The Sum of Us

The Dunschemin Retirement Home for Repentant Supervillains-2

Madame Mayhem gaped in bogglement. She reached into her pocket and retrieved the ivory monocle. “Ah, so it is. I guess I’ll just be, just be...heading back inside. Yes, inside. I’ve got an excellent book to r******w that I’ve found my monocle. Good day!” Her hoverchair zoomed away. Clearly she’d only emerged on the off-chance of discovering something to liven the long twilight of retirement.

“If the absent-minded lady was happy to leave, there’s nothing here.” Honora turned toward the trees. “We’ll walk the other way.”

Relieved, Stafford followed Honora past the gate, into the trees. The ground was a soft carpet of dead pine needles, spattered with pungent droppings.

Honora looked everywhere with a keen gaze. “This is a sizable patch of woodland. How does it all fit within the grounds?”

She’d noticed straight away; he’d hoped it would take longer.

“It’s Professor Perdition’s pocket dimension, where he keeps his monsters,” Stafford said.

“What does he need monsters for?” she asked, her voice sharp with disapproval.

“Companion animal therapy. For some residents, playing with monsters is a happy reminder of days gone by. It’s soothing.” Stafford attempted a diversion. “Maybe the alarm means a monster escaped. You should check outside to see if anything’s threatening the public.”

Honora shook her head. “I already swept the area when I was looking for the missing kid. I would have spotted any monsters.”

She was as arrogant as all the other fancy-suited meddlers. “You sound awfully sure,” Stafford said. “Perhaps you’d better take another look.”

“I have sharp eyes. And I can’t see any monsters here, which means they’re not hunting prey. So our missing child is somewhere else. From the dimensional warping, this looks the shortest way out. . . .”

They arrived at the raspberry canes of Miss Rule’s kitchen garden. Honora kept striding forward as fast as Stafford could walk.

“How long have you worked in the Home?” Honora asked Stafford.

“Just a few years, since Anarcho began needing specialist care.”

“So you were Anarcho’s henchman beforehand?”

Stafford grimaced. “I dislike the word henchman. It’s sexist and derogatory. I’m surprised that someone so virtuous would use such an obnoxious term,” he said, enjoying the chance to lecture her.

“Minion, then,” said Honora impatiently.

“No one wants to fill in a form and call themselves a henchman or a minion. My business card says ‘Executive Implementator’.”

They entered a formal flower garden bordered with black roses. All the flowers were so beautiful as to invite plucking, and all were deadly poisonous. Honora ignored the temptation of the siren flowers and hurried onward.

“You must be sweating inside that suit,” Stafford observed. “I bet someone else does your laundry, slaving behind the scenes to help you prance about in public. You must have staff, or at least an intern.”

“Yes. The difference is that whatever job title you fool yourself with, you’re working for a supervillain. You must have dirtied your hands, seen some blood. . . .” She pointed an admonitory finger at him, her nail varnish as red as a Stop light. “How do you stand it? Is there nothing more wholesome you’d rather be doing?”

Stafford thought of all his unwritten scripts and unchased dreams. “Not everyone has superpowers, you know. I need to earn a living, and this is a skilled job. Supervillains need lifestyle support; they deserve it as much as anyone else.”

“Being a supervillain is not a lifestyle choice,” Honora exclaimed.

“Says you, swanning around in your fancy dress,” Stafford sneered. “I suppose you think some people don’t deserve care and support. That’s discrimination! It’s not Anarcho’s fault he has morality deficit dysfunction. Supervillain syndrome is a spectrum trait that benefits humanity: we need mavericks, ruthless businessmen, mad scientists who invent amazing gadgets—”

“—Causing death and destruction—”

“—Shaking up the status quo, and asking the hard questions. Is gravity in safe hands? Are our borders secure against other dimensions?” Stafford’s voice acquired a musical cadence as he quoted from the opening song of Anachro! “And it gives superheroes a job,” he went on, “so you can’t complain. Why are you hassling me about Anarcho? I thought you were looking for a missing kid.”

“I am,” she said. “I can talk to you while I look. I always try to make a difference. Supervillains wouldn’t do half as much damage if henchmen stopped enabling them.”

Stafford grinned. “Then that shows we’re doing a good job.”

They’d traversed most of the grounds, seeing only nettles and litter. Now they reached AlphaMega’s abstract garden, an aperiodic tessellation of marble slabs where the supervillains occasionally played games with gargoyles. Beyond this arena lay Anarcho’s grotto. Stafford could feel the throb of the Time Hole casting a sense of déjà vu over the landscape. He needed to slow Honora down and figure out how to get rid of her.

“Let’s focus on the boy,” he said. “Have you got a picture of him?”

Honora retrieved her phone from somewhere in the Lycra suit and pulled up an image. The boy had dishevelled black hair and a sullen scowl. He looked oddly familiar, even though Stafford rarely encountered teenagers except on skateboards in the precinct outside the community theatre.

“Who’s that?” he blurted.

A caption appeared: Russell Fletcher.

Stafford summoned enough self-control to keep quiet but not enough to keep his expression neutral under Honora’s penetrating gaze. “Looks like you know him,” she said.

“I knew someone of that name a long time ago,” Stafford said truthfully. “Looked like him, too. Maybe I knew his father.”

“He doesn’t have a family,” Honora said. “He went missing from a children’s home.”

Stafford shrugged. “It must be a coincidence,” he bluffed. But this was interesting. Stafford had always wondered where Anarcho had come from, and Anarcho had refused to tell him, all these years. Historical documents could not explain his sudden appearance. This explained it. He was the result of a child from a broken home and a temporal paradox.

“There are no coincidences in my line of work,” Honora proclaimed.

“No humility either, by the sound of it,” Stafford retorted.

“Not much need for that,” Honora said. “I’ll find this boy, whatever it takes. Let’s start by talking about the person you knew.”

Stafford hesitated, wishing that another supervillain would cause a distraction. But none did.

Should he tell her? There seemed little point in hiding it, when the name was on Matron’s roll call. If Honora asked Matron, the connection would come out.

“Russell Fletcher is Anarcho’s civilian name.” Telling this to a superhero felt like a betrayal.

“And Anarcho is one of the residents here,” she said. “You mentioned him earlier.”

Stafford nodded. “He was probably before your time.”

Time. Honora was right: this couldn’t be a coincidence. The teenage Russell Fletcher must have entered the grounds, triggering the perimeter alarm. His presence had activated the Time Hole, and he’d started travelling. If he reached the past, he would grow up to become Anarcho.

Honora furrowed her brow, unable to see the connection. She didn’t know about the Time Hole.

“When we find the boy,” she said, “perhaps this will start making sense.”

She marched forward once again. Stafford followed perforce. Near the grotto, she stopped and glanced around. “There’s a shimmer in the air. No, not in the air—in the fabric of space behind the air.”

Honora descended into the grotto: a maze of rocks and gargoyles encrusted with multicoloured lichens. Amid the statues, a motionless figure sat as if posing for a sculpture commemorating his conquest of the world. Rats. Anarcho was supposed to have stayed indoors. Phipps would hear about this from Matron.

“There you are!” Anarcho said to Stafford. “Have you been headhunted? You know how much I value you. Is she offering you a pay raise?”

“Certainly not,” said Honora. “You must be Anarcho.”

“This is Honora,” Stafford said as he resumed his usual place behind Anarcho’s wheelchair.

“I don’t care who she is, as long as she doesn’t interfere.” Anarcho turned to Honora and said, “You have no business here. This is our territory. Get out!”

“I’m looking for a missing boy,” Honora said.

Stafford said, “He’s not missing. I can assure you he’s perfectly safe—and being very well looked after, if I say so myself.”

Honora’s eyes narrowed, as if she calculated the reason for Stafford’s sudden admission to knowing where the boy was. “Then you can let me see him,” Honora said.

Anarcho drummed his fingers on the arm of his wheelchair. Stafford couldn’t see his expression from behind the chair but felt sure he was giving Honora his well-honed look of withering contempt.

Honora returned Anarcho’s gaze with a defiant stare of her own.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” exclaimed Stafford. “I’ve got plenty of things I could be getting on with, instead of standing here while you two have a silent face-off. Look, Anarcho is Russell Fletcher, the missing boy. You’ve found him! He’s safe and sound, as you can plainly see. Congratulations, your mission is successful. Now scram!”

“Safe and sound?” Honora raised her eyebrows and gestured at Anarcho’s feeble, chair-bound frame. “You look half-dead, whoever you are. Russell Fletcher’s a healthy teenager with his whole life ahead of him. Show me the boy!”

Stafford bent down to whisper in Anarcho’s ear. “It’s probably easier to just—”

“Eh, whassat?” Anarcho shouted. “You know I can’t hear whispers any more. Speak up!”

Stafford said, “Let’s just show her the Time Hole. The boy’s probably still inside.”

Time travel was not a straightforward matter of instantly stepping from one year to another. The universe’s vast inertia required a lengthy trek to surmount.

“You can’t show her the Time Hole!” exclaimed Anarcho, aghast. “You shouldn’t even have mentioned it.”

“She would have found it anyway with her eyesight mojo.” Stafford waved at the three-eyed emblem on Honora’s costume.

Honora pointed past Anarcho. “There’s something down there. If that’s where the boy is—”

“All right, all right,” Anarcho grumped. “We’ll take you close enough to see the echoes.”

The grotto’s twisting paths led to a pond: normally an unremarkable patch of water, fringed with irises. Now it was a shimmering vortex of blurred impressions from the past. An iridescent sheen, like the surface of a giant soap bubble, marked the boundary of the temporal gyre.

Within the Time Hole, the figure of a dark-haired boy was gradually receding in strobe-like echoes. He wore the clothes from the picture on Honora’s phone. “That’s him,” Stafford said. “Happy now? You know he’s safe, because if he wasn’t, then Anarcho wouldn’t be right here in front of us. You’ve done your job, so you can collect another smug point and go home.”

“Yes, I’ve done my job,” Honora said. “But in my line of work, one job often leads to another.”

“You’re not getting paid overtime,” Stafford said. “So you can clock off now.”

“Yeah, just clock off,” said Anarcho.

“I don’t do it for money,” said Honora. “I do it because I care. Stafford, you’re Anarcho’s carer, so naturally you take his side. Yet I’m also a carer. I care for the entire community. When a child goes missing, I’m there. When a supervillain threatens the world—”

“Spare us the speech,” Anarcho said with disgust. “We’ve heard it before.”

“Then I’ll get to the point,” Honora said. “Right now, Russell Fletcher is just a missing boy who climbed over the wrong wall and explored a freaky rainbow vortex. He may be safe, but is the world safe from him? Left on this path, alone in the past, he’ll grow up to become a supervillain—”

With a swiftness belying his age, Anarcho reached under the blanket for a disruptor. The air crackled as a green energy bolt zapped through the air, aimed at Honora.

Seeing his move, she dodged and charged Anarcho. Instinctively, Stafford grabbed the wheelchair to pull it away, but he was too late.

Another shot went wild as Honora wrenched the weapon from Anarcho’s liver-spotted hand. Then she blasted the chair’s wheel, melting it into slag. Anarcho howled in pain. Stafford rushed to lift him out of the ruined chair. Anarcho had scorched, tattered trousers and an angry red wound on his thigh.

Honora charged into the Time Hole, chasing the distant figure. Unless she had yet more superpowers, it would take her a while to catch up with the boy.

Stafford carried the groaning Anarcho back to the Home. He staggered into the first-aid room, calling for assistance, and lowered Anarcho onto the examination couch. As soon as a nurse arrived, Stafford hurried back to the grotto.

Honora’s red suit flashed vividly inside the Time Hole as she pumped her limbs, looking like a jogger on a treadmill. Ahead of her, the boy was only walking; he hadn’t seen Honora behind him. She would catch him if Stafford didn’t intervene.

Stafford paused for breath. Dashing back and forth, carrying Anarcho, had taken its toll. Stafford wasn’t young any more. He’d spent many years as Anarcho’s implementator—henchman, let’s face it—then several more years as a carer in the Home.

If he could have his time again, would he choose that? Or would he prefer something else, whatever it might be?

If Honora brought the boy out of the Time Hole, then Russell Fletcher would never reach the past and grow up as Anarcho. Stafford would never meet him and become his employee. Some other life would unfold—perhaps one where Stafford became a famous playwright. Of course, in that other life he might have other dreams, equally unfulfilled.

Would he throw his whole life away for an unknown alternative?

Well, what had he achieved? Little on his own account: just some half-finished never-performed scripts. A few brief friendships and relationships, always interrupted by the exigencies of moving from one lair to the next.

He’d devoted himself to Anarcho’s cares. There’d been good times: inventing exotic gadgets, training pet monsters, drafting speeches that began “Citizens of the world. . . .” Cue the montage song. He’d put his heart into his work, even as he regretted deferring his own ambitions. Surely everyone—whatever their job—had at least one unpursued dream.

If the work was worth doing, it was worth saving. Now he just had to save it.

Stafford splashed into the pond, the frigid water squelching deep into his shoes. More laundry later; yet more work. He descended through the hidden hatch into the Time Hole control room. He remembered the long labour of digging and furnishing this chamber; the thrill of foiling an opponent made it all worthwhile.

On the big screen, Russell Fletcher strode forward, looking awestruck. A caption showed his progress into the past. What year did he need to reach? Anarcho had been thirty-nine when he hired Stafford; the boy was fourteen now. So the target was twenty-five years before Stafford’s employment.

Yet how would the kid know when to exit the Time Hole? Did he even understand how to leave? It would be safer if Stafford took control. He programmed the auto-release for the correct year. Then he glanced at the manual-release lever, fixing its location in case he needed it in a hurry.

Stafford allowed himself a moment to admire his own craftsmanship: gleaming brass levers, walnut panels, tortoiseshell inlays from endangered turtles. This control room had once been a photo-feature in What Lair magazine.

Another monitor showed Honora sprinting through the vortex with a determined expression. Damned meddling superheroes, trying to change people’s lives. Anarcho had a right to his own destiny.

Stafford had to prevent Honora from bringing the boy back. Anarcho—who remembered the original course of events—had attempted to shoot Honora, rather than let her charge in, so her interference wasn’t part of the target timeline.

Simply releasing her from the Time Hole would leave her in the past with foreknowledge: she’d find the missing boy before he climbed the wall. Stafford needed to eject Honora without stranding her in the past. He reached for the “reverse the polarity” lever, an ever-useful classic that he always installed. This would affect everyone in the Time Hole; Stafford couldn’t eject Honora alone. He could only pull the lever after the boy had reached his destination. Shivering in cold wet socks, Stafford urged Anarcho onward. Come on, kid.

Honora was closing in. How could Stafford stop her? Surveying the plethora of switches, he saw “alarm test”. Hmm. He reconfigured the circuit to include Honora and exclude the boy. He flipped the switch.

Whawp! Whawp! Whawp! Startled by the ear-splitting roar, Honora paused and looked around. Seeing nothing, she resumed her pursuit, but she’d lost valuable momentum. She called out, vainly.

Russell Fletcher had reached the target year. The Time Hole released him into the past to fulfill his destiny. Now Stafford unhooked the safety latch—#6 in his “Top Ten Tips” feature in Big Dangerous Machines Monthly—and yanked the polarity reverser.

The Time Hole exploded in a shower of sparkly special effects. The recoil ejected Honora into the future. “You’ve just clocked off, baby!” Stafford cried. “See you in a few decades.” He grinned in triumph.

Then his smile faded as he contemplated the wreck of the Time Hole. He needed to restore it for Anarcho’s next journey. More long labour, while his scripts languished. An implementator’s work is never done.

Stafford donned clean socks and shoes from the box of spare outfits. He cleared up the worst of the explosion’s mess and rebooted the tachyon accumulator. Then he exited via the escape tunnel: a longer but drier route than the pond. Mosaics on the walls depicted Anarcho’s most cunning stratagems. How the heck had this tunnel failed to place in Best Escape Route?

Back at the Home, Stafford concocted a story for Matron, emphasizing that Honora had found what she sought and had left after sparring with Anarcho. He assured Matron that there’d been no nuisance to the public.

Then he checked on Anarcho. The staff had bandaged him up, but he would need extra care to prevent him putting pressure on the wound while he slept. A carer’s work is never done.

Madame Mayhem accosted Stafford after his conversation with the nurse. “You look like you’ve been busy,” she said. “What happened to Anarcho?”

“That superhero shot him.”

She tilted her head and gave him an arch glance. “Any particular reason?”

“You know how they love meddling.”

Madame Mayhem sniffed ostentatiously. “What’s that—pond slime?”

“Yes, I went out for fresh air and a swim. Lovely day for it.” Stafford gestured to the window’s view onto the cold, blustery weather. It had started raining.

“Sure, just like I went out to find my monocle.” She pouted. “It’s selfish of you to hog all the mischief and excitement.”

Stafford shook his head. “Make your own toys if you’re so keen on excitement.”

“You’re the expert at making them. Would you, would you...leave Anarcho and work for me? We’ll go back to the big city! Whatever he pays, I’ll double it.”

She mentioned money but not vacations. Supervillains required constant support; whoever he worked for, Stafford’s own dreams would flicker and fade. No theatrical triumph for him, except constructing the stage sets for supervillains’ melodramatic schemes.

“Thanks for the offer,” he said. “But what kind of carer would I be if I abandoned Anarcho while he’s wrapped in bandages and his gizmo’s broken? He needs me.”

He always needs me.

Stafford retreated to Anarcho’s room. He checked the wound and watched Anarcho sleep while contemplating repairs to the Time Hole. He needed to fix it before any other envious supervillains started poking around. And he might as well install a few improvements, upgrade the control room....

A henchman’s work is never done. Here we go again.