The next few weeks were a blur for the new Wonder Heroes. Susan, Kalomo, Jay and Theodore spent their days in training. Martial arts masters and gymnastic coaches from around the world were brought to the Wonder Base for the chance to share their combat skills and warrior insights with the protectors of the Earth. It was considered a great honor in martial arts circles to be invited as an instructor, and the best martial artists competed fiercely to do so. Susan had spent many of her teen years learning aikido, a Japanese martial art that emphasized self-defense without undue injury to the attacker. It was primarily a defensive regimen, but now she found herself concentrating on developing deadly strikes and kicks, as she studied taekwondo and jeet kune do along with an extensive weapons training course.
Kalomo and Theodore were both kick boxers. Kalomo’s reflexes were off the charts, even without the Wonder Gauntlet. His form was sloppy, but he was fast, making it difficult when sparring to connect any punches. In contrast Theodore had fantastic form, but no instinct for the fight. He thought too much, telegraphed his moves, and delayed too long when openings presented themselves.
“You got to forget everything you learned and trust the training,” said a visiting boxing instructor one day. Cy Brookings was seventy plus years old and had trained six heavyweight champions in his fifty plus years as an instructor and coach.
“I don’t get how I can use my training and forget it at the same time,” retorted Theodore in frustration.
Cy sported a wry, toothless smile and said, cryptically, “You’re going to be your training, see?”
Theodore frowned. “You’d think he wandered out of a Tibetan monastery and not some Chicago boxing gym,” muttered Theodore to Kalomo as they resumed sparring.
Theodore and Kalomo exchanged some glancing punches and blocks before Kalomo suddenly swerved low and peppered Theodore with a half dozen short, devastating rabbit punches to the ribs. Theodore lost balance and fell.
“Maybe,” answered Kalomo, offering Theodore a hand up off the mat, “But the old dude knows what he’s talking about.”
Of the new team, Jay was the best fighter, at least in training. Though he had shown the team little when in the field, in the gym, even when sparring against some of the greatest martial arts masters in the world, Jay was more than able to hold his own. In the gym, he was a great sport, smiling even when it was his turn to hit the mat hard.
“Great throw, Susan. Never saw it coming. That was the aikido, right?”
Susan nodded, “Yeah. It was a move like that that got me the silver in Brazil.”
“I got to admit,” said Jay cheerily, “I never thought aikido was all that powerful, but you’re making me a believer.”
All four of the newcomers, though, were in awe of Matt. Three plus years of fighting aliens, training, and acclimating himself to the Wonder Gauntlet had made him perhaps the greatest living martial artist on the planet, though he was never one to admit it.
“These moves we’re learning, from all these martial arts,” Matt began one morning in the gym, “they're all good, and they’ve been developed over the last thousands of years by great warriors and philosophers and thinkers…”
Matt demonstrated a short, extremely violent series of punches and blocks, ending in a low stance. “...but they’re limited.”
Matt looked each member of the team in the eyes. He allowed his words to sink in. “They’re limited by the abilities and limitations of the human body.”
Matt walked over to a small pile of bricks. Earlier in the week the team watched a demonstration in which a karate master smashed the bricks with his open hand. The bricks Matt now approached were twice the thickness, and there were twice as many.
“These gauntlets let us go past human limitations.”
Matt raised his bare fist, and as the team watched, he screamed “Hai!”
Matt brought his bare hand down on the small pile of bricks with such force that the top two were completely pulverized into crumbs and all the bricks were broken into two and three pieces.
Matt looked at his hand, smiled, and showed it to the rest of the team.
“Oh crap,” said Jay, wincing. The rest of the team did not know what to say. Matt’s hand was a lump of bruised and bloodied flesh and broken bones. It was a hideous injury, but even as they watched, the hand began to heal itself as bones shifted beneath newly forming pink skin.
“The gauntlet has blocked the pain, and the nanobots in my blood are already repairing the damage.”
“That still had to hurt,” said Kalomo.
“It did,” said Matt, “a lot, but the gauntlet cuts off the pain quick, so you can remain battle ready. If I summoned the Wonder Armor my hand would be healed in half the time. As it is….”
Matt wriggled the fingers on his wounded hand. “I’ll be completely fine inside of ten minutes.”
Matt took a step back. The team spread out a little bit. “The gauntlet will pull you back from almost any damage. Paul had his leg bitten off by a sluk flower on Wod. It took almost a day, but his Wonder Armor regrew it. Harlan once had his heart ripped from his chest and eaten in front of him, but the Wonder Armor activated before he died, and grew him a new heart.”
Theodore absently rubbed his chest. Matt grew suddenly quiet. Mentioning his lost teammates had summoned unwelcome memories. “Uh… Well, you get the idea.”
Along with the training there was a steady barrage of media interviews and news stories that required the participation of the new Wonder Heroes. Reporters and film crews from around the world traveled to the Wonder Base, or the Wonder Heroes would make the trip by way of teleporter to various locations to be interviewed on site. In one week, Susan realized, she had done interviews in Mexico, London, Singapore, South Africa and Venezuela.
The Wonder Gauntlets provided the translations of the various languages the team met with so seamlessly that Susan sometimes lost track of what country she was in or what language she was speaking. The questions were all the same, variations on a theme. They wanted to know about her life, her values, her teammates, their beliefs, her thoughts on the seemingly never ending alien menace, and if she felt that she was truly up to the task of protecting the planet. General Rumpole had explained that this was the primary question on everyone’s mind: Could the new Wonder Heroes do the job, and would the various alien menaces see the team as a powerful enough deterrent?
The television broadcasts were thought to be extremely important. It was well known that just beyond the Oort Cloud of our solar system were positioned several alien armadas waiting for some slip in the Earth’s defenses. These aliens monitored the television broadcasts of Earth, searching for weakness, and the only thing that kept the Zaroulis, or the Mathic Intemperment, or the Wacabataille from launching a full scale assault on the Earth and its resources was the presence of the Wonder Heroes.
It was in India that one of the interviews went oddly askew. The entire team, minus Matt, who was crafty in coming up with reasons not to do public appearances (“I just think they’d rather hear from the new guys, and besides, Cassie asked me to visit…”) teleported onto a soundstage in front of a medium sized studio audience to be interviewed by a popular Indian radio personality, a small, stern woman named Rehab Veneer.
Veneer asked questions in a very direct, almost confrontational way, and the team found themselves a little put off: they were usually treated with the respect and deference reserved for royalty and movie stars, and had already come to expect such treatment.
“Jay Parker,” Veneer began in excellent English, with only a trace of her Indian accent beneath her clipped Oxford tones. “There were some early reports that you weren’t quite cutting it, as they say. Your comments?”
“What?” asked Jay, “Where did you hear that?”
“So you deny these reports?”
“I don’t know what reports you’re talking about.”
Theodore raised a hand. Something about Veneer’s attitude made them all feel on the spot. “Uh, if I might comment. Jay’s been doing stellar work.”
“That’s right,” chimed in Kalomo, nodding his head.
Veneer looked at Susan, who nodded in agreement with her teammates. “So this is the party line. No disharmony, you all work together well and there are no problems?”
The team shot each other looks and exchanged smiles and nods.
“Yeah,” said Susan, “There may have been some tiny bumps at the start, but we’re a team now. One hundred percent.”
Veneer looked doubtful, but did not press the point. “Next question. Theodore.”
Theodore smiled and leaned forward. He decided to embrace the combative air, rather than fight it. Besides, he knew what was coming, some variation on the ‘How do you live down the betrayal of Harlan Flicker?’ question he had already fielded what seemed like a thousand times. “Let me have it,” he said.
Veneer did not return Theodore’s smile. “Do you know the name Perfect Teddy 23?”
Theodore’s face dropped. Susan saw him go pale. His mouth opened, but no words formed. “Uh, I…”
A smile tried unsuccessfully to twitch itself into existence at the edge of Veneer’s lips. “It’s a simple question, isn’t it?”
“No. I don’t think so,” Theodore shook his head, “Definitely not.”
Veneer smiled. “Is that a denial, or are you just startled by the question?”
Theodore shook his head. “Never heard of him.”
Veneer’s icy stare pinned Theodore to his seat. “Are you sure you don’t want to reconsider?”
Susan looked at Theodore, and saw real fear in his face. Then suddenly, Theodore relaxed. “Sounds like an Internet handle,” he said, “what of it?”
“Perfect Teddy is the name of a notorious hacker,” said Veneer, “He’s made some daring raids on government and private servers all over the world.”
“Well, Teddy is short for Theodore, and I’m pretty near perfect,” retorted the Wonder Hero, “so I can see where someone might get confused.”
Veneer narrowed her eyes but again did not press the point. The rest of the interview went better, with Kalomo answering questions about his family and his girlfriend, and Susan fielding a question about her estranged father. After it was over and the cameras stopped, the entire team felt properly ambushed.
Veneer rose from her chair and without a word or a look back simply left the set.
“I like the Spratsis better than I like her,” said Kalomo.
“You got off easy, man,” said Jay, “she really had it in for me and Theodore.”
Theodore said nothing. Kalomo joked, “Maybe she’s an alien and we can beat her up.”
Susan smiled. “No such luck. I scanned her and she’s human. Barely.”
Between the training, press conferences, public appearances and defense briefings there was little time to do anything else, but when the odd opportunity presented itself, each of the Wonder Heroes attempted to try to have a life. Susan grabbed some of this precious time to wrap up her college career, which MIT graciously put on hold for her. She had one semester to finish before she could graduate, and she had already received several acceptance letters from graduate schools including Stamford and MIT, but all that would probably never happen now. She was a Wonder Hero. All academic degrees seemed suddenly pointless.
While on campus, Susan decided to knock on the door of her old dorm room. Lindsey, an Asian girl with long black hair and tired eyes answered the door.
She brightened considerably when she saw her friend. “Oh my god, Susan!”
Susan smiled, “Hey Lindsey. You busy?”
Lindsey opened the door wide and almost dragged Susan inside. The room seemed empty now that Susan’s stuff had all been packed up and sent to the Wonder Base. Lindsey had only just started invading the space Susan had vacated: a small, unopened package from Amazon.com and a coat had been thrown onto Susan’s old mattress.
“The place looks so different,” said Susan, looking around.
“Those military guys took everything, even the posters and stickers you put on the wall,” laughed Lindsey.
“I know. It was so weird opening a box full of useless paper.”
“Well,” said Lindsey, “they were thorough.” Lindsey smiled, “I really miss you.”
“I miss you too, Lin.”
The two women hugged and sat down on the edge of Susan’s old bed.
“It was so weird when you left,” said Lindsey, “One minute you were there, the next minute you were like, gone! Rumors were flying, and Steve and Dave were completely useless. They said you were snatched by a U.F.O. Then we heard the news reports. You’re a freaking Wonder Hero!”
“Yeah,” agreed Susan, “Sometimes I think I must be hallucinating, but there’s no getting around this.” Susan held out her arm so that Lindsey could examine the gauntlet.
Lindsey looked closely at the point where gauntlet met flesh. “It fits perfectly. The gauntlet has meshed with your skin…”
“You don’t wear the gauntlet,” said Susan, “It’s more like you merge with it.”
“That’s so weird. Can I touch it?”
“Go ahead.”
“It’s warm, and feels like plastic, or plastic coated metal,” said Lindsey, running her fingers across the surface of the gauntlet. “I’ve never felt anything like it.”
Susan was instantly feeling at home, engaging in science geek talk with her best friend. “No one knows what the gauntlets are made of. They behave like matter or energy, depending on the test, and the gauntlets seem to spread out beyond three dimensions, fractally.”
“I can’t even imagine,” said Lindsey, “I don’t have that much math.”
“No one does,” agreed Susan, “One theory? Each gauntlet is a self contained artificial micro-universe.”
“Holy crap.”
Susan laughed, “Yeah, no kidding. The Cassiopeians somehow managed to harness the power of an entire universe, or micro-verse, I guess, into a biological symbiote.”
Lost in thought, the two friends were silent for a moment. Lindsey began moving her hands in an odd nervous way, hyper-extending her wrists and rotating her forearms. Susan knew the movements as a sign that something was troubling her friend.
“How about you Lin?” asked Susan, “Is everything all right?”
“Yeah,” said Lindsey, a little too quickly, “Why?”
“Is it Paul?”
Lindsey smiled. “We broke up.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s stupid,” said Lindsey, her hands calming down, “I’m the one who broke up with him, but now I’m the one who’s all upset.”
Susan smiled and hugged Lindsey. She missed so much about her old life now that she was a Wonder Hero, but as she hugged her best friend in her old dorm room, she realized that what she missed most of all, now that she was on an all male team of superheroes, was a female friend to talk to. Not for the fist time she wondered why she had ever agreed to try on the Wonder Gauntlet.
“This is the Wonder Giant.”
The Wonder Heroes, dressed in their color coded jumpsuits, were assembled in the center of the hanger on Level Seven, where the awesome and powerful vehicles assigned to each of them were kept. Matt, Wonder Hero Ultra, was leading the tour.
“When we first received the Cassiopeian technology in early 2015, the six of us were given the Wonder Gauntlets for dealing with threats of what we might consider ‘normal’ or human scale, but threats come in all shapes and sizes, so we were also given access to the Wonder Base, and to the six vehicles parked around us.”
Theodore leaned in close to Kalomo. “Like we don’t already know this.”
Kalomo nodded. “Me and my brothers learned all this in the comics.”
Matt looked past Susan and Jay, who were listening politely, and straight at Kalomo and Theodore. “Look, guys, I know this is old news, but we need to cover it. The General thinks we should formalize our training, and I agree.”
“Sorry, Matt,” said Kalomo.
Matt nodded and continued, “There are six vehicles, each capable of air or space flight. When all the vehicles are operational, they can be combined to become a giant robot, which we call the Wonder Giant. Of course, since Danielle Walker, Wonder Hero Blade, went missing last year, we haven’t had a pilot for the Kick-Blade, and summoning the Wonder Giant has become impossible.”
Matt frowned, pushing away thoughts of his lost teammates.
“Each vehicle has slightly different capabilities,” Matt continued, “Jay, you pilot the Onyx Torso, which houses all the heaviest weaponry, and can generate the most power and most shielding. It’s a little bulkier and slower than the rest, but does, contrary to popular belief, have FTL capabilities.”
Matt led the team to the large, colorful crimson and ultramarine vehicles. “The two fists, Imp-, I mean Crimson and Ultra. The fists are heavily armored, built to take punishment and deliver a lot more. They come packed with offensive weaponry; pulse energy and missiles mostly. Also, Ultra can generate an energy shield and Crimson an energy sword, at least in Wonder Giant mode, any way. These ships form the arms of the giant…”
Matt led the team towards the Golden Kick and the Kick-Blade, “…and the Kicks provide the legs. The kicks are faster than the rest, point 999 light speed, plus short range FTL. Moderate weaponry, but like I said, fast.”
Matt gestured at the strangest looking vehicle here, resembling a large alien head. “Finally we have the Skull. We tried naming it after Wonder Hero Light’s call sign, but that didn’t really work. Terry hated all the suggestions and we just took to calling it the Skull. She’s yours now, Kalomo. The Skull has a good weapons system, a great battery of sensory apparatus, and the most advanced mobile computer system in the world. If you ever find yourself out of contact with Wonder Base the Skull’s onboard computer could be used, in a pinch. All Wonder Giant systems are routed through this ship.”
Matt paused for a moment, and then smiled. “So what do you say to taking these out for a test drive?”
Jay punched his fist into his palm. “Hell yeah!”
“I say yes to that,” said Theodore with excitement.
“We won’t go too far,” said Matt, summoning his Wonder Armor and walking towards the Ultra Fist. The rest of the team followed suit, and armored up in flashes of colored light. “Just a quick trip around the moon and back. Hopefully we can go a day without a problem.
Ten billion years ago, the first life forms inhabiting planets that orbited the first generation stars of our universe ventured into space, colonizing distant planets, and maintaining gigantic intergalactic empires. Inevitably these empires encountered each other, and soon, despite all efforts to avoid it, the first interstellar wars began.
The wars were fought by species long gone, their stars now decayed or collapsed into black holes best avoided. One by one, these vast intergalactic empires fell and the species that comprised them met with inevitable extinction, until all that was left was their machines: their robots, built for war, meeting each other in the cold recesses of space, and programmed for annihilation.
Time passed, and one by one even these great and powerful alien robots eventually broke down, pulverized by the sands of space, and eventually they, like the species that created them, were gone and forgotten.
Some of the more resilient battle robots found ways to survive. Their bodies pulverized, the warrior robots stripped themselves of every scrap of armor and every bit of weaponry, until they were nothing more than the relentless math that drove them: a handful of electrons in a program of destruction. They were the Aierta, the ghosts of robots, the angels of death.
Time is relentless, and ravaged even these now mythical creatures. Ancient legends of the Aierta were soon relegated not to history but to myth and stories for children, or became fodder for holographic entertainments. Among discredited historians and crypto-exobiologists it was speculated that there was a possibility of some Aierta being still out there, still spinning their programs of death and war, waiting to meet with a physical being that could support their programs of destruction.
There were tales, impossible to prove, of otherwise rational beings suddenly becoming possessed of a bloodlust that drove them to killing and conquest, or of animals suddenly throwing off a million years of evolutionary conditioning to go on a spree of atypical hunting and destruction, but they were tales only. No amount of dissection could prove the existence of the Aierta, who were after all, little more than a loose collection of mathematically directed electrons contained in a weak magnetic field, but the Aierta were real, and so it was that a cadre of Aierta happened upon on an intersect course with the Earth. The powerful magnetic fields of the planet both magnetically dragged the phantom aliens forward and tore at their subtle electron integrity. As ten Aierta passed through the Earth’s ionosphere, four were overwhelmed and swept away by the massive barrage of television, radio and cell phone signals that enveloped the world.
The six surviving Aierta were then absorbed into likely vessels. Each Aierta found an inhabitable body and each body provided a platform from which to conduct war.
The sun was setting earlier and earlier in Menlo Park, New Jersey as Claudia DeRezney, fashionable dresser and underpaid mortgage broker, took her twelve-year old golden retriever Vuitton out for her post dinner walk. Winter was approaching and Claudia dreaded the idea of taking these walks in the dark, in the cold, and even in, shudder, the snow. Still, she stood patiently, plastic baggie in hand, as Vuitton did his business in the tall grass by the fire hydrant. She did not see the sparkles of light that descended around her, but she felt the ever so slight touch of something, feathery light, inside her head when suddenly her cell phone vibrated, and the touch was gone, and instantly forgotten.
The caller was her ex-husband, and she made a face as she decided not to answer it, as she had promised herself to never answer calls from him in the future. It was a promise she was destined to keep. The sparkles of light, so subtle they were almost subconscious, descended upon the dog Vuitton, and lacking the slight electromagnetic disruption of the cell phone, Vuitton’s mind was quickly overrun and reprogrammed by the Aierta. The dog’s mind became a breeding ground for programs of war, unfolding and expanding with remarkable speed. Vuitton’s memories were sifted and prioritized. Enemies were calculated, and battle capabilities were measured.
Claudia DeRezney felt the leash go slack in her hand, and tried to say, “No!” but her voice was cut off as Vuitton leapt at her and tore at her throat with his jaws. She died in the grass next to the vibrating phone. Vuitton stared at her body, and with weak eyes but strong senses of smell and hearing, assessed the strengths and weaknesses of humanity. Then, when satisfied, Vuitton followed his nose and ran, dragging his leash behind him.
Twelve people were attacked in the next two hours. Three died. The police eventually cornered the twelve-year old Golden Retriever, not knowing that the poor creature was running programs of destruction ten billion years old in its brain. The dog expired in a hail of gunfire.
As the city of Menlo Park tried to make sense of the tragedy, the Wonder Heroes flew their Wonder Vehicles back from their trip around the moon. What happened in New Jersey was not significant enough for any of them to be alerted. It was a terrible event that made the news and except for those who had friends and relatives affected, no one gave the event much thought.
At 3am the next morning, police discovered a stolen eighteen-wheel truck abandoned in a parking lot near the Middlesex County Medical Examiner’s Office. Police were alerted to the vehicle because the offices nearby had been broken into. The security tapes showed two suspects, a young woman and man, later identified as teen runaways Jaimie Karasik and Kyle Jensen. The pair had stolen the truck in upstate New York, and driven six hours straight. They entered the building, murdered the sole guard on duty, bypassed a series of alarm systems, and stole one item…
…the brain of the golden retriever Vuitton.