"Jew?" Jonathan said. "Who's Jewish?"
Bubbles raised her hand. "My mother's side," she said. "They're pretty secular, though."
"Huh," Jonathan said. "Well, who knew?"
"I would like you all to consider the good that you could still do," Jayewardene said. "I have had a proposal drawn up for the creation of a special committee. The Committee on Extraordinary Interventions. It will function through my office, answering directly to the secretary general. And I wish to extend the invitation to each of you, in recognition of your service to humanity and to myself, to join as charter members."
"You want us to go back out there?" Earth Witch asked. Jonathan could see the distress in her expression. He didn't know if she was seeing King Cobalt, Simoon, and Hardhat, or the Egyptian soldiers she herself had killed. Curveball, he noticed, was looking mighty thoughtful, too.
"I want every dictator in the world to fear justice," Jayewardene said. "I want every soldier ordered to slaughter innocent children to hesitate. I want every trader in slaves to sleep less peacefully. I will not ask that you place yourselves in danger if you do not wish it. Certainly, I cannot compel you."
Lohengrin was on his feet, armor shimmering into being, sword appearing in his hand, raised in salute.
"My sword is yours to command," Lohengrin said.
There was a moment's silence. And then Jonathan watched as they slowly rose, each of them. He tried to understand why.
From the need to justify his father's death, Fortune stood. From guilt over her success in burying men alive and despite her wounded body, Earth Witch. To keep her friend from standing without her, Curveball. From idealism and a competitive heart, Drummer Boy. From a belief in goodness that transcended reason, Holy Roller—well, his hand at least. Christ only knew when the last time was he'd stood up without assistance. From delight at not being discluded, Rustbelt. Jonathan didn't know why he and Bubbles stood up. Maybe just because it seemed like the thing to do.
"Excellent," Jayewardene said. "This is excellent."
It occurred to Jonathan for the first time that the meeting table was, in point of fact, round.
The hall was like something from an old movie. Huge curtains lined the walls, and the crowd in the seats was bigger than a rock concert. The constant flashes from the press section would be the front pages of newspapers and magazines all across the world by tomorrow.
They were all sitting in surprisingly comfortable chairs on a dais. The slow ritual of presenting them with medals was over, but the ceremony itself promised to drag on for hours. While they waited for the next speaker to say more or less the same things, they fell—as bored people will—into conversation.
"Yeah," Bubbles said, "now that you mention it, I was bothered by that. I mean, he did as much as Han or Luke, right? So why wasn't he on the dais in the last scene?"
"Sidekick syndrome," Jonathan said. "Whole rebellion was prejudiced against Wookies."
"Oh, whatever," Earth Witch said.
"You guys all know he's just using us, right?" Jonathan said.
"Who?" Curveball asked.
"Jayewardene. I mean, he said it himself. Here he is, it's his first day of work, and what happens? He gets kidnapped. I mean you have to figure he lost huge credibility there. And so now he has to make it up somehow, and we're the most convenient way."
"Does it matter?" Lohengrin asked. "Whatever drives him to do what is right, it is not important. Only doing what is right."
"I find you charmingly naïve sometimes," Jonathan said. The German bristled visibly, then laughed. "I'm just saying Jayewardene is posturing. He's using us to seem more effective than he is."
"Even if you're not totally full of shit, so what?" Drummer Boy said. "I'm good with it. You can back out anytime you want, Hive. We won't call you chickenshit. Honest."
Curveball and Fortune both chuckled at that. Jonathan frowned. "I'm not saying I want out," he said. "I'm just saying that this whole committee thing is a publicity stunt. It's not like we're actually going to put on uniforms and run around the planet stopping bad guys and hauling them into the World Court for trial. We're figureheads. We're just for show."
"You know, Bugsy," Fortune said. "We're really not."
The crowd roared as Secretary-General Jayewardene took the podium. He smiled, nodding to the left and to the right. The room grew quiet. The cameras continued to flash.
"Ladies. Gentlemen," he said. "I hope you will all find this as worthy of celebration as I myself do. I have come before you now to announce the formation of the Committee . . ."
Posted Today 7:12 pm
COMMITTEE, POLITICS, AMERICAN HERO | REFLECTIVE | "CHILDREN OF THE REVOLUTION"—VIOLENT FEMMES
The Committee.
Yeah, there's more after that; but when you get right down to it, we're really the Committee. Say it, print it, post it. Everyone knows what you mean. The Committee.
I have a new job now. I'm one of the poor bastards going out there to help save the world now. But at least they don't want me to put on Spandex or a cape or some shit like that. It's great, but it also has the feeling of something ending. I'm going to keep this blog going as long as I can, but I don't know how much I'll be able to keep up with it. There are only so many hours in a day, after all. There's already talk about maybe going in to this shithole in Africa where a guy is encouraging half the people in his country to take machetes to the other half.
I don't know what we're supposed to do about it, but I guess if they send us, we'll try. What else could we do?
I started this thing because I wanted to talk about what it was to be an ace. Here we are, with powers other people dream of having. We're the cool kids. The heroes. The ones who get celebrated. And it's not because of what we think or what we do. It's because of what we are.
I don't think there's anything more toxic than that. To be celebrated—or condemned—for what you are instead of who.
We're aces. And some of us are petty little fucks. Some of us are pretentious asses. Some of us can rise to the occasion, and some of us can't.
So, if I did write my book—and honest to God, folks, I don't see the free time anywhere in the immediate future—what would I say with it? That Hollywood's ideas of heroism are shallow and cocaine-driven? Yeah, there's big news.
That genocide is bad?
That sometimes people do honorable, good, right things for all the wrong reasons? Or stupid, destructive, short-sighted things for all the right ones?
The problem with cliché is that it starts in truth. So when you dig down, fight and scratch and bleed and sometimes even die for the truth, sometimes—not always, but sometimes—you end up with something you could have bought on a greeting card.
Do the right thing. Cherish your friends; you don't know how long you get to have them. You're flawed and weak, but that's okay; just do the best you can.
For that, I went to Hollywood and Vegas and Egypt and Hell. Hardly seems worth it, except that maybe I understand better what the Hallmark cards mean.
And I understand they're looking at another season of American Hero. Good luck with that, guys.
I don't know how you're gonna top this one.
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DANIEL ABRAHAM
Jonathan Hive
1: Who the fuck was Jetboy? Posted Today 1:04 am HISTORY, JETBOY | REFLECTIVE | "THESE ARE THE FABLES"
THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS
Who the fuck was Jetboy?
My grandfather tried to tell me when I was too young. I didn't get it. A flying ace, he said, from before there was the wild card. I could never get my head around that. How could you have any acemuch less one who flewbefore there was the wild card? And that all happened back during the Great Depression which was right before Napoleon who took over after Rome fell. My grandfather hadn't kissed a girl yet when Jetboy died. That was forever ago.
My sense of history has gotten a little more nuanced since then. I know there was a Middle Ages, for instance. I understand that women existed before Christina Ricci, though I'm still not entirely sure why they bothered.
I've read all the underground R. Crumb comics about the Sleeper. My dad told me stories about the Great and Powerful Turtle. My fifth grade babysitterwho smoked pot and sometimes forgot to wear her bratold me lurid tales about Fortunato, the pimp ace who got his powers from sex. I saw Tarantino recycle all the tropes of Wild Card Chic, trying like a lifeguard on amphetamines to breathe new life into them.
When I drew my ace, I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I wasn't Jonathan Tipton-Clarke. I was Jonathan motherfuckin' Hive. I was hot shit. I was the kid who really could sting like a bee. Let me assure all of you out there that nothing but nothing stops bullies picking on you like being able to turn into your equivalent mass of small wasplike stinging insects; it shuts those rat bastards down. I figured I didn't need to go to school or worry about how a swarm of wasps was going to pay for an apartment. I was sixteen and an ace. I was God.
Maybe that was why Grandpa always wanted to talk about Jetboy. Jetboy, who didn't have any powers. Jetboy, who tried to stop the wild card from coming into the world and failed.
Jetboy (I thought, through all my youth and adolescence and most of my adulthood to date) was a great big loser who died half a century ago. But here's the thing: He was a hero to my grandfather, and my grandfather was not a stupid man.
When Grandpa started junior high, there were no aces in the world. When he started high school, there were. He was alive when the virus hit. He read about the 90 percent that drew the black queen. He heard rumors of the first jokers back when people still hid them away like they'd just crawled out of a David Lynch flick. And he saw the first aces. Golden Boy. The Envoy.
How can I imagine that change? How do I, or anyone in my generation, put my mind back to think what it would have been like in a world without jokers, much less a jokers' rights movement? A world where we didn't think that aliens existed? Where phones had actual dials, and no one locked their car doors?
It's hardit's always been hardto look back at that kind of simplicity and ignorance and not sneer. We know better now. We know more. We were raised on President Barnett. We saw pictures from the Rox war. We always knew that if we happened to be around when two aces started fighting each other, they might bring the building down, or cut us down with laser eye beams, or turn us to stone without even meaning to; we could die at any time, in any way, and there was no way to protect against it. You couldn't expect us to get choked up over a guy who fell off a blimp before our parents were born.
Most people my age think of history as being divided into two essential halves: before the Internet and after. But there was a shift before that, and maybe there have always been shifts, back through history. Maybe every generation has seen the world change forever, and we don't know only because we weren't there.
Ace or not, I grew up. I went to college. I got a degree and trust fund that I'm rapidly spending down. I write a few magazine articles, and I'm working on a novel. I'm an ace, and that's great.
But I'm a journalist, tooor will be when I catch a break. Being able to turn into wasps won't help me meet deadlines or pick the right words or forgive a cent of my electric bill. So, maybe what Grandpa was trying to tell me sunk in after all. Or maybe I missed his point and made up one of my own.
Here's the best I've got, folks:
Jetboy was the end of a world. He was the last man to die before the wild card came, and his age died with him. He is a symbol whose meaning I will never understand, except in the way I've come to understand King Arthur, JFK, and all the other beautiful losers of history. He will never mean to me what he did to my grandfather, and not because I'm more sophisticated or smarter or more jaded. It's just that the world's moved on.
To me, Jetboy's a reminder that there have always been peoplea fewwho fought for things that mattered. And (cue the violins, kids) that maybe being a hero isn't just about whether you win. Maybe it's also about whether you die memorably.
How's that for a Hallmark moment?
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