The Other Eight (6 page)

“Nope. My name is Clark.”

“Then your nickname is Sean?” Summers
offered.

“Nope, but everyone calls me that.”

Dr. Aiken stared for a moment. “I’m still not
clear exactly…”

“Try to call me Clark.”

“Sean,” Aiken said. He furrowed his brow.
“Sean. C-L-A-R-K. Sean.” He was legitimately trying to say the
man’s real name, but his mouth simply wouldn’t cooperate.

Summers chimed in. “Sean. S-S-S-Sean. Wow!
That’s so strange. I just can’t get the right word out.”

“How do you envision putting this power to
use as part of a team, S-… Mr. Kent?”

“I could go undercover, obviously.”

“As a man named Sean,” Dr. Aiken said
fighting the urge to roll his eyes.

“Now you’ve got it.”

“Well,” Aiken said, straightening the papers
and handing them to his assistant. “Thank you for coming in. We’ll
be in touch.”

Seanman shook hands with Aiken and Summers
and went on his way. When the door was shut, the doctor looked at
his assistant.

“At least he wasn’t deranged or dangerous.
And it was a pretty neat trick. Probably not super-soldier
potential, though. Here’s the next one.” She handed him another
folder.

Aiken flipped the file open, glanced across
the information, and braced himself for another session.

“Send in number 361!” he called out.

The door was pushed open, and in walked a
woman who, to say the very least, made quite a first impression. A
petite young woman, barely five feet tall and with a thin gymnast’s
build, she looked to be in her early twenties and of Asian descent,
but it was difficult to be sure thanks to the distracting outfit
she’d chosen to wear. She was dressed in a skintight latex catsuit
with a white and red starburst pattern. It was an outfit that would
have been lewd if not for the fact that her slender frame was
almost completely devoid of curves. On her feet were massive work
boots that had been painted to match the suit, and on her fists
were red gloves of the padded sort worn by MMA fighters. Her black
hair was pulled into a single lopsided pigtail, streaked with white
and red highlights, and black lipstick had been carefully applied
to her smirking lips. On her face was a pair of goggles that would
have looked more in place on an old-fashioned motorist. She also
wore a canvas belt, poorly dyed red to match the color scheme of
the rest of the outfit and weighed down with various pouches and
holders for everything from a cell phone to what seemed to be some
sort of martial arts equipment. With what could only be called a
cocky swagger, she strutted up to the interview chair and took a
seat.

“Uh… we requested that our applicants
not
interview in costume,” Dr. Aiken said, heroically
attempting to act professional. “And unarmed. Are those
nunchakus?”

“Oh?” She turned her head with a flourish of
pigtails, glancing at the door. “The guards are wearing
their
uniforms. Why shouldn’t I wear mine? And no, they
aren’t nunchakus. They’re non-chucks.”

Aiken took a deep breath. This was going to
be one of
those
interviews. “Very well then. It looks like
you didn’t fill out your application fully. Please state your name.
Your real name, please.”

“You mean my secret identity? No dice, Doc.
Classified.”

He sighed. “We’ll go back to that later. Now,
about your codename…”

She spread her hands out in front of her, as
if presenting her answer on a marquee. “Non Sequitur.”

“Yes. I’m afraid that’s already taken.”

She dropped her arms and shot him a stern
look. “What?”

“That name has been assigned to another
applicant.”

“Of course. Of
course
that would
happen.” She clucked her tongue and muttered under her breath,
leaning over to rummage through one of the pouches on her belt.
“Frickin’ perfect name.
Perfect
name. Already taken. Of
course.”

“What would be your second choice?” Aiken
asked, tapping his pencil on the form.

“Hold your horses. I’m getting it.” She
pulled a bundle of loose papers from the pouch. Each seemed to have
a sketch of an outfit and a name drawn out as a logo. One by one
she flipped through the bundle, discarding pages as she went. “No…
no… ugh, what was I thinking? No…
tsk
. I guess we’ll go with
Nonsensica. Madame Nonsensica maybe? No. No, just plain Nonsensica.
At least that way I don’t have to come up with a new name for the
non-chucks.”

“Okay, Nonsensica. You’ve written under
special abilities ‘Distraction.’ What exactly do you mean by
that?”

She leaned toward him. “Get this. I’ve got
the ability to cause mental misfires.”

“Could you elaborate?”

“I can do better than that. I can show
you.”

The guards at the door put their hands to
their pistols, and Dr. Aiken dramatically waved his hands. “No, no,
no! The sign!”

She turned to a large placard on the far wall
that read: Any demonstration of powers on interview personnel
without their specific request and permission is grounds for
immediate disqualification.

“Oh,” she said in disappointment. She leaned
back and crossed her arms, then her legs. Thanks to her outfit, the
motion produced a sound like a party clown furiously constructing a
pair of balloon animals. “Let’s see. How do I explain it? You know
how sometimes someone says something so bizarre that you have to
sort of shake your head and blink for a second?”

“Yes.”

“I can do that on demand with a one hundred
percent success rate.”

“How do you achieve this effect?”

“I say two words in rapid succession that are
so completely, so fundamentally, so drastically and conceptually
different that the act of attempting to comprehend them causes a
momentary mental overload.” She leaned back with a satisfied
nod.

“Interesting,” Dr Aiken commented, scrawling
three question marks on the line. “Under other abilities, you’ve
just written ‘ass kicking.’”

“That’s right.”

“Care to expand on that?”

“Jeet Kune Do. Seven years.”

“Ah. And under origin you’ve written
‘None.’”

“That’s right. I was born this way,
baby.”

“You’ve always had your powers?”

“As long as I can remember.”

“And have you always wanted to be a
hero?”

“I’ve always
been
a hero. Until now it
just wasn’t likely to pay the bills… You guys
are
planning
to
pay
us, right?”

“I believe there is a salary, yes.”

“Then I’m your girl.”

“Fascinating… So far you are the only
applicant who hasn’t pinpointed a single event in his or her past
as the launching point for their hero career.”

“Always was, always will be.”

“Not to offend you, but I would have thought
if there was someone with your… uniform running the streets and
fighting crime, I would have heard about it by now.”

“Well, I haven’t fought any crime, you know,
formally.”

“So how exactly have you been a hero all of
your life?”

“Because I am, okay? A poet is a poet even
before she puts her pen to the paper. If you’re meant to be
something, really meant to be, then it’s all there waiting for you
to let it out.”

Dr. Aiken nodded and made some more notes.
“Now this power of yours, does it have any peculiar limits? Can you
do it to more than one person at a time for instance?”

“No. Just one. I mean, I think I did it to a
group once, but it was pretty weak and I’m not sure how I did it,
so we’ll say just one. But one’s all I need, because then
these
come into play.” She threw three punches with
considerable speed. “And then this!” She thrust a foot upward. “And
then that’s it, boom. Another evildoer vanquished.”

Aiken wrote ‘extreme confidence,
compensation?’ in the application’s margin.

“And you say that you can achieve this effect
with just words?”

“Yep. It really is much easier to understand
if you let me show you.”

“I really don’t think that’s—”

“Is it safe?” Summers asked.

“Oh yeah. Perfectly safe. I do it to folks
all the time, and they’re fine after.”

“You can demonstrate on me then.”

Aiken gave her a concerned look.

“I think it would help with the evaluation…
and I’m a little curious,” Summers explained.

“If you’re sure,” Aiken said uncertainly.
“Nonsensica, do the honors.”

The applicant turned to Private Summers,
seeming to measure her up. Finally she drew in a breath and said,
“Temple woodchuck.”

Summers squinted and tipped her head.

“What?”

“You want me to do it again?”

“Oh, was that it? Sure do it again!”

“Milky Bradshaw.”

Summers shook her head. “It is the strangest
thing, sir. It’s like she flicked me in the nose.”

“And it works every time,” Nonsensica
added.

“Okay, thank you, Nonsensica. You can report
back two weeks from today at 9 a.m. for your initial assessment, or
else leave us with a callback number.”

“Oh, I’ll be back. You’re gonna want me
here,” she said with a cocky smile.

She stood and paced out the door. The guards
shut it behind her.

“Care to weigh in?” Aiken said to
Summers.

“You keep throwing the term ‘hero complex’
around. In her case it doesn’t seem so complex.”

“She’ll certainly be dedicated to the cause.
She doesn’t seem terribly unbalanced, at least not in a dangerous
way, but it is tough to tell with all of the glitz and the
attitude. My concern is that she’s too much about the
spectacle.”

“Heh, if you think
she’s
about the
spectacle, you didn’t take a good hard look at that line out there.
I think about a third of the women out there are just using this as
an excuse to dress in stripperific outfits.”

“Stripperific?”

“It’s a community term.”

“In what community?”

“The Internet.”

He furrowed his brow for a moment. Finally he
shrugged. “We’ll push her along and see how she does in the
physical and aptitude exercises. Next!”

General Siegel
sat in his office, sizzling with anger. Since the FM incident, he
had been on one massive, unbroken warpath. He’d yet to deliver any
orders at anything below a bellow, and his once gloriously clear
desk overflowed with paperwork. Three stacks of folders peaked
along one edge of the desk, the tallest with a few dozen and the
shortest with only a handful. At the opposite end was a trio of
cardboard file boxes loaded with hundreds more, and on the floor
beneath them was a disorderly crate of discarded folders. He turned
to the nearest file box, glaring at it as though it was the source
of all of society’s ills, and selected a fresh folder.

“General Siegel, Major St. John is here to
see you,” Sergeant Roberts announced over the intercom.

Siegel snatched up the receiver of the phone.
“
Send him in!
” he growled before hammering the phone back
onto the hook with enough force to send a chunk of plastic shrapnel
ricocheting around the room.

He buzzed the door open, and in walked the
infuriatingly debonair Major St. John.

“General Siegel, I see they’ve given you the
first round of hopefuls,” he said, a broad grin of gleaming white
teeth practically lighting his way. His tie was missing, and his
top button was open. It had the result of making him look even more
rakish, and ratcheting Siegel’s hatred up a few more notches.

“You’re out of uniform, Major,” Siegel fumed.
“And today is a day that you really ought to be wearing your
tie.”

“Why so, General?”

“Because it makes it so much easier to
strangle you. Look at this mess. I haven’t had to deal with this
much paperwork personally in
years.
”

“Neither have I, but then, in my case it is
because I’ve got a computer. Where is yours?”

“Sitting in front of my clerk, where it
belongs. I didn’t earn these stars to have to pound away at a
keyboard all day.”

“Fair enough. And there is something so
rewarding about taking decisive action with a red pen, am I
right?”

“There is no satisfaction in any of this,
Major. And I want you to know that I’m holding you
responsible.”

“Me?” he said, his grin turning a bit more
sly. “I wasn’t the one who caused this little publicity bonanza.
I’m just the fellow with the foresight to put it to good use.”

“Good use? Look at this,” Siegel said,
scooping up a pile of discarded folders and flipping them open one
by one. “The ability to see through his own eyelids. The ability to
make bees fly upside down. The ability to turn his liver blue. This
man needs invasive surgery to prove his power even exists, and he
thinks that it will somehow make him a superior soldier. This whole
project has turned into a damn farce.”

“You were looking for superheroes. It was
never going to be anything but a farce. The first three Guardian
Projects were all farces, but we got some good men out of
them.”

“As I understand it, they spent
three-quarters of a million dollars on the last one before they got
cut off, and all we found was a man who can fill out forms in
threes and a man who can remotely control a crash test dummy.”

“Thanks to your little leak and my quick
thinking, though, this particular farce is one that’s keeping
public interest high and has gotten the people holding the purse
strings to throw us a bit more. Not only that, but I’m starting to
get sponsorship offers. Red Bull has specifically offered three
million dollars in funding if we find someone with wings.”

Siegel closed his eyes until a tremor of rage
could pass. “Did you have a reason for this interruption, or did
you come along to hammer home the fact that this world is
officially an irredeemable wreck of greed and idiocy?”