Superhero Universe: Tesseracts Nineteen (29 page)

You’ll be spending a great deal of time here, the rotation schedule will be posted in the morning. I believe the best training to be hands-on, so you will all work in every department at one time or another. Specific assignments will come later; if you are drawn to a particular area of practice, do not hesitate to let your supervisor know. But Level One furnishes the greatest opportunity to practice on the widest variety of genetic anomalies. One day you’ll be ministering to The Burgundy Barnacle’s crustacean arthritis, the next you’ll be slopping irradiated salve on the self-inflicted wounds of DeathPriest. Oh yes, there’s quite the story there. Someday I’ll write a book.

Kidding, Colonel Tidhar! Kidding! The Colonel knows I would never write such a book. The scandals would cripple the superhero sector. How do you think the world would react if The Obviator’s bipolar disorder was revealed? Or The Groundhog’s intestinal insertion fetish?

Enough preamble! Behold, behind Curtain Number One we discover… I’m sorry, I don’t know who you are. Please forgive my theatricality, everyone, but I cannot resist making a little show of revealing your first authentic wounded superhero.

So you are… Thundra, Mistress of Climate? Superhero nomenclature has become a veritable cottage industry, hasn’t it? Are you a newcomer to the game, Miss Thundra? Ah, that explains it. Doctors, before you is a textbook example of how the onset of puberty is decisively linked to the evolution of superabilities.

My, that is quite the burn. How did it come about? Well, I am certainly glad you managed to save all those orphans, well done there, but superpowers do not always arrive conveniently bundled, do they? Just because you can harness lightning does not mean you’re necessarily fireproof. Let’s be a tad more careful next time, shall we? When you’ve been tended to, have the nurse direct you to the armory topside. They’ll set you up with a fire-retardant catsuit. Yes, a variety of colors are available, but I’d lose the cape. So last year.

Curtain Two? Ah, now
here
is a gentleman whom I’m sure needs no introduction. Doctors, meet The Reckoning, one of your A-plus certified top-tier heroes. An honour, sir, it’s not often we see someone of your stature on Level One. I caught your work last month in Rome, congratulations on saving the Vatican from Gorgon Zola. What’s Pope Deus Ex Machina like? Oh, that’s a shame, I rather hoped he was more open-minded.

Now, pray tell, what brings you to our doorstep today, Reckoning? Hmm? I do apologize. What’s troubling you,
The
Reckoning? Well, let’s just hunker down and take a looksee. If you could please remove your tights?

My, my, that
does
look inflamed. I’d like to throw this to my group here, do you mind? Doctors, close your mouths and place your thinking helmets on. We have on our hands a Grade One Flux Mutation suffering what looks to be a rash of cold sores about his extremities, swollen testicles and… Oh, I’m sorry, yes, of course, they always look like that. Moving on, we have additional sores beneath the scrotal sac and a degree of deep bruising, along with what the patient describes as a painful electrical discharge and nuclear piles. Diagnosis?

Interesting idea. Why don’t you ask him that yourself, Doctor Dayton? Go on.

Ouch. Please let the doctor’s suffering serve as a teachable moment. A degree of
tact
is of vital importance when treating the supercapable. Doctor Dayton, I suggest you trot off to the Level Four burn ward. Yes, just follow the signs. Off you go now! Hurry, and they may be able to save that arm.

Don’t concern yourselves, he’ll be fine. If we can patch up wounds inflicted by Dark Squid or Trajectory the Human Bullet, we can surely handle a simple third-degree scorching.

Now I do
hate
to be indelicate,
The
Reckoning but I
must
ask if you’ve at all been in contact with any of the Contagion Quints.
All
of them? I see. Well, this shouldn’t be a problem; we are very familiar with the Quints’ unique viral signature. Doctors Fuller and Berki, I don’t see why you can’t start your rotation immediately. You are now in charge of
The
Reckoning’s wellbeing. Head to the dispensary at the end of the hall, they’ll whip up an ointment that will clear up this trifling infection. And please stop your sputtering, it’s demeaning to your profession. Hurry, before that erythema goes septic. If that happens we’ll have to quarantine the entire level. Move!

The rest of you, onward to Level Two!

Now that we’re alone again, I can confide that The
Reckoning’s sexual appetite is the subject of water-cooler scuttlebutt, but that’s where such talk must remain. For all our sakes. But let me ask, is anyone here surprised that a dalliance with
all five
of the Contagion Quints has led to a rather volcanic STD eruption? We reap what we sow, doctors, no matter how many battleships we can vaporize with our atomic vision.

Frankly, most of your name-brand heroes are, for lack of a better term, utter assholes, and The
Reckoning is an A-Number-One poopchute. Few of you may have interest in proctology, but you had all better get used to having your heads lodged firmly up your patients’ asses, and yes that includes The Globule. When you are on duty, these beings are your gods incarnate. When you consider the vital international security work they do and, more importantly, how dangerous even the most mediocre supercapable is compared to humdrum normals like yourselves, well, it behooves you to suck up as much as possible.

By way of example; do you all recall the death of Major Proton? In truth, he was
not
slain in mortal combat with Terminatrobot, that was only a cover story. Some years back, one of our residents removed one of PorcuPinenut’s quills from the Major’s thigh and called him a… what was it again, Colonel? Yes, “big baby,” when he cried. Major Proton transmuted the doctor into a sentient rod of fissionable uranium-235 and stormed out in a huff. That was quite the day.

Anyhow, the Major is now known as Professor Nuke, the happy gent who destroyed most of Saskatchewan during last year’s Meltdown War. The doctor? Quadborg packaged her up and sent her hurtling toward a black hole in the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy. Uranium-235 has a half-life of 704 million years, so I imagine the doctor will have plenty of time to consider her lack of bedside manner.

Ah, Level Two. We are now three kilometers down. This is where we delve into the nitty-gritty of supercapable physiology. I’ll ask you all to get used to checking the radiation detectors on your ID cards. Should that bar turn
any
color other than blue, do
not
proceed from this point. It’s only changed to red once in the history of this facility, when X-Raygun had a bout of indigestion. We lost a lot of good people that day.

Levels Two through Five are primarily the SÜPER surgical wards, and—

Leaving us already, Miss Tycal? Are you sure you can’t stay and visit the… no, of course, you’re busy. I understand. I do hope you’ll visit from time to time?

That was obviously Miss Tycal, checking out after a week-long recuperation from her defeat by BlunderGus. She’s known for her rapid healing abilities; we’re rather superfluous when it comes to her. What is
not
well-known is that any part of her, if severed, grows, starfish-like, into an identical Miss Tycal in a matter of months. In the past we’ve managed to halt the maturation through reattachment or incineration, but this time her arms and left leg got away from us. Literally. It took days to find them. By that time they were completely sentient, and I simply didn’t have the heart to cremate the misshapen little tykes. Miss Tycal, as you saw, does not care to take her new charges with her, not when she’s on a mission of vengeance. I do hate it when it’s personal.

So now our children’s ward on Level Seven has three very odd-looking new residents. Eventually, we plan to reunite them with their hostmother to form a new superteam.

Ah, Surgical Theatre Seven is in use. Let’s peek in, shall we? Ooh, a good one. Last night, a squadron of organic zeppelins besieged the headquarters of The Excellent Eight. The blimps were thwarted, but Flexgirl suffered internal injuries. Normally not a problem, but
normal
is not what this facility is about. Flexgirl was in full elongation when she was knocked unconscious and has not retracted to her normal size and shape. We’re very wary of reviving her while her body is elongated to thirty-two feet and thin as ribbon candy. The surgeons are now trying to suture an abdominal wound, but it’s like trying to knit silly putty.

Looking at the schedule, I see we have a procedure on deck for tomorrow. Doctor Maxfield, you’ve some practice with thoracic malignancies, yes? Good, you’ll be assisting Doctor Pearce with a lobectomy. Yes, well, it doesn’t sound
too
bad, but your patient will be Third Degree. As his skin is an unquenchable inferno, you’ll have your work cut out for you. I’m sure there’s some irony in a man of living flame suffering from lung cancer

We’ve repurposed a hydrotherapy tank to keep Third Degree fully submerged during the operation, and we’re all very anxious to see if it works. I’m rather jealous; good luck to you!

Oh dear, the Colonel is tapping his watch. I do tend to go on, but can you blame me? Back to the elevator! I think we’ll have to cut the tour short and bypass gynaecology, occupational therapy, psychology, and the morgue and skip to Level Ten, our convalescent ward. A shame, our psychology department is second to none. You’d be surprised by how often near-omnipotence leads directly to erectile dysfunction.

Level Ten, rehab and long-term care, where we help those heroes who cannot help themselves. Down this hall is an assortment of the
differently
capable. Here you will learn that the überlife is not necessarily all fun and games.

Room 1001. Ladies, gentlemen, please gather around. Don’t worry, he’s quite unconscious. May I present Mr. Tim Tibbetts. Sad, sad case. Timothy, as you can plainly see, is suffering from a marked excess of dermis. In other words, too much skin. His internal organs are similarly affected; heart, liver, lungs, intestines, what have you, all stretched to near-bursting. This accounts for the marked bulging of his torso. We keep Timothy in a constant state of complete sedation and hooked up to a heart-lung machine. It’s the only way his body can continue to operate in its present form.

I see you don’t recognize poor Timothy, but you’ve no doubt heard of his exploits under his
nom de superplume
, the musclebound, nine-foot tall fuchsia force of nature known as The Humongous. In pre-Flux days, Mr. Tibbetts was a mild-mannered accountant with suppressed anger issues. Ordinarily this would have presented no real worry, but the Flux physically externalized his rage, expanding his body mass into the indestructible grunting horrorhero we all love. The thing is, when the rage ultimately subsides and escapes his body like air from a deflating balloon, what is left is a distorted, enlarged mass of muscle tissue and skin draped over a skeletal structure far too puny and frail to handle it.

Timothy
has
begged for death several times now, but our government considers The Humongous a critical weapon in the War on Superterror. Frankly, his care and feeding are among the easier tasks you’ll have. The tubes do most of the work, and the bed automatically turns him every twelve hours to prevent bedsores. The real work lies in reigniting his fury. Once it was a simple matter of transporting him to the site of the villainy, waking him, and making various unimaginative allusions to his mother’s sexual preferences. But endless repetition has inured him, and even the cattle prods aren’t working so well anymore. I fear we may have to resort to torturing his loved ones— if we can get legal on board.

Omelettes, broken eggs, etc. You know the idiom.

Let’s head to Room 1010, a much nicer space. Barbara, I’ve brought the new residents, may we come in? Are you decent? Just a joke, she never wears anything but Lycra undergarments anyway. Doctors, may I introduce to you Barbara Bainbridge, better known as Boulder, a woman fluxwarped into a being of living metal and rock. How are you today, Barb? I see you’ve crushed another sofa, I’ll ring the custodial staff to fetch you a new one. Not a problem; we get a discount on bulk orders.

I see. Well, that’s why we’re here, isn’t it? Doctors, if you’ve seen footage of her many battles with The Alterdimensionals during Parallel World War II, you’ll know that Boulder is the closest thing you’ll ever see to a human tank. Particularly when she’s equipped with a plasma bolt-cannon. Barbara’s outer dermis is a compound mixture of lead and molten lava (don’t think we haven’t exhausted ourselves trying to figure out how it all works), rendering her nigh-invulnerable.

But it’s her inner composition that has forced Boulder to become our longest-term resident. Skin of molten stone and metal is one thing, but her inner organs run the gamut of the periodic table. Barbara’s blood is pure liquid mercury, her liver is made of copper, and her colon is titanium. She has eardrums made of cobalt, and her heart is, no, not gold, tungsten. She subsists mainly on rhenium and magnesium alloys, they seem to be what least upsets her zinc stomach. Part of your job will be refining her diet to allow for some variety. One cannot live on beryllium alone, eh, Barb?

Also, Boulder routinely suffers from rather serious kidney stones. Doctor Maxfield! What did I say about tact? You try passing a four-pound renal calculus through your ureter, see how much you giggle then! Just for that, you’re now in charge of sifting through Boulder’s excretions for rare metals. Until I say so, that’s how long! Honestly! Head to the nurse’s station, tell them you’re the new bowel boy. Doctor Ginther will be more than happy to let you take over his duties. And tell them to prep Barbara for a session with the sonic jackhammer. Go!

Apologies for the intrusion, Barbara. You have yourself a wonderful day.

As you saw, Barbara is fairly content here. She was a freelance writer before Flux, so in her downtime she keeps herself occupied writing nonfiction pieces under a number of pseudonyms. If you get the chance, take a gander at the titanium-reinforced, extra-large keyboard our engineers cobbled together for her. Considering each of her fingers weighs ten kilograms and her hands are the size of frying pans, it’s remarkable she only goes through one a week.