Chapter 1: Complications
Director Nova sat at the conference table in the heart of BADGE HQ.
In front of him was a dozen tablets displaying various reports. He
signed one with his finger and then set it on a larger stack in the
seat next to him. Sliding the next over he began to read it.
“Attention, BADGE, the Canadian Government would like a follow-up
briefing on the Krampus issue… blah blah blah...” He scrolled
through the verbose letter that he had seen a dozen times by now, at
the bottom he got to the meat of this, “We require five reports on
the radiation studies, clean up processing, and identification of all
heroes involved in Canadian territories.” He groaned and typed in
his usual response and set that on the stack.
Just then Gar walked in, “Director Nova, you have been here since I
saw you this morning.”
“That’s because I have been under this pile of paperwork since
this morning.” He snarled at the remaining tablets, “Correction,
I have been under this pile of paperwork since the day after the
heroes sent Krampus fleeing.”
Gar frowned as he picked up a tablet, “What is paperwork for?”
“The usual. Every time we have any villain incident larger than a
bank robbery, every government official wants to complain and get
another report to file. There is a price to pay to get international
government funding, and this is it. They all want their hands in the
pot and it falls on me.”
Gar handed him the tablet, “One would imagine people would be
satisfied with the vanquishing of bad things from this planet.”
“Sure, one would think. But, that is not what they do.” Nova
tossed the tablet on the table, unwilling to read it just yet, “What
did you need? Did you finish that project I sent you to do?”
Gar smiled, “Yes. I studied the video footage from drones and
learned more about military maneuvers. Why did you ask me to learn of
this?”
“You’re still learning, I want you to understand basic human
defenses. Defending this planet isn’t just the job of superheroes.
The military gets involved and we need to understand how they
operate. Besides, you like to study and you need to relax after all
that work with Krampus, so it seemed logical.”
Gar smiled, “I did like learning things. But, this is not why I am
here. Dr. Henderson requested your presence.”
“He asked to see me,” Nova stated.
“Is that not what I said?”
Nova got up, “Yeah, but you talk so formally. What’s the doctor
need?”
Gar shrugged, his enormous wings expanding slightly, “I do not
know. His work baffles me.”
“Me too. Why don’t you take that stack in the chair and download
my responses to the transmitter and send them off? I will go see what
he needs.” Nova left the room.
Gar picked up the stack, reading the top one. His eyes widened, and
he smiled at the colorful way Nova told the French Government to stop
bothering them.
***
***
Nova strolled into the laboratories of the BADGE HQ. These were the
areas where one would find more humans working and not just the
standard robots. He stopped and stretched his back, still stiff from
sitting all morning and most of the afternoon.
A robot approached, “Greetings, Director Nova.”
“Where’s the doc?”
“Doctor Henderson is in laboratory seven, this way.” The robot
led him to the most advanced lab in this base, which was saying
something.
A heavy-set man with long blonde hair and a white lab coat worked
furiously at his station, checking data in a tablet and then
returning to a myriad of vials of liquid in every state from frozen
to bubbling.
“Doc?” Nova waited.
Dr. Henderson turned around, “Director! Great, glad to see you,
good, I needed to show you something.”
“Obviously.” Nova respected this man's extreme intelligence but
found his talkative nature a little bothersome.
Dr. Henderson got up and went to a wall with a huge monitor on it. He
took a tablet and directed the information. Screens appeared all over
the place. “You asked us to collect all the contaminated snow from
the battle with Krampus.”
Nova tried to follow the images that blazed by, “Yes. He lost a lot
of blood and I wanted it tested.”
“We tested his blood, well it really isn’t blood, but I don’t
know what to call bodily fluids from a mythical being. It has an
energy signature we recognize, morphon radiation.”
This grabbed Nova’s attention, “Morphon particles? The air is
still permeated with that crap. So?”
“The particles in the atmosphere have leveled off and remain
airborne, this is entirely different. It is a new type of morphonic
radiation.” He scrolled the images by, showing all the detailed
analysis. “The concentration is higher than any known source of
morphon radiation. And, we also found the same morphon signature in
the surrounding snow. I sent a team of drones to collect all the top
layer of snow in the battle zone.”
“You did? I didn’t authorize that?”
Dr. Henderson turned with a curious look, “I sent the request to
you yesterday. It was a basic tablet form, didn’t Gar get it to
you?”
“Oh, he probably did. I have been signing so much crap I probably
just signed it and now it’s being sent along with the other
responses… hehe… that’ll confuse those bureaucrats.”
“What?”
“What?”
“Never mind? What about this snow?”
Dr. Henderson smiled and walked him back over to the table of various
liquids. “I got back the initial samples this morning. After some
tests I was able to distill down most of the water, leaving me with a
liquid form of this advanced morphon particle.”
“Liquid morphons?”
“Yes.” Dr. Henderson picked up a small vial. “With this, we
might craft morphonic abilities that can be given to a person able to
handle them. Thus, we can create heroes.”
Nova was not excited about this, “I have already had five different
governments attempting to force superpowers on their soldiers. It
doesn’t work out there and I certainly don’t want to encourage
creating them in here. We are not in the job of manufacturing heroes,
we merely organize and guide them.”
Dr. Henderson said, “Oh, I understand that. It’s one of the main
directives of the science labs of BADGE. However, we might craft
powers for existing superheroes. Give someone a leg up in battle, so
to speak.”
Nova grunted at that, “That is treading a thin line.”
Dr. Henderson said, “Well, we are only at the theoretical stages
now. What I’m trying to determine is what these powers would be.
These particles don’t react like others we’ve studied. They are
infused with some kind of energy that defies all analysis. In the
past, we have seen that harvested morphonic particles from the blood
of heroes demonstrate the powers of the hero. Thus, if a hero can
fly, the particles show that. This energy is in the same area as
those tests would show, but we can’t define the powers if any.”
Nova said, “If they came from Krampus, I didn’t notice any powers
in him he didn’t already have before. We have him on record and the
particles seemed to just enhance what he had.”
Dr. Henderson said, “We have never tested post infused particles
from a specimen who did not exude extra abilities.”
Nova spent a moment untangling that sentence in his mind and then
finally agreed, “Fine. Keep learning what you can, but don’t
experiment with any power creation without my explicit approval and
that means in person, no tablets sent over.”
“Understood.”
Nova turned to leave just as one robot came walking by with a bucket.
Both collided and Nova was soaked from the chest down by this cold
water. “WHAT THE HELL IS THIS!”
“Oh, my. Get the director a towel at once!” Dr. Henderson ran
over and picked up the bucket.
“What is all over me?” Nova growled.
“It’s just water. This is the liquid distilled from the process.”
“Distilled, so it’s...”
“It’s clean… mostly.”
“MOSTLY!?”
Dr. Henderson quickly said, “I mean, it is not potable, I wouldn’t
drink it, but it’s clean of any particles… as far as I can tell.”
The robot came back and was about to wipe off the director, but Nova
snatched the towel from him and dried himself off, “Just get back
to work. I have my own job to deal with.” He walked out, leaving a
nervous doctor behind.
***
***
Director Nova left a nice trail of sloppy footprints behind him as he
stormed back to the conference room. He continued to dry himself off
while he muttered about this all being worth it.
“I could have stayed with the Guard Forces… but, no. I had to
organize this nonsense. Seasonal villains, nut job scientists, heroes
that act like teenagers… wasn’t this a hand towel?” He stopped
in the hall, holding that towel over both hands. “It’s… getting
bigger?”
He let go of the towel and held up his arm and his sleeve went past
his fingers. “What the?” He checked his other sleeve and then
noticed that his collar was touching his ears. “This water made my
coat get… bigger? This is not right.”
Nova continued toward the conference room, confused and still mostly
wet. Just when he saw the doors of the conference room, he tripped
and fell over. He had stepped on his pant legs. Scrambling back up,
he got to his feet just when his pants hit the ground. “Oh, crud.”
He yanked his pants up and dashed for the conference room, but he
didn’t make it before his pants were far too big for him to run and
he had to ditch them. And, then went his underwear. His coat was
dragging the ground and he could not keep it with him. All he had
when he got into the room was his key card, which allowed the doors
to open.
Once inside the room, a tiny, naked Director Nova held his key card
with both arms and he yelled, “HELP!”
Continued Tomorrow...
0 Comments