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  Once inside the KM Building took the elevator sixty four floors to the top, stepped back into the nerve center of The Carousel.

  His sensors picked up Heroes Man. He had given the kid access to a self-erasing guest rooftop code. The sensors told him Heroes Man was still alive. That had been the kid’s first test. Any activity outside narrowly defined parameters of guest intrusiveness would have triggered disintegration codes turning the kid into a tube of cremains. In three years the KM Building security system had subtracted eight OSD burglars from the payroll. An anorexic cockroach in rubber-soled shoes couldn’t sneak into the KM Building.

  He found Heroes Man in the kitchen making grilled cheese sandwiches. The buttery cheesy smell pierced his nose, set off an ancient appetite. Even more unusual since the kitchen did not stock bread, butter, or cheese. The kid was a twentysomething tall slender type with blonde hair that was short but cut to hang like it was long, framing the kind of sensitive perfection he had the luxury of downplaying, his features and bone structure sculpted with more symmetrical grace than necessary. He always wore headphones. His clothing clung to him, layered top and shorts and sandals, bare feet with black-painted nails. He was built for flight. He had been a stalker, turning up at the Starbuck’s to make his pitch: he could locate the Motorchrists. He could fly and lead a superhero anywhere. In one week he had worked that into becoming an intern sidekick to The Carousel. He served Milo a grilled cheese sandwich on a paper plate, served himself.

  “I’m a chef,” Heroes Man said. “I have weird hours.”

  “Me too.”

  “You don’t have food here.”

  “I don’t need a lot of food. And I hate stores.”

  “I brought food.”

  “You’re not moving in, kid.”

  “I have my own place.”

  They took seats in the kitchen, munched on grilled cheese. It tasted like it smelled and wanted to be served on a daily basis and again after midnight.

  “How long could you fly?”

  “I discovered it a year ago.”

  “How?”

  “I heard the song ‘Heroes’ and I could fly.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yeah. I’m into ‘Heroes.’ Heard it for years. Then from that one time on it made me could fly. Could make me fly. Only that recording gives me the power of flight. No covers, only the Bowie original. I can fly for over an hour off one play of the song. Then I play it again for a refill.”

  “That’s just dumb.”

  “Yet it works. I can fly, I can make a Delta 88 fly, any vehicle and size. But I’m not The Carousel.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “The Carousel’s only superpower is not being a superhero.”

  “No,” Spector said. “He creates them. I take it flying to classic rock changed your life.”

  “It changed everything. I never exactly fitted in as an ordinary person anyway. Now reality is like being inside a dream. Like I found my natural state and this is it.”

  “Now what?”

  “Now I become a superhero.”

  “Why become a superhero?”

  “You want the real answer? I’m obsessed with a superhero.”

  “Who?”

  “Teenage Cleopatra.”

  “You’re after her?”

  “I am. And I don’t have a chance without being a way better superhero than this. That is my goal in life.”

  “You got a name?”

  “Duff Nash.”

  “Okay, here you are, Duff Nash. Why should I trust you?”

  “You know why. You can tell who you can trust. You can tell I’m kosher.”

  “That is true. But if I turn out to be wrong, your life ends.”

  “Intense but deal.”

  “Now what have you gained from the deal?”

  “We can talk openly about stuff.”

  “You talk,” Spector said. “I’ll edit what we talk.”

  “Martian Justice took out the Motorchrists alone. I thought you…he was dead as fuck. Then he got up and blew their fucking heads off. You blew their heads off but they didn’t die. Somehow you…Martian Justice does that.”

  “Okay, first off: stick to third person. MJ uses regeneration disruptor cells. Their heads grow back. The gun doesn’t blow off heads, it grows a new one. The brain is childlike but harmless and eventually it grows to full adult size.”

  “How?”

  “KM technology.”

  “You started AXIS,” Duff said.

  “I won’t deny that statement.”

  “AXIS is a force for good?”

  “It’s a force that is anti-OSD.”

  “The Order of Social Domination.”

  “Correct.”

  “What does AXIS stand for?”

  “AXIS doesn’t stand for anything. It takes a word associated with evil, cleans it up and owns it.”

  “Why start AXIS?”

  “The OSD, that’s why. The OSD has to be stopped before it finds the key.”

  “How do we know the key exists?”

  “AXIS has confirmed the existence of super powers outside Brutalia. That indicates a key that will release super powers to the rest of the world. AXIS must find it first. If the OSD finds the key first the world as we know it is fucked. Dr. Playground will wipe his ass with every military on the planet and put everyone into a uniform. Except the children, who he will dress according to his sexual fantasies. The OSD will end inequality because everyone will be slaves. For now only AXIS can stop the OSD.”

  “What makes Dr. Playground that evil?”

  “That’s what he wants to be. He has the almost unlimited power to be whatever he wants to be.”

  “How many superheroes are in AXIS?”

  “The number is a secret.”

  “Are all of them…you?”

  “The membership is secret.”

  “How many superheroes are you?”

  “I talk about myself in the third person. There’s reason for that.”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s like this. The Carousel is a superhero who takes turns being an unspecified number of superheroes. They spin like the monthly comic books in the comic book carousel in the corner drug store. The Carousel picks one of them at a time to become.”

  “How does that work?”

  He had invented carousel tech based on KM identity sharing technology but there was more unknown than known. Like exactly how he accessed the carousel. It was a reality somewhere between dream state and ESP like he had at some point become part computer. It put the unknowable in his hand with the fit of a TV remote. He only turned the carousel. It involved 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

  Newport 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 bodies began toward the torches further up the alley, carrying the Tiger Gods with it.

  A torch framed either side of a pair of dumpsters set together into a tall platform. Cardboard boxes against the dumpsters formed a stairway to the top. The flow of bodies took the Newports upward until they stood on the platform high above the natives. Against the dark green metal cold under their bare feet, chalk-drawn shapes were entwined sensuously. The natives made low moans.

  Tiger Goddess sat on the cold metal surface, eased her back onto it, opened her legs. Tiger God got on top of her as primal as Animal Planet with zero foreplay. The ritual music began again. Tiger Goddess’ legs folded high as he speared her, watched by painted natives with upraised arms. The sex was porn-level. Then Tiger God stood above the natives, his followers, still rigid, spread his arms into fists, ripped a long howling scream, hands slapping his chest like an ape.

  The natives fell to their knees.

  The first human sacrifice had been brought to them naked and reeking, face almost hidden under matted hair and beard. His severed head now sat on a spear mounted to one side of the altar. To the other side was the head of the second human sacrifice, a homeless catch like the first.

  The natives raised their torches against the rainfall, chanting as Tiger God and Tiger Goddess raised the machetes above the tied-down third human sacrifice, this one female, bony and filthy, eyes dimmed in the heroin haze supplied before the ritual.

  With machetes the two started chopping, blades hitting bone, chopping bone, chopping until the blades struck cement. Tiger Goddess stood on the body as Tiger God grabbed the filthy hair, pulled the head loose. He held it high before the natives, the blood spattering his face, gushing down his arm, down his chest.

  A limo pulled into the alley, passed the natives, slowly came to a halt. The presence of the limousine had an effect. The natives broke character then dissipated, drained away into the night shadows.

  Tiger God and Tiger Goddess approached the limo. The passenger door opened and there was Her Blue Majesty glaring at them.

  “Get in,” she said.

  Neal and Nell Newport got into the limo.

  “Leave the head.”

  Neal was still holding the severed head. He tossed it out the limo door. Closed the door.

  Her Blue Majesty said, “Are you fucking insane?”

  Neal and Nell looked curious.

  “Where the fuck in the rules for this world does it say abduct and slaughter homeless people?”

  Neal said, “That part kind of developed on its own.”

  Nell: “That’s where this world led us.”

  Her Blue Majesty: “You two went completely off.”

  Nell: “That’s what we thought at first, but we found ourselves compelled to take it further.”

  Neal: “It was unavoidable.”

  Nell: “The curve was rising to a new peak. We had to follow.”

  Neal: “We had to.”

  Her Blue Majesty: “Killing people?”

  Neal: “Here’s the thing. The drug you give us…it…it pumps up the sex drive, makes you need more and more until it’s never enough. It’s like a drug habit. Just having godlike ritual sex wasn’t enough anymore. As our power grew, we needed more.”

  Nell: “We’re gods here.”

  Neal: “Power corrupts.”

  Her Blue Majesty: “Your cast went along with this insanity?”

  Neal: “Everyone was into it.”

  “Do you,” she began, “realize what you’ve done?”

  Nell: “I’ll admit, we may have gone too far.”

  Neal: “Yeah … “

  Nell: “Mistakes were made.”

  Neal: “Maybe we can keep this among us…”

  Her Blue Majesty: “This world is shot from every angle by six cameras. Hours of footage record what goes on during here. That’s it. You’re dropped. It’s over.” She picked up a cell phone. “I’m reporting this insanity to the authorities. Good luck.”

  Neal said, “Listen. You don’t want to do that, Blue Majesty.”

  Nell: “No.”

  Neal: “You really don’t.”

  Her Blue Majesty: “One fucking reason.”

  Neal: “You’d be destroying your edgiest world.”

  “How so?”

  “I don’t know,” Neal replied. “But we are breaking new ground here.”

  Nell: “And … and … this is something special. We may have actually redefined sex.”

  Her Blue Majesty began to nod a nod that turned into a raised chin with a thoughtful expression. Then she looked back down, pitched her voice down to a confidential murmur.

  “Maybe you’re not dropped,” Her Blue Majesty said.

  Neal and Nell said nothing, watching her.

  “You are a power couple after all,” she said. “You need more room to play in.”

  Neal: “Absolutely.”

  “We will continue the world. Along with a fresh supple of sacrifices.”

  “Thank you very much Your Blue Majesty.”

  Her Blue Majesty said, “Would you like the OSD to handle this?”

  The Newports nodded.

  Her Blue Majesty said, “Say nothing.”

  The Newports nodded.

  Her Blue Majesty said, “Do nothing.”

  The Newports nodded.
<
br />   “Nothing.”

  The Newports nodded.

  “The OSD will handle everything.”

  The Newports nodded.

  “It is recommended you leave New York for a short time,” Her Blue Majesty said. “The recommended city is Brutalia. You will need a residence there. The OSD will contact you to discuss that and to discuss the future of Brutalia.”

  14

  The 60 Minutes intro painted him with broad strokes, showed a clip from the SNL sketch with Andrew Thorne played by Alec Baldwin.

  The stone-faced 60 Minutes guy held up the photo of Mayor of Brutalia Andrew Thorne in mask and cape, a Bible in either hand. “This has become your defining image. Any comments?”

  Andrew Thorne was prepared for the gotcha moment. The tight face shot showed him flash a confident smile. He answered, “It’s a good shot. I think it’s overused but I understand how mass media works. One picture is easier than a thousand words.”

  “You have said that Brutalia is a city created by God.”

  “Do you know what ‘God’ means? Getting Onto Destiny. This is a city created by God. God’s hand is in the functioning of this city.”

  “How so?”

  “The success of this city is due to God’s will. We operate this city with God-consciousness.”

  Past that point Thorne set up a verbal checkpoint. It was to not-say too much about the functioning of the city.

  Privately Thorne spent one hour each night typing his memoirs. It began with the existence of his administration. The exact point when he had become mayor. It was the day God appointed him.

  Before that…in the year 1999 two rented tour buses left the church in Amarillo, Texas. He was the pastor and the driver, behind him 23 pilgrims going to see the Coming of the Lord for the new millennium. The first bus had the pilgrims, the second carried the dead, from ages 15 to 97, eleven loved ones to be resurrected in God’s city. Back then you could drive to Brutalia by freeway without Army checkpoints. Busloads of pilgrims headed there. There were pilgrims from churches, there were the handicapped and the sick and the dying. You saw it and drove toward it, a skyline that lined the horizon with skyscrapers without end. The sight filled your bones with terror and thrill as you rode toward God’s judgment made more vivid from the distance of a freeway, a vision beyond the steel girders of a bridge. It affected the people around you on the bus. A head rocked then the hair turned white. Someone started speaking in tongues. More heads turned white. Grown men rocked in the aisles crying.