But Canada borders the United States. Which means that there’s was a chance that thing might have edged over into Vermont, or Michigan. So Excelsior had swung into action. He wears the Red, White and Blue, and is sworn do defend the US of A. Even the cold, flat parts that everybody moves away from when they get out of high school.
Excelsior flings the covers from the bed. He walks over to the suit and taps the logo. “This is Bishop Six, go ahead.
“Bishop Six, we’ve got a situation.” They’ve always got a situation. “There’s a man knocking down buildings.”
“Just buildings?” asks Excelsior as he looks around for something to breathe through. The smell next to his costume is almost completely unbearable.
“Affirmative, just buildings.”
“Isn’t that what insurance is for?” wonders Excelsior. He hears scuffling noises as someone new grabs the microphone.
“Son, what in the hell have I told you about thinkin’!?!” Gus’s phlegmy drawl roars through the speaker. “Insurance is for acts of God and Nature, not superpowered freaks like you. No insurance company on earth will cover the pain in the ass damage you do.”
“Aren’t you dead yet?” Excelsior asks, somewhat in jest.
“I’m too mean to die. And too pretty.” Excelsior hears Gus turn away from the microphone and cough for a while. “Now we’ve got a little problem up around 108th street.”
“Gus, I’m running on two hours of sleep.”
“Yeah, well I’m 155 years old and you don’t hear me complaining.”
“You didn’t spend the last two days bashing your brains out against a monster from the bottom of the ocean.”
“Hell, I tried for that duty. But I pulled the short straw and had to settle for dealing with your sorry ass.” Excelsior smiles in spite of himself and the smell.
“All right. Let me get a cup of coffee in me. I’ll pound this guy flat as a manhole cover and then you buy me lunch.”
“Now listen, this one is a little different.”
“Different?” Excelsior says with a snort, “They’re all different aren’t they, Gus? But they’re all the same in the end. They all get pounded flat.”
“No, you just listen to—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. 108th and what?”
“Spackster Ave, but listen, we’ve had —”
Gus’s voice is cut off abruptly as beams of pure light leap from Excelsior’s eyes and vaporize the costume. No point in saving it. No dry cleaner on Earth would have been able to get that smell out. But the smell that is coming from the ashes is even worse. Now the room smells like burnt, oily, fish hair. Time for another place to live. Excelsior goes to the closet for another suit. He’s already thinking about lunch. He’s gonna make Gus buy him a steak. A big one.
Excelsior steps out the window and is at Spackster and 108th Street in a blink. The destruction covers a block and a half. He had no idea it was this bad. The cops have seen him and pull back. They drag their wounded with them as they go. What happened here? Excelsior circles over the rubble, searching through the clouds of dust. He sees a squat figure, standing all alone. He doesn’t look all that threatening. He looks big, sure, but he looks tired and a little lost. Somehow dissipated and harmless. Excelsior thinks about asking him if he needs help, but as soon as the guy sees Excelsior, he throws a steel I-beam at him.
Yup, thinks Excelsior, that’s the bad guy. He fades back to catch the I-beam. The last thing he needs is that landing on a pre-school or something. Oh he’d never hear the end of that. He heaves the beam over his shoulder and gets a good grip on it. He doesn’t want to hit guy too hard with this thing — then he’ll just have to go chase him down. But, yeah, he’s gonna hit this guy in the face with an I-beam. Big fella should be able to take it. After all, he’s just knocked down a bunch of buildings.
Excelsior dips low, skimming six feet off the ground. This is the part where the bad guy usually starts running. Only this guy isn’t running. He’s not moving at all. He’s just standing there, looking stupid. Oh well, thinks Excelsior, batter up. And he swings.
But when the I-beam connects with the guy, something funny happens. The I-beam hits him and stops dead. The force rebounds through the steel and Excelsior knocks the wind out of himself. He’s so shocked he falls down. What the hell? That’s never happened before. He looks up. The guy is walking over to him. His face is a little red from where the I-beam hit him, but other than that, he appears to be unharmed.
“Okay buddy,” Excelsior says as he starts to get up. But he doesn’t get there. The guy grabs his foot. He looks so harmless, and is so nonchalant about it, Excelsior doesn’t even see it coming. People aren’t supposed to grab him. They’re supposed to be afraid of him. Excelsior tries to twist free. But he can’t. He can’t? He’s almost got enough time to say, “Hey!” before the guy lofts him over his head and slams him into the ground.
WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! Back and forth, back and forth. Even after the first couple of impacts, it’s still kind of a joke to Excelsior. He’s never been beaten. And there’s no way this guy, with his messed up forehead and his eyes too close together, is going to be the first. Enough is enough, thinks Excelsior. He tries to fly away. But it doesn’t work. The guy is too heavy! How is that possible?
The earth keeps slapping him around. This is getting bad. Excelsior panics. He starts flailing in every direction, but it’s no use. The guy just keeps bashing him against the ground. He bashes Excelsior so many times that the remnants of a nearby building just gives up and collapse completely. Everything goes dark for Excelsior.
Hiding behind a pile of rubble, Topper sees the whole thing. Cocky as he is, at this moment, he’s glad he’s small. He had no idea Barry was so powerful. He thinks of all the times he slapped Barry and feels a little queasy. Barry grows bored with hammering the ground with Excelsior. He tosses the limp body over his shoulder like a child who is no longer interested in a toy.
“What a beast!” Topper thinks as he watches Barry lumber off. “What could possibly overcome a beast like that?” As soon as he asks the question, the answer becomes obvious.
Chapter Thirty-Two
How to Make Advantage from Avalanche
Edwin is not depressed. He is absorbed in thought. Since no one has said anything helpful to his present line of thinking, he has not seen the need to respond. In the fundamental monotasking of deep thought, all else was noise in the signal.
Edwin is certain that the world has become dumber as a result modern technology. There are simply too many interruptions. Deep thought — original thought — required a quietude that is in danger of going extinct.
To make matters worse, the modern world had also been seduced by data. And why not? It is easier to crunch numbers than to reason. Numbers offer such reassurance. Reassurance and more. When you combine these numbers with the theoretical framework of the physical sciences, they seemed to deliver the insight of a god.
The volume and pressure of a gas are inversely related. The motion of a body with a known velocity and mass can be described by a parabola. With these two bits of knowledge, even the dullest sheep can plug the right numbers into the right tables and use artillery to blow apart the world. Napoleon proved this when he used the intellectual wonder of calculus to conquer Europe.
But the concepts of the physical sciences are ill-applied to a world filled with acting men and women. The psychologic, the economic, these are matters for which no equation can reliably provide guidance. For today’s statistical relationship is sure to be turned on its head tomorrow by a change of preference or fancy. Electrons can be excited, but they do not panic. Observe as many favorable conditions for a riot as you like – better yet, set them – and still, a riot may not occur. Most frustrating of all, you may never know why your plan of domestic unrest was
