I prove I’m better than you, Shepherd,” he whispered. “I’m gonna offer you the mercy you never showed me. Because I am one of the good guys. No matter what that asshole Price thinks."

Screwball said, Time to bring the heat. Tango said, Mind over matter. One Man Army said, Cry havoc.

Had Dr. Cosmos muttered something before he began questioning Nicholas? Shepherd couldn’t remember what it was, but he was pretty sure he had. A big fan of the catchphrase, Nicholas was. Made a character stand out.

And Hyperion was his favorite character of all.

His uniform’s fit that gave him the proportions of a hero. The smooth fabric. I bet I could make it bulletproof. That jolt of the unreal, that feeling something was breaking through into this world from the next.

Shep, say it! Say I—

Shepherd’s heart began to pound.

“I’m gonna let you tell your wife you love her,” One Man Army was saying. “And she’ll hear you…because she hasn’t been blasted to atoms. Are you getting me? Are we clear?” He trapped the gun under his ruined arm, stooped and used his good hand to rip the duct tape from Shepherd’s mouth. “Go ahead, man. Tell her.”

Shepherd coughed, spat out the blood that had been pooling at the back of his throat. Looked at June. June gazed back. Terror in her eyes. And love.

You can’t possibly be considering this, he told himself. You really want those to be the last words she hears? You want to see her not understand, or worse, think you’re making a joke? Tell her you love her, and that you’ll see her soon. Because as sure as the sun will set tonight, he’s going to put a bullet in your head right after he does hers. His other pistol misfiring, that was a fluke. This is for keeps. Tell her you love her, and that you’re sorry you couldn’t save her.

“No?” One Man Army pulled the charging rod, chambering a round. “Nothing?”

Shepherd stretched forward, his wrists bound tight to his ankles, shoulders separating, agony in every joint. “June. June.” Slurring. Shzoon. Hoping she could hear him. He bared his loose teeth, licked his crushed lips. One chance to say it. Say it right. “Junie.” Biting the word off clean. “I…”

…am the Sun.

Part VIII

the Conclusion 

Monday

I AM THE SUN: VI

by Sean Manseau

“What—? Oh man, I forgot all about you, didn’t I, Lyle. Sorry.” Screwball shook his head, snorting laughter. He reached for the roll of duct tape and bit another strip loose. “You don’t get it, man. We’re the good guys.”

“And you used to be one of us,” One Man Army croaked. He slipped forward to the edge of the cushion, holding his bandaged hand high. His skin was gray from loss of blood, and his lip curled until his smile became a rictus. “Until you killed my wife.”

“There it is,” Screwball sighed. After smoothing the tape over Shepherd’s mouth, he patted his cheek. “What do kids do when they’re bored with their toys? They break them, in all sorts of fun and creative ways. But you were always his favorite, Lyle—I don’t think he’s ever going to throw you away. God help you.”

That was when the giant walked into the living room.

Behemoth was nearly eight feet tall; he walked bent over and sideways through the kitchen door, shoved the dining room table aside, and could only stand up straight when he entered the living room. At five hundred pounds, the pine floorboards flexed with his every step. Certain details matched Nicholas’s drawings: he was completely hairless, lacking even eyebrows, and he was wearing a sort of wrestler’s singlet made of steely blue mesh, but instead of a dull glower, his expression had an unmistakable cast of amused intelligence.

Arms loaded with a tarp-wrapped bundle, he indicated One Man Army with a thrust of his chin. “What the hell happened to him?”

Screwball sat on the couch with his cleats up on the coffee table, rolling a baseball over the knuckles of one hand. “He tried to shoot Nicholas, but uh, the gun blew up in his hand.”

Behemoth snorted. “How could that happen? He cleans those things more often than he wipes his ass!”

Dr. Cosmos stood and began to pace. “One Man Army had a misfire because One Man Army is an idiot.” Angry as he was, he still cast a cautious glance towards the love seat before continuing. “We went over this before the jump: the past cannot be undone. We exist; therefore, Nicholas lived long enough to create us. This is immutable. The mere fact we are having this conversation means he will not be killed now. No matter what we do, the universe will take action to frustrate our efforts on that point, no matter how improbable its strategies. I said it before, but let me say it again: we are in a temporal minefield.”

“Cosmo, you do like to hear yourself talk. Is that him?” Behemoth set his bundle down next to the overturned coffee table and stepped past it to loom over Shepherd. His breathing was like the exhaust of an industrial furnace. “Jesus, look how young he is!” One rolling pin finger under Shepherd’s chin tilted his face towards the ceiling. “Cute, too. Never would’ve believed it. But I bet you’re all wondering what I brought you for Christmas.” He grabbed a corner of the tarp and swept it away with a theatrical flourish. “Voila!”

Pieces of what recently, unmistakably had been a robot were piled together: arms, legs, torso and claws, the metal torn, wires dangling and spitting sparks. One of its eyes flickered red light, baleful and blind.

“Finally managed to get into that shed,” Behemoth said. “Pine board on the outside, sheets of carbon fiber nanotube on the inside. Took me twenty minutes to cut into it. This”—prodding a molten lump of electronics with the toe of his boot—“was the welcoming committee. I’ll tell you what, though, it felt pretty damned good mixing it up with one of Nicholas’s toys I could actually take. But I saved the best for last. Check it out.”

He reached behind his back and produced a ball of crumpled blue material, which he shook out and let dangle. A New Mexico State Trooper uniform, only sewn together as a sort of unitard. Instead of standard-issue gray and black, it was cerulean blue with mustard yellow piping, a stylized sunburst on the chest. Just the way Nicholas had carefully colored it for the cover of Avenging Furies #1.

“Christ almighty,” Screwball said, sitting up abruptly. His cleats clattered on the hardwood floor. “It’s Hyperion’s costume!”

Shepherd turned to see June glaring at him. He didn’t need telepathy to know what she was thinking: What the hell have you two been up to out in the shed? He could only shake his head. He had no idea what Nicholas had been up to. But it had something to do with these people. No matter how insane their story, he sensed they weren’t lying. The real world was beginning to shred like a dream on waking, leaving only that uncanniness, that unceasing bad dream jolt.

“No it’s not.” Behemoth tossed the costume into the fireplace, where it smoked and caught flame. “It’s a sham. Not even a prototype. No psionic amplifiers, and the molecular structure of the material is completely stable. No way to tell if that’s because he hasn’t, at this point, solved the half-life problem, or if it’s just plain ol’ polyester. But there was plenty of other good stuff in the shed. I took nanoscale scans of everything, right down to the dried-up mouse turds on top of the roof beams.”

Screwball hushed him with a wave. Hand to his ear, he stared into the middle distance.

“We’ve got real problems back in 2012, boss,” he said to Price. “Nicholas has found the bunker, and now Hyperion and a few of Nicholas’s latest science projects are staging an assault. Cannonade says they can hold them off for a bit, but—”

“How long?” Dr. Cosmos asked.

“He says twenty minutes. Half-hour tops.”

“And how long will it take us to drive back to the jumpzone?”

Behemoth checked his over-sized wristwatch. “We can make it, but we’ve got to go now. You get what you need from him?”

Dr. Cosmos looked dejected. “I haven’t been able to get anything from him. I knew that Nicholas was at least a low-level telepath—it was the most obvious explanation for the way he mentally dominated Shepherd over the years.”

Shepherd started. Mentally dominated?

Price went on. “I was hoping that this early on, though, he might’ve been largely ignorant of his own talents…however, he’s parried my every thrust. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised: he designed my telepathic augmentation, after all. I’ve always resisted the idea of omniscience, but there’s a strong chance he designed my abilities so that I might read and influence everyone but him, with this future situation specifically in mind.”

“Blah blah blah,” Tango said, tugging her Mohawk into indignant spikes. “What are we going to do?”

Part VII

Continues 

Sunday

I AM THE SUN: V

by Sean Manseau

“Duncan’s right,” said the gangling kid. June was on the floor with his knee in the small of her back. He’d already taped her mouth shut, and once he’d expertly bound her wrists and kicking feet, he stood to strip of his own coveralls. A baseball uniform, of all things, that was what he had on underneath: red with white stripes, a baseball pierced with a Philips-head screw on the chest. With its red metallic greaves, gauntlets, and helmet, it was an outfit more suited to combat than throwing strikes.

“You've got my vote,” the girl added. "Let’s just waste him and be done with it." She had stripped down to a simple black body suit, with a neckline that plunged to her navel and gloves and boots that matched her shocking pink hair.

“Damn straight!” One Man Army said, pulling on the Maadi’s charging arm to chamber a round.

Sighing, Price pushed himself up from the love seat.

“Lawless,” he said, “I know idiocy comes naturally to you, but try not to infect your impressionable young teammates.” He stepped out of his coveralls to reveal his black suit had acquired a velvety sheen, and the sleeves and collar of his white shirt had grown Edwardian ruffles. He pulled a collapsed top hat from a pocket of the coveralls, popped it to full extension, and settled it on his salt-and-pepper hair. “Any attempt to harm Nicholas will most certainly have very grave consequences. We went over and over this.”

“For Christ’s sake!” Shepherd cried. He had to make some sense of this if he was going to make a plan. Maybe they were a Manson-style family whose desert compound Nicholas had escaped? Psychos that liked to dress up as comic book characters, and that’s where he’d gotten his ideas? “He’s just a kid. Stop pointing that gun at him!”

“Tango, you have him?” Price asked.

“For now,” the girl answered. “He’s strong, though. I’m already getting tired. Hurry up with the little wifey, Timmy.”

“Coming, I’m coming,” the gangling kid grumbled. He hauled June over to the couch and then came back for Shepherd.

Shepherd didn’t recognize the girl, but the gangling youth’s costume brought another lurch of vertiginous unreality. He was dressed up as Screwball, originally a member of the Assailants Association, but who later defected to the Avenging Furies because he was in love with the beauteous Ne Plus Ultra. Screwball threw baseballs that exploded, baseballs that could stun, freeze, burn or paralyze. Dazed, Shepherd groped for Screwball’s battle-cry; all of Nicholas’s heroes had one. Then he had it: Time to bring the heat!

“Let’s stop fucking around,” One Man Army said around the unlit cigar stub clenched between his teeth. “We came for intel, so let’s collect some fucking intel. Straight from the horse’s mouth, as it were.” He combed back Nicholas’s blond bangs with the Mahdi’s delta sight. “What do you say, kid?”

Price stepped closer, but seemed to rethink laying a restraining hand on the man’s shoulder. “If you just give me a moment to prepare, I can telepathically—”

“Shut the fuck up, Dr. Cosmos,” One Man Army sneered. “We’re doing this my way.”

Whey-faced, Nicholas sought Shepherd’s eye. His mouth began to form a question, maybe Why is this happening? or worse, Why aren’t you doing something, Shep?

It was almost a relief when he said, “Why are you all dressed like one of my comic book guys?”

One Man Army grabbed the boy’s chin and turned his head back to face him. “Don’t play dumb, Nicholas. I think your little riff about time travel means you know exactly why we’re here. The question is, why are you here? Come on, now, don’t be scared. Speak up. Where are you from?”

Nicholas cried, “I’m from here!”

“Before that!” One Man Army roared. “Before Hyperion found you. Where are you from? What are you?”

Screwball was just beginning to wind the tape around Shepherd’s head, and he managed to wiggle free long enough to shout, “What is he? He’s a little boy, you maniac!”

Screwball smacked him across the back of the head. “Yeah, and thirty years from now, he’ll still be a little boy, Lyle, you dumbass. He’s gonna be ten years old forever. For all we know, he’s always been ten years old.” He paused to listen to his hearing aid. “Dr. Cosmos, Cannonade says that Nicholas has hunter/killers conducting sweeps about 100 klicks to the north and east of the bunker’s position. He’s getting nervous.”

“Tell him we’ll be on our way in two shakes of a pole-dancer’s tits,” One Man Army said. Then to Nicholas: “Listen to me, freak. I’m gonna count to three. If you don’t tell us where’re you’re from and what you’re doing here, I’m going to put a bullet between your eyes.” One Man Army stood and pushed Nicholas to stand against the piled slate wall of the hearth. “One.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Nicholas cried.

“Two.” One Man Army cocked the pistol’s firing hammer—tchak—a tiny mechanical sound that seemed to command a profound moment of silence.

“Shep! Help me!”

Shepherd helpless in his bonds, June with her eyes bugging, screaming behind the gagging tape and bucking as Tango pushed her back against the couch, Dr. Cosmos almost flapping his hands as he sputtered, “Don’t you understand the universe—”

One Many Army said, “Three.”

The report was deafening, the flash lasting only an instant, but searing the retinas. Then One Man Army was howling in pain, his gun hand clutched between his knees. Two of his fingers lay on the floor and one was stuck, jellied, to a picture it had toppled on top of the piano, Shepherd and June smearing cake across each other’s face, the frosting now tinted with blood.

Nicholas, unharmed, scurried back to huddle in the corner behind the end table. Shep could only watch as Tango extended a hand to float One Man Army to the loveseat, where Screwball bandaged his hand kitchen towels and more duct tape. June alternated between goggling at them and Shepherd. Shepherd stared back, trying to will the thought into her head: Don’t worry. Don’t worry. We’ll find a way out of this. Feeling so guilty, as if somehow this was all his fault.

Dr. Cosmos dragged Nicholas, thrashing and kicking, to the couch beside June, where he alternated between cooing Nicholas, relax, close your eyes and relax and screaming for Tango to get over there and hold the brat still already. At one point a tremendous explosion somewhere outside seemed to rock the house on its foundations and the Avenging Furies had leapt to their feet. The tableau of the four of them posed there, ready for action, was so uncanny Shepherd felt like he was falling backward down a deep black hole. They looked just as Nicholas would have drawn them.

After a tense moment Dr. Cosmos put a hand to his earpiece. He nodded at the rest of them to relax and returned to attempts to cajole Nicholas into conversation. The sulfur stink of expended ammunition hung in the room, burning Shep's sinuses. In the aftermath of One Man Army’s accident they’d forgotten to gag him. He’d bided his time, kept quiet. But now Shepherd twisted his neck to look up at Screwball. Abject begging his only option.

“Nicholas has never hurt anyone,” he said quietly. “Please, let him go.”

Part VI

Continues 

Saturday

I AM THE SUN: IV

by Sean Manseau

Nicholas sat down next to him and untied the strings of the portfolio. “Me and Shep collaborate on this.” He looked to June. “Is that the right word?”

“It is,” she said, smiling. To Price she added, “For the record I don’t approve of comic books. But boys will be boys, I guess. Whether they’re ten, or”—she smiled slightly at Lyle—”thirty-five.”

The pink-haired girl led Lawless to the couch on the other side of the coffee table. June, trailing a reassuring hand across Shepherd’s back as she passed, went into the kitchen to make them some coffee. Shep remained standing with arms folded tight, as the Bristol sheets of their unbound comic book were handed around.

“I draw everything,” Nicholas explained. “But me and Shep come up with the stories together.”

Page after page detailing the adventures of Hyperion, master of the forces that power the sun, and his sidekick Teslaboy, a prodigy of technology whose creations got him into terrible jams almost as often as they saved the day. Among his myriad other talents, Nicholas was a remarkable draftsmen, and Hyperion and Teslaboy unmasked were faithful renditions of Shepherd and himself.

The pink-haired girl, looking grim, turned a page around for them all to see and tapped a panel with a lacquered nail: Hyperion igniting and taking to the sky. “It says, ‘I am the Sun.’”

“That’s his catch phrase,” Shepherd offered. “Helps with the characterization.” June, returning with the coffee, gave him a withering glare. Shep grimaced in acknowledgement. He needed to look like an adult here, not an overgrown kid. But looking over their shoulders at carefully inked panels, he couldn’t help thrill at what he and the boy had made. The stories were uneven, but the stuff that was good rivaled anything Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had ever dreamed up. Sometimes when he and Nicholas were on the cabin’s rear deck, drinking iced tea and excitedly coming up with new plot lines, Shep got just the faintest sense of how it would feel to be Hyperion, a man with powers so great they’d all but burned away his humanity. It was glorious.

Duncan Lawless let out a surprised grunt and slumped back on the couch, one hand clamped to his face, while the other let loose a sheet of paper that the gangling youth caught as it drifted to the floor. The pink-haired girl leaned in to see as his eyes scanned the page, and then he breathed, “Holy shit, it’s her!”

They’d found Arcane, Mistress of the Dark Arts, a pin-up girl with a nimbus of white curls and a skirt slit high on one thigh. She and her husband, the super-powered soldier-of-fortune One Man Army, were locked in fierce combat, Arcane struggling to land a killing blow, One Man Army desperately trying to destroy the alien implant that was controlling her actions.

Tentatively, June set the coffee service on the table before them and then drew back to clutch Shep’s arm, puzzled and frightened. He raised a single eyebrow in response—he didn’t know what was going on, either. He was getting the bad feeling that these people were not who they claimed to be. But with Nicholas in their midst, Shepherd's ability to act was greatly circumscribed. He needed to get the boy back upstairs.

Price had tented his fingertips and pressed them to his lips. “Thirty years ago. He had it all planned out. I wonder if there are sketches of the rest of us.”

Lawless’s shoulders were shaking. The man was crying, Shep realized. What the hell—? “This issue was pretty good,” Nicholas said dismissively, as he collected the pages and slid them carefully back into the portfolio. “But the next one is gonna be boss. You want to hear what it’s about?”

“Certainly,” Price said, glancing around at his crew.  “I think we’d be very interested to know.”

“Well, the thing is, I was kind of stuck. Because I’d given the Avenging Furies—that’s this group of heroes that my main guy, Hyperion, leads—I’d given them this villain that was just too powerful.” Nicholas set a cup and saucer in front of Price, and then used both hands on the pot to carefully pour the coffee. “No matter what I tried, I couldn’t think of a way for them to beat him. A couple of them even got killed trying, which I felt bad about. But there are rules, you know? You can’t just make anything you want happen so there’ll be a happy ending. There had to be a way for them to win, though. Then I started thinking, well, if they can’t beat him now, what if they could time travel, go into the past and find out information that will help them beat him in the future? But the problem with that is—”

Lawless surged from his seat between the gangling kid and the pink-haired girl, clawing for the zipper at his collar. He shouted, “Cry havoc!” and in one motion ripped his black coveralls off. Underneath he was wearing a skintight body-suit, something one of those Olympic ski-jumpers might wear, and Christ, was the guy built, every muscle swollen and straining.

Almost faster than Shep could follow, he threw the coffee table aside to seize Nicholas from the loveseat and slam him to the floor among the television parts scattered at the foot of the fireplace. Nicholas screamed in pain and terror. And now Lawless had a gun in his hand, easily the largest handgun Shepherd had ever seen. The barrel alone as long as the man’s forearm, the muzzle wide as a screaming mouth, and pointed at the boy's blond head.

June screamed and lunged for them. Shepherd blocked her with his left arm as he drew his own weapon, a movement he had practiced thousands of times, had actually executed twice in the line of duty, but never, ever imagined having to perform in his own home. He bellowed, “Drop it! Drop it!”

“He knows, Cosmo,” Duncan said. He didn’t even glance Shepherd’s way.  “I don’t know how, but he does. Christ, he’s fucking with us, can't you see that?"

Shepherd shot him.

And missed. Except he couldn’t have missed; he was standing eight feet away, aiming center mass on a chest as wide as an oil barrel, his shoulder, hand, and gun sight in perfect alignment with his will. But he had to have missed, because when he fired, Duncan lurched backwards and hit the fireplace hard enough to dislodge the de Kooning print June had hung above the mantle, but he did not fall. He looked down at his chest, impossibly unmarked, then up at Shepherd.

And grinned.

A girl’s voice cried “Mind over matter!” and an invisible hand, soft and yielding as warm dough, but massive and irresistible as a construction crane, pinned Shepherd’s arms to his body and he was off his feet, accelerating to smash against the rough boards of the ceiling twenty feet above, then against the silver-framed daguerreotypes on the wall, then back against the piano.

“Enough!” Price shouted.

Shepherd slid to the floor, still restrained by that invisible hand, concussed and trying to suck air back into his lungs. His nose had broken against one of the lodge’s rafters and blood was trickling down the back of his throat. He was vaguely aware that June was close by, screaming in rage. But his primary concern was Nicholas, who wasn’t making a sound, and Duncan, with his artillery.

“I say we do him right now!” he was bellowing. “This might be our only chance. I say we do him now, and fuck all that egghead bullshit. I’m not going anywhere. Temporal paradoxes can suck my cock.”

Duncan’s bodysuit was camouflage, Shepherd could see now, but an odd sort, little square blocks of olive, gold and black instead of the tiger stripe he had worn in Vietnam. Over his shoulders he wore a combat harness laden with ammo pouches and grenades, and huge black holsters were strapped to his legs, one empty, the other filled by another preposterously huge pistol. On his chest: a yellow Roman numeral I in a circle.

Shepherd blinked at him, trying to will the situation to come into focus, and suddenly it did, with the very last word in bad dream jolts. One Man Army. The guy was dressed up as One Man Army! One of the Avenging Furies, the superhero squad that battled all the villains populating Nicholas’s imagination: Some Disassembly Required, Caterwaul, Abbatoir, His Name Is Legion.

This couldn’t be happening; One Man Army was not real. But that gun pointed at Nicholas’s head undeniably was. A Maadi-Griffin .50 caliber, impossible for a normal man to hold steady with one hand, but One Man Army was no normal man, was he?

Part V

Continues 

Friday

I AM THE SUN: III

by Sean Manseau


June clutched his arm. “Lyle, I don’t think that’s—”

“As they say, Trooper Shepherd, we can do this the easy way, or the hard way.” An ingratiating smile broke across Price’s face, like dawn on a dark plain. “We’d like to meet the boy. Talk with him for a bit. Get a sense of who he is, how his surroundings do or do not accommodate his needs.” His eyes hardened. “But if we leave now, be assured we’ll return with a court warrant, and a police escort. Nicholas will be coming with us then, to stay at Las Cruces Home for Boys until such time as this matter is sorted out…and as you know, the wheels of bureaucracy can turn quite slowly.”

“Sir, that’s not going to happen." Shepherd gave Price his best cop glare, but the words came out strangled. "You are not taking my nephew to that hellhole.”

“He’s upstairs. I’ll get him.” They both turned to look at June. She gazed steadily back at Shepherd, squeezing his hand. “He’ll be fine, Lyle. I’ll explain to him who these people are, and why they want to talk to him. He’s a smart kid. He’ll understand.”

Shepherd said, “You know how imaginative he is. He hears about Las Cruces, it’ll give him nightmares.” But by the time the last words were out of his mouth, he knew—he was hoping—that she was right, that Nicky would grasp what was at stake and play his role convincingly.

“It’ll be fine,” June repeated, and walked into the living room, headed for the stairs. And then she said, “What are you doing to my television set?!”

Shepherd pivoted on his heel to step back into the living room. Dr. Price followed. In the corner next to the fireplace, the console TV had been pulled away from the wall, the back removed, and the gangling kid and the Mohawked girl were kneeling amidst its disassembled innards.

Some of the parts, the vinyl-coated wires, the capacitors, the vacuum tubes, Shepherd recognized from high school electronics class. Other parts, though, he couldn’t place, like an hourglass that seemed to contain a tiny sun burning in each bulb, and a crystalline structure that gave every appearance of breathing. Above these the girl held her little device at different angles. Flashes went off, as if she was taking photos, but Shepherd heard no click of a shutter, and she wasn’t winding film.

The gangling kid grinned at them over his shoulder. “Got some bona fide early-era Nicholas tech here, Cosmo.”

“Lyle?” said June, her hand on the banister.

“Go ahead and get Nicky,” Shepherd told her. “I’ll handle this.” He rubbed the 5 o'clock stubble on his cheek and turned back to Price. "Sir, I'm trying to be cooperative here, but why is my TV being taken apart?"

Price waved a hand at the detritus covering the floor. “Would you mind telling us what that is, Trooper Shepherd?”

“Goddammit, it was my goddamn twenty-seven inch Magnavox," Shep said, and his voice was rising, a bad idea when you're dealing with bureaucrats, but he was beyond caring. "You’d better hope your department has the budget to—”

Somewhere toward the back of the house, a door squealed open and slammed shut. From the kitchen came the sharp report of boot heels on linoleum, a man rasped “Cosmo! Hey, Cosmo! Out in the shed there’s—” and then the door to the dining room swung open, admitting a short, barn beam-shouldered man who stopped dead when he saw Shepherd.

The man’s eyes widened. His nostrils flared. His mouth tried on and discarded surprise, disgust, and trembling rage before settling on a sort of fearsome half-smile. He began to unzip his coveralls, muttering, “Well, I’ll be dicked!” while covering the floor between himself and Shepherd in strides that were nearly a charge. Without time to think, instinct took over. Shepherd dropped into a wrestler’s crouch, bracing for impact, and then the girl with the pink Mohawk was between them, intercepting the short man with her forearms against his barrel chest.

“Duncan! Duncan!” she said, as the man tried to force his way past. “We’ve got a plan, right? In and out and don’t leave a trace, right? We’re on a schedule, remember?”

“What's your problem, man?" Shepherd said. Obviously this Duncan thought he knew him, but nothing about the man’s features—broken nose, blond crew cut, sharply dimpled chin—jogged any recollection. The main thing was that look he had—grunts coming out of the jungle after combat had that look. The thousand yard stare. Shep looked to the CYFD supervisor. "What is this, Price?”

“I apologize, Trooper Shepherd,” Price said, inserting himself into Shep’s line of sight. “Mr. Lawless...appears to have mistaken you for someone else. Isn't that so, Duncan?"

"Yeah," the man mumbled, not turning his eyes from Shepherd's. "Yeah, that must've been it."

"A regrettable misunderstanding," Price said. "Now, please, Trooper Shepherd, answer my question. This device in your television. It's obviously homemade. Potentially dangerous, a fire risk. Can you explain it?”

“I think I’m pretty much done explaining anything to you,” Shep said. The hell with the CYFD and any court order they might obtain. At this point, Shep was angry enough to take to the hills and fight it out. Unconsciously his right hand fell to the butt of his gun. “Except maybe that if you and your people are not out of here in ten seconds, things are going to get ugly.”

Someone cleared their throat loudly. June was on the stairs. “Lyle,” she said, “I’m sure you can show Nicholas that grown-ups settle their problems with their voices, not their fists. Can’t you?”

“Jesus,” said the pink-haired girl under her breath. She was staring up at Nicholas, who was crouched with his face pressed between the banister rails to stare back.

Glancing around, Shep saw all the CYFD workers were looking at Nicholas with something close to awe. All except the man Lawless. Shepherd returned his glare, thinking this was the strangest damned crew of social workers he’d ever heard of.

But staredown or no, Shepherd knew he had to calm his temper. June was right. If they played nice with the CYFD people, answered their questions politely, there was still a chance Shep could get Nicholas into the system, and secure the boy's place in their lives.

“As far as the TV goes,” June said, leading the boy by the hand into the living room, “Nicholas likes to tinker. We’re considering home schooling him, so he can apply for early admission to MIT or Cal Tech. I think he could be a famous inventor. The Thomas Edison of the 21st century, maybe.”

“I don’t want to be an inventor, though.” Nicholas hadn’t grown any taller in the six months since he’d come to live with them, although he’d put on about ten pounds from June’s cooking. He was wearing his favorite t-shirt, the one with the iron-on of the Eagle shuttle from “Space: 1999”, and green Toughskins that were worn at their reinforced knees. Under his arm he held a cardboard portfolio. “Not all the time, anyway.”

“No?” asked Price, his voice unsteady. “What else would you like to do?”

“Make comics!” Nicholas said. He brandished the portfolio before him. “Wanna see?”

Shepherd groaned inwardly. The kid wasn’t going to show them the books, was he? Price perched at the edge of the love seat and patted the coffee table. “I would love to see, Nicholas.”

Part IV

Continues 

Thursday