his being coexistent with the tech. He wasn’t a guy who ran to a phone booth or a Batcave, he had been reinvented as a disembodied program transferable to transformable androids stored deep in the KM Building that were also stored folded into the synthetic layer merged with his lifelike skin, all operating like unlearned magic. Facts like those made mirrors complicated for him.
“Not fully processed. Am working on that knowledge.”
“Got it. How long do the heroes last?”
“Until they’re…used up. That’s about two uses.”
“Like that month’s issue of Spider Man,” Duff said. “Except you only get to read it once. Is that it?”
“The metaphor will do.”
“But you’re really Milo Spector.”
“The Carousel uses the name Milo Spector for his alter-ego. Since 2000, Milo Spector has lived in the old Kinner & Membert building in downtown Brutalia. He bought the building for two million, tripled that in renovations. The money source? Milo Spector is a very good man to be. As always there is more unknown than known.”
“So your true identity is The Carousel?”
“I use Milo Spector as my identity. Milo Spector uses The Carousel as his secret identity. The Carousel uses the name Milo Spector for his alter-ego.”
“So who are you?”
“Everything suggests I began life as a scientist named Milo Spector. I look like his photos. Like every other long-term inhabitant of Brutalia, my memory ends before the year 2000.”
Duff said, “Whoever you are, you’re the guy. I have a hate for the OSD. I need a good side to take.”
“I’ll see what I can do for you. But Teenage Cleopatra is absurdly out of your league.”
“Can I make you another sandwich?”
“Yes.”
Duff went to the kitchen, got started. “Am I your sidekick now?”
“I don’t have a sidekick,” Spector said. “You’re a superhero without the identity. Find your cape. Then you can join AXIS.”
“You’ve revealed a lot to me.”
“Duff, what I’ve told you barely covers my
name
.”
13
N ewport L.P. was a corporation based in Manhattan. It’s founding CEO Neal Newport had a net worth of 30 billion. Newport L.P. made the Ground Zero Freedom Tower happen, its construction girdering its way up the New York skyline. Neal and Nell Newport were the hot Manhattan couple. Other couples wanted to take them home and put them on their walls like fine art. Some couples looked at them and saw a mirage in the desert of their lives. Even people whose teeth gnashed at the sight of couples heard strings when they saw the Newports.
That night on a closed block in Brooklyn, dozens of atmospheric speakers continuously played the song “Tusk.” Nude, the Newports stood between alley walls covered with drawings, shapes and figures of an arcane nature. The natives dipped their hands into blacklight ink buckets, dripped across cement then onto the Newports’ naked skin in layers of dayglo finger strokes. Ink-wet hands covered Nell’s breasts, spread across Neal’s back, circuited her hips, painted his pubic hair, the Viagra enhanced organ. Camouflaged in tiger stripes in luminous jungle colors set off by the banks of blacklights surrounding the block, the Newports were transformed into their alter egos, the jungle superheroes Tiger God and Tiger Goddess. The ink was a compound of dermal amphetamines permeating their skin and suffusing them with a hallucinogenic intensity.
“Transformation,” Tiger Goddess commented.
“Quite,” Tiger God said. “We are no longer two anthropologists observing the tiger in the wild. We are jungle superheroes.”
“Our origin story beginning with our discovery of the sacred lair of the God Tiger.”
“And our sacred responsibility to lead the people of the Tiger.”
“Through the Tiger fertility ritual.”
“Yes.”
The natives backed away from them when they had been completely painted-over. Their eyes blinked on streaked faces. The natives numbered fourteen and the flow of their
“Not fully processed. Am working on that knowledge.”
“Got it. How long do the heroes last?”
“Until they’re…used up. That’s about two uses.”
“Like that month’s issue of Spider Man,” Duff said. “Except you only get to read it once. Is that it?”
“The metaphor will do.”
“But you’re really Milo Spector.”
“The Carousel uses the name Milo Spector for his alter-ego. Since 2000, Milo Spector has lived in the old Kinner & Membert building in downtown Brutalia. He bought the building for two million, tripled that in renovations. The money source? Milo Spector is a very good man to be. As always there is more unknown than known.”
“So your true identity is The Carousel?”
“I use Milo Spector as my identity. Milo Spector uses The Carousel as his secret identity. The Carousel uses the name Milo Spector for his alter-ego.”
“So who are you?”
“Everything suggests I began life as a scientist named Milo Spector. I look like his photos. Like every other long-term inhabitant of Brutalia, my memory ends before the year 2000.”
Duff said, “Whoever you are, you’re the guy. I have a hate for the OSD. I need a good side to take.”
“I’ll see what I can do for you. But Teenage Cleopatra is absurdly out of your league.”
“Can I make you another sandwich?”
“Yes.”
Duff went to the kitchen, got started. “Am I your sidekick now?”
“I don’t have a sidekick,” Spector said. “You’re a superhero without the identity. Find your cape. Then you can join AXIS.”
“You’ve revealed a lot to me.”
“Duff, what I’ve told you barely covers my
name
.”
13
N ewport L.P. was a corporation based in Manhattan. It’s founding CEO Neal Newport had a net worth of 30 billion. Newport L.P. made the Ground Zero Freedom Tower happen, its construction girdering its way up the New York skyline. Neal and Nell Newport were the hot Manhattan couple. Other couples wanted to take them home and put them on their walls like fine art. Some couples looked at them and saw a mirage in the desert of their lives. Even people whose teeth gnashed at the sight of couples heard strings when they saw the Newports.
That night on a closed block in Brooklyn, dozens of atmospheric speakers continuously played the song “Tusk.” Nude, the Newports stood between alley walls covered with drawings, shapes and figures of an arcane nature. The natives dipped their hands into blacklight ink buckets, dripped across cement then onto the Newports’ naked skin in layers of dayglo finger strokes. Ink-wet hands covered Nell’s breasts, spread across Neal’s back, circuited her hips, painted his pubic hair, the Viagra enhanced organ. Camouflaged in tiger stripes in luminous jungle colors set off by the banks of blacklights surrounding the block, the Newports were transformed into their alter egos, the jungle superheroes Tiger God and Tiger Goddess. The ink was a compound of dermal amphetamines permeating their skin and suffusing them with a hallucinogenic intensity.
“Transformation,” Tiger Goddess commented.
“Quite,” Tiger God said. “We are no longer two anthropologists observing the tiger in the wild. We are jungle superheroes.”
“Our origin story beginning with our discovery of the sacred lair of the God Tiger.”
“And our sacred responsibility to lead the people of the Tiger.”
“Through the Tiger fertility ritual.”
“Yes.”
The natives backed away from them when they had been completely painted-over. Their eyes blinked on streaked faces. The natives numbered fourteen and the flow of their
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