super revisited

Today the peasants of Littleport Coast find the Benevolent Mastermind doing what he does best. Strolling the streets and being beneficial to them! In very clever ways no less.

He knows all the people of Littleport Coast, the children, the elderly, and everybody in between. While walking alongside Tommy Of The Eastern Half, the Mastermind saw the Taco Scorpion slinking along an alleyway, peering out with that creepy fourth eye of his. He had no third eye, just the normal two of everybody else, and a fourth one off to the side.

The Taco Scorpion. Arguably the least intelligent villian ever to claim the title. The Benevolent Mastermind, the kind of guy to give prestige to the intelligent, disdained the Taco Scorpion. His villiany was ever simple to see through and overcome. He was barely worth the glance down the alleyway to acknowledge him.

Quickly forgetting the encounter, the Mastermind and Tommy Of The Eastern Half walked along the cobbled roadway towards the Eye Doc. He lived on the shoreline, right by the dock. Long ago he had painted an eye on the dock, and jested about his "Peering Pier" because he was the "Eye Dock" he told people. What a clever man.

Tommy Of The Eastern Half needed glasses. He loved to read, and he read at night. "Of course," cautioned his mother, "reading in the dark can lead to eye strain which develops over time, leaving the reader short sighted."

After explaining the young boy's plight to the Dock, the Benevolent Mastermind bid him a good night and molded the residual temporal medium around his consciousness, so he could sleep for a few hours without time actually passing.

The next day, the Mastermind woke up to a very strong distress signal, coming from the bowels of the nineth floor of the local Best Western hotel. In less than 2.71828 seconds, the Mastermind was there, in the dank cell, with the cold dripping noises, and with the Taco Scorpion. He wasn't dressed in his usual shabby attire, but rather in a Spiderman costume that a child might wear on halowe'en.

Sighing, the Mastermind addressed the Taco Scorpion, "What is it you want, eh? I can see through your every ploy. There is no hope for you. Why do you persist?"

"Not so fast, oh master of minds." sneered the Taco Scorpion, "This time, not even you, a man of honour and intelligence will overcome me!" and he proceeded to press a series of buttons on the wall nearest to him. The ceiling opened up and a cage descended! Inside was a maiden! Trapped by the wiles of the Taco Scorpion.

"Here is the deal, Mastermind. I will ask you a question..." At this, the Mastermind sniffed haughtily, and accepted the challenge, but the Taco Scorpion hadn't finished his sentence "... I will ask you a question, and you have to give me the WRONG answer, and I'll let the girl go. If you answer wrongly, by which you say the correct answer, she's mine, and there is nothing you can do!"

At this, the Mastermind remained confident. All he has to do is find the right answer, which is the correct answer, not the one to use as the wrong answer thus making him right... he needs to find this answer and answer anything else!

But it wasn't such a simple task.

"Ok then," said the Mastermind, "ask your question. If I give you the correct answer, by answering wrongly, you can take the girl and go."

But what did the Taco Scorpion have in mind?

"Here is the question, oh smart one: If I were you and you were me, am I me, or you?"

This indeed was not an easy question. But our Mastermind is not so easily stumped! He sits down to ponder, his thoughts connecting every which way.

Past tensively, he reverses the identity of self and the second person. "If I were you" means his identity is equivalent to my own, in the past. Wherefore mine is his, and neither of use is exclusively the other, or the self. In the present though, the identities have elapsed, and I am not me anymore, but I am him. He is me, and the identities have become exclusive. So at this point, the verdict is I am him, AND he is me. Both conditions are true. But now neither of us is both, we are exclusively the other and self has become obsolete.The argument becomes a cycle, where each is the other, and both and self are meaningless. So, the question of whether he is I or I am him, is both paradoxical and and nonsensical...

Oh no! What has become of our hero? He sits, entirely befuddled! Confounded! Mysitified! Perplexed! Vexed and chagrined! He is unable to come up with an answer, so he does nothing but think, as the Taco Scorpion cackles maniacally and runs away with the maiden!

Oh no! What will become of her? What will happen before she is found again?

The Taco Scorpion is on the loose, and we can only hope that there are some other superheroes close by who can save the day!

superhero!

(This one introduces a superhero... the Benevolent Mastermind)

In the not so temporally awkward present, in a location not too distant from here, the people were roaming the streets, when unbeknownst to them an evil to rival the goodness of the superheroes put the final threads into place on his Tapestry Of Maleficent Deeds (TM). Soon the world would know peril! Soon! What pitiful deeds the people abhorred would seem luxurious.

From the bowels of the earth this sickly plot unfolds. The rotting odour of death permeated the fog which rose in the streets this morning. The tails of mist seemed to snag the clothes of the unwary as they walked the roadside. Soon the public learned that the safest place was home. Inside their nice comfortable abodes, while the fog was outside.

But this is exactly what the yet unnamed evil guy wanted.

By midday, the sun was blackened out of sight. The people were afraid, huddled in their basements and attics, seeing their loved ones waste away in the pale light of energy-efficient fluorescent bulbs. Who could save them? So they would lament. But indeed, who?

Oh so little did they know though! So little! Things were only starting to get bad...

They would feel, first. Feel the vibrations in the boards beneath their hands as they sat, squeezing fearful fingers to stillness underneath their bottoms. The tremors of notes emanating from somewhere underground. A dirge rose throughout the city, undertones of loathing, the darkest music imagineable. Perhaps the wails of otherworldly beings, perhaps the cackle of evil as the harbingers of doom were finally released. The scent of decay slips, now, through the slightest of cracks, filling the homes of the not so safe.

What could grip their minds but dread? Could they suspect anything worse? No, they thought. Death himself would have to knock on the door to instill more fear. Little did they suspect, this was the next chapter in their plight. Screeches, scratches, pounding, a chaotic rhythm that could only harmonize with the dirge of the unknown. Something wanted in.

Luckily for the townspeople, this day happened to coincide with the birth of the Benevolent Mastermind. He who values the public, saves the afflicted, rescues the scared and astonishes all who see him. How does he do it? Well, if he were to explain it, it would involve you needing a calculator, and me (the narrator) needing a scientific dictionary just so I spell everything right. Basically, he retains the unprecented ability to exceed relativistic speeds, morphing the very fabric of the space-time continuum to his whim, placing mesons, tacheons, electrons, positrons, other bosons and fermions into place to produce superviscous antidotes to unheard of ails.

If, for some reason one of those tactics doesn't work, he can usually get away with confusing the bad guy to no end. It's quite stupefying to see him in action.

So, back to our story, the Benevolent Mastermind, albeit a newborn, is proportionate to a grown man and striding purposely through the fog of death we have come to be acquainted with.

"What is this?" he exclaims "an aggregation of dihydrogen monoxide particles precipated around ambient dust particles forming a mostly opaque substance slightly more dense than atmospheric air and having the odour of ozone and decaying loam? What a simple problem to solve!"

Momentarily, he constructed a device, not unlike a bug catching net, with a very fine mesh. The handle itself was an air freshener, with remote traces of chlorofluorocarbons. In his right hand he wielded this. In his left he held high-impact short-blast-radius electromagnetic pulse grenades, for surely this uncouth sound was merely the audible byproduct of vibrating diaphragms present in craftily placed cassette players.

Off he travelled through the city, swinging the net, capturing the moisture in the fine mesh, taking it out of the air, and the chlorofluorocarbons present reacting with the ozone particles, reducing the odour and toxicity of the air, for the air freshener also compensated for the smell of plant decay.

Oft he came across such craftily placed cassette players as he predicted, and a flick of the wrist, tossing an electromagnetic pulse grenade, silenced them.

Suffice it to say, in short order the city was returned to normal. At his behest the public gained the confidence to once again leave their homes, and they all beheld in wonder this new superhero. Dazzled mainly by his great looks, they cheered for the Benevolent Mastermind.

The city was safe!