Cloudy Skies in a Cloudy Mind

I didn't mind wind. Think about it this way: when a person like me ZINGS through the air with the force of a million megaton bomb, the small, measly tickle of a fifteen mile per hour wind is somehow just not as harsh as what I feel when I travel from place to place. But it wasn't the wind by itself that bugged me. It was the overcast sky. I leaned out further onto the railing overlooking the Grande Kloopta mountain range in Southern New Hampshire, staring up at the gray sky. It was a depressing day. No sign of the sun, no sign of fun, no reason why I should feel motivated in any way. You know days like this, of course. So you know how I felt on that particular occasion. But Florey (my pet name for my super-charged companion) would never let the weather get him down.

"Spag-man!" he beamed cheerfully from behind me. As he approached, I watched my shadow lengthen on the porch. Florey cast his own light; no wonder he was so damned happy all the time. What he really needed was to get involved in a depressing personal relationship with a female Effervescent creature who would tear his heart in two and drive him to the brink of suicide. Then, perhaps, Florey would be in the same drink as the rest of us on the planet.

He joined me on the porch and looked out over the vast domain. "Why are you so down, my ever-prepared pensive pal? Look at this! We have our very own secret base in the largest, most majestic mountain in the Klooptas. We are world-renowned for our heroic deeds. We are entrusted with the powers that the Cube of Rubic bestowed upon us when we were rock climbing as normal human beings. Within that little skull of yours is the formula for perfect pasta. How can you not be happy with what we have here?"

At length, I turned to Florey and glowered at him with darkened eyes. "This weather, man. The WEATHER! It SUCKS!"

Florey blinked and stared up at the sky. He breathed in a long draught of air and then, after a long moment, looked back at me. "Oh - I guess you're right. I just hadn't thought of that, I guess."

I growled and turned away from the small porch which, viewed from the Earth far below, looked like nothing but an outcropping of stone. With one hand I brushed aside the hanging beads that separated the outdoor area from our lush bachelor pad inside, which looked more like a Vegas casino than a secret base. Our living quarters were nothing more than one massive room located at the top of Mt. Kachakooki. A spiral staircase lead up to a balcony area, off of which our private chambers were built. This one room served as a multimedia studio, theatre, office, and study. At one end of the domed room was a huge bookcase which rivaled most scholars' collections. (We rarely used it, however; Florey's comic book collection took up one shelf and that was where we usually went for our literature.) Opposite the bookshelf/study area was a small bar, which we were careful to keep fully stocked. (This place was a great babe magnet.) We had no need for a kitchen or a pantry, since the ion energy that fed us needed no further nourishment; usually we were pretty busy with our superhero duties and could afford no time for culinary experiment anyway. But our lives were fairly rich... and the money we spent came from the government. We were set for life. Well... as long as we lived, anyway. Needless to say, we cleaned up the taxpayer's money pretty well.

Below our pad was a massive complex that included a laboratory, multiple hidden storage areas, and a hanger complete with a dropship shuttle that would make Batman blanch in envy. There was nothing we couldn't handle. We were, quite obviously, the ultimate superhero combo, and were afraid of nothing and no one.

Then the hotline alarm went off. A revolving red warning light flooded the room and I sighed, groaning as I picked up our universal remote control from a nearby lamp table. With a mere press of a button, a twenty foot wide screen lowered from the ceiling and alighted, displaying scrolling text.

"A message from the President!" Florey gasped, jumping up and down in glee. "Yay! Yay! Something to do, something to do!"

"Shut up and settle down," I growled . "You're embarrassing me."

A moment later, the presidential seal, followed by the President himself, came up on the vidscreen. I crossed my burly arms in that superhero sort of way and stared at him. "Yes, sir?" I asked, being sure to lower my voice a couple of octaves for further effect.

"I'm glad I could catch you at home," the aged white-haired man said. "We have a real disaster on our hands this time, and I believe that you are the only men on Earth who can handle it.

"Don't you ALWAYS say that to us?" Florey asked innocently. I rolled my eyes and sighed, trying (and failing) to contain my exasperation.

The President's virtual eyes stared deep at my companion. "I have given you many tasks to perform in the past, gentlemen, but this one quite easily belittles them all. You, Effervescent Fluorescent Boy, and you, Eveready Spaghetti Boy, are the country's last hope against a scourge so cruel, so alien, that none have fought against it and lived!"

My eyes narrowed at the eighteen-foot wide face glowing on the vidscreen. "What? This doesn't by any chance have anything to do with killer bunnies, does it?"

The president's gaze shifted toward me. "No, my friend." I sighed visibly with relief. "This time it is much worse than that. We are dealing with WORMS!"

Silence pervaded the room as this statement echoed throughout the hall. Florey and I looked at each other, then back at the president. "Worms?" Florey squeaked.

"But these worms are like nothing we've ever seen," he continued. "They're huge - bigger than we can measure! And they're destroying our cities, collapsing our bridges, sinking our ships, and causing a general nuisance . . . "

"WORMS are doing this?" I burst out. "I don't understand."

"Let me put it to you this way," the president said, "have you ever seen the movie Dune?"

"Sure," I nodded, "I love that flick. Especially David Lynch's great acting cameo."

The president shook his head. "Remember the worms in that movie?"

"Yep."

"Well, there you go."

Florey and I exchanged glances, this time with a trace of fear. "Oh," I gulped.

"They travel in packs, so to speak," the president continued. "So far, we have been able to detect three different packs, and usually when you find one worm, you can find the others. We have just received word here at the Capitol that they are rapidly approaching Camp Fragrant. Please hurry!"

"Wait a minute!" Florey burst out. "Isn't that where you guys keep all those millions of tons of radioactive waste accumulated over decades of radioactive isotope testing?"

The president's eyes widened about two times their normal size. He looked left and right as if checking to see if anybody was listening. "Keep it DOWN, you idiot! Yes, it is, if you were wondering. Now if those worms reach that base and get into those holding tanks, we could have a real ecological disaster on our hands. Not only that, but the radiation would make them even bigger than they are now! There's no telling how they got that way in the first place. Now, quickly, before anything else happens. You have your mission: GO!" And with that, the man's face was gone, replaced by the Presidential Seal. And then nothing.

"Well," I sighed, "now that the readers know the gravity of the situation, I guess we better . . ." But then I noticed Florey's face. It was the first time I had ever seen him not beaming. After I got over the shock, I said, "What's drilling your teeth, my little pet ball of pure energy?"

He quickly recovered his smile and said, "Oh, nothing, my pasta-obsessive sidekick." I sighed at this. "Let's go save the world, shall we? And pick up some burgers on the way." And off he flew, bright yellow cape dancing and flapping vigorously behind him.

But the walking light bulb had dimmed from two hundred watts to sixty watts.

I made a mental note of this and leaped off the balcony with my maroon cape streaming behind me like a thick liquid. I sort of liked his cape better, but I would never tell him that.

Flying through the air at Mach four, I pondered the worm situation and what it could possibly have to do with Florey's sudden shift in demeanor. Even though he said nothing was bothering him, I knew he was lying. He just didn't have the same glow about him. Now, the worms, I thought, what about the worms? Hmmm . . . . There are gargantuan worms destroying cities and they're headed for Camp Fragrant. That's in the center of Alabama where nobody would notice the awful putrid stench. How ingenious! Why would worms want anything to do with a Top Secret military base? What in the world could . . . .

An insistent beeping probed my ears. I looked around in alarm before realizing that it was coming from my own pocket. I relaxed and pulled out my virtual reality pet. The dog that I had named Bill had made another mess that I had to clean up. After checking his vital signs, I found that he was also low on food and health and he wasn't very happy with me at all. Sometimes I wondered if these damn things weren't more trouble than they were worth. I quickly squelched the urge to let the hand held mutt drop to the Earth twenty-five miles below me. I fed him and played ball with him while trying to watch out for airplanes and mountains and UFOs. Those UFOs can be pretty unforgiving if you put a dent in their hull. After throwing a computerized ball at a computerized dog for a while, I rechecked his stats. His health was almost one hundred percent, his food was almost full and he had no problems except that he still wasn't very happy with me. I told him that I wasn't very happy with him, either, though in more choice phrasing, and put him back in the pocket of my beige suit with the squiggly design.

We caught up with one group of worms in western Texas. The first sighting of this group was in the middle of Arizona. The second group was seen in South Dakota and was believed to have started in Minnesota. The third group started in Maine and was last seen in southern New York. And they were all headed toward Alabama. Oregon was innocent, as usual.

Florey was already there when I landed, staring blankly and dimly at the giant worms. Then I looked at the worms. "Holy fish bait, Florey!" I declared. He continued to stare at the worms. "Ok," I said, "time to tell me what's going on."

He took a deep breath and his inner glow brightened briefly and dimmed again as he exhaled. "Well," he started, "I saw these things when I was being held prisoner on the Planet Bayou." I blinked at this and nodded sagely. "These are not just overgrown worms," he continued. "These are the Plagarthian Carnivorous Earthworms of Death!"

"I see," I mumbled. "And do you have a real explanation for this?"

Florey turned on me with swift vengeance. "Yes," he said. "At first they were mistakenly called the Plagarthian Cannibalistic Earthworms of Death. But then, after much study and many missing scientists, they realized that they were not actually cannibalistic, as they didn't eat their own. They just eat other animals. They prefer dilgawheps, but the largest things on Earth are the whales and the elephants. So they've had to turn to other sources of . . . unless . . . ."

"Hold your kilowatts, buddy! Are you saying that these things are actually giant meat-eating worms from another planet?"

"Yes, but I don't know how they got here. Or what we're going to do about . . . "

And he was silent again. His eyes got twice as wide as they had been for the last couple hours. I suddenly felt more comfortable seeing my old Florey back again. Then the old Florey came back more than the old Florey ever was. I think . . . actually, I'm not sure what I just said.

"Of course!" he screamed, frightening a load of spaghetti into my hero suit. "Look at the worms, my noodle-brained friend. Do you see the way they squiggle and squirm and do a bunch of other things that start with SQU-? They look like normal worms, don't they? They look real. That means they're fake! They aren't real. They would be real if they looked fake, but they look real, so they're fake!"

I stared at him some more, just for the sake of staring at him. I blinked once, I think.

"I did some research about them when I was coming back from Bayou," he explained. "Their flesh is rubbery and they move in random patterns with short bursts of speed. The smaller ones like to sashay and sometimes waltz. Some like to turn in concentric circles while others like to flop around like dead fish. They've even been seen . . . ."

"YES!?"

"Sorry," he said. "Anyway, my point is they don't move, look or act like real worms. These do, so they are obviously fake."

"So when they fakely hit the fake Camp Fragrant with all that fake nuclear waste it'll set off a fake explosion dousing the fake southeastern United States with an immense fake radioactive cloud?"

He stared at me for a moment. "You could say that," he glittered. "There was a guy on my flight back from Bayou that kept telling me how he was going to take over the Earth for fun. He said he lived in Oklahoma. Now we just have to figure out where he started those worms from and where he is now."

I sighed. "I wish I was still with my unicorn!"

I looked briefly at my compadre, as briefly was all the time I had. I decided to do some research in North Dakota, where my space-traveling companion, Wilfred, was last known to be. So, off I flew, in a fairly northern direction leaving the pasta-brained grouch to himself. I didn't tell him all that I knew about the worms, but that hardly mattered now, since we knew they were very poor impersonations of the real worms. That explained how they came to be upon the Earth, they were built here by someone who had to know about them because they looked almost EXACTLY like real Plagarthian Cannibalistic Earthworms of Death (sorry... Carnivorous) and there was only one other person from this planet that I knew came back to Earth from the Planet Bayou from whence these monstrosities came and that meant that the only person who could have built them and turned them loose on the United States was none other than . . . Wilfred!

I flew at the speed of light, almost passing up the inner fluorescence that radiated from me like a floodlight. This was exciting to me, I don't have one blasted clue why Spag-man was being such a testy, touchy, irritable nimrod! And what the hell was this yakkity-yak about killer bunnies and unicorns? If I had a dime for every time I heard that wet noodle spit about his horrid deal with killer waffles and unicorns from Hell . . . . So he was late to work one day, I missed work for two flippin' years! And the snotty muckity-mucks in the big offices don't like to hear that you were taken prisoner by frogs and made to tie snails in outer space! Instead, they gave me my own little room in another part of town where I had no work to do at all and everything was really soft and I got to play and paint and sleep all day when it wasn't my fault to begin with, it was the froggies' fault it was always the froggies the froggies and the snails and the chestnut treesitwasTHEM! Killer bunnies from Hell, indeed! That man lacked a serious grip on reality!

As I passed over Kansas, I spied him with my Effervescent Super Sight! Evidently my contact in Vermont was a few steps behind! I swung around and circled for a landing. I landed right behind him and he stopped, looking down at his shadow on the sidewalk in front of him. He turned around, looked me square in the face and said, "Damn, Edison, turn it down!" I tried to lower my fluorescence a bit, with mild success. There was chattering around us, people thinking the sun had finally come out on this gloomy day, for it was gloomy here in Kansas as well as in the Klooptas. Finally, Wilfred looked into my face and beamed, "Hey, it's you! How ya been? I'm sorry, I don't remember your name."

I looked seriously at him and said, "I have no name anymore!" I made sure to lower my voice a couple octaves for the effect. "I am now known as Effervescent Fluorescent Boy!" And I brightened myself to accent and punctuate (which I was very good at!). Everyone on the street shielded their eyes, but Wilfred was caught off guard and temporarily blinded. They all may have started laughing at me had I not done this. Indeed, I heard the startings of chuckles and snickers and various other candy names. "I did not find you to reminisce about such horrid things as the times on that planet which will remain nameless. I know it was you who built the worms and sent them on a path of destruction toward central Alabama. Only you could have done it, you evil genius."

"Hold up there, buddy!" he said as he cleared his eyes of the remaining light spots. "Worms? What worms? You don't mean . . . Not the . . . the Plagarthian Cannibalistic Earthworms of Death!?"

"No," I said.

"Oh," he said, and breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

"I mean the Plagarthian Carnivorous Earthworms of Death!" At this he screamed a blood-curdling scream and wound up his ululation by turning into a varitable mass of quivering jelly on the city sidewalk. I sighed and dragged his catatonic carcass into a back alley. After smacking him around a bit and . . . other methods . . . I finally roused him into near wakefulness. But as soon as he recognized me, we were back to the yodeling. I grabbed his Adam's apple and gave it a short squeeze. That shut him up. "Now listen," I began, "if you didn't build the worms, who did?"

"I . . . " he choked. I flicked his larynx and put it back into place. He coughed a couple times and smacked me. "Don't ever do that again!" I wouldn't, that slap hurt! His voice was still scratchy but it was at least vocal. "I don't know. Maybe it was that other guy on the ship."

"What other guy? I only knew of two Earthlings that came back on that ship."

"There was another one. A guy. He must have done it."

"Are you thinking that I'm going to believe you didn't do it when I only knew of two people on that ship who could have done, me being one of them and I know I didn't do it, and the other one being you who told me that he was going to take over the world and you think I believe that?"

"Yes!"

"Oh . . . well . . . OK, then!"

"See, when I said I was going to take over the world . . . well, look at this." He pulled a small piece of plastic out of his pocket and I instantly prepared to brighten and blind him again. He showed me a little thing on a chain with a small screen. A little computerized animal bounced around aimlessly inside the screen. "I invented the virtual reality pet game. Everyone's playin' 'em."

I nodded. "But I thought . . . . "

"Somebody stole the idea . . . and the prototype . . . and the lab!"

"Uh-huh. Well, that's all the motive you need to get back at the . . . ."

"It wasn't me, I hate those things! It was some other guy."

"And you don't know his name?"

He sighed. "I told you, it was some other guy!!"

I could tell he was serious by the double exclamation points. I thanked him and told him that the worms acted like real worms. After seeing the visible relief on his face, I turned and started to head back and take off when I ran into . . . "Spag-man! How'd ya find me?" I brightened somewhat.

Spaggy covered his eyes, reached in his suit and pulled out a pair of binoculars. "I brought these along, just in case I might need them," he said.

"Of course," I smirked. "How could I not have guessed?"

"Now who the heck is this moron?" Wilfred called from behind me.

"I am Eveready Spaghetti Boy, upholder of truth, justice, and various other things to hold up. Who are you, little man?"

Wilfred was certainly impressed by the deep voice. "I . . . I'm Wilfred, sir."

"He invented the virtual reality pet game," I offered.

Spaggy-boy's face contorted into a demonic skull-like thing! "Did he? Really?" He pulled something small out of his tights and turned to me. "Would you excuse us for a bit?" he said calmly. I, being scared, decided that might be a good idea. So I took off east, toward Washington, D.C. It was not long before I left the short, but heartfelt, screams behind.

* * * * * * * * *

"You beat him to death with a virtual reality pet??"

"You make it sound like a crime!" I said.

"I think it is!" Poor Florey . . . if he only knew the evil that man had wrought upon the Earth! But I let it pass.

"So," I continued, changing the subject, "what are we doing here in our great nation's capital?"

Florey sighed and evidently decided to give up with the virtual reality homicide. "We're going to look in the government files until we find the name we're looking for."

"What name ARE we looking for?"

"I don't know, some other guy that was on that ship."

"Oh, the ship! I forgot about the ship!" Poor, poor Florey! He was still living in that delusional world of his. Thinking that there were frogs on the other side of the unknown galaxy who actually WANTED us for anything, snail tying or not. I mean, PUH-LEASE! What would he have to do, sit in a seat while snails came down a conveyer belt and just tie them up with string and a pretty little bow and send them off again? Well, try sitting in a pan of stir-fry grease for an hour while your life is threatened by fourteen cute little bunnies with your only defense your wit and a unicorn that came out of nowhere who decides to fall in love with you and then you end up two hours late for work after cleaning up bunny guts only to get fired and never get another job as long as you live because those morons in the fancy suits tend to frown on tales about demon bunnies with a taste for Belgium waffles and I get fired as if I were the crazy one when it wasn't my fault it was the bunnies the cute little bunnies and the unicornitwasTHEM! Space frogs, indeed! That boy lacked a serious grip on reality!

"Um . . . Spag?" I was interrupted in my ramblings by the bright and blazing lunatic. "I think I may have found what I was looking for." He showed me the name that was highlighted on the outdated computer: UTHER, GUY. "No wonder I didn't know he was on the ship. Obviously he just blended into the background."

We checked the address and discovered it was in western Oklahoma. We sighed at each other and took off again for the center of the country. When we arrived at the dastardly dork's domicile, we knocked but to no avail. The door, of course was locked. "Yo, noodle-knocker," Florey said. I raised an eyebrow at this. "We need a lockpick. Know where we can get one?"

"I assume you're being facetious," I mumbled, pulling one out of my tights. This made me extremely happy as they were digging into a place I didn't want them digging into. Florey made some looney remark about how 'facetious' is the only word in the English language that has all five vowels in the correct order. And then he said some inane thing about 'facetiously' that I totally ignored. The lockpick did the trick and soon we were making our way through the middle-class, well-kept house. "I don't know what we're looking for," I admitted.

I jumped as a loud beep rang through the house. I turned, ready to throw a wet noodle at the offender, only to find Florey standing in front of the answering machine. A voice came through, fuzzed by static: "Hi, this is Guy, I'm not home, I'm visiting my family in the west. Don't leave a message because I don't want to talk to you." Another beep sounded and the tape rewound.

"Great," I said. "WHERE in the west? There's a lot of west!"

"Well, let's use our super brain powers and figure it out. How about Nevada?"

"Sounds great, I've always wanted to visit Las Vegas. But that's not right. California?"

"Not Connecticut. That place sucks. Let's forget Rhode Island and Massachusetts, too."

"Idiot, those are in the east!" I knew that . . . really!

"Washington?" I suggested. He shook his head.

"Idaho?" No. That didn't sound right either.

"Well," I said, "we're not going to Hawaii, and most assuredly not Alaska! When a state is a refrigerator, I tend to be a bit stand-off-ish."

"Montana?"

A bell went off in my head. "There! But it's a big state."

"Hey, did you bring a compass that would point straight to him instead of just north?"

I raised both of my eyebrows this time. I knew for sure that I had nothing of the sort, but I also knew I could be wrong. It's a curse. I reached in my suit anyway, just in case, and sure enough . . . I pulled out a compass. I blinked, not really surprised, and held the compass in my hand. It most certainly pointed northwest. I sighed. I seemed to do that a lot this story. Sighing, I mean.