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  In addition, Cuboid has written two award-winning books of pastoral poetry under the pen-name of Alain Matheson, both of which are noted for recurring themes of natural harmony, the interconnection of all living things, and the importance of vigilant stewardship over both communities and environments. Alain Matheson’s true identity was only discovered when his second book, Blue Marble, was nominated for the James Laughlin Award in 2011. Despite support from the current United States Poet Laureate, Cuboid was determined to be ineligible to receive the prize by the Academy of American Poets due to the fact that Cuboid was not (at that time) considered to be a United States citizen.

  It took several hours of meticulous research to confirm that Professor Paradigm’s technology represented the most likely opportunity to significantly expand the range of my akashic identity detector. He’d published academic papers with tantalizing implications and applied for relevant patents shortly after he’d spent time studying the remains of Dr. Chaise’s Dimension Bomb. Gaining surreptitious access to the patent office’s computer system was no help; the documents were missing key technical details that made reverse engineering the proposed devices impossible.

  According to gossip that I’d gleaned from the supposedly ‘secure’ chat-software the Paragons used, Professor Paradigm had valid reason for his unwillingness to bargain: he’d been on friendly terms with both Clash and Lycan. I’d badly injured the former and murdered the latter; I regretted both actions and had performed neurosurgery upon myself to ensure that I would not easily make similar mistakes, but the damage had been done long ago. Professor Paradigm would resist by any means available to him and his resources were substantial.

  A cadre of my drones were dispatched to the West coast to construct and hide teleportation platforms in useful locations. In the future, at least, I wouldn’t be forced to waste so much time traveling before initiating a confrontation. But Professor Paradigm was on his guard now, surrounded constantly by worried members of his former team; it would be some time before I could gain access to the elderly inventor without declaring war on the West Coast superhero community.

  With every failed simulation or experiment, the option of war became more tempting. If Valiant—the most powerful superhuman in all of history—hadn’t been observed visiting the San Francisco Paragons’ base, then I would already have been preparing for battle. The Mk 39 was sufficiently well-designed that it would be able to survive hand-to-hand combat with Valiant, but it was highly unlikely that I would prevail in a physical brawl. My only chance of victory would be resorting to exotic weaponry.

  The research contained in the Ancient’s library had suggested several methodologies that would completely bypass the mighty hero’s legendary invulnerability. Unfortunately, every one of those would be immediately fatal.

  Valiant was a worthy hero, kind, generous, and worthy of respect. His tireless devotion to disaster relief saved tens of thousands of lives every year, and his mere existence served to limit the chaos that superpowered criminals were willing to entertain. Both Bobby and Whisper had liked Valiant. So long as other options remained available, I would prefer to avoid his slaughter.

  Fortunately, it occurred to me that there might be another way.

  To: “Aaron Schwartz”

  From: “Terrance Markham”

  Subject: Apologies and a request

  Aaron,

  There can be no excuse for the way I treated you the other day. You’re always welcome in my home. All that I can say is that it has been a stressful time, and that you deserved better from me. I’m sorry.

  I’ve reached out to the members of the Board and they’ve agreed to support establishing a Chief Strategy Officer position. I haven’t spoken to Theo, but I do believe that he’d be interested.

  Attached is a document that includes my observations about recent technological trends, about existing projects and suggestions for possible future paths, and about staffing issues that I foresee in the near future. Something like this should have been written and handed off before your first day. Again, I apologize.

  For now, I’m afraid that I need another favor.

  I am going to be traveling and I was hoping that I could leave Nyx with you. I know that you already have three dogs, but I would very much prefer for Whisper’s puppy to be with someone I trust while I’m away.

  Thank you,

  - Dr. Terrance Markham

  To: “Terrance Markham”

  From: “Aaron Schwartz”

  Subject: Re: Apologies and a request

  Terry,

  Of course! Dinah and I would be happy to take care of Nyx. Bring her by any time.

  Thank you for the document. I shared some of your suggestions with Theo and he’s raring to go. It’s great to have him back on board. You were right about Frank Tierney, too…he’s returned to the office like nothing’s happened.

  You do whatever you need to in order to take care of Whisper and yourself. We’ll be here whenever you’re ready.

  Aaron Schwartz, CEO

  Cocooned within my armors, I have felt at ease in the most extraordinary of circumstances. I’ve faced the deadliest of foes and endured the harshest of environments with confidence. And yet, a strange tension touched my heart as I approached New Orleans airspace, as though the city itself had noticed me and that it disapproved of Doctor Fid’s presence.

  It was a psychosomatic reaction, I was certain. A few tweaks to my pharmacological regimen and the feeling faded. Still, it was telling that my quarry had chosen this region as his home. A place that I very rarely had cause to visit, a place where my initial feeling was one of discomfort. He’d relocated to New Orleans for a reason: to hide from me.

  With cloaking system engaged, I hovered a few thousand feet above the city—invisible against the night sky—and commanded a swarm of microdrones to explore. Tiny machines the size of insects, they silently spread out to map the buildings that surrounded my prey. Only when I was certain of the surroundings did I descend.

  Overconfidence when visiting Professor Paradigm’s facility had cost me precious time. There was no reason to allow a repeat of that debacle. The man I intended to confront this evening had fewer resources at his disposal than had the former leader of the Paragons, but that was no excuse to be incautious.

  As silent as a ghost, I drifted lower through layers of unease and waves of doubt. I’d been wrong…this strange sense of unease was not merely in my mind.

  There are no human psychics, and the alien invaders—the Legion—were no more. This was something else. Fortunately, facing the Legion mind-controlling telepaths had taught me many a hard lesson.

  I braced myself for the headache to come, but still the intensity was blinding. Electro-stimulation applied directly to carefully selected regions of my brain drove away the outside influence, and the armor’s neural interface made quick work of leveling my emotional state.

  A genuine psionic attack! Here, on Earth! How extraordinary.

  Someday (when Whisper was safe and I had the luxury of time) I was going to spend a month investigating why this city hated me. And why this effect hadn’t plagued me on my one prior visit to New Orleans to assist with disaster relief. For now, however, Doctor Fid had a mission and my target was in sight; he was in costume, patrolling near a series of dilapidated dock-front warehouses.

  I discarded stealth and dropped like a stone. Twice, I’d attempted to make civilized contact with a hero and twice I’d been punished for the attempt. I might have been a slow learner but some patterns were difficult to ignore.

  I slammed into the ground like a meteorite striking the Earth, cratering the pavement and raising an impenetrable cloud of dust. It was only with sonar and radar that I was able to observe my agile target leap to safety in a series of elegant flips. My target’s natural athleticism was supposedly the product of advanced genetic engineering, but the skill itself
had been earned through hard training. Even without his high-tech toys and innate (albeit limited) ability to speed and slow time, he would have been more than a match for any muggers or thieves that he might have happened upon during his nightly vigil. He had, in fact, proved himself a worthy opponent against no small number of lesser super-powered villains as well.

  “Blueshift!” I intoned, pulsing my forcefield to drive the dust from around myself in an expanding sphere of clear air. “Stand down!”

  What followed was a frenzied litany of high-speed cursing and energy blasts, both cast at such remarkable speed that I could not follow it. Fortunately, the Mk 39’s combat algorithms took control and could maintain reaction speeds far superior to that which could be managed by flesh and blood. I was a mere passenger within my armor as it smoothly danced between flashing attacks, parrying some and riposting with bursts of my own.

  The hero was wearing a dark navy bodysuit wrapped in black body armor plates and wielded an ion-pistol in each hand. Blueshift leapt about violently in an attempt to outrace my armor’s programming; the fiery blue-white halo of energy that arced after him intensified as he strained his power’s capacity to alter his own localized space-time, and his rate of fire was so rapid that it seemed a constant stream of light, a roaring deluge of thunderous barks as each blast boiled pencil-thin lines of air into plasma.

  His movements were a blur; I could only see freeze-frame images captured by my sensors, a stuttered perception of a battle too fast for human observation. At some point, my scepter had been summoned and I was batting brilliant beams of light out of the air while closing towards the frantic Blueshift. He attempted a fighting retreat but was no match for the Mk 39’s speed; the battle ended as quickly as it had begun.

  My hand had captured his wrist and a shaped forcefield curled up his arm and around his torso, locking him firmly in place.

  “Welcome to New Awlins,” Blueshift managed an only-slightly-nervous approximation of a bright smile. “If you here for th’ Jazz Fest, you a bit lost. Head lake on Pontchartrain-”

  “I’m here for you,” I interrupted. Blueshift had a reputation for being a loquacious opponent, and if I’d let him build up a head of steam, he was perfectly capable of blathering on indefinitely to waste time. Local supervillain Don Voudon had once visited Lassiters and complained incessantly about Blueshift’s habit. It only took Don Voudon the time to finish one beer to finish lamenting the failure of his latest scheme; he was still bellyaching about Blueshift’s monologues, however, when William Wasserman announced last call.

  “I’m flattered, but I’m in a committed relationship,” Blueshift attempted to continue, momentarily blurring as he tried (and failed) to twist out of my grasp. “I can maybe put in a good word wit Valiant if you want t’ hook up. The man knows his jazz; he was at the festival three years ago, I got him front-row seats for-”

  I let my forcefield constrict around the hero’s chest and the verbal deluge was cut off by a strangled cough.

  “I’m here for you,” I repeated, vocoder making the pronouncement sound intimidatingly final. “You have something that I require. Cease interrupting and we can conclude our business peacefully.”

  “Keeping quiet don’t seem like something I’m likely t’ do,” he half-chuckled, forlorn, when he could again speak. “And ‘peaceful’ don’t sound much like your thing, neither.”

  “I’m willing to make the effort,” I replied dryly, “since the alternative could include a great deal of unnecessary pain and suffering. Are you willing to do the same?”

  “When you put it like that the idea does seem awful tempting.”

  “Excellent.” I relaxed only slightly. Heroes were a perplexing bunch; if you gave them enough rope, some were often remarkably eager to hang themselves. I could only hope that the latitude that I was offering would not be abused. “I require access to your ‘time machine’.”

  “It’s not really a time machine, y’know.” His forced smile cracked. “If you want t’ visit the future, you’re goin’ have to do it the slow way: one-minute o’ travel per minute.”

  “I understand the basic gist as to how your transport functions. I wish to examine it more closely.”

  When he’d first publicly debuted as a hero, Blueshift had announced that he was a traveler from several hundred years in the future. The truth was eventually revealed to be more complicated: he was (unknowingly) an immigrant from an alternate dimension whose history had closely matched this one, to remarkable accuracy. The chances of every single action and reaction of every particle in two separate universes occurring in so similar a manner were incalculably low…but—given an infinite number of universes—inevitable. In fact, there were an infinite number of universes that just happened to be similar to my own. Also, an infinite number of universes that were wildly different. And that was the problem; locating a specific universe from among all those possibilities was extraordinarily complicated.

  And yet, that was one of the capabilities of the craft the hero had arrived in.

  “I don’t think you’d be welcome on my home dimension,” Blueshift noted, his expression troubled. “We remember our Doctor Fid. And, honestly, there ain’t much technology there you can’t replicate here.”

  “I have a different destination in mind.”

  “Yeah?” he looked skeptical.

  “A dimension that the Red Ghost visited. I have no intention of visiting your homeworld.”

  The hero looked thoughtful and it was a while before he responded. “So, we negotiating or you just goin’ threaten me ‘til I give you what you want?”

  “My plan was to attempt bribery, first.”

  “Tomorrow’s megalottery numbers gonna be eight, fourteen, twenty-seven, fifty-seven, sixty-four, an’ five for the lucky ball. I want money, it never gonna be a problem. But I got another idea.”

  “Oh?”

  “Red Ghost ‘n Valiant, they tell me there a person under that armor. I got a story maybe that person needs t’ hear.” He exhaled shakily. “You stand still ‘n let me talk a bit, maybe I let you have a look at my ship.”

  The option of resorting to mindless violence was more appealing, but I nodded nonetheless.

  The sun hung low on the horizon and shallow wispy clouds glowed like hot embers as they poured over the distant mountain ridges. The scent of the nearby orchard washed over the camp, a pleasantly warm breeze that gathered and waned in patient waves. Jackson could watch the wheat fields ripple with each swell from his vantage point. The growing season had ended; for the first time in as long as he could remember, Jackson wouldn’t be helping his family take in the harvest.

  “Tell me again,” he requested, refusing to turn towards the researcher who’d ascended the ladder to give him the news.

  “They’ve narrowed it down to three names,” the slender man grinned, still panting from the climb. “We have the go ahead to proceed.”

  The old watchtower had the best view in the facility, and everyone knew where Jackson preferred to spend his free evenings. If he’d gone to the town like Lois had wanted, maybe no one from the center would have been able to find him. Maybe he’d have had one more evening free from doubt and sorrow, one extra dinner spent smiling instead of making somber farewells.

  It wasn’t exactly unexpected; Jackson had been training for this his whole life. Countless procedures at the Center, endless drills and interminable lectures…it had felt like such an honor when the council announced his name. More than two hundred applicants and he’d eked out the win! The farm was paid for now, free and clear, because of his oath to serve. That was something to be proud of, something worthy. But when the eggheads at the Center started narrowing the list, reality settled in: this was real. This was going to happen.

  Jackson Pierce was going to be a hero.

  “I thought we weren’t planning on moving forward until we’d narrowed it down to one,” the young man commented, standing up and arching his back in a slow stretch. The watchtower was
old and the footing unsteady, but Jackson had absolute faith in his balance.

  The slim man in the lab-coat, on the other hand, was still holding to the ladder with a death grip despite his eager exuberance. “The records aren’t as clear as we’d hoped; we lost a lot in the Long Dark. But the council is certain he’s one of these three.”

  “How certain?”

  “As certain as we can be,” the researcher shrugged tightly. “We’re only going to get one shot at this; I wouldn’t be on this ladder if the council wasn’t sure.”

  “All right,” Jackson nodded and wished that his own conviction was as strong, but he was a soldier and he knew what orders awaited. “Climb down, I’ll follow. The Commander is going to want to see me.”

  The smaller man flashed Jackson a grateful smile and began his slow and shaky descent. Jackson savored one last moment staring over the fields and croplands, and beyond that the rolling hills covered in a dense forest where he’d played as a child. And further out to the foothills that housed the reservoir and then the mountains whose ice-covered peaks fed the grand river that wove its way towards the facility. The sun was visibly lower now, blazing fiercely as if it resented leaving the day behind, and the snow-covered mountain peaks glistened as though on fire.

  The Long Dark had stolen billions of lives and cost humanity centuries of progress, but the survivors had eventually rebuilt much of the world. This place was beautiful, and Jackson was going to miss it.

  The soldier straightened his back, inevitability solidifying in his spine like an icicle. His own climb down was much faster than that of the man who’d preceded him.