August 3, 2011
Martha Clark was nervous. Her magnum opus was nearing completion, but she felt some small dissatisfaction at how she'd gone about it. Instead of
culturing her own strains of handwavium, she'd stolen some from the old worker's quarters. As her creation had proceeded, she found herself doing
shadier and shadier things to get the materials. She clutched the small coffee can and eyeglasses case to her chest and dashed back to her workshop.
Inside, superhero posters lined the walls and figures of various female superheroes posed along her shelves protecting her graphic novels and DVDs, while a
desktop computer displayed the log-in screen for the Lunar Edition of City of Heroes™. A rack of costumes sat forlorn in the closet, as time had been unkind to
her. Her once stunning figure had long ago abandoned her after the traumatic pregnancy and miscarriage which had left her barren. To chase away the spectres,
she had leapt at a chance to come into space and had participated in the construction of Kandor like so many of its citizens. It had helped for a while, but
the excitement and wonder had slowly faded.
She wanted her glory back, when she had been one of the Cosplay Queens of the Texas SciFi/Comics/Anime convention circuit. She wanted the power over those
attracted to beauty back. And since diet and exercise didn't seem to work, she was going to have to take drastic measures. She'd heard about Wave
Convoy and AC Peters' successes, and of course she'd heard about Biomods. Martha was going to get, if not exactly her old figure back, a powerful new
body. Ignoring her answering machine and its blinking messages light, she hurried over to her carefully hidden work table and the figure underneath the sheet.
Dramatically flinging the sheet back for no reason other than it looked cool, she revealed her creation.
The well-formed female figure was clad in a tight blue shirt and a red miniskirt. A shield familiar to millions of comics fans was centered in the correct
position on her chest, and a lovely face with a mixture of Caucasian and Asian features was framed by wavy golden hair. Kara Zor-El, or Supergirl, lay still
and unmoving on the table. It had taken many painstaking hours to create her, etching circuitry diagrams for a speed engine and a force field generator onto
the bones of a custom carbon-fiber skeleton and working out the full biomimesis necessary to make an "Armitage III"-like android body. The sensor
package alone had gotten her so far in debt to Don Antonio that he wouldn't lend to her anymore, so she'd turned to one of his fellow Mafia Fen, Don
deLeon. He had provided her with whatever she wanted, because he thought she'd figured out how to get handwavium to produce a weapon that would actually
HURT people in any way. But, in a fit of blue hair syndrome, she'd Doc Browned him. All of the stolen handwavium strains that had gone into her creation
made, in Martha's opinion, "Supergirl" into the closest thing to an actual Kryptonian possible. And Kara was going to be her new body once she
figured out how Wave Convoy had managed the meat to robot transition.
Gervasio had told her that this latest batch of handwavium had been stolen from Stellvia. She didn't know how the note to "Use Glasses!" would
help her make Kohran's kaboomite, but since so many Stellvians wore glasses, maybe the goop did something useful to them. She ignored her apartment's
phone as it rang and dipped the glasses into the can of goop. In a fit of whimsy, she put them on "Kara's" face. Seeing nothing happen, Martha
got up and pushed the hidden button to hide her workshop. She picked up the phone as the panels shifted around.
"Hello?"
"Hola, Señorita Clark," the cultured voice of Gervasio Faustino deLeon purred. "How is my Kaboomite
coming?"
Martha began to sweat. "It's going as well as can be expected. I'm trying all of the materials you've gotten me, but I keep coming up with
dead ends."
"Sí, 'dead ends.' Es verdad." His voice grew cold.
"We're going to have to show you how seriously we take this. Open the door, puta."
Martha's blood ran cold as pounding sounded on the door to her quarters. She turned to her kitchen in terror as the door burst off its hinges, and sagged
as she realized there was no escape from deLeon's goons. As they dragged her off, she wondered what would happen to her incomplete creation.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''
-- James Nicoll
Martha Clark was nervous. Her magnum opus was nearing completion, but she felt some small dissatisfaction at how she'd gone about it. Instead of
culturing her own strains of handwavium, she'd stolen some from the old worker's quarters. As her creation had proceeded, she found herself doing
shadier and shadier things to get the materials. She clutched the small coffee can and eyeglasses case to her chest and dashed back to her workshop.
Inside, superhero posters lined the walls and figures of various female superheroes posed along her shelves protecting her graphic novels and DVDs, while a
desktop computer displayed the log-in screen for the Lunar Edition of City of Heroes™. A rack of costumes sat forlorn in the closet, as time had been unkind to
her. Her once stunning figure had long ago abandoned her after the traumatic pregnancy and miscarriage which had left her barren. To chase away the spectres,
she had leapt at a chance to come into space and had participated in the construction of Kandor like so many of its citizens. It had helped for a while, but
the excitement and wonder had slowly faded.
She wanted her glory back, when she had been one of the Cosplay Queens of the Texas SciFi/Comics/Anime convention circuit. She wanted the power over those
attracted to beauty back. And since diet and exercise didn't seem to work, she was going to have to take drastic measures. She'd heard about Wave
Convoy and AC Peters' successes, and of course she'd heard about Biomods. Martha was going to get, if not exactly her old figure back, a powerful new
body. Ignoring her answering machine and its blinking messages light, she hurried over to her carefully hidden work table and the figure underneath the sheet.
Dramatically flinging the sheet back for no reason other than it looked cool, she revealed her creation.
The well-formed female figure was clad in a tight blue shirt and a red miniskirt. A shield familiar to millions of comics fans was centered in the correct
position on her chest, and a lovely face with a mixture of Caucasian and Asian features was framed by wavy golden hair. Kara Zor-El, or Supergirl, lay still
and unmoving on the table. It had taken many painstaking hours to create her, etching circuitry diagrams for a speed engine and a force field generator onto
the bones of a custom carbon-fiber skeleton and working out the full biomimesis necessary to make an "Armitage III"-like android body. The sensor
package alone had gotten her so far in debt to Don Antonio that he wouldn't lend to her anymore, so she'd turned to one of his fellow Mafia Fen, Don
deLeon. He had provided her with whatever she wanted, because he thought she'd figured out how to get handwavium to produce a weapon that would actually
HURT people in any way. But, in a fit of blue hair syndrome, she'd Doc Browned him. All of the stolen handwavium strains that had gone into her creation
made, in Martha's opinion, "Supergirl" into the closest thing to an actual Kryptonian possible. And Kara was going to be her new body once she
figured out how Wave Convoy had managed the meat to robot transition.
Gervasio had told her that this latest batch of handwavium had been stolen from Stellvia. She didn't know how the note to "Use Glasses!" would
help her make Kohran's kaboomite, but since so many Stellvians wore glasses, maybe the goop did something useful to them. She ignored her apartment's
phone as it rang and dipped the glasses into the can of goop. In a fit of whimsy, she put them on "Kara's" face. Seeing nothing happen, Martha
got up and pushed the hidden button to hide her workshop. She picked up the phone as the panels shifted around.
"Hello?"
"Hola, Señorita Clark," the cultured voice of Gervasio Faustino deLeon purred. "How is my Kaboomite
coming?"
Martha began to sweat. "It's going as well as can be expected. I'm trying all of the materials you've gotten me, but I keep coming up with
dead ends."
"Sí, 'dead ends.' Es verdad." His voice grew cold.
"We're going to have to show you how seriously we take this. Open the door, puta."
Martha's blood ran cold as pounding sounded on the door to her quarters. She turned to her kitchen in terror as the door burst off its hinges, and sagged
as she realized there was no escape from deLeon's goons. As they dragged her off, she wondered what would happen to her incomplete creation.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''
-- James Nicoll
