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  “The federal government is seeking to shut down all travel to and from Brutalia. It classifies the city as unsafe and a risk to public health and safety.”

  “That is only a fear-based reaction to the unknown. We are in a dialogue with the government to avoid such measures and keep transit and air travel open. We work to create the understanding that there is nothing to fear from Brutalia.”

  “Are you saying the coldwave power plants pose no danger to the public?”

  “The NIH has confirmed that.”

  “The State Department sees Brutalia as a rogue entity run by the OSD.”

  “Completely false. The OSD is contained. Legal authority rules.”

  “How do you account for the paranormal activity occurring here?”

  “These are various forms of direct experience with God occurring. You see it in the rise of enhanced human abilities and medical and scientific innovation.”

  “Yet these effects only exist inside city limits. The Brutalia Limit. Why is that?”

  “That is one of the mysteries of this city. I would venture it is not a ‘limit’ as much as it is a defining perimeter. It exists to make clear this city is the source of these effects. The people in this city are the language God uses. This city has been chosen as God’s medium of direct communication to mankind.”

  “Why Brutalia?”

  “To be honest, it is a mystery. Why this city? It was put here to serve a purpose.”

  The city was vast. It spoke to you with the voice of God. It told you it had always been there. If as some said the city had appeared from out of nowhere it was a story as Biblical as the parting of the Red Sea.

  The city was vast yet it had no money, collected little revenue, the reason for his high tax measures. The population was undersized and shrinking for a city twice the size of New York. If you worked for the city you kept things from the public, like how somehow the water and power and gas seemingly ran themselves by unseen computer systems. You left out the men in blue suits who went around the city collecting people. They were not policemen. They were more like career counseling tour guides. Over time people appeared in the vast empty offices. They showed up like campers putting up tents.

  Thorne had been holding a morning prayer service at the foot of a downtown statue when the men in navy blue suits came for him. They surrounded him like a river of suits, flowed him toward the city hall building.

  That was how he had become mayor.

  It was too hallucinogenic an account to share publicly. He typed it into his private memoirs. It was too hallucinogenic for even him to believe. It was dreamlike, in the shape of parables. It was a sacred mania. Whatever it was, he had touched the Hand of God.

  “The city of Brutalia has a massive public relations problem.”

  “God and the city will prevail.”

  Brutalia had an imaginary industrial core. Factories stacked smoke like a 1940s industrial film. There were more jobs than people. Men in navy blue suits and their computers set up the city government. They installed people into offices. Then you didn’t see them again. The operations and their budgets drew themselves up and you followed them. The following year you could imitate the budgets and draw them up. Your brain filled with the capacity for details. God told you it had always been that way. You invested your faith in whatever God told you and it was so. Over time the people came to assert order. Now there was a city council and elections and mayoral races. Thorne always won and in Brutalia there were no term limits.

  “Does God speak to you directly?”

  “I’m not an evangelist. I don’t claim to speak to God like we’re speaking here. This is communication beyond the use of symbols. God makes Himself known. It is for us to understand Him. That said, this about God bringing us to God consciousness through direct experience. You don’t need me to tell you anything, you can see it for yourself.”

  “Some say the US government is somehow behind the paranormal activity in Brutalia. Some say the origins are extraterrestrial. What do you say to them?”

  “I say prove it. I say this city is where the guesswork ends.”

  “How do you see your future in politics?”

  This is where Thorne’s tight face shot delivered the segment closer, the cut just before the ticking watch: “This is larger than politics and today is the future.”

  There was no telling 60 Minutes that God was directing Thorne to run the country. God had made him mayor of Brutalia to rise to the Presidency. With little effort he had gotten this far. All he had to do was follow the path made for him.

  15

  Opening music: trip-hop remix of the ‘50s TV Superman theme.

  Dig it, my geeks. Welcome to The Cape Report podcast. I am your host, Clark Kant. Sponsored by the Fleshball and Shroomtropic Labs. Show them some love, my geeks and buy their really good stuff. Your body will thank you.

  Next week I’m off to an unnamed east coast comics convention. In the real world live artifacts from Brutalia are hot, the geeks eat up anything to do with real superheroes, so I expect to make out large. Thank you Blue Boss. Thirty seconds of you tooling through Deltville last week: three digits.

  Plans continue to launch a new comics convention in Brutalia. The PR nightmare that is this city scares people but real geeks want it to happen. This city is a comics convention 365, Vegas for capes and geeks.

  Last week saw major action from AXIS. Martian Justice decimated the Motorchrists outlaw biker gang. Does “decimated” means totally wiped out everybody or every tenth of everybody? Whatever, the Motorchrists no longer exist except for the handful who missed out.

  On the OSD side it was also a busy week. Man Mafia 3 on video confessing to the Customizers serial killings. Eight homicides contracted by a wannabe serial killer now in maximum security. Mafia 3 was wiped out by the Blue Boss in a stealth operation that leveled half a city block.

  The Corpus continues his personal mission to heal the city. He continues to reject offers to join AXIS or the OSD. Last week he was seen in Alphaville performing curbside street surgery.

  In amateur news, a car door was torn off a car by the transgendered amateur team JKM and the Halo. That one was all JKM. The Halo isn’t yanking off any car doors. Holy fuck, Batman, with amateurs like these who needs the Tick?

  Name checking the more credible amateur October Revenge, who will be on this podcast in two weeks. Shout-out to another of the serious amateurs, the Human Human. It’s amateurs like these who close the gap between what exists here and what here exists.

  So let’s look at the big picture. Most people here who gain enhanced abilities never turn them into superpowers. Super powers as opposed to superpowers. They only become superpowers when they get a mask and a cape. Most people ignore their super powers and only use them in emergencies. Maybe they become better at their job. They avoid attention. Some get super religious, think they’re touched by God. Psychic people used it to play the NY Lottery. Today by law NY ticket vendors check driver’s licenses. Boring. The Cape Report is not about them. It’s about the archetype of the superhero.

  Before the existence of real superheroes the only superheroes that existed were in comic books. You had comic books and the people who imitate them. Amateurs are the self-made crackpot vigilantes who walk the streets in imitation of superheroes. Their number has exploded into a growth industry. They are all over the U.S. but Brutalia grows them like L.A. grows development deals. They rescue cats stuck in trees and buy doughnuts for the homeless. Some track the street drug trade on their beats; every blue moon the police find use for their information. Actual crime fighting they rarely get to attempt. There are amateur superheroes and there are the amateur supervillains who pick up dry cleaning for the OSD. We know where amateurs come from and it’s usually the Greyhound station.

  Only in comic books do you have the all-natural self-made superhero, the amateurs who with enough skill set and slick toys reach a level to cross over into real superhero. They pass the Batman test. Bu
t no such superhero exists or is possible. Me, I say it takes a superhero to become a superhero, therefore “Batman” began as an enhanced human. So there are only amateur superheroes and pro superheroes.

  The big question is where did the real superheroes come from?

  This is Brutalia. The city of Brutalia is big and dangerous, lurking outside the velvet ropes of Manhattan like its bouncer. Kind of big kinda industrial-looking, a big dirty city. Get this: superheroes don’t exist anywhere else. They don’t appear anywhere else. The Brutalia Limit holds. Therefore they never leave Brutalia. Therefore what? Either their powers do not exist outside of Brutalia….or they just can’t cross the city limits. If they could they could save the world or take it over. So maybe this is a good arrangement. Whatever. Bigger questions for a bigger time.

  So where did the superheroes come from? In the real world superheroes aren’t like in the comics. They don’t come into being from a whole bunch of different causes invented by comic book writers where one guy comes from the planet Krypton, another guy gets bitten by a spider, another guy finds a magic ring—forget that. In the real world, superheroes are created by one thing: the same thing. The same thing brings them into existence, the same cause produced that effect, the same source brought them into being. What that is has yet to be determined. I’m just saying that’s where to look for the probable answer, geeks.

  16

  “Really?” the Halo said in that whine that had been trendy for five minutes but she was committed to bringing it back.

  Alphaville. It was a dull grimy sunrise after making their nighttime superhero circuit and now the Halo and JKM were walking up to an unnatural wonder.

  JKM grunted, “What?”

  “Suicide by biker gang?”

  “Bullshit.”

  “You didn’t care about living.”

  “I stay ready for death if it comes.”

  “There’s that and there’s seeking it out.”

  “Being a superhero is a high-risk occupation.”

  The Halo switched off her tiara. She switched it back on.

  “I can do that with my remote now.”

  “Good for you.”

  “I’d rather have nylons that never ran.”

  The Halo looked down at her legs in those high boots. The short skirt under which hung the post-disco pre-opera. Softened by hormones her face looked less like Pete Wentz but she kept his hairdo and the mascara. She had changed her name from Princess Glimmer to the Halo to be taken more seriously. She looked over JKM’s muscular build that was only partially augmented by the chest plating. The guns were real, pumped and massive. His body was broad with upper body training, striding upon broad, muscled thighs. His hair was stark white in a box-shaped crew cut.

  They were the only people out at that hour, in a lot between two tenements where the wheelchair mountain stood, abandoned wheelchairs were piled thirty feet. That was where The Corpus marked his territory.

  “You are taking this way too seriously,” the Halo said.

  “We’re superheroes.”

  “We’re only in this to reach The Corpus.”

  “Maybe earning virtue is the way to do it.”

  “Please. By getting killed by a biker gang?”

  “Should we not be worthy?”

  “We have enough issues.”

  “We fucking have more issues than TV Guide.”

  “So who needs to get killed by a biker gang? Not me.”

  They reached the wheelchair mountain, stopped, gazed up at the crooked pile.

  “Be honest,” JKM said. “Am I desecrating the name of Jack Kirby? The man was a god. Sometimes even I think I went too far.”

  “Don’t ask me, I’m a Dan Clowes person. Dan Clowes from the neck up, Robert Crumb in the thighs. My thighs are huge.”

  “I like your big thighs.”

  “Gee thanks.”

  “Look, I wasn’t trying to suicide.”

  “I know. It’s the testosterone. It makes you go too far sometimes.”

  “Anyway what would you do without me? We’re a team. I’ll never let you be in danger.”

  “Please. I could go solo. I can handle myself, okay? I can do my thing.”

  “I know but don’t waste it on street thugs, let me do it.”

  The Halo took his arm.

  He said, “Are you crying?”

  “Golly,” she said. “Wheelchair Mountain is so movingly iconic.”

  “For the past year we’re out here every fucking day yet we never get close to him. Either he’s somewhere out of the city or if he’s in the city we only hear about him like Bigfoot sightings. Last week he was seen in Alphaville performing street surgeries. He did heart surgery on the hood of a car. Do you believe this guy? Do you believe us? But he could make us real.”

  For the Halo a lot had become hard to believe over two years. Meeting JKM…becoming a kind of couple….becoming a superhero like him…with him becoming a superhero team. Taking up a real personal crusade: The Corpus. It had been a year since The Corpus was a guest on The Cape Report. The Halo had been waiting for that podcast, marked it on her calendar, Post-It noted it on her PC. Then she was listening to his Greek accent, picturing the Silver Surfer-ish nude white marble-skinned bald Greek statue that was The Corpus.

  Clark Kant: The Corpus then is a body of knowledge?

  The Corpus: Yes. I gave it the name of the historical Greek Corpus. It stores the knowledge and directs me.

  So the power is in the technique or is it a power?

  You are making a fine distinction. Is it the Christ-like power to heal? No. The Corpus uses surgical technique so advanced it can be done without instruments and is so quickly performed it has the appearance of healing powers. The Corpus uses advanced science that generates the instant regeneration of cells and tissue. The Corpus is based on science so advanced it seems like a superpower. Just as if a doctor today went back to primitive times he would look like he had superpowers. And maybe he would. And maybe I do. But it isn’t me pointing at a cripple and having the power to make them walk. The power is the knowledge of the technique for repairing the spinal cord with a two minute massage.

  Can you restore youth?

  No. The Corpus only covers what can be done medically. Medical science. There’s no medical way to restore youth or stop the aging process. So far. I hear Xoir has done that but I’m not a super scientist.

  What celebrity would you most like to heal?

  Muhammad Ali…Larry Flynt…Stephen Hawking…

  Would you go to them except you have no powers outside Brutalia?

  Apparently not. But there have been inquiries made my way.

  Do you ever get a break?

  I go outside the city, The Corpus disappears and I’m…it’s like going back a thousand years.

  I couldn’t imagine it.

  There is too much work to do everywhere. So no, I need the break. The Corpus…you need a break from it. So I leave Brutalia and I’m back to having one brain instead of a thousand brains.

  We need to take this to the larger world. Is that the goal?

  I can’t do all the work. The goal is to find a way to spread the power to others. But I could no more share this or teach this than I could teach geometry in a language I do not know to a blade of grass.

  Do you stipulate who gets the benefit of your powers?

  I only heal the good. And the innocent.

  That rules out joining the OSD.

  That rules out joining AXIS too. I don’t use The Corpus for fascists.

  Two sides, both power freaks.

  I say never follow anyone who cannot heal your ills. Anyone else is a power freak. There has never been a so-called leader who offered anything of worth to the people they want to lead. They are afraid one day I will lead the people. They know if I ever did their day will be over.

  Will you ever create a movement to lead the people?

  I am not leader of people. But I do like to keep the fascists nervous.


  THIS INTERRUPTION IN INTERNET ACCESS WILL LAST APPROXIMATELY THIRTY MINUTES AS A SECURITY MEASURE TAKEN BY AXIS. AXIS IS GOOD.

  Everything went dead. AXIS had picked that moment to shut down the Internet just to show its power.

  Today in grimy daylight JKM said, “Fuck AXIS.”

  The Halo said, “Fascist asshole Nazis. And OSD is just as bad.”

  “They can’t get to him. That happens they control his powers. That can’t happen.”

  “I know. But are we…enough to stop them?”

  “We find him,” JKM said. “We protect him. That takes superheroes.”

  17

  Inside the city of Brutalia the OSD was headquartered in the 77-story OSD Towerplex. It had proven impregnable to the U.S. armed forces. Nuclear warheads had dissolved against the tower surface. You felt secure there.

  Dr. Playground’s indestructible exoframe activated itself, the white light went on, hit the gleaming surfaces. There were two types of supervillain, the Lex Luthor/Joker type and the Darth Vader/Dr. Doom model. One was villainous, the other villainous and the most powerful motherfucker in the room. Dr. Playground’s exoframe was made with better comfort design than a warm bed while it made Darth Vader’s suit look like a string bikini. It was indestructible and better armed than a third world country. Dr. Playground could level four city blocks or strangle a mosquito. The face plate was a screen that flashed ghost-like a face. This week it was a mash-up of black eye-patched Emilio Largo, the villain in Thunderball, with the Wizard of the 1939 MGM Wizard of Oz. The synthetic voice made James Earl Jones sound like Jennifer Tilly. The exoframe was neuropedically connected to his brain and nerves. Its “face” changed with every twitch of his mood. The face image darkened.

  Across from him sat Xoir. Born 1932. By age sixteen she had earned a doctorate in psychiatry from Columbia. At twenty she had been a Yale graduate reinventing neurosurgery. By thirty she had taken to esoteric projects in the field of aging reversal. Today she permanently appeared to be age 36. Brutalia was the next frontier. It had advanced her scientific work to a 23rd Century level. She became a masked and costumed supervillain named Xoir. Then Communications Director of the Order of Social Domination.