Welcome to the world of Edison City, where the never-ending battle against the forces of evil includes everything from the Owl Bandit taking over the subway line downtown to the Antichrist trying to rewrite history aboard the HMS Titanic. Anything and everything is a possibility here, including flying sharks. Especially the sharks.
If you’re new here, catch up with the Edison City Index.
If you’d like to read the episode immediately preceding this one, start here:
And now, the adventure continues in our new serial, Meg, Mauve, and Malevolence!
The wall was really more of an irregularly shaped dome, or possibly a rhomboid that a giant had sat on and then gotten up again, but people still called it a wall. For one thing, there it remained, solidly mauve and unyielding over the tiny European city-state of Muldavna. No communications had been received from inside, and no one had come out. Very few, other than the Green Moth and her friends, even knew why or how the wall had appeared to begin with. What everyone did know was that a famous Edison City cape, Mr. Superlative, was locked inside.
Just about every superhero in Edison City had gone over and tried to break in and get him out, and even a few villains, including the Malevolent Med-Student. When asked by an international news reporter why he would bother with something heroic like a rescue of a superhero, the Malevolent Med-Student had only laughed. “Why?” he’d said, strolling past the mauve wall and giving his Pharma-Death Beam a casual twirl. “As the man said, because it’s there!”
He’d then blasted the wall straight on. Nothing happened. The Malevolent Med-Student laughed again, swung on board the Malpracticycle, and blazed away. Only in private, where the world’s media and social feeds couldn’t see, did he have his henchwoman Candystriper send a surreptitious coded message through her robot arm to Meg Atomic. The message, when it ended up in Seymour the cybernetically enhanced soccer ball’s databanks, turned out to be simply, “Sorry. Did my best.” Meg had the sense they meant it. For one thing, Candystriper had added a small encoded sad face in pale neon pink to the end of the message, and really evil villains didn’t usually work emojis into their pronouncements.
Meg volunteered to pass the word about the failed attempt to Samuel Superlative the Third, who’d taken up residence in his Earth family’s house for lack of anywhere else to go. When she arrived later that night on the front steps of the expansive Superlative home and knocked, Samuel himself opened the door. Meg explained, a little hesitantly, about her errand, hoping he wouldn’t ask why she’d chosen to come in person instead of a simple email. She wasn’t entirely sure herself.
“Thank you,” Samuel said in a bleakly formal way, once she’d told him about the Malevolent Med-Student’s message. “The computer system here has theorized schematics of the Pharma-Death Beams and their possible effects against the mauve wall, so I hadn’t expected them to work, but I appreciate the effort all the same.”
“You’re welcome,” Meg said. She started to go, hesitated, then added, “I tried to break through as well. I hit it with graviton blasts, several times. I would’ve nuked it too, but the possibility of inadvertent nuclear war breaking out was… well, non-zero. I couldn’t risk it. I’m sorry.”
“I understand,” Samuel said, “I would’ve done the same. Or wouldn’t have, to be more precise. Again I appreciate it.”
There was a small pause. Then, all at once, Meg realized why she’d wanted to stop by. Before she could stop herself she blurted out, “I met your father once. Well, a couple days ago. A few days here, anyway, I don’t know how long ago it would’ve been for you.”
Samuel stared. “He never … That is,” he began again, after a small cough, “My father didn’t share much about Earth. Nothing at all, really. Actually, what I know about Earth is its name, and that it has humans like my father. He said once that the skies are different too, mostly that you had a moon. We don’t, back home. That is the sum total of what I know. Well, that and your time runs differently than does my home world.” His voice dropped low and bitter. “Would’ve liked to have known that sooner.”
“Oh,” Meg said. She knew by now about the time difference, of course, that a short time spent on Earth meant a lot longer time passed on Samuel’s world. It was one thing to be told about it in a briefing or speculate over the possibilities by oneself on patrol; it was altogether something else to face up to the cold reality of it. There were two ways this conversation could go now, and she didn’t know Samuel well enough to predict how he’d respond. He might want to be left alone, in which case she’d make an appropriate apology and walk away. On the other hand…
Samuel hadn’t said anything for a minute, which Meg took to mean he wanted to be left to himself. “Well,” she said at least, “I am sorry. If I hear anything more I’ll be sure to-”
He interrupted, which had she known him longer she would’ve realized was highly unusual. “How did you meet my father? You didn’t say.”
“Ah,” Meg said. Strictly speaking the answer was that she had come across Sam Superlative Jr. as he’d been about to apprehend Candystriper in the act of stealing a truck of superhero-themed ice cream pints, only Sam Jr had been hesitant to proceed with the apprehending because he’d had a thing for Candystriper but then Mr. Superlative himself had shown up and Sam Jr. had flown Candystriper off somewhere and after that the next thing Meg knew Candystriper was in the hospital and Sam Jr had gotten himself kaboominated off Somewhere Else and she’d never seem him again after that.
All of this was a lot to dump on the poor guy standing in front of her, so Meg decided to sum up. “Work,” she said, and left it at that.
“Oh,” Samuel said.
“Well, patrol, really,” she elaborated.
Samuel thought this over for a minute. “Patrolling against what?”
“Ah,” Meg said again. All at once she had an idea. “Maybe you’d like to see for yourself?”
He stared up at the distant moon, which was just in view over the city skyline at that moment. Meg thought his eyes seemed achingly lonely. “Yes,” he said finally, “I suppose I would.”
And so they went off together into the darkness of the city.