The Wounded World, a story of Mantra, Chapter 7

By Aladdin 

Edited by Christopher Leeson

The Wounded World

Originally written 2006

Revised and posted Mar. 21, 2019
Additional revision, Apr. 21, 2019

Chapter 7

THE KILLING MACHINE

When a sinister person means to be your enemy,
They always start by trying to become your friend.

William Blake

“It sure seemed like you were dead,” the teenager insisted.

“If you say so,” I said. “What happened next?”

“Gus wanted my blood. What he could do was incredible; he turned your house into a holodeck full of monsters and warriors.”

As Lauren continued her report, it became clear that these magical constructs had been imagined to kill a schoolgirl, not a powerful ultra, and Lauren quickly “zapped” them out of existence. The victory had given the girl confidence, but was taken aback when a ghostly image appeared. Lauren had found herself looking at a phantom of Eden Blake. This insubstantial Eden began speaking in a small voice, as if from far away. She outed herself as the secret identity of Mantra and appealed to the sixteen-year-old to save her. 

“To do that, you need more magic than you have,” the specter said. “Find it before it's too late.” Before the babysitter could ask how on earth she was supposed to pull off such a feat, Gus injected himself into the arena, his face a distorted mask of hate and fury. The boy launched a rage-driven attack that the girl barely managed to fend off, until one of her power-bolts blasted into shards the plastic joystick that he had been using like a magic wand. Startled, the boy vanished.

Now that the fight was ended, the vista around her faded and Lauren found herself back inside the Blake household. Mantra's “dead body” and Evie were gone, and so was Gus. Not knowing what else to do, Lauren dashed outside to see if she could spot them. But she'd no sooner gotten out the door when a police squad started to bawl at her, demanding that she drop her sword. In the teen's startlement, she hesitated a moment and the panicky police started shooting. Somehow, without any conscious thought, the girl ghosted, becoming like a living hologram which allowed bullets to pass through her harmlessly. That was a defensive measure that I had used many times myself.

When the rioting officers rushed her, a surge of power flashed out from her body and tossed them away like leaves on the wind. Fortunately, weren't smashed to death against the trees and walls; instead it looked like they were floating. They kicked and beat their arms against the air, but they were helpless. “That's how Mantra flies” the newly-empowered ultra thought. Immediately wanted to get into the fun herself and so sprang up into the air. Yet she found herself little better off than the police squad. Fortunately, being a Mantra groupie, she'd read the fan articles and interviews. Mantra's power came from levitation and she created direct flight by creating and controlling brisk wind. “Wind! Come!” she yelled mentally. In a blink, Lauren found herself sailing through the moonlight like a paper airplane. Flight was exhilarating, but also disconcerting. As soon as the girl started thinking about how to land, she dropped precipitously into a park, her forward momentum throwing her into a bumpy roll across the grass.

With even more bruises than before, the young ultra limped to boulder and sat down to get her breath. She needed magic, she knew, but where did one find magic on such short notice? As Lauren concentrated, a tingle spread over her skin and a tart odor drifted to her nostrils. On top of that, she saw that the turf was faintly blinking, as if she were sitting under a string of Christmas lights. A glance upward beheld sky in chaos. The full moon was beaming brightly and the sky was somehow glowing violet. More amazingly, dazzling green zig-zags were hanging under the stars, resembling forked lightning. Whatever it was, it certainly was not a normal phenomenon. The more she stared, the stronger grew the tingle and the smell! Instinct told her that the forked lightning was magical in nature and she might make use of it somehow if she could find where it was striking the ground.

The Wounded World, a story of Mantra, Chapter 6

By Aladdin 

Edited by Christopher Leeson

The Wounded World

Originally written 2006

Revised and posted Feb. 21, 2019 

Chapter 6

WHAT ARE LITTLE GIRLS MADE OF?



"Every house a den, every man bound;
The shadows are filled with specters,
And the windows wove over with curses of iron..." 
 
William Blake

As soon as we got back to Penny's digs, I spread out on the couch to rest. Such a day!

Pinnacle crossed into the kitchen, and when she reappeared, she was balancing coffee cups on a tray. The scientist offered me one, saying, "From all you've said, you're carrying quite a load of trouble. What do you need to fix first?"

I sat up and tasted the beverage before answering. "If I'm ever going to get back to my real home, I'll need to recover my Mantra powers."

She set the tray aside and occupied the chair across from me. "Okay. Do you have any fresh ideas about how they were lost?"

I shrugged. "I wasn't the one who lost them. What Evie said makes me think that Mantra still had her powers even after Gus got his. She was probably taken by surprise by his attack. Maybe Evie is right. Maybe Mantra got hurt fighting with her brother."

"What kind of an attack did Gus make?"

"Search me. Evie used the word 'zapped.' The boy probably released some sort of magical blast. I know how that works. On my first night in Eden Blake's body, I incinerated a street creep who came at me. I wasn't trying to draw up magic; it came up automatically in self-defense.”

“You're tied emotionally to your abilities?”

“I guess so. They're at their strongest when I'm furious.” I took a mouthful of coffee and set down my cup. “Where do ultra powers arise from anyway?”

"There's been a theory, rising in popularity, that ultra powers come from the so-called 'junk DNA' that everyone possesses. It makes up about ninety-seven percent of the whole.”

I cocked my eye. "It comes out of the DNA? Then how does that jive with what I learned on the moon? There was an artificial brain on the moon that had been sending out energy bursts for thousands of years. It created ultras from ordinary human beings. Remember that sky blast that hit that San Francisco trolley? Most of the fifty-nine people inside the vehicle got ultra powers. That was the AI brain – the Entity – that did that."

Pinnacle nodded. "That case has been intensely studied. One of the people on the trolley who didn't seem to get powers was my old boss – my old slave master -- J.D. Hunt. He happened to be on that that streetcar at the faithful moment.”

“A trillionaire riding a public trolley?”

“That's J.D. He likes to go slumming incognito, finding out what real people think – so he can make up new ways to trick them and screw them over. I never saw him use an ultra power, but sometimes, when he was near, I could sense an odd energy field. I couldn't make any sense of it, but when it powered up it made my hair stand on end.”

"Does everyone have the potential to become an ultra? If so, what, exactly, is an ultra?"

“A lot of people who've studied the matter think that an ultra is a person who is able to draw from genetically-granted capabilities beyond what's normal for most people. There are some people who seem to be born with powers. From what you've told me, Eden Blake might have been that kind of ultra. But if that streetcar phenomenon was able empowered a random sample of people, it's clear that the ultra potential can be artificially stimulated. Possibly, most of the people on Earth has some sort of ultra capability. I'm wondering if the ancient gods weren't actually...."

"Ultras?"

She gave me a sort of “not quite” look. "Hercules might have been a sort of B.C. Hardcase, but I think a god-like being is something extra. Our genetic configuration provides us with many different traits. Possibly, the 'higher DNA' that can produce ultras could also provide us with many different abilities all at the same time. The more abilities one displays, the more godlike he seems.”

"I've met a few gods in my day. In ancient times, the Godwheel was crawling with them.”

“That super-sized artificial solar system in deep space?”

I nodded. “The toughest one I ran into was Loki. He could do almost anything, and loved doing it! I'm still not sure why that nut-case let Primeval and me get away with our lives.”

She shook her head. “From the way you live your life, I don't know how you manage to stay alive from day to day.”

“It's not the way I want to live. I died hundreds of times in Archimage's cause, but the next time it happens I'm afraid that it's going to be for keeps.” Suddenly I got a flash. "Wait a minute! How can DNA be responsible for an ultra like Electro-Cute? She's an artificial life form, but still the Entity's energy burst was able to empower her.

"That dicey question has come up in most of the scientific studies. We don't know exactly how Electro-Cute was put together. Possibly UltraTech used human DNA in her construction. Let's consider her case an unanswered question."

"Okay, but if there's a jump-start, can't there be an 'anti-jump-start'? Could something have switched off the power-genes inside this body?"

"I'll know more if you allow me to examine you intimately.”

“I'm game, but just don't get too intimate about it.”

The scientist smiled. “If I looked like Rosie O'Donnell, I could understand such reluctance, but....” she made a casual gesture to call my attention to her figure. Then, abruptly, she changed the subject. “How do you fix a malfunctioning computer?”

I blinked. “If you don't know, don't ask me. Remember, I'm from the days before stirrups were invented.”

“I mean, if there's a bad chip, a computer tech doesn't look for the one pinpoint that needs fixing. Instead, he pulls out the board that fails the testing and slots in a factory-certified replacement. Lauren is a witch who's extremely similar to Mantra, isn't she?"

"She seems to be."

"Good. Studying her might let us map a paradigm for how a healthy witch should check out. Wherever we find that you're different from her, that could be the source of your problem. I hope she hero-worships you enough to put up with what could turn into a series of long tests."

I shrugged. "I think she might. She's quite a fan."

"That would be a break. But what about 'Strike -- ah, Warstrike, as you call him? In the car, you said you helped him when his precognitive abilities started to fail."

“I tried transferring a little healing energy into him. It worked like a charm. Afterwards he seemed to be bake in form.”

She eyed me narrowly. “Could his problem have been psychosomatic?”

“I don't know. Maybe. He sure cured easily.”

“Is it possible that Mantra could be suffering from psychosomatic symptoms herself?”

“The other one? How can I know that. I think I've got my own head on pretty straight."

Pinnacle stroked her chin with a thumb. "So you think. But the mind is more powerful than muscle. Thoughts behave like computer programs inside the body. A bad mental attitude can make a person sick. The trauma of what happened on Friday might have thrown some mental switch inside Mantra's head."

"And I have to take the consequences of that hit? Hell! Where does that leave us?"
"Now that the conflicted mind of your double have been removed, your powers might reset on their own. It may take some time. After all, you haven't been in that body for very long.”

"Are you saying that Mantra lost her powers because she thought they did more harm than good?”

"I didn't say that. The hysterically blind don't set out wanting to be sightless. But the subconscious mind may interpret our deep-seated desperation in strange ways."

"So, you're recommending that we wait to see what happens? What next? 'Take two aspirins and call you in the morning?'”

Penny's brows drew together. "If your problem fixes itself, we're home free. But there has been work on how to switch on ultra powers, based on the DNA theory. For instance, the Theta Virus seems to induce ultra powers into people. What if it is not a natural disease, but the infecting microbes are really artificial nanites? ”

“Could be. The records I hacked suggested that the disease may have come from outer space. But the Theta Virus is dangerous. What Aladdin was trying to do in its own ham-handed way killed every person they'd treated.”

“If its tender-loving care, never go to a government black ops outfit. Fortunately, I have a much simplier idea.”

I looked up. “Simple is good.”

The Wounded World, a story of Mantra, Chapter 5

By Aladdin 

Edited by Christopher Leeson

The Wounded World

Originally written 2006

Revised and posted Jan. 21, 2019 

Chapter 5

THE ANGEL AND THE APE

When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears
Did he smile, his work to see;
Did he who made the lamb make thee? 

William Blake

After Penelope Lammars had gone off to nap, Evie and I watched The Miracle on 34^th Street for the next couple hours. I was restless, but would have nothing productive to do until I could link up with Barbara Freeman. Once Evie was properly cared for, I could start searching for the means to get back my personal reality. But maybe it would be easier to say than to do; I felt responsible for the Evie and Gus of this world. On top of that, I couldn't get Penny's perplexing condition out of my mind. What had driven her to drink?
 
By the time the movie had ended, it was time to rouse up my friend and take her and my daughter over to the Budget Inn. The traffic in that part of San Francisco was pretty bad, but we manged to get to the motel shortly before Barbara Freeman arrived. After very brief introductions and a few pleasant words, the still-tipsy Penny excused herself and retired to the car. Evie and I then assisted “Mom” to move into a room of her own. Whatever she thought of Pinnacle's sobriety, she didn't bring it up directly, but instead expressed relief that I'd already found a psychiatrist. 

Frankly, I think she would liked me to find one years sooner. The cover story I served her regarding Penny Lammars was that the two of us had been friends in college. I creatively claimed that she had worked with a clinic in the East for several years, and arrived a year before to set up a San Francisco private practice. As soon as I could, I excused myself and left Evie in the care of her grandmother, on the excuse that I was meeting with the doctor for dinner to begin discussions of my problem.

Once I rejoined Penelope, I took her back to her own place.

It was after seven by the time we got there. My overriding thought was to speak to Lauren. I used directory assistance to get her father's number. The phone rang only a couple times before someone picked up.

"Hello?"

"Hello, Mr. Sherwood? This is Eden Blake. May I speak to Lauren?"

"Oh, of course, Mrs. Blake. Lauren told me that you'd moved away from Canoga Park just yesterday. I guess nobody could blame you, after all that's happened. Hopefully we aren't going to lose you permanently."

"I hope not either. But I left town in too much of a rush to get everything done. I think Lauren could help me out, if she has the time."

"Maybe she can. Just a minute!"

I waited tensely. After a minute of quiet, Lauren's voice came on.

"M-- Eden?"

Embarrassing moment. Her stumble reminded me that the Lauren of this world now knew that I was -- or used to be -- Mantra. That meant that the relationship we'd had back home would be radically altered in this dimension.

“Where are you?” the girl asked.

"San Francisco. Lauren, we can't talk over a public line. But I've gotten into a kind of situation and you're one of the few people who can help out."

"Sure."

“Just a minute, Lauren.” I looked back at Pinnacle.

"Penny, I need to ask Lauren to call me back on a secure line. Can you recommend one?"

The melancholy blonde nodded. "My line is secure. I threw out all stops to make it NSA-proof.” She jotted down a number on a pad and handed the page to me. "Here, give her this."

I took the sheet.

"Lauren, I can't say too much just now. When can you get to a phone – a public phone, maybe -- without your dad becoming suspicious?"

"At about one tonight," she whispered.

"Will be you safe on the street at that hour?" I asked.

"Are you kidding?"

The Wounded World, a story of Mantra, Chapter 4

By Aladdin 

Edited by Christopher Leeson

Originally written 2006

Revised and posted Dec. 22, 2018

PINNACLE 

And thine is a face of sweet love in despair

And thine is a face of mild sorrow and care

And thine is a face of wild terror and fear

That shall never be quiet till laid on its bier.

William Blake

Going from Internet link to Internet link, I learned that Gus – young August, as they called him – had gone on a destructive rampage on the 15th, which was only cut short by the sudden arrival of an unknown ultra creature. This entity was described as a female-appearing humanoid protected by armor and possessing a tail. The two aberrations fought like Godzilla and King Kong, until both were knocked flat. A special police unit belatedly burst in and August Blake was taken into custody. The police unit and its insignias could not be identified by observers.
 
That was about all I could find out about the Night of Terror, even though there were hints that it had affected the whole world. Some of the alt-right sites were complaining about a multi-government clamp-down on information.
 
Switching my focus, I searched for references to Gus's earlier – and equally tragic – encounter, the one with the so-called fairies. A keyword search for “August Blake,” “Canoga Park,” and “fairies” drew in a scattering of stories – most of them frustratingly brief. They were mainly located on “strange world” websites. The August Blake Jr. it described had been a normal boy, a boy very much like the one I remembered, until May 23. Then, inexplicably, he had suffered a spontaneous mutation, one that medical science found itself at a loss to explain.
 
Felicia Campbell, the wife of Prototype and a noted specialist in ultra-oriented medicine, was interviewed about the case on FLOX News, a corporate network, but the best of a bad lot. According to reports, the scientist said, August Jr.'s physical changes generally followed a pattern observed in extreme ultra transformations, those involving disfiguring mutations. This time, however, no observable ultra abilities had developed in the boy. 

The only other useful information I could glean was that the boy's claim to have been captured by fairies was being passed off as merely a fantasy of his trauma. Moreover, the supporting assertions by his younger sister were similarly ignored. With annoying quickness, I could see, Gus's problem passed out of the news, and the devastated child was left to a miserable and reclusive existence in the family home.
 
The poor little guy! I could easily believe that events -- even before the Night of Terror -- had left him half out of his mind. Nothing more useful was recorded concerning the tailed creature in armor, though I was willing to believe that what Evie had told me was true. As for the the "special police unit" mentioned, Evie's testimony had likewise convinced me that it had been Aladdin. Like a bad penny, it kept turning up wherever there was trouble -- and almost always managed to make the trouble worse.
 
Then I had to imagine what it had been like for the local Mantra. Everything taken together must have been hideous for her. I, fortunately, hadn't seen these things happen, but just learning about them was choking me up worse than anything I had experienced since the mid-fifth century!
 
Glancing at my watch, I saw it was a little after noon. Mother wouldn't be arriving in Frisco for another six hours and Lauren would be out of touch for almost that long. I continued to worry about Gus, but since Aladdin hadn't called back, I supposed that he was still sleeping. Frustrated, I tried to make sense of all these disparate bits. Though I could tell myself that this wasn't my world to worry about, I had to do the best I could for both of the Blake kids. But what, really, could I do?
 
I needed advice, and not just the ordinary kind. But to whom could I turn? Aladdin probably knew a lot, but it was staffed by professional paranoids whose business had always been to hide information, not to circulate it. If I were caught tapping into their data bases without authorization, I could disappear and never be seen again.
 
Taken all together, the situation was making me antsy. I needed to do something positive and do it immediately. Did the Mantra of this world have ultra allies whom she could call on? Was there anyone of them that I could locate? Not Warstrike or – as he was called here, Strike. He was currently in hiding as a fugitive. The Strangers were, apparently, still in San Francisco, but government hostility and the vengeance-mentality of organized crime had made most of the ultras do their best to make themselves undetectable. Finding what amounted to missing persons would take a long time.
 
Wait a minute! I did know an ultra in this city, and I also knew her address. Or, at least, I knew the address that she had used on my home planet.
Pinnacle had been the most powerful psionic I'd ever run into. She had told me little about herself, but I knew she had been worked on by the bio-tech company, NuWare, to endow her with abilities. One of the company's biggest money-making schemes was inducing ultra powers into ordinary people – for high fees, of course. When NuWare got done with her, she had been able to give a supercomputer a run for its money.
 
What made my and Pinnacle's friendship harder than it should have been was that from the start she liked me in a way that I didn't want to be liked. Her beauty should have made that palatable for me, but that degree of kinkiness had instead made me uncomfortable.
 


Now, as things stood, any such issue had become secondary. She was my best bet for finding out what had happened to me, and to the rest of the world. I had to find her, but an Internet search for "Pinnacle" brought up hundreds of trash listings that had absolutely nothing to do with the woman I was looking for. That was probably because“Pinnacle” had never gone public as an ultra; there had been no mention of her in The Ultramate Source. In fact, she could easily be using another codename, like Warstrike/Strike. Or, even worse, she might have become a “missing person,” like Contrary had.
 
But Pinnacle had, I knew, built up a fully-equipped lab, using intermediaries and dummy companies to cover her traces, while paying her way through the use of her abilities, such as breaking the banks of Las Vegas casinos. J.D. Hunt, meanwhile, was seeking to find her, determined to reassert his control over his pet, something that Penny wanted no part of. 

I still remembered the lab's address. I could only hope that Pinnacle would be found there in this world. I needed to make a drive across the sprawling city and check the place out.
 
Or did I?
 

The Wounded World, a story of Mantra, Chapter 3

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.