Introduction: Solar Warrior's Revenge
"Last summer at NW SolarFest [2017], we met Saab Lofton, an author and social justice activist, who approached us with an interesting idea: Creating a literary serial wrapped around a solar-based character. Starting this week, we're going to be sharing a new episode, once a week, so stay tuned."
—Stu Frothingham, formerly with Artisan Electric
… for one brief, shining moment, Camelot, but then …
"Our marketing team, including myself, has really loved Solar Warrior and what it brings to our company and society at large. We feel your writing is so important for readers, but with our drastically decreased budget, we are having trouble affording anything outside of basic advertising ... We will also do what we can to make sure Solar Warrior and you as an author/activist get as much exposure as possible. We're really proud of the work you have produced and feel extremely honored to have been part of it. Thank you."
—Artisan Electric, March 10th, 2018
… fair enough. Shit happens. At least I proved myself as a storyteller, once again, beyond any snark of a doubt … Unfortunately, despite the promise Artisan Electric made to get me "as much exposure as possible," what did I hear — over and over, in one form or another — for months ..?
"Hi Saab, I am very busy at work today, but would love to talk via phone. I am available to phone tomorrow, but not today. Let me know a good time for you."
… until finally …
"After speaking with the managers, we've decided to permanently delete the Solar Warrior content from our site."
—Artisan Electric, September 4th, 2018
… and when I demanded an explanation …
"[Nikki Bain's] comments were concerning to me because she was very uncomfortable with you and not because of the color of your skin. She was super excited about Solar Warrior when she hired on and was eager to help when I left, but it sounds like you escalated with her at some point. I'm not sure what was said, heard, etc [HE doesN'T EVEN KNOW AND I BET SHE doesN'T EITHER], but I've observed you get frustrated and escalate on a few occasions, so I can understand why she felt uncomfortable. I've felt uncomfortable with your escalations. That type of escalation pushes people away regardless of the color of their skin."
—Stu Frothingham, formerly with Artisan Electric
… first, this ain't Artisan Electric's first rodeo …
"Artisan Electric, the solar-energy company that employs the driver who allegedly made the slur, said he’s been suspended as the company investigates."
—The Seattle Times, December 2nd, 2016
… second, the only "escalation" I can imagine would've been when I called Bain from the hospital while in pain (as a result of a lifetime of typing, far more so than my white counterparts, my right shoulder flared up horribly in early 2018) — could she have been that petty; could she have actually faulted me for momentarily raising my voice while I felt like absolute Hell ..? Given the history of this country; from Rosewood, Florida to the modern phenomenon of white women constantly calling the police on black people for the most trivial of rationales, it's far more likely than not …
"The social structure has always demanded that we put white people at ease."
—from the book, Reel to Real, by bell hooks
"A white woman called the cops on a group of black people barbecuing in an Oakland park. Not long after, another white woman called the cops on a black girl selling water on the sidewalk in San Francisco … When questioned, the women argued that the matter had nothing to do with race. Yet, their insistence upon police intervention in minor affairs amounts to more than a simple case of tattle-taling — it's putting black lives at risk. White women have weaponized their fear and discomfort in otherwise peaceful situations for centuries. An examination of their role in enforcing racial segregation and the lies some women spin to maintain innocence while controlling black movement has become increasingly urgent … The knee-jerk reactions of the white women in these examples to meddle in the lives of these innocent black people demonstrate a reliance upon the power of the state to carry out that which they cannot — to effectively 'control' people who are not like them. We need to realize that white feminine fear does not produce innocuous behavior, but a kind of harassment that often leads to racial trauma. If we are ever going to meaningfully address racial injustice in this country, we must unpack the power of this fear and understand how it is inextricably linked to discrimination, police brutality and other forms of racial terrorism. For it is through someone’s baseless apprehension that people like myself are only a phone call away from being exterminated."
—Morgan Jerkins, Rolling Stone Magazine, July 17th, 2018
… control, eh ..?
"Spike Lee also demonstrates white women's investment in upholding white supremacy ... 53 percent of white women voters pulled the lever for Donald Trump ... as Melissa Harris-Perry wrote in Elle, history has proven that, for the majority of white women, 'gender politics is a secondary game, NOT the main show' ... Lee reminds us NOT to forget the white woman who have caused, supported, committed or stood by as systematic and individual racial violence, in many forms, persists. It's also a message for the pussy-hat wearing, safety-pin donning white woman who have spent more time fretting over manners [BIN-fucking-GO!] than unarmed black people shot by the police or brown immigrant children separated from their parents at the border."
—Rachel Leah, Salon, August 11th, 2018
… fretting over manners, eh ..?
"Why do they accuse us Bush [OR TRUMP] critics of being 'bitter and angry,' as though our lack of complacency is some sort of character flaw? Their implication is that being bitter and angry is just so unladylike. Do they imagine we're all at some 19th-century lawn party? That perhaps we're throwing an unseemly fit because a croquet ball went off in the wrong direction?"
—Beth Quinn (a WHITE woman) of the Times-Herald Record in Middletown, New York, August 28th, 2006
… evidently, toxic femininity is just as dangerous (especially to black men) as toxic masculinity …
"It's been hard to ignore the mounting evidence — the friends who were pushed out of jobs ... even if they were eminently overqualified ... Most of all, it's the small moments of discrimination that are so insidious, they’re hard to pinpoint. In my career, I've been excluded from key projects that were given to white women ... often made fun of and called 'defensive' and 'difficult to work with' by white men and women."
—Ruchika Tulshyan, The Seattle Times, September 20th, 2018
… and yet, my "mounting evidence" will probably be ignored — given the extent that white Americans irrationally fear (to the point of criminal insanity, in some cases) being surrounded by their tan/brown skinned counterparts, anger is a CONstant CONcern. However, in a world where we're literally one degree away from the planet overheating past the point of no return, are a white woman's feelings really worth more than the promotion of eco-friendly literature ..?!
"Living every single day with institutionalized racism and then having to argue its very existence — is tiring and saddening and angering. Yet if we express any emotion while talking about it, we're tone-policed, told we’re being angry. In fact, a key element in any [ethnic] argument in America is the 'Angry Black Person' ... they are 'just being overly sensitive' or 'too emotional' or 'playing the race card' ... The entire discussion of [ethnicity] in America centers around the protection of white feelings. Ask any black person and they’ll tell you the same thing. The reality of thousands of innocent people raped, shot, imprisoned and systematically disenfranchised are less important than ... a single white person ... This is the country we live in: Millions of black lives are valued less than a single white person’s hurt feelings."
—John Metta, The Huffington Post, July 15th, 2016
"[Dylann] Roof is that colonizer. White women are his land. His land is a she. His relationship to this country and the white women in it is the same: both belong to white men like him. In his mind, apparently, black people are the interlopers, the rapists, the plunderers of his natural resources, female and otherwise. It’s a twisted but not an unusual way to think about the world ... Historian Jacquelyn Dowd Hall describes Ames's work as a 'revolt against chivalry.' Ames understood that all oppression is interconnected ... Roof's act was racist, yes, but his racism was built upon colonialism and sexism. Our hierarchies interconnect, interweaving, providing each other with support. I am a white woman. I am NOT yours to protect. NO more murder in my name."
... AND YET ...
Wikipedia: Stabbing of Timothy Caughman
Law & Crime: James Harris Jackson convicted of murder and terrorism
"In an exclusive jailhouse interview with The News last week, [white supremacist AND MILITARY INTELLIGENCE OFFICER James Harris] Jackson said he imagined the bloodshed [as in, the MURDER of 66 year old Timothy Caughman] would deter white women from interr[ethnic] relationships. 'Well, if that guy feels so strongly about it, maybe I shouldn’t do it,' he said, imagining how he wanted a white woman to think of his savagery."
—The New York Daily News, April 5th, 2017
… B E C A U S E…
"We stand against the one-world government, against the coming world of anti-Christ, which is a one-world system of blending ... So we say, OK if they're going to blend this world and inter[ETHNIC] marriage is a very definite sort of blending, we said, 'let's put this policy in here.'"
"The point of segregation was to keep black southerners in their separate and inferior places. To do that, the state had to be able to tell who was who. In order to do that, like had to marry like. For more than 300 years, state legislatures wrote laws that defined whiteness for the purpose of marriage. Depending on the state and the decade, people who were more than half black, or a fourth black, or an eighth black, or one-sixteenth black, or even one-thirty-second black, could not marry anyone defined at law as white. These laws were the lodestar of segregation, because without controls on sex, [ethnic] classification became impossibly complicated. Inter[ethnic] sex — what white southerners called miscegenation — undercut all forms of segregation based on genealogy."
—historian Jane Dailey, from PBS' American Experience: The Murder of Emmitt Till
"As long as white women remained a racially pure source of production, the racist society could continue."
—Gloria Steinem, during her 2002 speech at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville
"If present immigration trends and falling white birth rates continue unabated, the end result will be total extinction for all whites on Earth within two hundred years. As a result, Captain Kirk will never be born — at least, not the Captain Kirk we're all familiar with."
—white supremacist author, Ward Kendall, from his article, "Why There May Never Be a Captain Kirk"
"Star Trek should have begun to use more and more members of 'minorities,' NOT less. Despite the fact that most of the world's technology is presently dominated by white- skinned Human beings, it will NOT always remain so. The stars and the planets will NOT be colonized by the Ku Klux Klan."
—David Gerrold (the author who created those ravenous Tribbles), from the 1973 book, The World of Star Trek
"Most men in this world are colored. A faith in Humanity, therefore, a belief in the gradual growth and perfectibility of men [i.e., the very basis of Gene Roddenberry's utopian series Star Trek] must, if honest, be primarily a belief in colored men."
—W.E.B. DuBois, 1938
… which brings me to Solar Warrior itself — the starring characters are named after Timothy Caughman and James Harris Jackson (if anything, the two of them form a sort of a Holmes/Moriarty, Batman/Joker connection in my narrative) and it's set in a future where tan/brown-skinned Humans vastly outnumber whites — I love my job …
… but as important as homage to this victim of a hate crime is, so too is the environment, so I ask again: In a world where we're literally one degree away from the planet overheating past the point of no return, are a white woman's feelings really worth more than the promotion of eco-friendly literature?! In conclusion …
NEELIX: The Trabe were widely admired ... No one really
knew about the Kazon and how they were being treated.
JANEWAY: Why not? Holding another culture in virtual
slavery isn't the kind of thing that could go unnoticed.
NEELIX: You have to understand. The Trabe were rich and
powerful. They manipulated information about the conditions on their
planet. And no one wanted to risk offending them and losing
opportunities for trade.
—from the Star Trek: Voyager episode, "Alliances"
... well, the days of manipulating information, losing opportunities, AND ESPECIALLY, WORRYING ABOUT "OFFENDING" A MOTHERFUCKER ARE FUCKING OVER! As the old expression goes …
"The world of speculative fiction publishing is plagued by 'structural, institutional, personal, universal' racism, according to a new report that found less than 2% of more than 2,000 SF stories published last year were by black writers.The report, published by the magazine, Fireside Fiction, states that just 38 of the 2,039 stories published in 63 magazines in 2015 were by black writers. With the bulk of the industry based in the US, more than half of all speculative fiction publications the report considered did not publish a single original story by a black author. 'The probability that it is random chance that only 1.96% of published writers are black in a country where 13.2% of the population is black is 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000321%,' says the report."
—Alison Flood, The Guardian (UK), August 9th, 2016
… denial ain't just a river in Egypt ..!
"A voluntary, free-spirited, open-ended program of procreative racial deconstruction. Everybody just gotta keep fuckin' everybody 'til we're all the same color."
—from the 1998 movie, Bullworth
… so here are all twenty-two episodes of Solar Warrior (uncensored; in their entirety) — and now, on with the show …
The Mighty Saab Lofton
King of the Impossible
January 2019
When a villain from the future alters Earth's past —
and accidentally creates legions of monsters in the process — one
man became the Human race's last hope. With a solar powered armor
that's literally centuries ahead of its time, Timothy Caughman is
known to the world as SOLAR WARRIOR !
Episode One
TUCKER: How about war, disease, hunger? Pretty much
wiped 'em out in less than two generations. I wouldn't call that
small potatoes.
T'POL: It remains to be seen whether Humanity will
revert to its baser instincts.
—from the Star Trek: Enterprise episode, "Broken Bow"
Under purified skies and atop the litter-free streets of a port
city entitled New Seattle, an increasingly tremendous assemblage of
Humans ranging from beige to brown adorned in garments reminiscent of
East Indian tunics congregated around a century old monument for the
unveiling of a revolutionary advance. Dozens of citizens amidst the
hundreds who gathered there tried to dance in anticipation of the
impending ceremony, but being surrounded by rapidly burgeoning crowds
made dancing awkward. Even a tad rude. "For frack's sake! That's
my foot, you drumpf!" an elderly lady complained in
pain.
"All apologies," an adolescent girl who had been
wildly flailing about slowed to a halt and strove to restrain herself
from then on.
Far closer to the large stage where the avant-garde
would be revealed had been several ornery Kindergarteners and
their already-weary teacher. "I can't see, Miss Straczynski!
Pick me up!" One urchin demanded.
"You know full
well you'll be able to see the hologram clearly enough, Eugene,"
Straczynski's strained patience was apparent in her tone.
Another
youngster raised his hand and queried, "Miss Z, are we
celebrating the President of a Green Liberation?"
Miss
Straczynski groaned in frustration, "you're mixing things up
again, Wesley. A member of the Green Party was elected President of
North America two hundred years ago and The Liberation
was one hundred years ago, but even though today is The
Liberation's centennial, that's not quite why we're here ...
and don't call me Miss Z!"
Meanwhile, behind the
scenes of this anticipated presentation; along a marina where Old
Seattle could be seen in the distance across cleansed waters, a
handful of brilliant scientists enjoyed a scant juncture of cherished
privacy and the illustrious Professor Maria Menounos was one of them.
"James, are you certain this solar cell will accumulate enough
electrons to ... James Harris Jackson! Please pay
attention!"
The professor's wayward apprentice, a
platinum blonde James Jackson, honed in on the audience instead of
his mentor's experimental generator and nearly sneered at the
gathering citizenry. "Yes, absolutely certain," he
grunted with a hint of contempt before storming off and isolating
himself as much as possible by heading towards the marina's furthest
pier.
Lumbering forth with an elephantine stride was a seven foot,
five hundred pound golden automaton — or so it seemed, but moments
later, a hermetically sealed helmet unlocked and an Afrocentric
Adonis was seen underneath ... "Why would Jackson take off like
that just as we're about to start? Do you need me to slip out of this
and replace him?"
Professor Menounos remembered the vehement
and even primitive arguments James Harris Jackson engaged in recently
about him being the last of his kind, but she dismissed them under
the assumption this was simply a phase her apprentice was passing
through. "No, keep the armor on, Tim. I can do this by myself.
As they used to say, 'the show must go on.'"
Shortly before
the curtains parted, that January weather turned for the worst, which
was to be expected in the Pacific Northwest. "Aww, nah!"
The lad called Wesley bewailed. "It's getting cloudy! We won't
have to go back to school if this is cancelled, will we? I want to go
home early if there's a blackout!"
"In the name of
Boyega, child!" An exacerbated Kindergarten teacher declared.
"Unless every single sunlight collecting satellite falls from
the sky, there won't be any blackout!"
"Welcome,
everyone, to what you've been waiting for!" Professor Maria
Menounos announced even as she noticed how swiftly the heavens became
overcast. "We chose the anniversary of The Liberation, because
back then, they used to claim space exploration was supposedly
escapism; that we didn't deserve to colonize other worlds so long as
we polluted this one. Well, the only atrocities these days are in our
history books, so I dare say we're finally worthy and ready!
Behold, my Nanauatzin Engine, which I named after the most humble of
the Aztec gods, who according to myth, sacrificed himself in fire so
he could shine upon Earth as the sun! Anyway, these cells turn
sunlight into electricity, which ionizes xenon into an exhaust that
distorts the space-time continuum and accelerates a starship faster
than the speed of light! Instead of taking months to reach Mars,
it'll only take minutes! Minutes! The solution to
overpopulation is colonization!"
As applause erupted, the
slightest of misty precipitation descended and was accompanied by the
rumbling of thunder, but the professor ignored this. "But wait!
There's more! If you're worried that it'll take a long time to
terraform Mars; to create an artificial magnetosphere, raise its
temperature, and perform other functions to make it inhabitable, then
worry no longer! Allow me to introduce an apprentice of mine,
Timothy Caughman ..!"
From the rear of the theater platform
came an armored Timothy and the sight of a giant metallic enormity
initially startled and even frightened this mostly pacifist
citizenry, but that apprehension soon dwindled.
"...
technically speaking, Tim is a mechanic and not an astronaut,"
Menounos elucidated, "but a terraformer wearing this armor can
withstand conditions on nearly any planet — and if you kids want to
see something really cool ..."
Picking up on his cue,
Timothy Caughman ignited a miniature flamethrower which emitted a
fifty foot long pillar of fire straight into the air, and once it was
safely extinguished, he then demonstrated a limited form of
magnetokinesis by compelling a sampling of needles and utensils to
literally float.
"... as you can see," the Latina
scientist concluded, "the United Nations is doing everything
it can to hasten colonization, so be patient and—"
S H T R A - K O W !
A bolt of lightning interrupted the professor, struck her
generator, reacted with its gravimetric circuits and inadvertently
tore a rupture in the universe itself, which assumed the form of an
enormous portal — through it, one could discern scenery from the
early 21st century; unregulated industries contaminating the planet,
back-to-back traffic, imperialistic disinformation and homeless
families huddled in their vehicles shielding themselves from the
cold.
"Is it part of the show?" Someone in the audience
wondered. "Is it a holographic history lesson?"
"If
that's how our ancestors lived," another audience member
mentioned, "thank Yahweh I won the sperm lottery and was born
when I was! Ugh!"
For his part, James Harris Jackson
focused on this scenery's prevalence of Caucasians, such as himself,
and almost salivated as he bolted from the waterfront, past a cluster
of New Seattle's residents and leapt into the portal's event horizon.
"Let's find out if it's an illusion or if it's real
..!"
Subsequent to disappearing inside this portal to
yesterday, Professor Maria Menounos screamed to Timothy, "I
didn't want to say anything out of respect for confidentiality, but
James has a serious problem with being pale in a dark- skinned
world! If that is the past, he could easily change history for
the worse! You've got to stop him, Tim! Bring
his ass back here ..!"
In a single bound, Timothy
Caughman went in after Jackson without question or hesitation —
armor and all — only for that portal to collapse upon itself
no sooner than he entered.
TO BE CONTINUED
When a villain from the future alters Earth's past —
and accidentally creates legions of monsters in the process — one
man became the Human race's last hope. With a solar powered armor
that's literally centuries ahead of its time, Timothy Caughman is
known to the world as SOLAR WARRIOR !
Episode Two
PAXTON: Don't you realize that baby is as much a threat
to your race as it is to mine?
T'POL: She's NOT a threat.
PAXTON: That child is a cross-breed freak. How many
generations before our genome is so diluted that the word Human is
nothing more than a footnote in some medical text? The same thing
could happen to your people or don't you care about that?
T'POL: Neither of our races are what they were a
million years ago nor what they will become in the future. Life. Is.
Change.
—from the Star Trek: Enterprise episode, "Terra Prime"
Tumbling out of a temporal portal, which was the result of an
unprecedented accident, James Harris Jackson emerged in the middle of
a filthy alleyway where a tatterdemalion with pale skin, blond hair
and blue eyes soiled himself while he gulped liquor from a nearly
empty bottle. "What the ..? Where did you come
from, man?" The tatterdemalion stammered at a stranger who
literally appeared out of nowhere. "Or am I finally starting to
see things? If I am hallucinating, I've got to remember to
ask for this particular brand of booze in the future!"
Curling
his upper lip into a sneer, Jackson looked down upon the drunken
vagrant and lamented, "ironic you should mention 'the future,'
old man — if you only knew how it'll be ruined because
Caucasians fell from grace just as you clearly have
..!"
Barely able to walk, the tatterdemalion still managed to
at least stand on his own in defiance of James Harris Jackson's
insulting accusation. "What's this 'fall from grace' stuff, man?
Only reason I'm out here is it's too expensive to live with
any dignity, so I figured, to Hell with it!"
"Then to
Hell with you and your wasted potential ..." as callously as one
would exterminate an insect, Jackson tossed a sunlight-galvanized
pyrotechnic (similar to a roadside flare) that's common in his time
at the tatterdemalion, but without its safety features activated, so
it quickly consumed this homeless Human in flames until only charred
embers remained. "... well, if he was an ancestor of
mine, I'd have already ceased to exist, but I'm still here,
so ... Glad I had my tool kit on me when I jumped through that
..."
Turning around so he could see behind himself, James
Harris Jackson noticed the dissipation of that portal between
historical periods and inwardly realized he'd be stranded without
it.
"... whatever it was," the acutely high tech
mechanic with psychotic characteristics remarked, "well, I
suppose I should find out exactly when I am."
With a
radically leading-edge palmtop computer that Jackson happened to have
had on his person during that century-spanning journey, he accessed
cyberspace and immediately determined the exact date inhabited by
him. "So this is 2016 of all years, eh? And it's
January, no less."
Even as his sinister mind began to
contemplate the ramifications of time travel (and concoct plots),
James Harris Jackson examined the headline of an online journalistic
periodical. "Let's see here, 'the International Atomic Energy
Agency announced that Iran has adequately dismantled its nuclear
weapons program ... the United Nations is expected to lift sanctions'
... atomic energy, indeed! Should I tell them the future is solar?
That the United Nations will take control one day and dismantle all
nuclear weapons?"
Then Jackson was reminded by an
adjacent headline who's been President of the United States during
this era and said reminder triggered him. "The mongrel Obama!
If only I landed a few years earlier — then again, if I remember my
history, maybe it's not too late to change things ..."
Renting
an entire auditorium within a massive Freemason temple seemed to have
been a waste to time, since only a handful of vapid, disheveled
individuals had arrived at an event organized by the xenophobic Sons
of Odin, but a fervent reactionary lecturer carried on nevertheless
... "Superman? 'Last survivor of the doomed planet Krypton?'
Well, not one but two Jews created that character! A character
that was depicted with a beautiful white woman, like my daughter! Oh,
I know a Jewish conspiracy when I see one! 'Get the kids used to the
idea of aliens and white women bein' together —lovin' each
other ..!'"
That motley collection of bigots hissed their
disapproval and jeered before the speaker returned to his
hatred-filled tirade, "then came integration, and all of a
sudden, there were all these movies and TV series and celebrities
tellin' us to jump in a big ol' melting pot and forget about your
past, your culture, your people! Well, the Sons of Odin won't
tolerate it, so join us!" Those jeers soon turned to cheers.
"Fantasy or reality, I don't want any kind of alien
'round here! I'm proud to be who and what I am and ain't nothin'
wrong with a li'l pride!"
"Well, First Contact hasn't
been made by 2216, so there's that at least."
That
handful of totalitarians whirled around and turned their attention to
the stranger who interrupted a lecture they were irrationally
enamored with. "Huh? First what?" A particularly
burly teenager adorned in Nazi swastikas rose from his seat and
stormed forth as he addressed this uninvited guest with hostility.
"Look, we don't want any crazies at our meeting, even if they
are white, so just turn around and—"
James Harris
Jackson obtained another solar powered flare from his carryall
satchel, but instead of overloading as he did in the alleyway (and at
that homeless man's expense), the early 23rd century mechanic simply
let it burst ever-so-slightly in the face of that hostile adolescent
until blindness set in. "Aaarrrrgh ..!"
"He'll
be fine, eventually ..." Jackson clinched what was only meant to
furnish illumination during an emergency and held it aloft just as a
priest would elevate a sacrament against vampires. "... but it
could've been a lot worse, so back off!"
After
reaching an irate-but-terrified orator, the engineer who had yet to
be born demanded, "that means you too, Mister Conspiracy! Go
sit down, I have something important to say that I know you'll
be interested in ... so this is it? Six? Unless each of you
are as strong as Superman, you're definitely going to need my
help! My name is James, I am in fact from two hundred years in
your future, and believe me, it's nothing like William Luther
Pierce's The Turner Diaries — behold ..!"
With a
miniature projector retrieved from his satchel, James Harris Jackson
displayed several three-dimensional holograms of life in New Seattle
and the sight of a predominantly tawny/mahogany citizenry upset or
infuriated the smattering of totalitarians. "This is just so ...
that can't be ..." One white supremacist rambled in
angst.
"And how did, or rather will, this dystopia
happen?" Jackson corrected himself before answering his own
question. "A welfare state that guarantees every-single- person
on the planet an apartment and plenty to eat! Eleven billion
people worldwide at last count, because at some point, we stopped
counting! Now, I have a plan — if you so-called 'Sons of
Odin' want to really make a difference, gather around
..."
Since he entered that century-spanning entrance a dozen
seconds after his racist counterpart had, an armored Timothy Caughman
emerged nearly a year later, and as a result of this temporal
differential, he found himself marooned in a far more precarious
America.
"President Trump? No, no, no ...
it's supposed to be President Doctor Jill Stein from the Green
Party who wins in 2016!" Caughman groaned and ignored the stares
his armor understandably garnered as he read a discarded newspaper.
"And who the frack is Donald Trump anyway?"
TO BE CONTINUED
When a villain from the future alters Earth's past —
and accidentally creates legions of monsters in the process — one
man became the Human race's last hope. With a solar powered armor
that's literally centuries ahead of its time, Timothy Caughman is
known to the world as SOLAR WARRIOR !
Episode Three
MARTIN: There are alternatives to war. We take our case
before the king. We plead with him.
LEE: Yes, we tried that.
MARTIN: Well, then we try again and again, if
necessary, to avoid a war!
—from the 2000 movie, The Patriot
HELEN: We can change.
KLAATU: You lack the will to change.
PROFESSOR BARNHARDT: It is only on the brink that
people find the will to change.
—from the 2008 movie, The Day the Earth Stood Still
Many impressions swam in Timothy Caughman's mind and competed to
determine which felt the most overwhelming: Marooning himself in a
primitive time period, the disorientation of being enveloped by
dystopic scenery that, up until this point, had only been seen by him
academically; in historic records or reenactments, but every
Kindergartner in the twenty-third century is taught that the 2016
general election was when the Green Party finally won the American
presidency, against all odds ...
... so the sight of a completely
different (not to mention potentially dangerous) candidate a stone's
throw from America's presidential inauguration had to have been more
tormenting than anything else. "That worthless bastard!"
An alarmed Timothy screamed, which made him stand out on the streets
of Old Seattle almost as much as his imposing armor. "James
Harris Jackson must be responsible for this!"
By the
time Timothy Caughman noticed the sizable audience of stray passerby
his startling presence amassed, a policeman approached and sounded
anxious, "whatever this is supposed to be, get it out of the
way! You're big as Andre the Giant and you're blocking
traffic!"
Given that Caughman's exoskeleton was five hundred
pounds, it marginally splintered the concrete pavement; enough to
leave twenty-inch footprints behind, which angered an
already-impatient policeman. "You're going to have to take off
that helmet and give me some I.D.," one of Seattle's Finest
insisted, "whichever movie studio you work for better damn well
pay for all this damage!"
"I.D.? Movie studio?"
Timothy stammered, unfamiliar as he was with 21st
century terminology.
Assuming Timothy Caughman was either under
the influence or merely being snarky, the policeman lost his temper.
"Still waiting for you to take off that helmet ..!"
Designed
to analyze the environmental conditions of
inhospitable/uninhabitable planets, Caughman's terraforming armor
warned that the air of this barbaric era was hazardous to his
welfare, so he (not-so-)politely declined, "are you joking?
According to these readings, all of you should have helmets
on!"
"All right, that's it ..." The officer tried
to arrest this visitor from the future, but the latter had read far
too many horror stories concerning the atrocities of
turn-of- the-millennium law enforcement to succumb, let alone
surrender his visionary armor to barbarians, so with the slightest
ounce of force, he easily cast the policeman aside.
"A
suspect in some kind of goddamn Iron Man costume is resisting arrest
and he just assaulted me — requesting backup ..!" Were
the determinative words broadcast over federal radio, and within
thirty seconds, the armored newcomer found himself surrounded by a
handful of Seattle's Finest.
"Well, I suppose it's no
different than fighting Neanderthals, Emperor Nero or Hitler's Nazis
..." With a shrug, Timothy Caughman began gently swatting
patrolmen in a manner similar to Frankenstein's monster warding off
torch- wielding villagers.
Then came the firearms, which were
aimed at Timothy's shimmering armor, but rather than endangering any
nearby citizenry, he magnetically levitated the bullets that had
been directed at him — thus preventing them from bouncing off of his
chest and accidentally piercing the innocent in the process ...
...
so while the constabulary of Old Seattle were mind boggled by how
their projectiles were held still, in mid-flight, by a phenomenal
technology — only to later collapse harmlessly like droplets of
sleet — Caughman jumped like a caricatural kangaroo into the distant
horizon ...
... and landed several miles away onto the rooftop of
a filthy tenement. "Great, so now I'm a fugitive," Timothy
Caughman lamented to himself, "well, at least they never
actually saw my face. From what I recall in school, the darker
skinned you are, the worse off you'll be."
Whirling around to
ensure he was alone, Timothy removed his helmet, but felt congested
by airborne pollutants within minutes. "Ugh! Won't be
doing that again anytime soon! Ironic that I'm now an alien on
my own planet — well, at least Jackson must also be
suffering, so maybe that'll make the bastard easier to
find ..."
After a year of breathing 21st century air in
urban areas out of an irrational desire to appear more virile, an
ultramasculine James Harris Jackson eventually became permanently
dependent on a bronchial inhaler, which certainly set him apart from
the white supremacists he had assembled as his minions. "Anyone
ever tell you you sound just like Darth Vader from Star Wars?"
A particularly muscular segregationist rhetorically queried during a
large gathering organized by the much vaunted Sons of Odin in a nerve
center of the Republican Party.
"Either that or an obscene
phone caller," another muscle-bound simpleton chimed in, but a
malevolent expression on Jackson's countenance silenced this
ignoramus soon enough, "uh, I didn't mean anything by that,
Mister Jackson, Sir."
"I'm sure ... you didn't ..."
An intimidating James Harris Jackson strenuously responded.
Though
most were there to celebrate the inauguration of Donald Trump,
a minority of them had revolution on their so-called minds. "Yeah,
well, it's nice that he's about to get sworn in and all, but unless
we do something to show him, and the world, that we're dead
serious, he'll forget all about us just like every other conservative
has."
The 23rd century interloper furrowed his brow and
angrily frowned at the minion who challenged him, "listen to me
...very carefully ... I'm from the future ... so I
know better ..." he advised with an extremely asthmatic
voice "... electing Trump ... is all we need to do
... for now, at least ... anything more ... at this point
... and we risk ... alienating the public!"
"The future
— right ..." An unconvinced Son of Odin returned
Jackson's frown with one of his own — then he began to abscond
...
... before departing, however, that challenging reactionary;
the would-be revolutionary covertly ordered a subordinate to "borrow"
solar powered components from James Harris Jackson's handbag without
permission ...
... and those components were soon crudely used to
augment a homemade bomb (a strontium-90 thermal generator; with the
ability to create an incident comparable to Chernobyl), which was
smuggled into the Columbia Nuclear Facility near Richland,
Washington. "We are the Sons of Odin and we refuse to sit idly
by while the globalists swallow whites whole like the Blob from that
1950s horror movie," that racist ominously announced to the
masses via cyberspace, "so either Trump declares himself
emperor and enacts a final solution or we'll light this nuke up
like a Christmas tree! We would rather die than have
our distant descendants look like rapper Ice T or singer Mariah
Carey!"
Unfortunately, when the renegade Sons of Odin were
ignored or filibustered by the authorities — and they tried to
power their contraband generator with the ultramodern
microelectronics; the small crystals of gallium-selenide stolen from
Jackson — a plume of flame consumed them: Fourteen xenophobes and
eighty- eight hostages were lost in this incandescent holocaust.
A
colossal fireball engulfed all of the Columbia Nuclear Facility and
lifted itself towards the troposphere, where it metamorphosed — as a
result of the clumsy inclusion of those crystals — into a cosmic
anomaly; blindly driven by solar currents with an elemental profile
unlike any other ...
... what became deemed by environmentalists
in the media as "the Columbia Storm" roamed America's
firmament and earned a frightening reputation, for if it lingered
over a creature long enough, there was at least a chance that an
acceleration — or rather, a bastardization — of evolution would
happen.
A fawn, for instance, in the woodlands of Richland,
Washington had been innocently gnawing on vegetation when the
Columbia Storm meandered like a mist until a gruesome mutation
commenced. Hours later, nearby campers were slaughtered by a deer
with razor sharp antlers, an extra pair of limbs and molars the size
of a saber-toothed tiger's.
Then there was that fleet of white
rabbits — liberated by militants for animal rights in order to be
spared experimentation by the cosmetic industry — which were
immersed in this same miasma ... Upon being granted enhanced speed,
not to mention a vampiric craving, they turned on, and then devoured,
their vegan/vegetarian liberators.
As benign and innocuous as a
common fawn and those bunnies had been, the question soon became,
what might transpire if the Columbia Storm ever altered nature's
predators ..?
TO BE CONTINUED
When a villain from the future alters Earth's past —
and accidentally creates legions of monsters in the process — one
man became the Human race's last hope. With a solar powered armor
that's literally centuries ahead of its time, Timothy Caughman is
known to the world as SOLAR WARRIOR !
Episode Four
THOMAS WAYNE: You know why they attacked you, don't
you? They were afraid ... All creatures feel fear.
BRUCE WAYNE: Even the scary ones?
THOMAS WAYNE: Especially the scary ones.
—from the 2005 movie, Batman Begins
SERAPH: I had to be sure ... that you are The One.
NEO: You could have just asked.
SERAPH: No, you do not truly know someone until you
fight them.
—from the 2003 movie, The Matrix Reloaded
Mockingly called the President of the Electoral College as a
result of his failure to secure the popular vote, Donald Trump
predictably reacted to the destruction of a nuclear plant — not to
mention the subsequent and unprecedented threat of mutated beasts —
by declaring martial law as well as waging war on foreign terrorists
despite the established fact that white supremacists were the guilty
party behind this atrocity ...
"It is time to expose and hold
responsible those countries whose support and finance terror groups
like al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, the Taliban and others that slaughter
innocent people. The Iranian government, for instance, masks a
corrupt dictatorship behind the false guise of a democracy," the
more straightforward commentators in broadcasting remarked how
hypocritical it had been for an American like Trump to make that
claim, "it has turned a wealthy country, with a rich history and
culture, into an economically depleted rogue state whose chief
exports are violence, bloodshed and chaos. We cannot let a murderous
regime continue these destabilizing activities."
...
ironically, while the militarization of policemen, the strict
limitation of nocturnal movement and the random internment of Muslims
cemented Trump's reputation as a despot, the harm caused by him had
been countered, even negated, by the extent that monstrous versions
of animals lunged upon anyone he commanded more often than not.
An
example of how Trump's implementation of fascism was seriously
hindered occurred during the purge of an Islamic mosque: Surrounded
by angry demonstrations, national guardsmen forced protesters at
gunpoint to stand at a distance whenever worshipers were
unceremoniously, even violently, escorted into transports bound for
prison.
However, an already-formidable-by-nature grizzly bear was
altered earlier by the appearance of a certain solar/nuclear-created
weather pattern, so after being outrageously empowered by the
so-called Columbia Cloud, it staggered out of nearby timberland, on
its hindquarters, with a murderous desire to nourish a ravenous
hunger.
"Sweet Jesus ..!" A national guardsman
invoked a Christian sentiment even as he imprisoned Muslims and
became the first to satiate that beast's appetite.
Only
considering that soldier to be a mere hors d'oeuvre, the gargantuan
bear then devoured another ... and another ... The comrades
of those dead soldiers tried to ward it off, but its hide was solid
enough to at least tolerate bullets. Meanwhile, the followers of
Islam unjustly led out of that temple were hastily liberated and
concealed by several radicals during this welcome, if ghastly,
complication. "Where will my family go?" A Muslim parent
whispered in desperation.
"One thing at a time, dude,"
an activist quietly stated, "for now, let's just hope 'Yogi
Bear' over there keeps these pigs occupied."
Extremely
melancholy over the unsettling alterations made to a timeline he
recalled learning in school, Timothy Caughman determined it'd be best
that he depart the city and retreat to the country for cleaner air to
breathe — not to mention the evasion of law enforcement ... From
there, the 23rd century tinkerer could better prepare to find and
confront a criminally insane James Harris Jackson.
Timothy had
remained in his terraforming armor since journeying through history,
and as a result, he depleted the scant amount of rations it
contained, so replenishing an empty stomach was also an important
mandate for him.
Jumping miles at a time, Caughman eventually
chanced upon a solitary house nestled amidst forests on the
northernmost outskirts of Seattle. He very nearly dared to inquire
whether its owner would provide food in exchange for performed
chores, but the attempt to make that request was interrupted by a
shrill and painful wail for help.
Timothy Caughman soon discovered
an individual in an expensive business suit being eviscerated by a
mountain lion of gigantic proportions that almost resembled a Human.
"Great, my first mutant," he lamented.
A whirlwind of
fangs and talons, the aberrant feline pounced from the businessman's
remains to an armored stranger who disturbed its dinner.
For a
moment, it seemed as if this monster of a cougar would overpower that
visitor from the future, but that was only because Timothy
demonstrated restraint by waiting for an opportunity to cripple
instead of kill the malformed animal.
Once the feline was rendered
unconscious, Caughman examined the mauled man and noticed
bloodstained credentials indicating this must have been a government
agent. "What's someone from 'the National Security Agency'
doing all the way out here?" He wondered with concern.
TO BE CONTINUED
When a villain from the future alters Earth's past —
and accidentally creates legions of monsters in the process — one
man became the Human race's last hope. With a solar powered armor
that's literally centuries ahead of its time, Timothy Caughman is
known to the world as SOLAR WARRIOR !
Episode Five
"The way the system works, the loner, the dreamer, the crackpot who comes up with some crazy idea that everybody laughs at, that later turns out to revolutionize the world — [s]he's squashed from above before [s]he even gets his[or her] head out of the water because the bureaucrats, they'd rather kill a new idea than let it rock the boat! If Benjamin Franklin were alive today, he'd be thrown in jail for sailing a kite without a license ... If big business closes the door on the little guy [or gal] with a new idea, we're not only closing the door on progress, but we're sabotaging everything that we fought for! Everything that the country stands for! And one day we're gonna find ourselves at the bottom of the heap instead of king of the hill, having no idea how we got there."
—from the 1988 movie, Tucker: The Man and His Dream
Timothy Caughman soon noticed that slain agent wasn't the only
victim of a monstrously enhanced feline — several other corpses were
sprawled along a bloodstained woodland and each one had apparently
been a servant of the American Empire ...
... so he understandably
assumed that next sound heard by him; that of a shotgun being pumped,
was simply another imperialist, but instead, his eyes feasted upon
the sight of an absolutely beautiful, slender-yet-shapely blonde lady
in her early thirties adorned in snug, timeworn denim. "What the
actual Hell are you ..?!" She exclaimed with alarm and
a hint of wonder, "Is this what our tax dollars are being
wasted on? Solid gold armor? Typical of Trump! Well, unless you want
me to find out if it's bulletproof, I highly suggest you get off my
property!"
Aside from a chance meeting with the police
subsequent to his emergence in the 21st century, Timothy only
conversed with himself out of angst, so this was the first
conversation he had with a native of this savage era. "I
probably shouldn't say this, but since history has already been
radically changed … First of all, it's not solid gold; it's
mainly a nickel-titanium alloy called nitinol, otherwise, I'd be too
heavy to move. Second of all, what are tax dollars? This was built by
a labor cooperative of engineers. Finally, if this is your
property, I'd like to talk—"
"—talk to this,
you crazy bastard ..!" Afraid the armored stranger in her front
yard could be a madman, the blonde lady hurled a slug of molten lead
from the rifle she nervously wielded – only to see it hover in
mid-air at least half a meter before its target was reached …
"In the name of Carl Sagan! How did you … How are you
able to ..?"
Caughman smiled from underneath an oval helmet
while he held a single hand aloft in order to levitate that bullet.
"Now Sagan I've heard of! There's a statue of him in New
Seattle, but this …" After lowering his arm, the
projectile abruptly fell onto an ensanguined lawn. "…
this was designed to help create an artificial magnetosphere
for Mars so it could be colonized. That's why my suit can
manipulate electromagnetic fields — at least to a limited extent …
Now are you ready to put that weapon down and listen to
reason?"
The lady didn't simply lower her firearm, she let it
plummet out of utter astonishment — and then fainted …
…
upon awakening minutes later, the blonde had been gently lifted to
her feet until she could stand by a seven foot tall, five hundred
pound golden giant. "So, are you a robot?"
"I'm
Timothy," for a fleeting moment, that helmet unfastened so the
countenance of a dark skinned Human could be seen, but then it
hastily sealed itself, "I'm from what you'd consider the
future, where the air's much better, which is why I prefer to
keep this on … Then again, given everything that's happened, I
should've ceased to exist by now."
Timothy Caughman
reluctantly explained that he originated from an
environmentally-versed future and elucidated his desperate pursuit of
James Harris Jackson for damaging the timeline by empowering Trump in
particular and white supremacists in general.
"Wow …
just, wow … Well, I'm Lily Sinclair, and if what you're
saying is even partially true, then the government must be
after you too … Is that why you killed those men
..?"
Initially bewildered, the time traveler whirled around
until he realized Lily had meant the agents who'd been violently rent
asunder and even devoured. "Them? No, that mutated cat
did it."
Turning Sinclair's attention to the nearly Humanoid
feline in the distance that had been unconscious for the longest, he
blanched with concern when she naïvely gallivanted in its
direction. "Uh, what exactly are you doing ..?"
"I'm
petting it," Lily daintily answered, "it's so
adorable." ERR-ROWL ..!
A startled Lily Sinclair
quickly staggered backwards to avoid being disemboweled by a swipe
from the claw of an animal she stimulated. Fortuitously, this beast's
legs had been lastingly incapacitated, so it could only slither after
her and barely at that.
"Still think it's adorable?"
Timothy smirked. "Now that I did do — lucky for
you … Listen, aside from rations, I haven't eaten since
I went back in time, so is there something I can do for you in
exchange for a meal?"
Lily inwardly contemplated the enormous
opportunity that presented itself — a gargantuan manservant with
fantastic talents — but that handful of lifeless federal employees
proved to be very diverting. "Yeah, sure, how good are you at
digging graves? Last thing I need is to give those bastards another
reason to come after me, so their bodies need to be hid and
quick … Say, if you really are from the future, you
wouldn't happen to know next week's lottery numbers, would you?"
"Do
you mean Shirley Jackson's classic story, The Lottery?"
Caughman inquired as he began singlehandedly unearthing large
clusters of dirt in a Herculean manner.
Sinclair sighed and rolled
her eyes. "Well, at least it's nice to know reading is
considered more important than money in the future … Money
sure does come in handy in this day and age, though —
especially when you're trying to discover renewable sources of
power."
The time traveler had rapidly excavated one mass
grave for all the government operatives who were eviscerated before
responding, "is that why these men came after you? Are
you pioneering solar power? That's what this armor of mine runs
on."
"Water, actually," Lily revealed, "I'm on
the verge of obtaining clean energy by separating hydrogen and oxygen
atoms from water molecules. All I need is enough time to discover the
frequency that stabilizes my process, so if anything, what I really
need is a bodyguard; someone to watch over me while I work.
Sooner or later, more 'federales' will come looking for their dead
friends and I need to be done by then … So, what do you say,
'Solar Warrior,' will you help ..?"
TO BE CONTINUED
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