The Great Powers Outage (7 page)
NAME:
Spore, The.
POWER:
Wherever he goes, mold and mildew are sure to follow.
LIMITATIONS:
Antibiotics could prove fatal.
CAREER:
A budding entrepreneur, the Spore has an unerring nose for sniffing out truffles.
CLASSIFICATION:
A tendency by others to mistake him for being dead could prove problematic for future success.
“Irresistible,” I heard her mumble faintly to herself as she chewed.
Transparency in Government
The second half of the day dragged on as Miss Marble described the electoral process until even I was thoroughly bored.
“And so the candidate with the most money then buys the most ads and thus wins the race,” she concluded. “And I assume that's the way it's always been.”
“Miss Marble?”
“Yes, Ordinary Boy,” Miss Marble responded in a way that indicated I was throwing her off her lecture plan.
“You said you assumed that's how it's always been,” I pointed out. “Can we talk about history for just a second?”
“Why would we do that?” she responded with annoyance. “It's all in the past.”
“O Boy is just trying to keep us from focusing on the election,” Transparent Girl piped up. “He knows his side is going to get creamed.”
“Maybe if we look at things that happened in the past, they can give us answers to events that are occurring right now,” I proposed, ignoring my opponent.
“So what exactly is it that you're curious about?” asked a skeptical Miss Marble.
“I'd like to know what you can tell us about the Red Menace,” I said.
“The Red Menace?” Miss Marble responded as if she hadn't heard the name in decades. “The Red Menace is a villain who went away when I was half your age. What could you possibly need to know about him?”
“He's free now,” I informed her, “and I think it might be important to know something about him.”
“Well if he's free, the Superopolis Parole Board obviously thought it was safe to release him,” she said. “End of story. Now let's get back to discussing the election.”
“I have something very important I need to tell everyone regarding the election,” Transparent Girl blurted out. Miss Marble happily took the opportunity to move on from my questioning.
“Certainly, Transparent Girl.” She nodded. “You have the floor.”
“As your candidate for treasurer,” she began as she rose to her feet, “I think it's my duty to alert you all to the fiscal crisis that is brewing right beneath our noses.”
LI'L HERO'S HANDBOOK
PEOPLE
NAME:
Transparent Girl. POWER: The ability to make herself nearly invisible.
LIMITATIONS:
She always leaves a partial outline.
CAREER:
With motives as transparent as she is herself, we expect her future goals to be readily apparent to all.
CLASSIFICATION:
You can see right through her.
We all glanced down to see if there was anything beneath our noses, but found only our desks. Transparent Girl was up to something, and I glanced up at her semitranslucent form as I tried to figure out what it might be.
“Our class treasury,” she continued, “has been completely depleted thanks to the financial incompetence of my opponent, Ordinary Boy.”
“What??!!” I shot up from my seat. “I'm not the treasurer. We don't even have one yet.”
“Miss Marble,” she huffed as she became even more transparent, “I believe I have the floor.”
“You do”âMiss Marble frownedâ“but you better be careful how you use it if you're going to make accusations like that.”
“It's true,” she insisted. “Just this afternoon, I came back from recess and found our fish food fund completely emptyârobbed of everything it contained.”
“I didn't take it!” I fumed.
“I never said you did,” she said as she faded to just a vague outline. “But isn't it true that you did nothing to prevent the theft?”
“Neither did you,” I shot back.
“On the contrary,” she responded smugly, “I am now doing everything I can to prevent you from causing further harm by getting
myself
elected class treasurer.”
Just as I was about to blow up again, I spotted the coins in her pocket. Unlike her, they had not faded at all. There was exactly twenty-three cents, plus two pencil stubs.
“What's more,” she went on as I began to point and sputter, “if elected, I will create a new fund with money raised by selling all our schoolbooks to buy more cans of AI's Pseudo-Chips.”
The class erupted into cheers as I sank into my seat in frustration.
“Meanwhile, my opponent”âTransparent Girl went in for the killâ“doesn't even
like
Pseudo-Chips.”
The shocked and disapproving silence from my classmates was interrupted only by the final bell. With Transparent Girl's charges unanswered we filed from class. I was fuming at how this had all been turned against me. How was I going to recover from her charges?
“So are you going to come with us?” asked Plasma Girl.
“Huh?” I responded, jolted out of my train of thought. “Come with you where?”
“We were saying that we wanted to go to the Mighty Mart,” she said.
“Yeah,” agreed Stench. “Miss Marble took all our Pseudo-Chips and we need to buy more.”
“Maybe if you get some, too, they'll help keep you focused,” Tadpole suggested. “Everyone knows that they sharpen the mind.”
“That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.” I snorted. “They're potato chipsâand barely even that!ânot some kind of miracle food.”
My friends stared at me as if I had made some unforgivable comment.
“Fine,” Plasma Girl said with a sniff after an uncomfortable pause. “Don't come with us.”
As they turned to head for the Mighty Mart, I felt like I was about to lose my best friends. Until I knew what the Red Menace was up to, I needed to give my teammates the benefit of the doubt.
“I'm sorry, guys,” I said. “It's not right of me to make fun of something that you all like. I'll come along with you and I promise to stop insulting AI's chipsâas long as I can still keep insulting AI himself.”
“Do as much of that as you want,” Halogen Boy said with a grin.
When we got to the Mighty Mart, the place was mobbed with customers, and they were all there for one purposeâto buy even more of the Amazing Indestructo's Amazing Pseudo-Chips. My friends rushed off to do likewise.
Having no interest in Pseudo-Chips, I wandered over to one of the aisles that held the entire Dr. Telomere's line to pick out some
real
chips for myself. I arrived just as the last jumbo-size bags of Dr. Telomere's X-tra Crispy Potato Chips were being boxed up.
“What happened to all the Dr. Telomere's?” I asked incredulously as I grabbed the final two bags off the shelf. Mr. Mister, the store manager, was supervising the switchover and turned around at my comment.
“Nobody wants any of those relics of the past.” He sniffed dismissively as a fine spray of moisture drifted down onto my head.
“I do!” I blurted out.
“Well, I'm afraid you're out of luck,” he replied. “You seem to be the only one who wants them. The Dr. Telomere's factory has already ceased production, and we're dumping what we have in order to make room for more Pseudo-Chips.”
I glared up at Mr. Mister. I assumed he was equally irritated with me based on the amount of mist that was gathering around his head. Before I could say something I shouldn't, I heard a familiar voice from the next aisle over.
“But how can I
not
tell people how incredible they are?”
“Dad?” I followed my father's voice to the snack cake aisle where he was stationed in front of a huge display of Maximizer Brand products. Only he wasn't holding any Maximizer cakes but rather a can of Amazing Indestructo Pseudo-Chips. His boss, the Great Garbanzo, was standing there, too, and he clearly wasn't happy.
“I don't gives a monkey's butt how much youse likes dem chips,” fumed the giant chickpea. “Youse guys woik for me, not de Amazin' Indestructo.”
“But nobody is buying anything but PseudoChips,” my dad insisted. “Nobody's even paying attention to us.”
“Den clearlies I hired myself de wrong team a heroes.” The Great Garbanzo dropped his voice to a menacing level. I just knew this wasn't going to be good. “So it's times I gets myself a new one. Youse, and yer whole team, is FIRED!”
The expression of surprise on my father's face turned to utter humiliation as he looked over and saw that I had witnessed the whole thing.
When the Chips Are Down
My dad put on a brave face as we walked home, but I could tell he was devastated at having been fired. That it had happened in front of me just made it a hundred times worse.
“It's not really a big deal, Dad,” I said. “Everybody is spending so much of their money on Pseudo-Chips that nobody has any left to spend on Maximizer snack cakes, anyway.”
“Maximizer
Brand
snack cakes,” he replied out of force of habit. “But we finally had an endorsement deal. Do you know how hard they are to get?”
“I know. But the Great Garbanzo is a jerk,” I said. “Even worse. He's a
joik
!”
That got a small laugh out of my dad.
“Something will come along,” I continued. “Besides, it's not like you'd be any better off if you'd remained at Dr. Telomere's. They're out of business entirely.”
“I never thought I'd see the day.” My father sighed as he shook his head.
“How long has the company been around?” I asked.
“Forever.” He shrugged. “Or at least for as long as I can remember. Dr. Telomere's chips have just always been there.”
“Until now,” I concluded his thought. “But who owns the company, anyway? Is there really a Dr. Telomere?”
“Oh, no.” My dad laughedâthis time a little more genuinely. “Dr. Telomere is just a marketing character. Look at the bag.”