EPISODE TWO: THE ASSASSINATION, PART ONE

The speaker of the secure radio in the secret hideout crackled to life as it translated the encoded broadcast. Striker One listened to Haze's computer-modulated voice with growing incredulity.

"After decoding the data you appropriated in your heist, I have discovered that the android Eye One is on a sightseeing starliner orbiting the sun. In an attempt to avoid detection, he is traveling incognito with limited support staff. This presents a unique opportunity for you to cut off the head of one of the Three Families."

No doubt Eye One was a tyrant and a threat to all sentient life in the galaxy, but the leader of The Helpers had a well-earned reputation for foresight and caution. Eye One had built the Helpers from the ground up, making a lot of enemies along the way. For self-protection, he was known to change his appearance and biosignature as often as other creatures changed their shirts. If they couldn't identify Eye One, how could kill him? What were they going to do, shoot down an entire starliner?

Striker One was pleased to hear that his companions shared his reservations.

"Just how do you propose we do this?" asked Sahara. "We're hardly a crack team of assassins."

"We're not assassins at all," clarified Quig.

Maybe you aren't, thought Striker One, but Cobryn had proven himself handy and willing with a laser pistol during the heist, and Sahara... Sahara was colder and harder on the inside than most androids. Maybe Haze did know what he was doing.

"Eye One is aboard the Corona's Light, a state-of-the-art pleasure ship compliant with all Core World regulations, including escape pods for all passengers. In this case, each state room is its own luxurious escape pod. However, there's a key flaw in their design: the orbit of the Corona's Light itself. If there was to be a sudden emergency on board the ship and the escape pods were launched before an appropriate recovery vessel was notified...."

"The pods would be trapped by the sun's gravity and fall into the sun," finished Cobryn. "Those regulation escape pods are tombs!"

Striker One smiled. It didn't matter what Eye One looked like or how clever he was if they could trap him in his room and incinerate the whole apartment. There was just one problem.

"Only the captain of a starliner can trigger an emergency pod separation, and the bridge will be secured and guarded. How will we gain access?"

"I have a plan. Tell me, do any of you like fruit?"

Striker One suspected Haze already knew the answer to that, too.

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EPISODE ONE: THE HEIST, PART THREE

Striker One looked through the two-way window of the second-floor manager's office at the club's main room below. From his position, he could see the ysoki elevator guard, representative of the Garbool family of arms merchants, sleeping on his table and the human elevator guard, representative of the Wolf Pack family of slavers, dancing with Sahara. Striker One could also observe, via the camera monitors on the vault access master system control computer console, Cobryn in the basement security booth and Quig hacking the vault.

But it wasn't the people that Striker One could see that concerned him. He was worried about the missing third elevator guard, the android Naom13.

When Haze had first laid out the plan to steal the datastick and mentioned that Naom13 was among the guards, Striker One knew she could be a real problem. Naom13 was a trusted enforcer in The Helpers organization. She no doubt knew who he was and would recognize him on sight. If she saw him before he saw her, she could derail the entire plan.

Which is why Striker One was pleased to see her emerge into the main room from the kitchen. She was still trouble, but at least he knew where she was.

Naom13 marched to the napping ysoki and slapped the table, snapping him awake. Striker One didn't need to hear through the thick glassteel window to know she was displeased with his sleeping on the job. It was also pretty clear that the Garbool had little interest for the Helpers' opinion about his job performance. He made a rude gesture at Naom13 and wandered out of sight to the club restrooms. Naom13 stormed in the opposite direction, straight towards the staircase to the manager's office.

Striker One looked down at Sahara. Her wide eyes told him that she was aware of the developing situation. However, she seemed to have her hands full keeping her dance partner distracted. Striker One would have to solve this problem himself.

He pressed a button on the computer console to lock the manager's office door. That should keep Naom13 out for a while, so long as she didn't have an access keycard. How long did the door have to hold? On the camera monitor, Quig was opening the vault door. Good. Not long.

A beep alerted Striker One that someone had overridden the manager's office lock with a keycard. He looked up into Naom13's eyes. She drew her laser gun with the speed he would have expected from an experienced android enforcer.

It was at this point that the building fire alarm went off.

To her credit, Naom13 didn't even flinch. "Move away from the console," she instructed over the ringing alarm.

"I cannot do that," Striker One answered calmly.

She stepped forward menacingly. "Do not make me kill you before I've had the chance to interrogate you."

Striker One calculated his options. Could he beat her in a fair fight? Maybe. He was a more advanced model than she was. But he couldn't abandon his position at the console; it was the only way to recall the elevator.

"I said move away from the console," she repeated sternly.

"No," said Striker One.

Another beep from the console indicated that Quig and Cobryn had entered the elevator. Striker One reached for the controls.

Naom13 was faster. The sound of her laser gun firing was swallowed by the fire alarm.

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PROLOGUE, PART TWO

Sahara twitched her antennae in nervous anticipation. Had she escaped from a noose only to face a firing squad?

"Surrender your vessel and whatever your cargo is, and I just might let you live," ordered the space pirate through the starship's radio.

Sahara toggled the radio to broadcast. "We don't have any cargo of value," she said. It was the truth. The holds were as empty as her pockets. Not even the ship itself was worth more than what a scrap yard would pay for it.

"I'll be the judge of that," came the reply. "Turn off your engines and prepare to be boarded."

An electronic signal from the ship's science station caught Sahara's attention. She looked at the android in the gunner's seat. "The pirate weapon has a target lock on us," Striker One said calmly.

Sahara looked at the ratman. "Are the shields working?"

The furry Ysoki nodded vigorously. "You can count on Quig."

"If you say so, Quig," said Cobryn, the ship's pilot. "But shields won't last forever. A pirate ship like that against a tub like this.... We'll never be able to outrun him or his lasers. Maybe we should comply and hope for mercy."

Sahara's three crew mates waited for her response. She hadn't asked to be captain of this vessel, but she wasn't a trained pilot like the human or a natural engineer like the Ysoki. And she certainly didn't have the artificial man's ability to talk to computers. That left her in the captain's chair by default. It was not a comfortable fit.

The last time she'd been the captain of a starship, it had been on a two-seat craft fleeing the slavers who had captured her and her sister. Their escape plan was Sahara's idea, but it had been her sister's beauty that lured an overconfident jailer into giving up the security codes to the ship that would carry them both to freedom. The plan had worked well, but an unlucky break, a guard's unpredictably overactive bladder, had resulted in her sister being gunned down on the launchpad. Sahara took off without looking back. She knew she would meet the same fate if the slavers ever caught up with her again.

That's why she had been willing to answer the mysterious summons that had led her into this latest pickle. She didn't know where they were headed or why, and she certainly didn't trust her crew mates. But so far as she was concerned, death was a better option than surrendering to a pirate who would only sell her back to her captors.

Turning back to the android, Sahara ordered, "Target his thrusters with our gyrolaser. Let's see if we can't even these odds."

She had made her decision. The die was cast.

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Autocorrect continues to plague me.

After Simone Biles withdrew from Olympic competition citing mental issues, I tried to Google the definition of "gymnastics twisties."

My autocorrect changed it to "gymnastics titties."

I'm sure they're nice, but that's not what I'm interested in (right now).

If it's true that the average man thinks about sex once every 7 seconds and that computers process information 10 million times faster than humans, how often does my computer think about sex?

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Has 2020 pushed you to the brink? Thankfully, there's a Superman for that!

Superman #361 (1981)

Saving 21st-century balcony leapers is the least bonkers thing in this story. It turns out that Superman III has 2 secret identities: computer-traffic controller Jon Hudson and tennis professional Lewis "Lew" Parker (and he's kind of bad at both jobs).

2020 is a strange year, even in the comics.

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There's no such thing as good news anymore, so let's just watch movies.

120. (1774.) Pale Flower (1964)
A Yakuza hitman commits murder to impress a girl addicted to gambling, drugs, and fast living. So uplifting. The moral is clear enough by the great ending, but I can't say it's a lot of fun getting there.

121. (1775.) The Sign of the Ram (1948)
I had to check out imdb to refresh my memory on this one, which probably tells you everything you need to know. For reference, it's about a jealous handicapped bitch crushing the love lives of her stepchildren. Whee!

122. (1776.) The Vikings (1958)
Damn, Hollywood has a strange obsession with romanticizing violence and pretending it's okay so long as it's presented as Shakespearean. (To be fair, this probably has more to do with justifying attempts to satisfy the bloodlust of American audiences than any true moral perversion on Hollywood's part, but still.) I'm damn glad I wasn't a viking.

123. (1777.) Rocketman (2019)
I liked this Elton John bio-pic, but I think you'd have to be deaf not to. I'm starting to really respect Taron Egerton as an actor. He goes for it.

124. (1778.) Little Nellie Kelly (1940)
Eighteen-year-old Judy Garland plays a mother and her own daughter in this musical comedy with tragic elements. When no one's singing, it's mostly cliched melodrama, but I still liked it. Cliches work!

125. (1779.) Alexander's Trail: The Coke Bottle Story (2019)
A bloodless documentary re-enacting the life of the man arguably most responsible for manufacturing the original Coca-Cola bottle. It's as long on imagination as it is light on details, but it becomes clear in act 3 why this was made when everyone's face lights up as they start talking about Coke. (Mmm, Coke.) Worth a watch only for Coke fans, since they never even really bother to explain how the bottles were actually made.

They were made by computers, apparently.

More to come.

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On May 29, I decided I couldn't put off buying a new chair for my computer desk any longer. I'd broken the wooden chair I'd been using. The last two wooden chairs, I'd used, in fact. What can I say? I sit a lot.

Research was done online. (You may have heard that there's a pandemic on, and I didn't want to visit any showroom and sit in potentially infected chairs.) The purchase was done online, too. I ultimately placed a $200 order via Amazon.com. The seller — who was not Amazon because Amazon doesn't actually sell anything itself anymore — said I should expect it between June 8 and June 11. It did not arrive by June 8. It did not arrive by June 11, either.

On June 12, I finally looked into the FedEx shipping system to discover that the package had arrived in their Georgia distribution center on June 4. It must have liked it there, because it didn't move again.

On June 14, I called FedEx, and the customer service representative took one look at his computer screen and told me that "anything that hasn't moved in that long we consider a lost package." But he couldn't help me find it. Instead, he recommended that I get in touch with the shipper so that the shipper could file a claim. The shipper told me they'd get back to me once they'd looked into it.

On June 18, no one had gotten back to me, but Amazon.com's algorithms finally allowed me to request a refund on an undelivered product. So I did.

On June 20, I got my refund. Now I have my money back, but I'm still sitting in a broken chair. Since Mom had already planned an outing to Costco on June 24, I figured I'd bring home whatever they had available. At this point, I'm willing to sit on just about anything.

On June 24, when I woke up, an email was waiting for me from FedEx. They say the chair had been found and would be delivered to my house. Hooray! I was finally going to get the chair I ordered. I don't know why they were sending it to me after all this time, especially if they had already given money back to the seller, but if it was going to show up at last, I figured I'd accept it and settle up with the seller later. So I went to Costco and didn't buy a chair.

And when I got home, I got an email from FedEx saying that delivery had been delayed. It'll be there on June 25 now, they promise.

*smh*

That's what I get. I'm going back to Costco tomorrow, and I'm coming home with a chair. If FedEx delivers another, so be it. As the old adage tells us: Two chairs are better than none.

UPDATE

On June 25, the chair was delivered before I could get to Costco. The box was in very bad shape, but the contents seemed well enough. So I assembled it and didn't buy a chair from Costco. But since the chair was finally delivered, I decided that I return my refunded payment to the seller. That proved to be another ordeal.

Long story short, as of July 2, the seller is paid (somewhat slightly less than the original amount), and I have a chair. The new moral here is that patience is a virtue, even when it can be hard to stand for.

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The Hollywood Reporter reports the totally inevitable news that Disney is remaking Bambi as a "live-action feature" as a "companion piece to its remakes The Jungle Book and The Lion King." I can't tell you how much it bothers me that Disney insists on calling its computer-generated eye-candy "live-action." I also can't tell you exactly why.

A large part of it must be related to my distaste for Disney itself. I once had a great deal of respect for the company that Walt built on the back of an animated mouse. Mr. Disney was an imperfect man, but he really did believe in making disposable entertainment into art. His successors less so. These days, the powers-that-be at Disney are obsessed solely in their quest to be the only entertainment company on earth. They'll do anything that gets them an extra almighty dollar, mostly including exploiting pre-packaged nostalgia for Walt's corpse.

However, a bigger problem is the lie itself. Computers are powerful, but outside of Weird Science, they remain incapable of breathing life into binary code. Nothing about The Lion King was live action, but Disney has been very careful to avoid saying so. (For example, they refused to submit the movie for consideration for Best Animated Feature Film Oscar.) I don't know why. Movies aren't real to begin with, so why mislead people about how they are made?

It increasingly looks like we're living in a post-truth society. The man in the White House can't say two sentences without a lie. Facebook will not restrict political campaigns from spreading intentional, demonstrable mistruths in paid advertising. Enemy states are using face-switching technology to promote propaganda on social media. With politicians already doing such a great job at it, why should we let corporations continue to degrade America's tenuous grasp on "reality" any further?

Sigh. I know I'm over-reacting. It's just promotional press for a movie that I won't watch. (Unless they shoot Bambi this time.) I know I'm just getting old and weary. But these uncontested, re-reported lies are really starting to get to me. It feels like 1984 is getting closer ever day, and now it's coming soon to a theater near you.

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And so begins a series of backup stories first appearing in Superman #354, released 40 years ago.

It's easy to look at this series by Superman stalwarts Julie Schwartz and Curt Swan and see what the old-timers got wrong about the far flung future forty years forthcoming. (Sorry. You can't talk about Silver Age comics without a lot of alliteration.) Flying cars, domed cities, and passenger flights around the moon are still more dream than reality.

What is considerably more impressive is what they got right about contemporary life, and I don't mean the giant flat-screen TVs.

Superman-III's main antagonists aren't mad scientist or sentient computers. No, in the "future," Superman still has his hands full with intolerant Nazis. Their rhetoric would sound crazy if it wasn't something we heard every day on Twitter and Facebook and White House press releases.

Or saw at Navy football games.

Despite the predictions of many over the years (myself included), comic books still exist in 2020. And it's a good thing, too. We need the Man of Tomorrow as much as ever to lead us in the never-ending battle for Truth, Justice, and the American way.

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While we were on the way to a second place finish at trivia last week (where we learned that a flute is a woodwind instrument and a Philco Predicta was a television), friend Keith was amused by my phone lock screen and background. I assume that's because he is envious and would like to use them himself. So here you go, Keith.

If you like those, you might want my computer background image, too.

Ask yourself: is it vanity that I have my name and face all over my devices, or is it that I want everyone to know who they belong to?

(It's vanity.)

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