Super Man and the Bug Out | Page 4

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The Super Man and the Bugout ============================
"Mama, I'm not a super-villain," Hershie said for the millionth time. He

chased the last of the gravy on his plate with a hunk of dark rye,
skirting the shriveled derma left behind from his kishka. Ever since the
bugouts had inducted Earth into their Galactic Federation, promising to
end war, crime, and corruption, he'd found himself at loose ends. His
adoptive Earth-mother, who'd named him Hershie Abromowicz, had
talked him into meeting her at her favorite restaurant in the heart of
Toronto's Gaza Strip.
"Not a super-villain, he says. Listen to him: mister big-stuff. Well,
smartypants, if you're not a super-villain, what was that mess on the
television last night then?"
A busboy refilled their water, and Hershie took a long sip, staring off
into the middle distance. Lately, he'd taken to avoiding looking at his
mother: her infra-red signature was like a landing-strip for a coronary,
and she wouldn't let him take her to one of the bugout clinics for
nanosurgery.
Mrs. Abromowicz leaned across the table and whacked him upside the
head with one hand, her big rings clicking against the temple of his
half-rim specs. Had it been anyone else, he would have caught her hand
mid-slap, or at least dodged in a superfast blur, quicker than any human
eye. But his Mama had let him know what she thought of that sass
before his third birthday. Raising super-infants requires strict, loving
discipline. "Hey, wake up! Hey! I'm talking to you! What was that
mess on television last night?"
"It was a demonstration, Mama. We were protesting. We want to
dismantle the machines of war -- it's in the Torah, Mama. Isaiah: they
shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning
hooks. Tot would have approved."
Mrs. Abromowicz sucked air between her teeth. "Your father never
would have approved of that."
That was the Action last night. It had been his idea, and he'd tossed it
around with the Movement people who'd planned the demo: they'd
gone to an army-surplus store and purchased hundreds of

decommissioned rifles, their bores filled with lead, their firing pins
defanged. He'd flown above and ahead of the demonstration, in his
traditional tights and cape, dragging a cargo net full of rifles from his
belt. He pulled them out one at a time, and bent them into
balloon-animals -- fanciful giraffes, wiener-dogs, bumble-bees, poodles
-- and passed them out the crowds lining Yonge Street. It had been a
boffo smash hit. And it made great TV.
Hershie Abromowicz, Man from the Stars, took his mother's hands
between his own and looked into her eyes. "Mama, I'm a grown man. I
have a job to do. It's like . . . like a calling. The world's still a big place,
bugouts or no bugouts, and there's lots of people here who are crazy,
wicked, with their fingers on the triggers. I care about this planet, and I
can't sit by when it's in danger."
"But why all of a sudden do you have to be off with these
meshuggenahs? How come you didn't need to be with the crazy people
until now?"
"Because there's a chance now. The world is ready to rethink itself.
Because --" The waiter saved him by appearing with the