After many moons, a Skaldthetical. If you don’t like these, I’m sure there’s some thread about football or J K Rowling or Brexit open someplace.
Today’s story takes us back to the world of BOB X, the black, bisexual superhero and former slacker with Kryptonian powers, no significant weaknesses, and an adoptive daughter. There are about 100 other super-heroes on Bob’s world, but most of them are at about the power level of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, So although Bob has a support staff to assist him in his do-gooding, he always does the heavy lifting solo…
As our tale begins, Bob’s America is in the midst of an impeachment crisis. The current president — let’s call him RONALD FRATT — is regarded by half the population as a racist, homophobic, would-be dictator and buy the other half as possibly Jesus. embroiled in a foreign policy scandal, Fratt has been refusing to allow any of his top aides to testify despite congressional subpoenas; request for documents are similarly being ignored. (Nothing familiar about that, I’m sure.) Bob, though despising Fratt, has tried to stay out of this controversy, partly because he has always been chary of the dangers he himself poses to society (he never did succeed in completely squelching worship of himself), but mostly because he finds it depressing. He’s been throwing himself into his natural disaster relief/kaiju-fighting efforts.
During one of the impeachment hearings, Bob gets a phone call from his kid. “Popsy,” LYNN Says, “are you watching CNN?”
“No,” Bob replies. “I’m busy towing this kraken out of shipping lanes before it eats another oil tanker. Why?”
“Because something really weird is going on. Fratt’s chief of staff just decided to defy her boss, and she is giving damning testimony. You need to get to a TV screen and watch this.”
“I wouldn’t see anything anybody else wouldn’t over a television. But I’ll check it out.”
By the time Bob is done with the sea monster, the day’s hearing is over, and the next day there is a volcano to cap, a hurricane to avert, another monster to wrangle, and a terrorist attack on Paris to foil… He zips to Washington for the following sessions; Fratt’s secretary of defense gave similar testimony as the chief of staff the previous afternoon, and today it’s the national security advisor.
Bob has no formal authorization to enter the Capitol, but every official waves him through immediately simply because he asks. That’s been happening for years. The alternating responses of gushing adoration and unspoken terror always concern him, as does the most frequent question he gets from the press & Twitter these days: “Are you going to allow President Fratt to remain in office, Mr. X?” Of the usual groupies who throw them selves add him that day, two are hoping to persuade him to toss Fratt out, three the opposite (And before you ask: all five, though not simultaneously.)
Swiftly Bob realizes that Lynn was correct in her suspicions. Upon entering the Capitol he starts sneezing., and there’s only one thing in creation that can make HIM do that: mine control raise! Bob does a super-sinces scan of the building looking for an old enemy of his who uses such technology (she once tried to technomagically straighten every gay in North America), but there is no sign of anybody with the initials LL. Instead he finds a fellow superhero: one SHELDON ROOFER, an inventive super genius Bob occasionally goes to for tech advice — including how to reverse the aforementioned brainwashing, so he certainly knows how to do it himself. An x-ray vision scan shows that Roofer has some suspicious tech hidden on his person, and as soon as he realizes he has been spotted, he tries to rabbit. But of course he can’t outrun Bob, who, an eyeblink later, has whisked him to the top of the Washington Monument for a private conversation.
“So what are you up to, Roofie?” Bob says, holding up a handheld device he withdrew from Roofer’s pocket. He has already X-rayed it and recognizes the mind control technology. “Because it looks like you are trying to earn your nickname in a pretty horrifying way.”
“Not as horrifying as that whackjob in the White House,” Roofer replies In his Texas twang. “But as for what I’m doing: YOUR darn job since you refuse to save the world like everybody expects.”
“You call puppeteering people into doing your bidding ‘saving the world’? Because I call it turning super-villain.”
“Easy for you to say. Easy and DISHONEST. You know as well as I do that Nameless is a racist, queer-phobic, demagogue who would like nothing better then to make himself president for life. We can’t let that happen.”
"I am not going to argue with you about Fratt. But mine-fucking his aides into testifying against him— "
“— is totally justified. Every word these guys have said is true. I’ll show you the documentation if you want. All I did was make them speak the exact truth in answer to any question —”
“— and also compel them to testify,” Bob interrupts. “Right?”
“Well, yes. Like that matters. My point is, we both know that every day that man is in the Oval Office moves the world a little closer to a catastrophe not even you will be able to avert. And I can tell that you yourself are having some doubts, because you haven’t vaporized my gizmo. And I’ll let you in on a little secret: it’s a one off. I could only scrape together enough of the special crystals required to make it work for that one unit, and if you destroy it I doubt I’ll be able to make another. Not that I need one. I was hoping to force Fratt to speak the unvarnished truth about the Turkmenistan affair, but I think with the testimony of his top aids on the matter, he won’t have any choice but to resign or be impeached and removed. Unless you decide you’re going to blow the whistle on me, of course. But you don’t have to. Why don’t we go to my place; I have something like 75,000 pages of evidence to support Nameless’s criminality. With your super-speed, you should be able to peruse that in an afternoon. Then you can decide what to do. What’s the plan, Bobby?”
Bob hesitates. He shares Roofer’s opinion of President Fratt, and Lynn has already been suggesting that come the next election, he should campaign for whoever the opposition candidate was. But the mind-control squicks Bob out — and given the reaction of almost everybody he has encountered that day, he isn’t sure his own intervention can count as anything less than mind control either.
What should Bob do?