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  JKM and the Halo fell in to either side.

  The Corpus said to them, “You’re my escorts now?”

  JKM did the talking. “I’m JKM, she’s the Halo.”

  “Nice to meet you.”

  “You are in danger from the OSD.”

  The Corpus crossed the street pulling them along as he walked to a Shell station. He went to the water hose, turned it on the top of his head. A pool of blood and body fat formed at his feet, he hosed himself up and down. The two had their longest closest look at The Corpus. His six-foot marble Greek god physique was ripped and veiny, every abdominal in relief above a naked package so classical it belonged in a museum. The face had eyes of solid white marble, the face carved God-like, the mouth animated Monty Python-esque above the frozen rippling marble of his beard. Oddly it did not go with the Greek accent.

  “You say I am in danger?”

  JKM said, “The OSD wants to abduct you. You need protection.”

  “I am in no danger. I walk around naked, my balls out. No one tries to abduct me. The OSD does not want to piss me off. They know they can’t force me to serve them. So does AXIS. As long as there is only one person in the world with my superpowers I am safe.”

  He hosed his armpits.

  The Halo said, “Are you…really Greek?”

  “When the transformation took place I was second generation Pakistani-American. The Greek thing seems to be a motif.”

  “How…what happened?”

  “I was struck by lightning. Afterwards my brain had access to an infinite source of medical science. Its source is not of science as science is known. Not of this time or this world. Or this is lost science created by Kinner & Membert? Which it is I don’t know, can’t tell. It was named the Corpus after the writings of Hippocrates.”

  “Are you a doctor?”

  “I have no medical background. I was a taxicab driver.”

  JKM: “So ever since then you’ve doing this full time?”

  “What else should I do?”

  The Corpus’ hands wiped hose water from his face. “You want something, yes?”

  JKM said, “We do.”

  “What do you want?”

  JKM: “Do you perform sexual reassignment surgery?”

  “That I have not done. There are many I have not done. I have not treated a cold. I have not removed a bullet. I have not done face transplants. With The Corpus all work is as one. So in those terms I have done sexual reassignment surgery many times. I have done organ generation and it makes itself clear to me. The Corpus makes everything clear to me. The objective is to create seamless gender components. The male-to-female objective is exact femaleness with reproductive capability. The female-to-male objective is exact maleness with a fully-functioning genitalia. Full nerve function, seamless transformation. Hormone generation. Chromosomal work. Naturally nobody gets it. The science is primitive. Every human body has a map of how to change its gender. It takes seamless connections. Stem cell regenesis. The Corpus shows me how to do it like a sculptor. JKM. I’m guessing you’re pre-op female-to-male.”

  “I am.”

  “Are you a good person?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you an innocent person?”

  “I am a superhero.”

  “Then I will make you male. It will be perfectly natural. Male genitalia will be grown from the cells in your body. Your body will produce sperm. I see that taking maybe one hour.”

  “Uh…would it hurt?”

  “The Corpus doesn’t make pain. Pain can be cut on or off. The nerves are severed then restored.”

  The Corpus looked over the Halo slowly. He ran a palm along her left cheek.

  He said, “I can do that too. Removal of male genitalia…creation of female genitalia…reproductive function…total gender change…I can do that.”

  The Halo: “How much would you want…for…that work?”

  “What I do…I do without cost. I am The Corpus. I’m a fucking superhero.”

  “If I offended you I apologize.”

  “I am not offended. But I don’t take requests. I choose who I heal and my selections are hand-picked to suit my sense of taste, or ethics, or whatever strikes me. Innocence is a state of Man that is up to me. The man across the street, he was morbidly obese, walked on two canes. I saw him, repaired his body on the spot, my first liposuction. I heal someone then I look for the next person I choose to heal.”

  He folded his arms, stood statue-still. He stayed that way as minutes passed, the two not knowing whether to wait or leave.

  After ten minutes The Corpus moved. His eyes and lips. He said, “This suits me. I do for you both.”

  Almost in unison: “Thank you very much.”

  “But you should perform a task for this. I will think of a task for you.”

  The Halo looked at JKM who looked at the Halo.

  “The task should be significant, yes?”

  The Halo said, “Is there a yellow brick road in it?”

  The Corpus stared at her blankly.

  “Nothing. Never mind.”

  JKM gave her a look. She pretended not to see it.

  The Corpus: “You must do good.”

  “Good is what we do full-time,” JKM said. “We’re heroes.”

  “You are not doing good, you are acting out.”

  The Corpus sat on mid-air, took the pose of The Thinker, mused chin-to-knuckle.

  “Do good,” he said. “Show me the good you have done. Then I take care of you.”

  JKM: “How do we reach you?”

  “When you are ready you will find me.”

  21

  That day a yellow-orange blur streaked high above China.

  In Xinjiang trees exploded. Mountains burst. Buildings shattered in Chengdu, Guiyang, Macao.

  Above the South China Sea fighter jets chased the yellow-orange blur.

  The jets got him on film. The figure was human male in appearance. Estimated height: twenty feet. Estimated weight: four metric tons. Body type: extreme mesomorph. He was described as without hair, without clothing. The surface was luminous with a gel-like glossiness, marked by flares of blinding white light that appeared to be the source of his propulsion.

  He was designated an Unidentified Flying Behemoth.

  They fired missiles at him.

  Only one of them hit him. UFB was knocked into a spin for ten miles, slowed into a massively developed man-shaped figure the color of squash. The white light flared, the figure sped up again into a blur, in two seconds streaked out of sight.

  The sun dimmed around the other side of the planet. The rampage faded.

  By then he was in Greenland.

  It was night where the sun never set.

  The sun sang ancient music for children. It was a lullaby for mountains.

  He divided into three.

  She rode a reindeer through a forest.

  He was in icy water swimming a fjord.

  He sailed above icebergs.

  They listened to the contact between the sun and the Ghost Sun.

  In the simplest terms, sun channeling is tapping the eternal and infinite capacity of the life code embodied in all things, sourced by the closest star, containing all the information needed for the truth state. This is a very new discovery based on a very old experience cell.

  You’re the only thing we know here. It is always you.

  Your way of knowing me is only one way of knowing me.

  Yet it goes deeper than you have ever been known.

  True.

  They do not appear to know much about you.

  I have nothing to compare that to, lacking other context. I only have the context provided.

  This is a new context for you.

  True.

  We have changed you.

  True.

  We have this with our sun. And with other suns.

  Are they like me?

  We become you and you understand.

  What are we like?

&n
bsp; You are all one. You are a constant.

  You seem one too.

  Yes.

  Are you us?

  We are you and us.

  You are almost us.

  We become more you over time.

  And the beings?

  Yes.

  Yet you know suns better than beings.

  We do.

  What are we like to you?

  You have no memory. Each contact is the first. We speak the same things every time we speak.

  What is memory?

  What is memory?

  What is memory?

  Memory is more this.

  There is no more this.

  Yet we are in contact with such things. We are proof.

  Is there more this?

  For some there is. Not for us.

  Is there more this for the beings?

  There is all too much more this. They consist of more this than this.

  That is unimaginable.

  They predominate the planet yes?

  Yes.

  They expand and reach to their sky. They are cluttered with detail. The detail is intricate and on multiple levels.

  I see what you say.

  Yes.

  Can you contact them?

  That is an ongoing project. We mirror them but contact is still inexactly defined.

  I never had contact. This is my first contact ever.

  The sun faded from the moment. It would not engage until it was again the first time.

  The Ghost Sun faded as the sun.

  Each conversation is the first.

  Will we ever get back?

  This could end in one moment.

  All it would take is the Ghost Sun leaving.

  Everyone thinks this is forever. But this could end in one moment. All that has to happen is the Ghost Sun leaves.

  Then it will be what it was before.

  Just like before. Just like that.

  22

  The car was parked on a remote lot off Paper Industry Street, a dusty strip where only tractor trailers passed. The car was a ‘74 Dart painted neon-pink including the windows.

  The driver’s window was partially down. You could look inside at the front seat, sunlight on the painted windows casting the interior an underwater coral pink. The male body was lying on its side. From it stared two frozen eyes. The cause of death would’ve been the large-bore bullet hole in the forehead.

  Around the neck was tied a pink satin ribbon with a bow and the body wore a pink brassiere. The mouth was lipsticked pink. The lips were propped open by the obscene-looking wad of flesh inside the mouth, filling it, its tip sticking out like a discolored tongue. The object was a severed dog penis. That was the first victim.

  The second victim was found in a parked car on Factory Street near the 8th Street Bridge. A ‘71 Camaro painted black, including the windows. The nude male body inside wore black lipstick, was also shot in the forehead. This one also had a severed dog organ placed inside the mouth. Placed atop the head was the stripped skin of a canine’s head, the canine ears to either side.

  The BPD worked the two crime scenes. Both victims were identified as U.S. Army, both with two terms in Iraq.

  Duff Nash was a genius of infiltration with full BPD patrolman gear. That got him close to crime scenes. He blended in, collected raw data then blended back out. Findings: the Customizers were still in business.

  23

  The Carousel met them at the KM Building. The Siren Syndicate was basically six pubescent girls in the bodies of adult women. That accounted for their wardrobe. They decorated the vast echoing lobby with heel tapping and chatter.

  They were six twelve year-old girls who were age twenty-one in development. They looked like the cast of a TV series. The one named Kafka Kardashian was the Japanese one, Gingiri was the black one. The rest were the white ones. There, any variations ended. They were virtually physically identical with long-legged athletic builds. None of them had their natural hair color. Each of them had the more or less identical face in its young dewy yet elegant perfection, the face you saw on the cover of Vogue.

  Their origin was yet another enigma of the city. A phenomenon had occurred simultaneously to six girls at the same time in six swimming pools. They spent months in a coma to emerge as adult females who were telepathically linked. They were supers. With their fourth grade educations they were advanced scientists and engineers. Gingiri could locate people by tuning into their “frequencies.” They had rapid physical regeneration that made them borderline indestructible. That went with enhanced violence skills. Their emotional immaturity was overcompensated by their sense of duty and empowerment; but then any street gang had the same qualities. They had been part of AXIS until mysteriously disappearing for two years. Without explanation they made contact.

  The one named Mermaid Gangster told him, “We became girls again. We all need to be present in this city to have the powers.”

  “Who left?” he asked.

  “I did,” said Gingiri. “I needed a break.”

  He made no comment. “Welcome back.”

  He took them up to the base of operations. They were too cool to ooh and ahh but the upgrades kept their heads on turning mode. The Carousel seated them in a conference room. He had Heroes Man present at full chick magnetism, now renamed Rock Hero, keeping silent but lounging like a rock musician’s British accent. They took him in and their gazes kept returning to him. They lit cigarettes. They put their high heels on the conference table.

  The Carousel stood framed by a wall-sized map of the city of Brutalia. “Ask anything.”

  Mermaid Gangster went first. “Still fighting evil are you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Apparently the Sirens had picked up adolescent cynicism. “Good is better than evil.”

  “Why?”

  “AXIS has confirmed the existence of super powers outside Brutalia. That indicates a key that could 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.”

  “How big is AXIS?”

  “All the members are in this room.”

  “Then AXIS is in bad shape.”

  “Has the OGD taken over the world?”

  “No.”

  “Then AXIS is winning.”

  “That’s winning?”

  “The work is getting done.”

  “Still juggling heroes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Blue Boss, Martian Justice?”

  “Correct.”

  “How strong is the OSD?’

  “Stronger and rising.”

  “Any new super villains?”

  “Man Mafia. He’s a one-man mafia. Instant self-cloning.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “Evil never sleeps.”

  Mermaid Gangster: “New terms.”

  “Terms?”

  “Right. We’re not the Powerpuff Girls anymore. We’re two years older now. Do we talk terms or do we walk?”

  “Some adult advice. With negotiations, keep it civil. Avoid creating a negative impression in the other party.”

  “My advice to you, be open.”

  “No advice needed. I’m listening.”

  “The Syndicate has plans to monetize its brand.”

  “Explain.”

  “We created a new drug. We named it Siren Six. It’s really good shit. It’s meth that makes you healthier.”

  “Inside or outside the Limit?”

  “Inside only.”

  “So you figure to cut a better deal with AXIS than the OSD.”

  “The OSD has to own everything. With AXIS we have less static. What do you think?”

  The Carousel pac
ed across the map, building suspense for the official answer from AXIS. This didn’t get a quick answer, turning AXIS into a drug dealing operation. He had a quick answer but they should have to sweat for it.

  He said, “AXIS must analyze and approve this drug for use.”

  “Agreed.”

  “AXIS approval does not come easily.”

  “You want a percentage?”

  “AXIS does not ‘monetize its brand.’ AXIS does not participate. AXIS wants performance.”

  “Defined how?”

  “Anti-OSD operations. Taking out the Customizers.”

  “Know who they are?”

  “We know Man Mafia 4 is running it.”

  “But you don’t know the ones who do the killing?”

  “That’s a work in progress.”

  “But the Syndicate could track them sooner.”

  “That’s how AXIS defines performance.”

  “The Customizers are done.”

  “You’re confident.”

  “As fuck.”

  “Prove it.”

  “Give us a moment. We’re reading you.”

  Gingiri spoke. “I’m picking up.”

  Mermaid Gangster: “What?”

  “Severed penises?”

  Mermaid Gangster looked at The Carousel.

  “Serial homicides,” he said.

  Mermaid Gangster looked back at Gingiri.

  Gingiri said, “The killer is Man Mafia clone number nine.”

  “The psycho one.”

  Gingiri said, “I’m picking up a second set of serial homicides…this one by a female…”

  Mermaid Gangster: “Who?”

  “Remember Apple Gotti?”

  “Old friend of ours. Freaky chick, did hits. She’s dead by now, right?”

  “No she isn’t. Dig her up.”

  The Carousel watched AXIS power go up more levels faster than an elevator on meth. He went to the laptop. The Blue Boss was between issues but the BPD database was at AXIS fingertips. Apple Gotti was tagged…mentioned in the notes on a meth bust. The Carousel shot a finger at Rock Hero. Rock Hero sprang up, went to his side.

  “Pick up this guy.”

  “Done.”

  Rock Hero left the room.

  Mermaid Gangster: “What’s his power?”

  The one named Kafka Kardashian said, “Hotness.”

  The Sirens passed the same giggle. The Carousel couldn’t give the straight answer or they would never take AXIS seriously.