Don't Be a Hero: A Superhero Novel

1: No One Can Stop Me Now

Dr. Atomic

Real name: J. Robert Oppenheimer

Powers: Super strength, flight, energy beams, impervious to most conventional weapons. All abilities derived from his immense psychic powers.

Notes: The first superhero. Originally the lead physicist for the US atomic bomb development program, dubbed “The Manhattan Project”. Gained his powers in an explosion at Los Alamos and became the leader of scientist-superhero group the Manhattan Eight. Disappeared from the public eye in 1951. Died of oesophageal cancer in 1954.

—Notes on selected metahumans [Entry #0001]

***

Somewhere over Northern Russia, October 1969

Morgan Shepherd leaned against the airship’s expansive windows, drinking in the light from the sun. Below, the powdered Siberian tundra rolled past. Pine trees and brown grasses dotted the landscape, clinging to patches of exposed earth. The airship’s heating system kept out the cold, but when he pressed his forehead against the glass, he could almost smell the dry air outside.

“I saw him once, you know,” Morgan said without taking his eyes from the landscape. “Dr Atomic. The Americans brought him to London to show him off to Parliament. I must’ve been about ten at the time. They had a parade through the streets, all confetti and flags. Mum brought me and my brothers to see. We lived in a little town outside Birmingham. Did I tell you this?”

“Yes, sir.” John’s voice quavered a little. He seemed a nervous man.

Morgan smiled out the window at the past. “I spent all my pocket money on Dr Atomic comics. I liked the ones about his real adventures the most, the ones where he and the rest of the Manhattan Eight were fighting for freedom, fighting the Nazis, pushing them through Belgium and all the way back to the Fatherland. I knew every story by heart, every little bit of trivia. But there was nothing like seeing him in real life.”

He rubbed a white-gloved hand across the tan and pale patches on his cheek. He’d shaved an hour ago. It was important to make good impressions. He wore a white suit and tie as pure as the snow. A series of gold buckles ran up the jacket, and a pair of cuff-links engraved with starbursts clung to his cuffs. The black domino mask he wore over his eyes wouldn’t do a thing to hide his identity, but that didn’t matter. He wanted them to see his face. If he had his way, he wouldn’t wear a mask at all. But traditions had their place.

“At the parade I snuck away from Mum and my brothers to get to the front. I was tall for my age, but skinny, so I easily slipped through the crowds. I got to the front just as Dr Atomic came past.” He closed his eyes to picture it better. “He was magnificent. That yellow suit was a hundred times brighter than in the comics. And his royal blue cape, blowing behind him in the London wind….” He tried to find the right word. “Remarkable. The Americans were never afraid to use colour. Not like we English. We were always obsessed with browns and greys, treating metahumans like soldiers to be camouflaged. But soldiers are just boys who point rifles at other boys because their government tells them to. No, the Americans understood. Those men weren’t soldiers. They were heroes.”

The airship hummed and started a slow bank to starboard. Morgan glanced behind him, where Navigatron’s skeletal, half-naked body sat hunched over in the pilot’s chair. His eyes glowed with green light and his mouth hung half-open, tongue twitching within. If Morgan concentrated, he’d be able to sense the packets of information travelling from the airship’s control panel into Navigatron’s palms. That particular metahuman had been a good find. Morgan had picked him up just eighteen months ago in New Delhi. He couldn’t walk or talk without assistance, but the improvements he’d made to the airship’s rocket engines alone were enough to speed up Morgan’s plan by months. Morgan’s father had worked developing electronic appliances during the Depression. It would boggle his mind to see what Navigatron could do when he made friends with a machine.