By Aladdin
Edited by Christopher Leeson
Originally written 2006
Revised and posted Nov. 21, 2018
THE ULTRAMATE SOURCE
Prayer is vain, I called for compassion: compassion mocked.
Mercy and pity threw the gravestone over me
And with lead and iron, bound it over me forever:
Life lives on my Consuming:
And the Almighty hath made me his
Contrary...
William Blake
"Uh, sure. Is there anything else, Doctor Sarn?"
"No, that's it, Blake." The Aladdin bureaucrat clicked
off abruptly.
What in blazes had happened at the mall? I didn't even know which
mall she was referring to. Did it have anything to do the weird
experience I had over at the Kid's Club? No, that couldn't be. She
was talking about Sunday, and my disaster occurred on Thursday.
And why was a data analyst being asked to make a report instead of
a field agent? It wasn't my job to ongoing operations outside the office. Why was Sarn getting me involved?
I shifted toward Evie. "Scrumptious, did something happen at
the Mall Sunday? I mean, was there anything going on there that was
important or scary?"
She gave a little moue. "You can't forget that! A bad robot
came and started chasing people. Lauren had to fight with it."
A robot? It certainly was beginning to sound like one hell of a week. “What
kind of robot?"
“A big one!”
"Was it at the Mall at Topanga Plaza?"
"Scaring everybody!"
“Were you and I there?”
“You were there, Mommy. I was with grandma.”
“Why was I there?”
“I don't know.”
I paused to think. These little details, as perplexing as they
seemed to be, had to add up to some sort of picture, but I still had
too few pieces. What had Sarn said? She'd used the term fiasco.
There had been a fiasco at the Mall? Shouldn't she have called it an attack or tragedy. A fiasco usually referred to a
failed plan. Was the robotic attack somebody's failed plan? Whose
plan?
I
had a sinking feeling. Aladdin was a tricky and deceitful
outfit. It sometimes sent its own agents out dressed as ultras to
discredit the vigilantes they
impersonated. If people could be manipulated into fearing, would
tolerate a government that wish to treat them as criminals or
terrorists. Had Aladdin sent a
battle robot into a minor suburban mall, intending to start a panic
and make it look like some ultra was responsible? That sounded
heavy-handed, even for Aladdin.
Momentarily stumped, I punched in another number on my phone menu.
This time time I got a real estate office. Once confirming that "I"
had a mid-day appointment with a realtor, I asked for a postponement,
using illness as an excuse. With that taken care of, the biggest
thing left on my plate was learning more about this alternate world.
I needed to acquire more information if I was going to stop reacting like a deer caught in the headlights.
"Evie," I said, "do you feel like going out with
me?"
"Sure! But you told the man you were sick."
"I fibbed. I need to go and carry out a secret mission."
"A secret mission? Can I be your sidekick?"
"You certainly can! The first thing we need to do is go to
the library."
She looked dubious. "Are there robots or monsters at the
library, Mommy?"
"I certainly hope not!" I said, not quite able to
smile.
#
A sign at the nearest library of size directed patrons to a
parking ramp that was three blocks away. Emerging into the light, we
continued our trip on foot. Evie stayed close by my side and at first
I thought it was because she was suffering from fright. But her grave
and determined expression soon caused me to wonder whether it was me
whom she was afraid for. Was Evie keeping close to protect her
mother from danger, now that she was no longer a super-powered ultra?
I took her little hand and squeezed it. Wherever I found a double of
Evie, she was always an easy child to love.
But that raised another question. How _should I react if an
emergency arose? I could hardly do more than grab Evie and run --
which was a depressing thought.
Approaching the library, we passed in front of a
paperback-and-news shop called the Readmore and I impulsively led
Evie inside. I immediately took in the frantic newspaper headlines.
Terrifying reports were shouting from almost every article heading.
I bought the Los Angles Times on the spot and also asked the clerk
for a copy of The Ultra, but the young man replied that he'd never
heard of the latter. He recommended instead a newsprint tabloid
called The Ultramate Source. Wanting to know how my ultra friends
had come though the emergency, I gave in and bought the unfamiliar
weekly.
Then we left the news store. A couple buildings down, there stood
a coffee shop. Evie was hungry, so I bought us both a brunch. While
absently consuming my java, sausage, and eggs, I poured through the Time's lead story, the one describing an appalling disaster in New
York.
The events of Friday night had not been merely local. The paper
was saying that more than a quarter of New York City had been blasted
to rubble by a mysterious explosion occurring on Sunday night.
Millions had died. A suitcase-sized nuclear weapon was at first
expected, but testing showed that the radiation count was low. The
authorities were frantic to find a scapegoat to redirect blame from
their muddled disaster response.
A civilian's smart phone video had
come forward, showing ultras near the blast zone. One of them was a
giant of a man in armor, and with him was some yo-yo swinging a
scythe. A woman in a black cat suit was also seen, hurling shurikens. When an ill-trained National Guard unit to
confront the mysterious group, a officer apparently lost his nerve
and sent his men rushing in with guns locked and loaded. A female
ultra appeared overhead and proceeded to repel the the panicky attackers
with energy bolts. The startled guardsmen started shooting at
anything that moved, and even at each other.
In the aftermath, two members of the ultra gang could be
tentatively identified. One matched the description of Amber Hunt, a
name that was familiar to me – and not in any good way. But the
detail that floored me was the allegation that one of the ultras had
been a known crime-fighter known as Strike.
I knew that name from my own world. Strike had been the nome de
guerre of Brandon Tark before he'd re-christened himself "Warstrike."
Was Warstrike still called Strike in this reality? I searched my
reading material to find the name of "Warstrike," but was
unable to.
How could Brandon Tark ever willingly involve himself in a
terroristic incident? Tark, I knew, had suffered a severe breakdown
in my reality, following the incredible Godwheel incident. But he had pulled out of it. Was it possible that in
this world he had lost his marbles and gone rogue? Still, I didn't
want to believe the worst. Maybe Strike had only been on the scene
trying to apprehend Amber Hunt and was not a member of her gang. A
similar mix-up had wrongly implicated me – as Mantra – in a
museum break-in only months before.
I kept reading, but there was not much in the news stories that
was useful. The politicians were getting their priorities screwed
up, as usual. The dominant party in New York state was shocked at
having lost to many of their urban voters and were screaming
“treason!” and tried to implicate the Russians, or even our own POTUS, in the disaster. The mayor of New York, no longer sure of a
winning margin, was actually demanding that his party be granted a
handicap in the next election, as if the atrocity had been some sort
of a golf game and not mass murder.
A case were one person dies is a tragedy; a million beings wiped
out is only a statistic. I couldn't let the magnitude throw me. I had concerns
closer to home. Checking for local news, I found a story that
apparently proved Evie's testimony. It had a small picture of the
"new Mantra."
I showed it to my little girl.
"Have you seen this picture of Lauren in her ultra-suit yet?"
I asked. "I wonder where she got that armor." Then I
noticed a detail of the picture that I had missed. "Hey, she's
using the Sword of Fangs! Evie, how did Lauren get my sword?” I
asked.
