SUPERWORLD

Marco I

The alarm went off on schedule and Marco slammed a hand down on it before it got off a full tone, he'd been awake for fifteen minutes already. He had to train twice as hard as all his competitors, which meant he needed to get up every day two hours before school started and get in a full workout.

Especially now that I've got two teams to think about.

Just three months ago, the recruiter from USC had come by to speak with Abuela and Marco to tell them the good news: Marco was getting a full ride and a position on the football team. Abuela had cried and blubbered about how god had answered her prayers, but Marco was just annoyed they hadn't come sooner. In his sophomore and junior years, he helped win his team the state championship, and it was looking like they were going to get another one this year.

Bet they were too busy going after Michael and giving him all the credit...

Marco had bitterly thought, as Abuela strangled the recruiter in a hug. Michael had started the same year as Marco, and they both had their eye on the starting quarterback position, Michael had beaten him out. The coaches tried to get Marco to play wide receiver, but he refused.

"Coach, if I can't be in charge of the offense, I'll take charge of the defense." That simple statement was how Marco became the best free safety in the country.

He rolled out of bed, threw on the exercise clothing he'd set out for himself the night before, and instantly fell into his routine. One hundred sit-ups, push-ups, and air squats, two sets each, before going into the garage and hitting the bag for twelve, three-minute rounds. He worked combination after combination into the sand-filled canvas tube, somewhat softened after six years of Marco pummeling it, and who knows how many years of others pummeling it as Abuela had bought the bag at a pawn shop.

When the last bell chimed from his father's old gym timer, Marco wiped the sweat dripping from his face with the back of the cherry red leather of his glove, removing the pads from his hands and lifting the repurposed milk jug full of water to his parched mouth. He looked around the garage, no car, no tools, just Marco's gym equipment. Along the exposed walls hung posters. Some were of Marco's Dad when he headlined a card, others were vintage football posters, and one, Marco's favorite, was a signed poster of American war hero and undisputed greatest athlete of all time, John "The Golden Eagle" Smith wearing the costume, or, properly, the uniform, the government made for him when he entered the military.

Marco's dad met him at a fight, Smith had come as a fan, and Dad had him sign the poster for Marco. In the poster, Smith smiled wide, showing two rows of perfect teeth. Smith's square jaw protruded from under the golden cowl and he wore all seven gold medals he had won around his neck. At the bottom of the poster, in great star-spangled letters was a caption that read:

BE AN AMERICAN HERO: BUY WAR BONDS TODAY!

Flanking The Golden Eagle were posters of lesser masked adventurers, people who partook of the fad that, from the end of World War I to the mid-eighties, saw men and women dress up in funny costumes and indulge in nighttime vigilantism. 'The Kenosha Kid' held a bloodied caricature of a bootlegging mobster beneath a tagline that insisted crime didn't pay. L.A.'s 'Samaritan' crushed a crack pipe under a heavy boot, the infamous 'Just Say No' slogan at the base of his feet. Marco loved The Masks, as fans would call them, and knew he could've been one, had he been born then. But football was marginally less dangerous and infinitely more profitable.

And Lord knows I need profit...

Workout completed, and dying for the breakfast that the team nutritionist would have waiting for him, Marco began his walk to school, Abuela's cataracts prohibiting her from driving him anymore. Autonomous delivery drones flew overhead, all different colors and sizes, all flying soundlessly through the air. Most were laden with packages, and most of these packages were from the online delivery service Genie, though some others were still carried by the blue drones with a red stripe and a white stripe of the moribund USPS. There were also the thick, black drones of the police with red and blue lights. The advent of an AI smart enough to avoid birds and thieves made it so that the sky always had a flock or two of these machines going around.