Minister Faust by From (html) (best ereader for pdf txt) 📗

“You got to get the move on, your groove on! It’s time for PG’s smooth song, the lube song! And o-o-o-O-O-uh-uh-UH-UH-UH—”

she intoned, rippling in her trademarked R&B/gospel trill,

“—can you think! slink! and JINK like ME?”

In a Squirrel Burger blink, sixty diners of all ages, body shapes, races, and genders simply disappeared.

Replacing them instantly, in the same chairs and the same poses, were threescore uniformed Power Grrrls, “booty-shaking” their way behind the original as she dancebeat them to safety outside and away.

A moment later, a gray-haired man in plaid slacks shuffled his way out of the restroom, reclasping his eagle-shaped “Elvis” belt buckle. Swooping down on him, the Brotherfly plucked him up and out of the restaurant an instant before CycloTron flattened the diner into an inch-high greasy crust of flaming rubble and burning food products.

Burning Bridges

Checking my display, I clicked myself over to the fringes of mainland Los Ditkos where the X-Man and Flying Squirrel were speeding at 160 miles an hour over fractured highway right behind the thundering CycloTron. Lacking any real opposition, the hurricane wheel had ceased aiming its particle beams—otherwise X-Man and Flying Squirrel would have been reduced to nothing but costumed puffs of smoke.

“Omnipotent Man, Iron Lass,” shouted the X-Man into his comm, “what in the hell’re you two doing in southeast Los Ditkos? We’ve gotta stop this thing out here!”

“Wellsir,” crackled back the voice of Omnipotent Man, “we can’t let this here monsterosity cross the Centurion Bridge over to Bird Island. If downtown Los Ditkos is destroyed, th’whole free ennerprise system of the state could be at stake!”

“So you’re gonna bring down that big metal bastard in my neighborhood? So what if all the coloreds buy it, so long as you can save Ivory Town?”

“Son,” snapped the Squirrel, “this isn’t the time for your Zulu goddamned nationalism, do you hear me? For once in your life, listen to people who know what they’re actually doing and let them bring down this giant steel cocksucker like they know how to!”

“Old man, we can clear the path to Centurion Bridge, destroy the bridge, and drown this motherfucker in the river, we can destroy CycloTron here while we still can, or I can personally rip you to pieces and fry you into hot wings. Now either shut your caviar-hole or help me blast this freak—or better yet, both!”

“And how do you suggest we do that, Rochester?”

“What’s its power source?”

Even behind the mask, the Flying Squirrel’s eyes glinted. “Get me as close as you can to that super-colliding sonofa-bitch!”

As if he were piloting a ship in a tsunami, X-Man ripped at the steering wheel, hurtling along in the ditch at station-keeping with the giant wheel’s hub, all the while dodging the storm of crushed cars, spinning street lamps, and flying trees pouring down on them. Dialing his comm, the Flying Squirrel waited for his connection and then unleashed thirty seconds of fury at the person on the opposite end.

Instantly CycloTron’s lights went black. Slowly, the peak of its rotation dipped left, and the device fell straight for the Ford Fairlane.

X-Man cranked hard to the right, arcing 180 degrees east.

Behind him, the entire mile-high apparatus that was CycloTron plummeted. From that height, the distance to fall was so great that the descent appeared to be in slow motion, until the wheel clapped the earth with a sound like God backfiring His truck, turning every window within four miles of the shock wave into a mutilating hurricane of slivered glass.

“I can’t believe you pathetic bunch of cripples!” snapped the Flying Squirrel, ripping off his Event Helmet, unstrapping himself from the Event Chair, and storming out of the Id-Smasher® before I could call him back.

I tapped my panel, releasing all my sanity-supplicants from their Event Chairs. Each one detached him-or herself, stretching and groaning, before exiting the techno-pinnacle of my analytical career. At more than three stories tall, the neurodimensional Id-Smasher® was a glittering titanium tower of nine hundred terabits of cognintegrated processing power. I held back a moment, admiring the technology which interlaced the psychespheres of my patients via the long, slender transduction rods through its two black processing bulbs.

“Looks just like a giant shrimp, Doc,” said the Brotherfly, observing me observing. “Come to thank of it, I’m hongry for some takeout now that we up outta there! Brotherfly be sayin ‘ka-pow!’—or should it be ‘kung-pow’? Bzzzt! Somebody, anybody, can I get a witness?”

Laughing at his own joke, he looked around for approval, holding out a hand palm-up for slapping reinforcement. He received none.

“Thank you for sharing, André,” I offered.

“Now could somebody fill me in on something?” said Omnipotent Man, rubbing a dried trail of drool from the side of his mouth. “How exactly did we bring down ol’ CycloTron, anyway? Cuz I think I mighta missed how that happened.”

Festus shook his head. “Since you people couldn’t destroy it, I went after its power source.”

X-Man snorted. “Only because I told you to!”

The Flying Squirrel rippled an eyebrow in my direction, then said, “When we were driving alongside that mangler, I called the Defense Department, which is what kept CycloTron operational. I got them to yank its funding.” He harrumphed, fluttering his flaps. “Hell of a simulation you’ve got there, Doctor, to’ve actually arranged a simulated DOD for me to talk to. Do you have a Hoover in some other section of that program, too?”

“I’m glad you approve, Festus. The program improvises according to the essential logic of any gambit you take, responding accordingly.”

“Hmph. Anyway,” he said, “that’s how it’s supposed to be done. Analyze the situation first. That’s what Hawk King taught us—those of us who bothered to learn. Forget the brute-force idiocy. That’s for amateurs. We’re the professionals.”

“Now,” I said, “if you’d all like to get dressed, we’ll pick up in the Group Dynamics Verbalarium.”

Back to Base, and Back to “Base Sicks”

All teams, super or otherwise, function and dysfunction like all families do: having to cope