provide a lot of leverage to people who want to do bad things.”
I remember seeing the heroes once, before everything went bad. Smiling and clasping hands, arms around shoulders. Good people doing extraordinary things and making the world better for everyone, because they could. We were proud to be part of the same species.
Then Statesman came.
“The Golden Guardian tried at first to look like he was helping without helping. But that didn’t last long. Soon he was in the position of fighting against a good super, or risking his family. It wasn’t much of a choice, really. He would try to reason with them first, try to get them to come in without a fight. Try to save their lives. It rarely worked. And when the government knew where you lived, knew what you looked like, knew where you slept, well, it wasn’t that hard to catch most of them. A bunch of black suited combat troops would burst in with guns leveled and trained in each super’s weakness, and the Golden Guardian in reserve if things got tough. A lot of good people ended up in secret prisons. A lot ended up dead. I doubt we’ll ever know how many.
“Probably the biggest dust up was when Lady Red went up against the Golden Guardian. They had been friends long before Statesman. Partners in the League. As close as two people could be.”
I trailed off, thinking about those days. Two of the world’s greatest heroes, the world’s finest. And Lady Red had been so beautiful and strong, poised and passionate.
“So they knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses,” I continued. “And Lady Red wouldn’t listen to reason, wouldn’t budge. Or couldn’t budge. I guess she really had no choice, either. Statesman had passed a bill requiring that all citizens be completely human, and Lady Red wasn’t. With the blood red hair and eyes, and the soft bronze skin, she was clearly something else. Something better, maybe. She had a family, too, but the only way she knew to protect them was to fight. If she had no rights under the law, maybe her children wouldn’t either.
“It was an epic battle, if you’re into that sort of thing. It certainly made great TV. The Guardian pulled his punches as long as he could, but Red was just throwing too much power at him. In the end, he had to kill her. She just wouldn’t yield, wouldn’t stop fighting. He stood over her body for a long time, as the cameras rolled. You couldn’t see his face through that golden helmet, but you could almost feel the pain through your television screen.
“It wasn’t long before there weren’t any more supers on the street. The Golden Guardian vanished when his work was done. Probably a deal made with Statesman. And what came next was worse.”
I looked at my son in the darkness. A teddy bear night-light gave off a thin, blue light to one side of the room. A happy but impotent protector against the darkness. Just one of many illusions of safety for which we all paid so much. He was the most important person in my life, and I would do anything to protect him.
“Statesman became President that year. That’s like the Emperor, except in those days it wasn’t for life. The groundwork had already been laid for what he did next. The Constitution – sort of a list of rights people had – was suspended. Personal freedoms had already been restricted, so the logical next step in the crisis was to put elections on hold. Just until things were safe again, of course. New robots, similar to the ones that destroyed DC, were put into service to assist the military in making sure no new threats showed up. Threats like the British, or the Chinese, or the Russians. Anyone who wasn’t an American was a Terrorist until proven otherwise. And to be an American you had to believe in the government and whatever it did. You never knew who might be plotting to bring back supers.
“The President changed his title to ‘Emperor.’ Just semantics, really. Statesman was already ruling with divine right. Any dissent vanished in the dead of night in a flurry of boots and nightsticks. And if no one was disagreeing, then everyone must agree.
“London was hit by a freak meteorite, completely wiping it off the face of the earth. The Emperor’s robots moved in to help restore order, and never left. The Middle East was hit by a new plague, killing everyone from Turkey to Pakistan. Again, the Emperor’s robots went in to clean up and salvage the resources. After that we sort of lost track of the rest of the world. Travel had been restricted anyway, so there wasn’t much point in keeping up with current events in other places.
“And now we have peace. The Emperor makes sure we have what we need, more or less, and makes order out of chaos.”
“What would happen if another super showed up?”
“I don’t know, sweetie. I haven’t seen a super in a long time, good or bad. I don’t know if there are any left. It’s just the Emperor and his troops.” I felt nauseous hate start to well up within me, and held it in check so my son wouldn’t see.
I tussled his hair, which was starting to show blood red roots. We’d have to get the dye out again in the morning. “Now go to sleep. It’s late.”
I reached between his mattresses and pulled out the old relic he had hidden there. His eyes were already closing, so he never noticed. It was a comic book, from my own secret collection. Things like that could get you killed, so I should probably burn it. I looked at it as I left his room. It was a good one, though. A red and blue super was locked in battle with a villain, but you knew the hero would win. The hero always won. Who would want to believe otherwise?
I closed my son’s door until it was just a crack, and went down the hall to my bedroom. My own room was sparsely furnished, with only a bed and a dresser, made of dark, cracked wood. The paint was thin in places, and the carpet was so threadbare that you could hardly tell it used to be blue. I crossed the room and opened the walk in closet, one of the few luxuries I allowed myself. There wasn’t much in the closet since my wife passed. Just a few suits and pants hanging against the back wall.
I pushed the clothes aside and gave the wall a push. It opened up and slid out, revealing an equally sized alcove. I tossed the comic book in on top of several others. The folded suit of gold rested next to the pile of books, a dented and tarnished helmet on top, staring eyeless at me. It screamed at me words that never left my head; accusations, epithets, warnings. Mistakes made, battles lost, lives forfeited. Faces of dead friends and a lost love.
I closed the secret alcove and left the closet. Moonlight streamed in through the one window, casting squares of dim light across the opposite wall, angled like even the night judged me. I looked out the window and watched one of the Emperor’s patrol robots, twenty feet tall with tripod legs crawling through the streets like a huge, spindly spider. It was after curfew, and anyone it found on the streets without a government transponder would be killed on sight. So no one was on the street. A lesson quickly learned.
I closed the thin curtains and went to find that bottle of Jim Bean. It would be a long night again, filled with memories and regrets. In the morning I would dye my son’s hair to a normal, human color, and pray his eyes didn’t change like his mother’s. I could always find colored contact lenses, like my wife did in the old days, but it would be hard to explain that to my son. One day he would figure it all out. But until then he could still be my little boy. The most precious thing I have, and my only weakness.
Who ever thought the villain would win in the end? Evil would triumph over good?
Who ever thought loving someone could cost so much?
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