Jeremy Malone didn’t notice he was being followed.
He also failed to notice how long it was taking him and his friends to get to the convenience store which was supposed to be just around the corner. Still, a good time was a good time—even if it was at the expense of those trying to sleep at 2AM on a Tuesday. One guy was insisting that it was Wednesday, but Jeremy couldn’t be convinced. The alcohol, he would always say, sharpened his internal clock. So did everything else he took. That was why he never bothered to wind his Rolex—it was just for show, like most everything else.
“I’m calling the cops!” someone shouted out of an apartment window.
The group—half a dozen twenty-somethings—staggered along, pushing one another into trash cans and cars, setting off alarms. They couldn’t hear much over the sound of their own high-pitched laughter, and together with blurred vision they were successfully able to tune out their environment. In moments of clarity they often rationalized that theirs was a better part of Los Angeles, and muggers usually kept to the poor parts of town. This, of course, was completely unfounded, but none of them liked being cooped up in someone’s apartment for too long. This morning, surprisingly enough, their excuse to get out was a bag of chips. They had plenty of the other stuff.
“We aren’t going the right way.”
“No, really, I don’t recognize these buildings…”
“Man, they’re buildings. They all look the same. You’re just wasted.”
Jeremy tuned them out as he tried to have a serious look around. They had in fact made it into a different part of town, somehow. He had no doubt that they’d find their way back before the sun came up, but he was really wanting those chips now. Not a neon open sign in sight. He whimpered in protest.
“Well then, where’re we?”
“Hell if I know. Malone was leading the way.”
Just then, the figure of a man turned the corner, and Jeremy was the only one to really care enough to observe. It was 2AM, after all. He squinted, but he couldn’t figure out if he recognized the guy or not. After an intense moment of contemplation, he realized that everything had gotten considerably quieter. He looked around, and found that his friends had left him.
“What the hell?” Jeremy played with the bottom hem of his shirt as he looked around. He wasn’t where he thought he was, either. Empty parking lot? When had he gotten here? The act of calling upon his memory was causing his head to swim, so he crouched down to keep from falling over.
It wasn’t the first time he’d found himself alone in this state, but it was always a little frustrating. They’d agreed to keep together. He stood and began pacing about the parking lot, murmuring about what he’d do to each of the guys when he got the chance. The sun hadn’t come up yet, but the sky was a little brighter. That meant time had passed. Jeremy hated when it did that, as it seemed to do no matter how closely he watched it.
He took off walking again, hoping to find some sort of landmark that would either guide him home or back to the others. Whatever part of Los Angeles Jeremy was in, it was eerily dark. He was used to lights everywhere—night clubs, billboards, headlights… The part he was in seemed dead. Jeremy was disoriented and it was freaking him out. His vision was failing him, as his eyes kept falling out of focus. The angry text message he sent to one of the guys—which he knew was in vain—was probably also unreadable.
Jeremy eventually made it to a park and collapsed onto an unoccupied bench. It was the only unoccupied bench, as there were homeless men everywhere. Disgusting. There was one lying under a tree behind him and Jeremy could smell him all the way from the bench. He positioned himself so that he was looking up at the stars, and draped his forearm over his head.
After a few moments a figure standing on the other side of the street he was facing caught his attention. Jeremy’s memory was triggered—wasn’t he looking at a guy earlier? He couldn’t tell if they resembled one another or not, but they acted the same. The pose, the…watching him. Jeremy swallowed thickly, trying to get whatever was clogging up his dry through down so that he could breathe again.
Then, in a moment of antagonistic glory—“C’n help you?”
The figure make a break for him. Jeremy yelped and staggered to his feet, running into a busy street off the other side of the park and trying frantically to lose his pursuer in the traffic. After escaping death several times, he reached the opposite sidewalk and tried to locate the man in case he was still after him. Surely enough, the traffic eventually hit a red light, and the man had started crossing with a calm gait. Jeremy breathed an expletive before making a dash down the sidewalk. Paranoia turned to adrenaline as he tried his best to sober up and take in his surroundings. The names of the cross streets were becoming more and more familiar, and soon he had somewhat of an idea of where he was in relation to his own apartment.
His lungs were on fire. Jeremy was soon forced to collapse against a building, coughing and wheezing. He wasn’t fit—his running excuse was that he had no time for exercise. This was awful. He’d done nothing wrong. He was just trying to go home. What was this guy’s deal?
As his pursuer showed himself in the distance, briskly walking in Jeremy’s direction, Jeremy shouted, “What’s your deal?” Then, despite the agony in his bones, he took off running again. This time, it was more of a jog, as the adrenaline had long since worn off. Jeremy wheezed and groaned as he slugged along, and, finding a narrow street that he recognized as a shortcut to his apartment, he made an abrupt right and simply hoped that his pursuer had lost track of him visually.
After Jeremy had been forced to slow to a walk by his own ineptitude, it became apparent that he hadn’t. “I really don’t wanna run anymore, dude…” As his stalker began to close the distance, he raised a gun, which started Jeremy’s flow of adrenaline right back up. With a nightmarish shriek, he picked up a quick sprint again, squeezing his eyes shut and bracing himself for a bullet. He ran and ran and ran, not daring to look back, not daring to stop, not daring to open his eyes. Eventually he was slowed by the sound of someone shouting at him. “Hey…hey! What’s going on?” For once in Jeremy’s hellish night, fate decided to have mercy on him. It was a pair of police officers.
“Oh thank God. Officers…I’m being chased.” That was all he managed to blurt out before he erupted into a fit of coughs. This time, he vomited the contents of his stomach right in front of the two men, who merely looked at one another uncomfortably. “I…I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’ve been running. For like. Ever. Please. Please. Stop the man who’s chasing me. He has. A gun.”
“Can you describe the man?”
Jeremy forced himself upright once more, despite the contortion of his abdomen. He looked around, and despite a thorough scan of the area, he failed to locate his pursuer. He’d simply disappeared. “…no…”
“Have you been drinking tonight, sir?”
“No. Yes. I mean…I’ve sobered up. I’m serious, this is real. I was just chased all the way from this park and…and he had a gun and he was going to shoot me.” In spite of himself, Jeremy was on the verge of tears.
“Wait…you’re Jeremy Malone, aren’t you?”
“Yeah,” he grunted. “Yeah, I am. And I’m scared as hell and I just want to go home.”
The officers shared a laugh which Jeremy observed with an indignant expression. “Want a ride? It’s the least we could do. Then if…you know, the man with the gun comes back, we can protect you.” The officer snorted, and the other started laughing again. Jeremy stuck out his lower lip. It wasn’t the first time he had been caught in an embarrassing situation like this, and it seemed like his celebrity status made moments like these even worse. Nonetheless, he accepted the ride home and had every intention to sleep it off like a bad nightmare.
Like most Tuesday mornings, Jeremy Malone had no idea where he was upon waking up. The lack of light aggravating his hangover eventually clued him in to the real time—it was Tuesday evening. Whoops. When had he left his apartment? He clearly remembered being dropped off at his own place by the officers, but everything after that was—once more—hazy. Once his eyesight returned to him, he lifted his arm (which felt like lead) to dig into his pocket and check his phone. The date in the corner told him that he was mistaken. It wasn’t Tuesday, but Wednesday. 7:18 PM, to be exact. Jeremy groaned.
He tried to sit up, but some woman with smeared makeup was lying in a heap across his chest. Jeremy cringed, but this expression faded as he realized that, yes, his pants were still on. “Okaaay, lady. I need to get up. I need to go home.” He nudged her, but she wouldn’t budge. Out cold. “Dammit, get off of me.” Jeremy wriggled, but she wouldn’t stir. Mustering all the strength he had at this ungodly hour, he shoved the woman off of him, and woke her up in the process. She let out a few expletives under her breath before drifting back into unconsciousness. “Yeah, okay.”
Still unaware of whose apartment this was, Jeremy stumbled into the bathroom with a familiarity that did not strike him as odd. He hissed as he turned on the light, immediately covering his eyes with his hands. The other hand blindly felt for the faucet, and after a few attempts he managed to turn it on. He splashed some of the cold water onto his face before looking up at his own reflection. There were bags under his eyes, and his long blonde hair was falling out of its ponytail in several places. To his disgust he noticed that it was quite greasy, but was too tired to put forth the effort to jump into the shower. Instead, he stared blankly at his reflection, idly itching at his chest. In the middle of his period of deep contemplation, his phone buzzed in his pocket, startling him backwards into the wall. He caught himself and reached for it, inwardly vowing to strangle whoever it was. After reading the ID, Jeremy reluctantly pressed it to his face.
“Where the hell are you? You’ve been missing for days. Do you have any idea how hard it is to keep coming up with excuses for your sorry ass? Meet me in my office before 7:30 or so help me God I will kill you.”
“You’ve been threatening that for two years, Fox.”
“That sounds like a great plan and all, but that’s ten minutes from now, asshat.”
“You don’t know, do you?”
“What do you need me so soon for anyway?”
“That’s tonight?” Oh, right. It was Wednesday. “Right. Okay. Tell everyone I’m sick.” Wasn’t too far from the truth.
“Yeah, I know. Bye now.” Without hanging up, Jeremy lazily chucked his phone, which collided with the wall. With a gut-wrenching noise, the small device shattered, and the bulk of it fell into the toilet. He took a few deep breaths, closed his eyes, and then opened them again. His phone was still resting against the side of the toilet bowl, its screen flashing and its data corrupting. “At least I won’t have to answer any more calls.” Jeremy hummed an incoherent tune as he unzipped his pants and ended his phone’s suffering.
He soon emerged from the bathroom, and as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he noticed that the living room in the small apartment was actually quite populated, but no one was awake. There was no one to clue him in on where he ended up after the previous night’s chain of events. Jeremy left the apartment anyway, knowing that he at least had to make it to his own if he was going to make that Wednesday at least somewhat productive. He’d answer his emails and then promptly return to bed, resetting his sleep schedule and returning to the world of the living.
As Lloyd Tillman ascended the floors of American News Corporation’s main headquarters in a crowded elevator, he rehearsed his television facial expressions. Appearance was everything, and this was to be his first time on camera. He was an intern fresh out of college, and had been summoned without any prior interview to work directly under Fox Campbell himself. What had distinguished him from the rest, he had no idea, but he took the opportunity with great eagerness. Opportunities like this didn’t fall into place every day. This was a miracle of God, and God was Fox Campbell as far as Lloyd was concerned. He was going to impress this man no matter what it took.
As he reached his desired floor, he spoke with the receptionist, who informed him that Fox had been waiting. Lloyd apologized briskly and made his way to the room in which he’d meet his hero. As the door slid open, he was looking down the barrel of an old-fashioned handgun. Lloyd blinked once, blinked twice, and finally came to the conclusion that this was actually happening. As his eyes adjusted to his surroundings, he realized that Fox—salt and pepper hair, glasses, fatherly look—was the one pointing the gun, and he was sitting in a wheeled desk chair right in front of the door. There was a stern look on his face, and all Lloyd could do was remember to breathe. After a century, Fox put the gun down and put on his trademark wink and a smile. “Gotcha there.”
He wheeled backward, allowing Lloyd entrance into the newsroom. Unsure of how to react, the intern began to laugh, slowly regaining his composure and realizing that it was a pretty funny stunt to pull. Fox began to laugh with him, but after a while it died down. “You laugh because you think I brought some old gun to work and thought it’d be amusing to make that my first impression on you. Newsroom hazing, if you will. Of course I’d never load it, that’d be unsafe. Right? Wrong. This gun is definitely loaded, and my finger was on the trigger. For those thirty-five seconds, I cradled your life in my index finger. I would like you to mark that as a metaphor for the power I hold over you from the moment you agree to work for me. Have we come to an agreement?”
Lloyd could not speak. Instead, his eyes were on the gun that still rested in Fox’s lap. He was dumbfounded, frozen in terror. “I suppose I haven’t made my point.” The senior anchor adjusted his glasses, and then lifted his gun again and pointed it at Lloyd’s throat. “Your destiny is mine. Your fate is subject to my manipulation. Blink once if you hear me.” The intern blinked.
“Good! Welcome aboard, Lloyd. May I call you Lloyd? I like you. You’ve got a face for TV. Good composure, too. You ready for your talk segment?”
The gun was raised again.
“Awesome. Just the attitude I like to see. Keep it up, and I shouldn’t have to skew your destiny just yet.” Wink and a smile.
As the crew prepared, the guests for the segment arrived. It was a group of five dignified senior citizens, all men, all in decorated military attire. Fox greeted them eagerly and shook each of their hands, while Lloyd stood in the background and sipped nervously at a water bottle. Eventually they all took their seats at a round table, and the cameras were rolled into position. Fox, noticing Lloyd’s unease, slapped him on the back. “Oh, Lloyd. Lay back, relax! Apathy’s back in style!”
“November 3, 2071. American News Corporation, your only source for the latest breaking news.” The cameras focused on Fox, who braced himself for another skillful introduction.
“This is A Word with your host, Fox Campbell. I’m here with some very special guests tonight. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the invasion that began the War on the Homefront. I’m pleased to announce that five of the original ‘Superman Brigade’ have taken the time out of their busy schedules to sit down for an interview tonight to discuss their experiences in the war.”
The men were introduced one by one by Lloyd, who shook each of their hands. They were honorable, yet humble. He was comforted by their presence, despite the fact that even in their unarmed state and old age they could easily kill each and every man in the room.
“Now,” Fox began, “I’m sure America is dying to know: how are you all feeling? More youthful than seventy-something year olds, I’m sure. You sure have the energy to give that impression, with all of your book-signing tours and appearances around the world. It’s a full time job, being living legends.”
“You got that right,” one responded, laughing. “Well, I don’t know about the others here, but I feel about the same as anyone my age might feel. Nothing different, to be sure.” The rest nodded in agreement.
“Ah, forgive me for assuming. But I’m sure you understand where we might get that impression. I mean, you were all genetically enhanced right before Thanksgiving of 2024.”
“There are plenty of misconceptions that come with that, Fox. Our enhancements were developed for wartime purposes only. Sure, we have the abilities that carried us through to victory, but that’s got nothing to do with the way we age.”
“What, exactly, were the improvements performed upon you during the testing phase?”
“Well, we were given superior strength, and that was the bulk of what we used. But we could also regenerate damaged tissue. That, and our senses were improved upon—and trust me, those can be a real nuisance sometimes.”
Fox laughed. “I can only imagine. So, you’re superior on the battlefield, but when put back into society you’re just like everyone else. What a concept.” A deliberate pause. “Oh, didn’t you have a question, Tillman?”
Lloyd froze, but then looked to the prompter. There, in big text, was his pre-determined question. He breathed a sigh of relief before reiterating it to the veterans. “Are you experiencing any negative effects from the testing? After fifty years, anything that would be troublesome would have made itself apparent, I imagine.”
“You’re quite right. But that’s the curious thing. We still haven’t experienced any side effects. You would think that abilities like this would come at a great price, but we feel just fine. No health defects, no psychological damage… We’re entirely normal. Of course, we all receive free medical examinations every other month just in case something nasty does decide to show itself, but we’ve perfectly healthy the whole time.”
Lloyd leaned forward and propped his chin up on his palm, trying his best to portray the nonchalant look Fox had suggested. “That must be nice. A win-win situation.”
Fox glanced at the teleprompter before changing the subject. “Some people are regarding Hector Wilkes as a war criminal now. Sure, doing this kind of research and experimentation on human begins was outlawed shortly after the war, but everyone had agreed that Wilkes did what had to be done to win the war—God rest his soul. Do you agree with this new sentiment? Should he be considered a war criminal?”
The five men grumbled in unison. One spoke up after a few murmurs of discontent among the group. “If anyone dares say anything like that to my face, he’ll have another thing coming. There was nothing inhumane about it. We considered it the next generation of weaponry. With each war comes a new way to kill—that’s the nature of war. Wilkes wasn’t doing anything different from the works of Richard Gatling or Albert Einstein. If that damn sniper hadn’t taken his life two years later, he would have fought to the end to keep genetic research and practice legal. He believed in it, and so do we.”
Without the teleprompter, Lloyd found a question of his own. “Nothing inhumane? What about the actual procedures, if you don’t mind me asking? That’s something I’ve always been curious about.” Fox cocked his gun under the table, pointing it sideways so that a shot would hit Lloyd in the stomach. Leaning in, he murmured, “You stick to the script, got that?” The intern gasped sharply, but covered it up with a few coughs, followed by a sip from his water bottle. After an uncomfortable pause, one of the veterans answered his question.
“Oh, we were put under for the procedures. We’ve discussed it many times, but we can’t recall exactly how it was done. I know there were some chemicals involved, but we can’t ask Wilkes himself, bless him.” The rest of the veterans nodded in agreement. “We’re sure that there were surgical procedures and minimal testing, but we were released into the battlefield in a matter of days. I think it was a little over a week. Then we really showed ‘em.”
“In one of the most glorious battles in American history,” Fox finished. “Now that we’ve addressed that slanderous war criminal talk, what do you make of the rumors that these experiments are still going on?”
“Nonsense. The American government established the Department of Research and Ethics for this very purpose, and it does its job. Any research for war has to be sanctioned by the government to even establish a base in America. It’s all very transparent.”
After that, Lloyd found he had a prompt, but only after a sharp jab in the gut by the handgun. “Do you think we’ll return to this method in future wars?”
“Only time can tell. Like the breakthroughs in the early twentieth century, it might just become a necessity. But I don’t think we’ll have another war for a good while. Our troops are keeping a good eye on anyone who might spark another insurgence in North Korea and Iran. I believe that it will be a question of ethics for the next generation…maybe even further into the future than that. And I know that they will make the right decisions. We owe our victory forty-six years ago to the quick, progressive innovations by Hector Wilkes and the nation’s readiness to accept something new and strange.”
“As we always are,” Fox finished with a smug smile. “I’d like to thank you gentlemen for joining us tonight. It really was a pleasure seeing you again, as it always is seeing living American legends.” He turned to the cameras with his wink and a smile. “America, the movie The Day We Met Superman hits theatres this Thanksgiving. For those of you who couldn’t get enough of their story in history class, this movie tells all. Any words to leave us with, gentlemen?”
After a few murmurs, one of the veterans proclaimed, “Don’t fear progress.”
“And we’re clear!” The cameras cut to a closing sequence, and Lloyd slumped in his chair. After some friendly goodbyes and the dismissal of the veterans, Fox called his intern into his office for a private word. Grasping his water bottle so hard that it crumpled, Lloyd did as he was told.
“I hope you’re used to taking orders. That little stunt you pulled—that was unacceptable. You need to follow the teleprompter at all times. If it doesn’t tell you to speak, you shut that little mouth of yours and smile, because we don’t want to hear it. You have no right to improvise until you’ve put your years in like I have.”
“M-Mr. Campbell, will all due respect… Why did you take me on as an intern? Why do you even want me working for you?”
“Lloyd, I’m fifty-two years old. My contract has me retiring in eight years. In eight short years, my career ends and I leave the ANC forever. Where will they be without me? Hell if I know. Jeremy Malone is already liable to run this place into the ground. I was Rodney’s backbone and I have to work extra hard to be Jeremy’s in order to keep us afloat. When I’m gone, all hell is going to break loose. You…you’re going to be my successor. You’re going to be the next Fox Campbell, as painful as it is for me to say it.”
“Drop that self-doubt now, Lloyd. You’re going to be a man when I’m done molding you. You’re going to be the next best news anchor ANC has ever seen, even if it kills me. I’ve put so much into this corporation and I’ll be damned if it all goes to waste.”
“I can’t help but feel that you picked me at random, though…”
“I did, Lloyd. I did. I had very little time topick from the lousy pool of candidates; I’d have to train the interns in eight short years, after all. So I used the photos of each candidate to make my decision. Your hair is black like mine, and your facial structure is similar to mine. You don’t wear glasses, but that can be fixed. This job is all about image, Lloyd, and I need a son-like figure if I’m going to retire with a glorious memory in my wake. I was never married long enough to have a son of my own, but that’s what the public eats up these days. That’s why Jeremy got to be CEO and not me.”
“Are you going to tell people I’m your son?”
“No; they’d never believe that. I’m just going to let the public get used to the idea until they believe it. It’s the best we can do.”
“I think I need time to think about this…”
“It’s too late. You’ve already jumped onboard. This is it; you’re to be one of the most powerful men in America by 2079. Now, buck up. It’s time for you to meet some people.”
