Big Superhero Action by Raymond Embrack Read Free Book Online

larger or beyond its borders. Every day began that way. It took time to become what he was.
    Then he went to the nerve center where 10 screens ran the media pickups…
    The President said for the time being information on Brutalia was on a “need-to-know basis.”
    Jay Leno: “NBC announced the new anchor of the nightly news is Stan Lee.”
    “Inconclusive,” said the NIH of the connection between coldwave energy and the amnesia in long-term residents of Brutalia.
    Disagreement over whether Brutalia was located in New York or Pennsylvania.
    The Army had secretly sent drones over Brutalia.
    Brutalia was a break for the politicians. It had taken over all conversation. No one had time to think about them and their bullshit. It relieved so much national crap it came off as refreshing. Both sides were unified in fear. Mass media was more than ready to serve it non-stop.
    Dr. Playground: America’s Dictator?
    OSD-sponsored street gangs in Brooklyn NY, Portland OR, London, Tokyo, and Berlin.
    Brutalia mayor Andrew Thorne in a mask and cape, a Bible in either hand. He was doing
60 Minutes
.
    Man Mafia appearing in a cable TV ad for 2100 vodka.
    Update on the Long Island man suing KM Industries and the city of Brutalia for one billion. The man had been a KM employee killed in a coldwave power plant accident. The official cause of death was overload of superpower-based energy. When his family sent the body to Long Island the man was restored to life. Once beyond the Brutalia Limit where superpowers or superpower-based science didn’t exist, his life was restored. If he ever returned to Brutalia he would revert to
dead
. That was worth one billion for “loss of life.”
    A slow news day.
    He followed the latest satellite reports on the teen with flight power. He had been spotted between Manhattan and Brutalia. Now he was tracking as far north as Canadian air space. The boy had been identified as Chase Juniper, the only child of parents killed in a commercial space travel accident. The boy had inherited an estate of 3 million. He had stopped attending a private school in Brutalia, was seldom seen. One maternal aunt, no contact. One account of Chase Juniper rescuing a suicidal gay teen in Massachusetts. The teen was about to go off a bridge when Chase spotted him, intervened for the rescue. Chase then spent the night talking the teen through it. Media hero for one day. And potentially the most dangerous person in the world.
    Spector owned the block of downtown real estate on which the KM Building stood. At his own Starbuck franchise, Milo Spector anonymously had his ten a.m. cup of coffee and a window table. Being a creature of habit was the least of his issues, it was a luxury. He watched the people passing in the rain. He sat there with the anonymity of a regular person. In Brutalia you could smoke anywhere. He smoked his pipe. The pipe made him feel like a scientist.
    He read the ever-shrinking
Brutalia Post
for local superhero coverage. There was one about a team of two transgendered amateur superheroes named JKM and the Halo. According to the story they were being sued by a drunk driver they had stopped by tearing the door from the driver’s 4x4.
    The two amateurs had posed for a photo.
JKM
stood for
Jack Kirby Man
. Apparently JKM broke the gender name barrier as JKM was a muscle-bound female in a mask and cape and emblem. Posing beside her was the Halo, a reasonably feminine she-male in white with big boob implants, thigh-high boots, a tiara that lit up like a halo. This had nothing to do with superpowers; Brutalia’s utter weirdness had to be in the water supply.
    The guy at the next table, a Kevin Nealon type with a laptop, said, “Not impressed.”
    Spector: “With these two?”
    “With superheroes in general.”
    “I get that.”
    “Superheroes fit into the known spectrum. They change nothing. They may even make things worse. But they sure don’t make anything any fucking different. I guess they never did. You