Falcon Boy 1: 5 ‘The Cowardly Jumpy Nolan’ Part I

Stun Ramsford worked as a gardener for the Panic Town Parks and Gardens Department for forty-seven years, before finally being convinced to retire following a campaign initiated by the Panic Town Gazetteer.

Gardening was Stun’s life and even though he was no longer employed by the town, he still turned up at the Panic Town Park and Ornamental Gardens each day, weeding the flower beds and pushing his own wheelbarrow up and down the paths.

‘No one knows the weeds like I do,’ he told the Gazetteer. ‘When the time comes, I want to be buried in the compost heap along with the fruit peel, sandwich boxes and grass cuttings.’

One day in July, a gang of out-of-town toughs headed down to the Panic Town Park and Ornamental Gardens, looking to wreak some horticultural havoc.

Have you ever wondered what to call a gang of toughs? A pack? A group? A gaggle? A fist? What about a trouble of toughs? Anyway, the leader of this gang-pack-group-gaggle-fist-trouble of toughs was a repulsive, odious-looking fellow called Jumpy Nolan.

Jumpy was very tall with hunched, round shoulders. He wore baggy children’s clothes and had a face like a ventriloquist’s dummy that had been dropped from a great height. Jumpy also had a very foul temper that he reserved for the young, the elderly, the inanimate and anyone or anything else that he thought he could be tough with and get away with it.

Falcon Boy 1: 4 ‘Bacharach McCarthy’ Pt 5

And so the idea was fixed. Clayton handed in his notice the next day and tried to ignore the sniggering of his supervisor when he explained why it was that he no longer wanted to work in the factory.

‘You’ll be back begging for this job in a couple of weeks,’ the supervisor sneered. ‘Fools like you always are!’

‘Not this fool,’ thought Clayton, but he held his tongue as it seemed like the right superhero-type thing to do.

That night, Falcon Boy logged into SuperHeroVerse™ and posted the following message on the superhero community notice board:

TIRED of talking?

Want some ACTION?

Mail me NOW!

Logging on the next morning, Clayton was delighted to find a reply. The reply had no content and didn’t actually say anything but Falcon Boy could see that it came from someone called Bewilder Bird. It was a fairly torturous process to make arrangements with someone who didn’t speak, but finally arrangements were successfully made for the two heroes to meet in real life and embark upon their life of superheroing together.

Falcon Boy 1: 4 ‘Bacharach McCarthy’ Pt 4

But people were doing things, plenty of things, just not the sort of things Clayton had imagined people would be doing.

‘I’m having some people over at the weekend,’ said an ugly-looking alien to an ancient-looking god with a cloak made of crow feathers, ‘but two of them are vegan and three others are lactose-intolerant.’ The alien scratched its three heads. ‘Planning the menu is a nightmare.’

‘You poor thing,’ said the god. ‘Have you thought about getting a take-away?’

‘I have,’ replied the alien, ‘but what about the MSG?’

         The ancient-looking god nodded. ‘You’re right and in any case, you’ll all be hungry half an hour after you have eaten.’

‘Make sure you have plenty of salad,’ said a passing lizard. ‘That is sure to keep everyone happy.’ The lizard flicked its very long tongue. ‘That would work for me.’

         The gathered superheroes turned to Falcon Boy. ‘What would you suggest?’

‘Who cares?’ replied Falcon Boy. ‘I joined SuperHeroVerse™ to forget about the ordinary world, not to go on and on about it.’

‘Humppff!’ humppffed the alien. ‘You’re no help.’

Bewilder Bird had exactly the same experience as Falcon Boy, only his was slightly different because Bewilder Bird chose not to speak to anyone. Instead he just listened. And he couldn’t believe his ears either.

Once Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird realised that there were no superhero things to do in SuperHeroVerse, they both decided to leave. But the whole creating a new identity thing was extremely intoxicating and Falcon Boy felt very reluctant to relinquish his newly-formed alter-ego.

‘If I’m not allowed to swoop and sweep like a bird of prey online anymore,’ Falcon Boy wondered, ‘then what about I try to swoop and sweep in real life?’ The idea seemed like a good one and the more he thought about it, the more it felt something like his destiny.

‘There has to be more to life than stirring pickles,’ thought Clayton. ‘I can’t be stinking of vinegar until the day I die.’

And of course he was right. There is more to life than stirring pickles unless, of course, stirring pickles is all you have ever wanted to do with your life. In that case, well done to you and I hope you get the chance to keep stirring. The same goes for stinking of vinegar.

Falcon Boy 1: 4 ‘Bacharach McCarthy’ Pt 3

All of this was simply amazing and marvellous in the beginning and SuperHeroVerse™ was inundated with riotous superhero activity twenty-four hours a day. But it wasn’t long before things began to get a bit same-y.

What’s so super about being a superhero if you are only as super as every other superhero?

If you can fly and I can fly and he can fly and she can fly and they can fly, then what’s so great about flying anyway?

Indeed, what’s so great about anything anyway when everyone else can do something else equally as impressive?

Gradually, members of SuperHeroVerse™ began to disregard their chosen superpowers, renouncing their ability to walk upside down on ceilings or see things from a fly’s eye’s perspective, choosing instead to simply log on, meet with friends and talk about their day and other normal things. Eventually the owners of SuperHeroVerse™ succumbed to community pressure and removed the superpower creation function altogether.

Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird joined just as this was happening but didn’t realise anything had changed until they began to discover large groups of vividly-designed avatars of all shapes and sizes standing around, talking about their busy days at work.

‘So how did you get on today?’ said a giant mechanised monster to a radioactive merman.

‘Snowed under, as always,’ replied the merman. ‘I really must find some time for a holiday.’

‘I know what you mean,’ said the mechanised monster, ‘but where to go is the question.’

‘Too true, too true,’ said a gaseous cloud as it passed by. ‘I hear the beaches are simply packed at this time of year.’

‘Where’s all the action?’ thought Falcon Boy to himself. ‘Why is no one doing anything?’

Falcon Boy 1: 4 ‘Bacharach McCarthy’ Pt 2

In the original iteration of SuperHeroVerse™, members were given full access to an unlimited range of superpowers, and as you can imagine it wasn’t long before everyone you met could:

fly,

bend time to their will,

cause impossibly heavy objects to float like feathers,

shoot bright green lasers from their eyes,

feel no shame,

breathe underwater,

talk to animals,

think big,

walk through walls,

control thunderstorms,

unite warring insects and cause them to fight for them,

understand the true meaning of things simply by touching them,

survive extreme drops in temperature,

compartmentalise,

blend into any kind of scenery,

dupe people with a supernatural sleight of hand,

be visually and vectorally versatile,

breathe in a vacuum,

correlate,

hover hawk-like,

cause the molecules of their body to become gaseous,

hop really high,

invert algorithms,

disregard emotional stimuli,

shoot sheets of flame from a wooden pole,

discover the poetry evident in everyday objects,

swordfight with a custom-made walking stick,

reanimate corpses,

make their skin as hard as steel,

speak the language of electrical circuits,

adopt the abandoned,

repel,

wrestle the unruly,

self-propagate at an alarming rate,

lie to both themselves and others,

self-edit the past,

shake their head to stop things happening,

predict the future (but those that chose this superpower never saw what was coming, coming),

raise the temperature of things with their breath,

change colour at will,

out-process the fastest microprocessor,

argue at great length,

make great strides,

write long lists,

inhale aeroplanes and helicopters,

force people to dance uncontrollably,

wonder aloud,

forge documents convincingly,

never die,

motivate defeated soldiers,

magnetically attract,

run incredibly fast,

animate the inanimate,

memorise extremely long combinations of numbers,

exaggerate to co(s)mic effect,

plan accordingly,

know things worth knowing,

stop speeding vehicles dead in their tracks with the flat of their hand,

de-fraud,

desire the undesirable,

have the fastest wheelchair in the universe,

spit a long way,

imitate,

seize the day,

echo,

stare at the Sun,

mimic,

use their finger as a USB key,

pay no mind to things,

run incredibly far,

short-circuit,

do a speedy whirl,

expertly ventriloquise,

touch the sky,

create a whirlwind with a flick of their wrist,

become a machine,

or a centaur,

see the good in everyone,

stretch themselves incredibly thin,

dominate whole nations through sheer force of will,

stand very still for very long,

completely disregard local sensations,

act unbidden but wholly appropriately,

transmute and alchemise,

proffer expert advice when required,

and summarise long lists like this one.

Falcon Boy 1: 4 ‘Bacharach McCarthy’ Pt. 1

Bacharach McCarthy also lived a lonely life. He was tall and athletic-looking, capable of lifting heavy things, and took a keen interest in how the world worked but none of these attributes ever made a real difference to his adult life.

Bacharach left school and went to work for a small manufacturing company that produced the world-famous Universal Drain Righter©. This handy-sounding device is a small twist of metal that you attach to any antipodean plughole to re-right the direction that the water swirls as you empty a bath.

For eight hours a day and six hours of overtime on Saturday, Bacharach McCarthy placed a piece of metal into a groove, pressed a large red button and then laid the now twisted metal onto a conveyor belt for packing.

In all this time, he spoke to no one. And no one spoke to him. But when the shifts were over, Bacharach raced home, wolfed down a pot of noodles, logged onto SuperHeroVerse™ and turned once more into Bewilder Bird.

Online, Bacharach felt completely free and was able to express himself in ways that he couldn’t in reality. He could behave in any way that he wanted to, but still he chose to be as silent in SuperHeroVerse™ as he was in real life. He just preferred it this way.

The SuperHeroVerse™ community was an active one and new members were quickly met and gret by more established denizens. There was the usual list of rules covering such things as player interactions, acceptable behaviour and other ethical guidelines. These rules would be similar to any that you might encounter in any other online communal space. But the one thing that makes SuperHeroVerse™ so different from any other online superhero communities is that special powers had recently been outlawed.

With this in mind, Clayton took every opportunity he could to say something good about himself. Yet, whenever he found an occasion to heap praise upon himself, Clayton found that he always typed too fast in the heat of the moment and his spelling would go awry.

For example, he never realised that the description of his avatar, visible to the whole world of SuperHeroVerse™ described Falcon Boy as being ‘cepable ot fihting crim and ritting werongs.’

As part of the registration process, you also invent your own superhero catchphrase. Clayton dutifully completed this section but could never understand why ‘I’m good, me! Let me help and fight and save you!’ didn’t inspire the kind of confidence he felt sure it should have done.

The opportunity to say wonderful things about yourself is an intoxicating one, and Clayton discovered that the crushing anonymity he so detested in his real life became profoundly liberating in his new, virtual one.

In the real world, it is very sad and frustrating to think that nobody knows anything about you and your life. In the world of SuperHeroVerse™, nobody knowing anything is what makes the experience such a liberating one. If no one knows anything about you then you can say anything you want about yourself and no one is any the wiser.

Halfway through a busy shift, Clayton overheard two of his colleagues talking about a new online experience where you pretended to be a superhero and lived a startlingly exciting, albeit virtual, life pretending to fight imaginary crime. That night Clayton logged on.

The SuperHeroVerse™ slogan confidently states:

‘YOU are what YOU want to be’

This sounded good enough to Clayton and he enrolled straight away. With the simple filling of a form, Clayton Candlegrease became Falcon Boy.

‘I swoop like a noble bird of prey and will sweep away crime wherever I find it,’ he typed. ‘I am majestic, and magnificent,’ he hurriedly continued as the SuperHeroVerse™ Induction film played. ‘I am big and strong and hardly ever wrong,’ he concluded gleefully.

You are probably wondering who Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird are and how they got to be everyone’s favourite superheroes. Let me explain.

None of us are ever who we think we want to be, and Clayton Candlegrease was no exception. Clayton lived alone and spent all day stirring gherkins in the world famous Sours Pickle factory. The smell of vinegar followed him wherever he went.

Clayton had recently moved to a new town and didn’t know a single soul. Living in a town where you don’t know anyone is a very strange experience. It is the simplest things that feel the strangest.

For example, when you buy a newspaper and a pint of milk at your local corner shop, you strike up a conversation with the person behind the counter but when they are not immediately friendly, you misinterpret their obvious dislike of their job as an obvious dislike of you.

It was a lonely life and with nothing to do and no one to do nothing with, Clayton quickly reached the outer boundaries of his solitary existence. This was when he discovered SuperHeroVerse™.