Week 15: Jordan Staggs- Yes. A Giant Robot

Full Prompt: “Yes, a giant robot. That's the kind of thing you had to deal with as a "superhero." It was still hard to come to terms with that job title. And it did make explaining things to his roommate difficult”

Story:

“DUDE!” 

“What?!”

“What’s all over the carpet??… Oil? Is this OIL?!… maaaan, we’re never going to get our security deposit back…” 

“Crap. Yeah, alright, hold on. Let me try something…”

My thinking was that if the robot had been pumping a non-synthetic oil I might be able to pull it from the carpet. We were in luck. He was, and I could.

“You know I won’t ever get tired of seeing that, but you gotta be more careful. That is unlessss you wanna ‘manipulate’ some money into our pockets…”

“C’mon.”

“Your rules! I’m just sayin’… paper used to be trees- aren’t they ‘elemental’ enough for you?” 

My roommate was, yet again, hatching a scheme to use my powers to our capital gain. Something I wasn’t about to do. In my late teens I began to be able to manipulate the four elements- earth, fire, wind, water- its something my parents never got to see. Powers like these historically display around age 10 in my family. For some reason mine took longer to mature. They’ve been missing now for 12 years- my parents, that is. Most people think they’re dead. I’ve never known what to think. Except that they both stood up for what they believed to be right. It’s getting harder to see in those terms these days- right and wrong- but on a gut level, I have to believe most humans know when they’re doing something right. And even more know when they’re doing something wrong. 

“So… what’s the oil from?”

“Giant robot.”

“A GIANT ROBOT?!”

“Yeah, man.”

“Holy! What?! Come on, dish! How did you beat it? Wait, you’re not hurt again, are you?” 

“My back is pretty scraped up but I think I’m okay.”

“Lemme see… uh- woah. Uhh… Quint, you’re… it doesn’t look… Okay, lay down. I’ll go get Eve.”

Providentially and thankfully my and O’s neighbor is an RN. On top of that, both he and she are keen on keeping my not-so-secret, secret. Now that he’d mentioned it, my back did hurt. I hadn’t used the best approach in this giant robot scenario. To my defense it hadn’t yet destroyed anything by the time I had arrived. That changed quickly. Dad would have figured that. And mom probably would have dispatched it quicker than I was capable.

My father was able to calculate the probability of any situation instantaneously. To watch him, one would wonder if his power was actually to see the future. In his own words, though “All probabilities have a failure rate. One day the math says I’ll be wrong- I just hope your mother isn’t around when it happens,” I remember him saying with a wink. But there was never going to be a scenario when my mother wasn’t around to help him. She trusted him implicitly. She had the classic powers: flight, invulnerability; she was the muscle. She was the one on cereal boxes. 

“Quinten- I saw your fight on the news. Let me take a look at your back,” came the voice of Eve Flores, our neighbor, as she breezed in the door.

“Hey doc, thanks for coming over.”

“Several lacerations, nothing too deep or serious. I’ll just clean these up and give you something to ward off infection.” 

“Thanks, Eve.” 

“You’re welcome, but you should take it easy for a couple of days.”

“Hah, yeah, I’ll do my best.”

“One of these times you’re not gonna to be so lucky…”

You could feel the room fill to the brim with awkward as Eve realized what she had said- in realtion to my parents’ demise. 

“I’ll walk you back to your place, Eve” O blurted out to cut the silence.

“Feel better.” Eve offered through soulful eyes.

“Thank you- and it's okay.” I replied.

As they both left I flipped on the news Eve had mentioned.

::…was seen fighting off a massive robot in the Central District this afternoon. It was quite a spectacle as the hero used old brick debris from a recently demolished brown-stone to break through the defenses of the mechanical menace. Then delivering a short- circuiting, final blow, via use of water from a near-by fire hydrant. As it stands, it seems no one was…:: bzzZZZzzZZuurRRppsshhhhhh 

The television went static as a voice crackled on before an image blurred into view.

“Quinten Quansah, Quinten Quansah- this transmission should be reaching you and you alone. Quinten, you, in your small two bedroom apartment, on the fifth floor of a building on Chestnut Avenue. Do I have your attention?” The shifting, spectacled image questioned. “I don’t have much time- or rather, time is of the essence. There is still a chance to save your parents. Am I coming in clear? Do you understand? I repeat, there is still a chance to save your parents!” 

VvVvVrrrksssshhhHHhhHhhhh…

“…and that’s when things got really interesting…”

The news ironically returned as I shot up and stared at the tv. 

“Hey man, do you wanna order up some pizza?… what’s your deal?…” O questioned as he returned.

“Osiris. Someone on the television just said…they told me… there was, there’s still a chance to save my parents…”

“Quint… I think you’re a little more banged up than we thought. I’m gonna go get Eve again.”

“No. It was real. A transmission. And I recognized the person’s voice.”

“Who was it?!”

“…It was my father.”