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

network! You tell Finch-beck to get up footage of those Egyptian goddamned gods exploding into the funeral—that’s the most spectacular apparition ever recorded, should’ve been leading the news every five—

“What do you mean the footage was blank? All of it? How can it all be…? Fine, then just get up a poll—one of our polls—to answer this CBS swinewash before the beginning of the next commercial or the presidency of PNN will be open by the end of it!”

He stilettoed his finger into his hang-up key, then switched his screen back to PNN.

PNN was showing the same footage—some of it, anyway: that of Kareem hitting the Flying Squirrel, but not the strike by Mr. Piltdown which initiated it. Mr. Piltdown clicked through a dozen other channels; on all the stations owned by Piltdown Corp, the X-Man was the aggressor.

“See, Festus?” said Wally, his eyes like dead bulbs. “They done forgot about ol Omnip’tent Man an hour anna half later. I’m done. Yesterday’s man. Y’all were worried bout nuthin.”

Mr. Piltdown sneered again, turning his back on ever-more shoulder-hunched Wally. Behind him was the famous photograph of Omnipotent Man hovering beside Mount F*O*O*J-more, where the last son of Argon had used his legendary chisel-vision to carve the giant busts of the F*O*O*J’s founders following victory in the Götterdämmerung. Beneath their gazes, he’d hewn the phrase ENDURING TRIUMPH.

I called him over and drew his attention to the picture.

“This’s been a tough day for you, Wally, hasn’t it?”

“Yessir, ma’am-doctor.”

“You know, Wally, looking at that famous photograph, reflecting upon all the pain and loss and the sense of lostness that you’re feeling now, with your resignation in this age of peace you helped create…I wonder if you can see how the slogan you carved might be ironic?”

He looked at the photograph, squinted. “Whaddaya mean?”

“Well, enduring doesn’t only mean ‘lasting.’ It means ‘getting through’ or ‘surviving despite.’ ”

He chewed his lip. “I…I’ont follow ya, ma’am.”

“ ‘Enduring’—see, it means…Okay, that’s fine, Wally. Look, where are you going now?”

“Back to An’ar’tica.”

“Antarctica? Why Antarctica?”

“I’m retirin…so I’m gon retire to my Stronghold of Standing-on-My-Own-Two-Feetitude. T’live out my days. ’Merica don’need me no more.”

“Wally, I think you’re making a mistake, leaving like this before you’ve processed all your unresolved issues…but all I ask you to do is come see me at least once before you go, okay?” He looked doubtful. “Please, Wally. I’m worried about you.”

He breathed in, his chest inflating to its fridgelike volume and grandeur. But he was still looking at the floor.

“Kay, doc. But on’y for you.” He tilted his head up, looked me in the eye. “Know why?”

“Tell me.”

“Cuz you wannid to hep us. To hep me. I’s always sposta be th’one savin evrabody. An th’on’y person other’n you who ever tried savin me…was that man we done laid to rest t’day.

“An even with all m’pow’rs, m’dadblasted, planet-shakin, worldifyin pow’rs,” he said, the corners of his mouth curling down as if he’d sucked up rotten milk, “I cain’t bring Hawk King back anymore’n I can grab a coupla fistfuls a yesterday.”

He sniffled, touched my arm gently with his massive hand, and then pushed open the door before walking out, out and away.

When Heaven Shrivels, Whither the Earth?

For Wally, the death of his icon was only at that moment becoming truly real. While nonpowered citizens live daily with the reality of their powerlessness and have no choice but to make their peace with it, for you as a hyperhominid, facing the fact of your own ultimate powerlessness can be devastating. I asked Wally to come see me to ensure that he, a savior suddenly bereft of his own savior figure, wouldn’t plunge perpetually into the jackbooted tentacles of the slavering mouth of the black hole of despair.

Others, however, were legendary for their capacity to slough off the slivery yoke of mourning to don the newly dry-cleaned uniform of self-actualization.

Mr. Piltdown was not one of them. Hampered by his own over-glorification of his mentor and pinned to the mat of political intrigue by his contempt for Kareem, Mr. Piltdown was haranguing anyone who would listen—in this case, Dow-Man, the Downsizer, and Smithing Wesson—with his diatribe about the day’s events. I took a seat within hearing distance, signaling S. Bruce Pippen for a piece of Original Leeby’s Cosmic Cheesecake.

“—nerve of that knot-muscled blunder-boor to come here, just for the sake of appearances. Watchtower hasn’t stepped foot inside this establishment in years. Yes, Soup ’n’ Heroes might be cramped, run-down, with passé blue-collar kitsch for cuisine and blue-haired biddies named Madge and Eunice serving low-end coffee, but for those of us who honor tradition—”

“I haven’t seen you here once in the last year, Squirrel,” deadpanned Original Fabulous Man, swiveling around on his counter stool.

“Maybe if you didn’t spend all your time here in a men’s room stall,” said Mr. Piltdown, his cohorts snickering viciously at his riposte, “you would have.”

“I still have my membership card, Squirrel. I’m still fully paid up. And I’ll remember what you said on ratification day.”

“You do that,” said Mr. Piltdown. “Assuming you can tell the difference between a voting box and what I believe you people refer to as a ‘glory hole.’ ”

“Right now, Squirrel!” said Original Fabulous Man, standing to his full six and a half feet and shoving his rainbow flag off of his immense biceps.

“Somebawdy here wanna get banned?”

It was S. Bruce Pippen speaking, his non-eye-patched eye alternating glowers with both men. “Cuz I am itchin to ban somebawdy! Snappin and fightin in here, on the day a Hawk King’s fun’ral, like a coupla dawgs out in the street. Samatta witchu guys?”

“Sorry, Bruce,” said Original Fabulous Man. “I’ll stop if he stops.”

“I’ve already stopped,” said Mr. Piltdown, turning back to his own group while Pippen monitored a moment for compliance before putting my cheesecake on my table. “Can’t you do sumthin about these mugs, Doc?”

“I’ll do my best, Bruce,” I reassured him. He winked, then glared at the would-be combatants before limping back to the kitchen.

“Anyway,” said Mr. Piltdown, “Watchtower’s a