The Unstoppable Kid Stardust #99

The most tiring part of stakeouts is the noise. After as little as thirty minutes, the cacophonous sounds of millions traversing Times Square tend to blend together into a tumultuous sea of noise. This would be irritating enough if I didn’t have to aurally pick through the sonic sludge in search of criminal activity. Thankfully, it’s not as hard as it could be– I couldn’t imagine doing this if I wasn’t flying a thousand feet above the city.

After an agonizing 2 hours, I spot a mugger holding a woman at gunpoint in an alleyway near 44th and 3rd. I give his revolver a quick jolt of heat. It’s not enough to give him permanent damage, but it’s just enough to get him to drop his gun. He flings a string of curses at me, and in response I drop a stock line about how it’s a bit early for a mugging. Honestly, I don’t know why anyone still goes for muggings here in New York; Don’t they know it’s hero country?

As I drop the mugger off at the police station, I think of the thousands of other crooks I’ve dropped off at this exact station. Over the years, I’ve probably spent as much time dropping petty crooks off at the NYPD that some people have spent going to school or at their job. This police station is, in its own manner, more of a real home to me than I’ve had in decades.

As the police at the station take the thug away, an officer who seems to be in his thirties throws a “Thanks, kiddo,” my way. I guess he sees the awkwardness of it too– his eyes seem to dangle on me for a second as if he’s lost his mental footing. I don’t blame him, to be honest– it has to be disorienting to look at a teenager and know he’s twice your age.

I think I'm currently on my ninety-ninth reboot, but I’m not quite sure anymore. I received my superpowers from the Sinstar in 1962, that much I’m sure of. I remember my first reboot a bit less than four years later– how could you forget the day you find out the suits want to keep you from turning eighteen? I think it was around ‘94, at the tail end of my gritty “Son of the Sinstar” rebrand, that I reached my fiftieth, but I couldn’t tell you for certain. To be quite honest, I lost track around 2010, when the Third Convergence rewrote a lot of human history. Now, I’m sitting on the edge of my hundredth reboot, but it’s not too big a deal.

Suddenly, the sky cracks like glass, and a man with an impossible face emerges from the fracture. I sigh in exhaustion. Dr. Arnold Gilman, known to the public as the Many-Angled Man, has a tendency to get a bit uppity every couple of years. I suppose it’s high time he returned to terrorize New York City once more. I lift my body from the ground and carry myself towards the fracture at the edge of the sky. There, I meet my last remaining nemesis.

“Hello, child,” Dr. Gilman wearily croaks. To the traditionally sane, the Many-Angled Man’s voice is toneless and the expressions of his so-called face are inscrutable and alien. After sixty years of dealing with him and his inanities, I’ve learned to intuit the meaning in Gilman’s shrill timbre and esoteric expressions. 

“Another rift in the cosmos, Dr. Gilman?” I groan. “Would it kill you to be more original?”

“It kills me to appear before you today,” Gilman groans, emitting his closest approximation of a sigh. “I’m tired, child. I made my pact with the Null-Worlders to escape the doldrums of my daily life. Instead, I simply created a new ennui, forced to fight the same battles on and on ad infinitum, all in the name of gods who don’t even know my name. I crave the novel and the mad.”

“Attempting world domination seems pretty par for the course for you,”

Instantly, shapeless tendrils reach out from invisible holes in the fabric of reality and bind me by my wrists and ankles. I try to ignite them with the Sinstar’s chthonic flames, but the inky black seems to swallow the fire.

Dr. Gilman reaches into the mess that was once his head and rubs two soft spots at the top(?). “I don’t crave domination, dear. I crave liberation.”

Slowly, the fissure in the sky above begins to expand, and a vast array of swirling starstuffs fill the black void. “This plane has become my prison, and the Null-Worlders have become my wardens.” says Dr. Gilman, looking down at the earth below. “Every emergence, every strife, every defeat– they’re all part of an endless cycle… one that will spin on even after all the stars in the sky are no more than embers. That is, unless I act now. I intend on eliminating the Null-Worlders, now and forever. Once the shackles of this reality have been shed, I shall be free to wander the vast multiverse, infinite and non-repeating.”

“And I’m supposed to just let you escape into the multiverse to do god-knows-what?” I rebut.

“I won’t be going alone,” answers Gilman, placing his hand on my shoulder. “I want you to join me.”

I scoff. “You must be joking.”

“You know I’m not much for jokes,” answers Gilman. “You and I both know the Null-Worlders are some of the most powerful beings in the known universe. While my power is vast, I alone cannot overcome their immeasurable might. Having a son of the Sinstar on my side would be an invaluable asset to my escape. Granted, I’d rather work with one who wasn’t an impetuous child, but my options are quite slim at the moment.”

“Quit calling me a child,” I sneer. “At this point, we’re practically the same age.”

“You know that’s not true, Kid Stardust,” retorts Gilman, slowly turning away from me. “Or should I say number ninety-nine?”

My concentration falters a bit. “What are you-”

Before I can respond, several thousand eyes swim out from the folds of Gilman’s face. “These eyes see all, my child. I figured you’d know that by now. I also figured you would have realized that the boy known as ‘Kid Stardust’ died a long time ago, but it seems I continue to overestimate you.”

I regain my composure. “Look, I don’t care what you think of the reboot process. I’m me– the same me that’s been kicking your ass for the past sixty years.”

A chuckle-adjacent noise escapes Dr. Gilman’s head. “You cling to the illusion of continuity as if it will save you. I can assure you it will only leave you empty.” 

“I don’t need saving,” I counter. “This city needs saving, and I’m the only one who can do that right now.”

Dr. Gilman snaps toward me, fist raised high, before regaining his composure. He steadies himself before continuing. “Very well. I will leave you alone, free to live out your routine forever and ever… if you could just do one thing for me.”

I grate in frustration. “Fine, what is it?”

“Name one person who will miss you when you’re gone,”

I scoff at the idea of my insignificance. “I’m the most famous hero on Earth! Surely-”

“I’m not referring to Kid Stardust,” Gilman retorts. “I’m referring to the boy behind the costume. Will anyone miss you when you’re gone, Erik Xander?”

I open my mouth to respond, but no words can escape.

“Just one person,” said Gilman. “It shouldn’t be too difficult.” 

 In that instant, it dawns on me that I haven’t heard that name–my name–in decades. After about ten years into the reboot program, the suits came to the conclusion that keeping me within the school system wasn’t sustainable, due to the risk of being recognized by faculty. As such, they had me moved to a dedicated facility far away from the city entitled “Section 8.” There, I wasn’t allowed to contact my friends or family. I still have no idea where my old high school friends went or if they’re even alive. I didn’t even know that my parents had passed until years after the fact.  

Ironic, isn’t it? The whole reason I was put into the reboot program was to preserve the icon of Kid Stardust, part of which was being “a teen boy’s fantasy.” In doing this, however, they denied me the bonds of my own teenage boyhood. 

My mind returns to the rest of the American Knights, and how none of them had to go through this. Goose made it to seventy and then retired with his wife in Nebraska when his strength started to dwindle. Dr. Boltzmann slowly worked his way back out of the superhero business; now he runs the most prolific technology corporations in the solar system. Ataraxia gets to rule over the Furthest Reach, spending time with her loving lord and her two heirs. What do I have? Sixty years of seventeenth birthdays and no one to share them with. 

Gilman makes a clicking noise with what once might have been his tongue. “Erik Xander is dead. He has been for a long time. You’ve simply been wearing his skin for your entire life.” Gilman then extends his hand out in a friendly, yet longing gesture. “Do you plan on being buried in it or would you like to find out what living is?” 

For the first time in thirty years, I can feel the blood pumping through my veins. Was this it? Did my life end fifty years ago? Were any of my previous reboots even me?

No, not reboots. Clones. I’ve danced around the semantics of the reboot program for long enough. I am a 98th-generation clone of the original Kid Stardust, forced to live out the best years of his life at the expense of never having mine. Everything Gilman has just said is right. Erik Xander is dead, and it’s not my job to serve as his substitute. 

I dare to respond, but can only muster a pitiful “I…”

I look deeper into the boundless cosmic array above. In each stellar speck, there’s boundless life-giving energy. An incalculable number of living things dwell above me, all precious and filled with potential. I, on the other hand, have no potential. I am a being with no autonomy, whose existence is solely to serve as a reminder of the long-gone Silver Age of superheroes. Floating right above me is the closest thing I have at a real shot at actually living.

“I’ll do it,” I whimper.

The tendrils holding me up begin to retract.

“Wait!” I shout without thinking of my volume.

“What is it, child?” questions Gilman.

“My employers…” I say. “They put a special chip in my head. If they suspect me of any funny business, they can kill me instantly.”

“I suppose that’s one way to treat America’s greatest hero,” Gilman snarks.

“Yeah, it’s really something,” I mumble. “Anyway, if you want to get me off-world, we’re gonna have to make it look like a fight.”

“Old habits die hard, eh?” Gilman says. “Very well, what do you need me to do?”

“Could you loosen those tendrils just a tiny bit? Not quite a full release, just make a little slack,” I inquire. Immediately, the tendrils make just enough slack for me to escape their grasp. I triumphantly burst free from them with a glee I haven’t felt in years. I slam hands-first into Gilman, clinging to his shoulders for dear life as we fly into the infinite cosmos. As I venture deeper into the outer cosmos, Gilman closes the fracture behind us. 

“Are we gone?” I ask.

Gilman grins with all thirteen million of his teeth. “Welcome to the land of the living, Erik Xander.”

For the first time in decades, I smile back.