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

when the Gasteroids threatened to infest the intestinal tracts of the entire population of Crystal City, Arizona, Stinson reduced its city hall, Jewel Museum, and 40 percent of its downtown to shards. No one doubted that smashing had its place—but never in Crystal City.

Similarly, Magna’s magnetic-seduction was powerful enough to sway even the Iron Eunuch and the Cobalt Castrati. But her overreliance on her erotipathic powers to the exclusion of all her others tossed her off the peak of her celebrated career and into a sewer of sexual addiction, facedown in the lap of the capes, the niche-porn market of ex-heroines and -heroes.

The chief social advantage of the Götterdämmerung had been its demand from all citizens, and certainly from the college of heroes, for self-sacrifice—that is, the development of the superego. But lacking an overriding threat, many in our society, including its former champions, had by now developed overactive ids. Such was the case with nearly everyone in my team.

Who’s That Whispering from Your Shoulders?

Selfish desire and highest ideal—in the cartoons, they’re represented by a miniature devil and angel perching on our shoulders. In rare cases, these voices are literal, as with the tiny wizard Mage Mogdobnag and Lord Lizaard on the opposite epaulets of Noble Man.

But for most of us, these “voices” are expressions of our id and superego, our respective sub-and supercognitive urges toward selfish, violent gratification and altruistic self-actualization.

Our id isn’t evil. Its self-interest fuels our self-preservation and individual advancement. The id’s social defect is its incapacity to value the needs of others. And while the superego’s lofty goals might seem almost saintly, if left unmoderated a superego-controlled individual could starve to death from refusal to harm animals or plants, or be so possessed by her idealism as to slip out of our reality and into the Platon Dimension of pure Ideals.

That’s where the ego comes in. The ego balances selfishness and selflessness. But because the superstrength of most heroes comes from the interaction between super-ids and super-superegos, destabilization occurs when one capacity becomes stronger than the other. Unfortunately for several members of my team, a post-Götterdämmerung world has starved their superegos, letting their ids grow unchecked, like black-dripping toadstools on a yellowing psychemotional lawn.

Failing Checks and Balances Among Super Powers

Festus,” I asked the Howitzer of a man after he’d stopped grimacing from the effects of the Mind Whistle™, “despite the simmering soup pot of rage which has just bubbled over onto your behavioral stove, you haven’t walked out. Why not?”

He leveled his eyes on me like twin turrets, silently.

“As one of the country’s wealthiest men,” I probed, “you’re at the head of a corporate empire of mass media, defense contracts, surveillance technology, and fast food. You’ve led a distinguished career as one of the nation’s finest investigators—”

“The World’s Greatest Detective®,” growled the black-haired septuagenarian. “Period.”

Brotherfly: “Damn, Squirrelly. Takes balls to be trademarkin y’self as the world’s greatest dick, knawm sayn? Bzzzt!” Everyone ignored André while he laughed. “C’mon, y’all! All y’all can’t be that uptight, can ya? Who gon leave a brother hangin like that? Syndi-girl, snap me a bzzzt! from them bad girls!”

Syndi smirked and shook her fortified cleavage in tardy acknowledgment of his jape.

“That’s what I’m talkin ’bout! Bzzzt!”

“Kot-tam, André,” snapped Kareem, “would you please, for just five minutes, QC?”

“Whuzzat, Exxy?”

“Quit cooning!”

“Festus,” I refocused, “you’ve never been one to follow orders meekly. So why haven’t you defied the F*L*A*C and marched out the door?”

Festus Piltdown III sat back in his chair and crossed his gloved forearms over the flying squirrel silhouette emblazoned on the tunic covering his massive chest.

X-Man: “I can tell you why, Doc.”

“Kareem, ze doktor dit not ask you.”

“And the Squirrel didn’t answer her, Hnossi!”

“Gawd, Kareem, would you, like, shut up?” said Syndi, stamping her boots, one-two, and putting one hand on her hip-strung backlash. “You want her blowing her, like, whistle-thingy again?”

Finally Omnipotent Man put up his hand.

“See now, ma’am-doctor, maybe Festy’s a might modest, but as y’all probably know, he’s fixin’ to run in th’upcoming election for Director of Operations. You knew that, din’tcha?”

“I think I recall having heard it somewhere, Wally, but as I don’t follow politics, it must’ve slipped my mind.”

“Wellsir, an as y’can pro’ly guess, if the F*L*A*C shows ol Festy out through the F*O*O*J saloon flappers, he caint run for D.O.O. Then his dreams’re hooched, knowuttamean?”

“I, uh…I think so, Wally.”

“An Festy pro’ly figures, an I agree with im, that he’s earned this goldang job. He was in the F*O*O*J almost since the beginnin, he’s served almost evra other p’sition on the F*L*A*C—Director of Personnel, of Finance, of Investigation—he was even Chair once. So y’can unnerstan if the F*L*A*C sendin im to your woodshed an threat’nin to turn im loose altogether has got his fur up an hackled.”

I asked Festus how he felt about Wally’s remarks.

He glared back at me with all the glowering, terrifying, predatory intimidation of his mammalian namesake.

On the Receiving End of F*L*A*C

For a group of men and women who had devoted their lives to saving others, my six psychemotional journeyers were stunningly incapable of saving themselves. That many of them despised one another was obvious to anyone; that each one despised him-or herself was unknown to all of them.

And that is why the F*O*O*J’s F*L*A*C had ordered them into my care and analysis, since the infighting and dysfunctionality generated by their mutual-and self-loathing threatened to vaporize their organization at a time when the F*O*O*J was particularly vulnerable: election time. Three of the six directorships were up for grabs, and for the first time since the F*O*O*J’s inception, so was the post of Director of Operations.

In theory the most powerful position on the F*O*O*J Leadership Administrative Council, the DOO was responsible for setting long-range mission goals, determining strategy and vetting tactics, outlining long-term needs for staff and matériel acquisition, and, potentially, reforming the obese F*O*O*J bureaucracy. The retirement of Colonel Strom Flintlock from his grandfathered, unelected position meant that the F*O*O*J was poised for potentially massive change. And