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C H A P T E R O N E : T H E L O N G W A Y H O M E
DOWN A GRAYMALKIN LANE
W E S T C H E S T E R
November 12th, 2017 | 6:22p.m. | The Xavier Institute of Higher Learning
“Are you really... Captain Marvel?”
The new kid was named Sammy Pare. He seemed like he was about Billy’s age. Kinda. Maybe. His mutation was so aberrant in appearance that it would have been hard to really say for certain.
The X-Men had detected someone or something landing on the mansion grounds. An ad hoc team composed of Scott, Megan, and Ilyanna dispatched from the house to Breakstone Lake in order to investigate.
They were on guard. The tension around the three had been palpable, as they were rather startled at discovering a tee shirt and shorts clad Billy Batson sitting on the snowy banks of an icy lake, just staring up at the sky.
As Captain Marvel, he flew around the sunless reaches of the most desolate parts of the galaxy, where temperatures could be negative 455 degrees. Or negative 270 Celsius, if you were into that sort of thing. Here, in lower New York State, it was only about 34 degrees and the X-Men were acting like he was going to freeze to death any moment now.
They’d planted him in a chair at a table in the kitchen, around which Billy seemed to have found the Spanish Inquisition. In no particular order, Sammy was questioning Billy’s identity and/or the nature of reality. It was probably both, or the same thing, owing to the fact that the hero he’d heard about for probably his whole childhood was not only sitting right there, but looked to be his same age. Jean was making the boy a plate of leftovers. Ilyanna was helping catch him up on sports. Megan was looking to see if they had any clothes that might fit him. And Scott was giving him a strategic overview of what had happened since the whole Limbo thing.
We have the best helicarriers. I've talked to my people at SHIELD. Really, really great people. And they assure me it's great. It's going to be huge. And, you know what? You know what folks? It's going to be made in America. And we're going to make Hydra pay for it. It's true.
“The guy from The Apprentice is President?”
The television running CNN in the background helped to fill in a couple of gaps in the deluge of information overload that he was receiving at present. Ronald Reagan had been an actor, so having someone from who wasn’t a career civil servant or politician in the White House was not unheard of in American politics. Nevertheless, as Billy sat there in front of a bowl of cereal, the fact that someone he associated as a television personality was now the leader of the free world was something of a culture shock.
The year was 2017. It was nearly two years since Billy had departed for the troubled Kymellian world of Arcon, time that Billy -- traveling at velocities greater than the speed of light -- recounted as the passage of weeks.
Donald J. Trump had run against Hillary Clinton for President of the United States. Both were subject to questions about Russian connections. He was mired in allegations of sexual harassment. She was plagued by questions about e-mail use.
“What’s e-mail again?”
The world had changed.
Billy had been born in the late 1970’s. Before the accident that had claimed the lives of his parents, he’d had a normal 1980s childhood. There really weren’t that many electronics. He played outside mostly. Video games were things you played at an arcade.
He didn’t think that he’d ever even heard of such a thing as a home computer. Electric typewriters. Word processors. But a computer? At home?
Cellular telephones had been these neigh mysterious inventions that belonged on television. No one Billy knew growing up had one.
Now people walked around with telephones in their pockets that could pull down information from the Internet and run apps that allowed you to read the news, get the stock quotes, shop for everything from clothes to groceries, and access the Library of Congress right at your fingertips.
Sometimes, when Billy got back to Earth, he felt as though he was the alien. Everything changed so fast, it was disorienting to try to keep up with what was new, what was different. He'd disappeared from Earth completely in 1987, when he'd been taken to the Rock of Ages and then journeyed around the galaxy adjusting to his newfound life and occupation. When he finally returned home, as Captain Marvel, it had been 10 years later. In the time since then, he'd left Earth several times to mediate disputes among the Kree, the Shi'ar, the Kymellians. The cost each time had been a voyage of days in which entire months and years passed on Earth.
But, even with that being true... not everything had changed. Wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria lingered on. At home, it was the debate about immigration and the so-called Dreamers.
In some ways, even though he’d only just gotten back, Billy was ready to go back to Arcon. At least a dire wraith infestation was a problem he knew how to solve. You just punched it. And you kept punching, until there weren’t any dire wraiths left to punch anymore.
Now, Earth’s problems?
Not even the wisdom of Solomon had the answers for all of Earth’s problems.
But, while Billy might not have the answers to health care reform, immigration reform, election finance reform, electoral college reform, or the Middle East... he did pick up on the fact that the X-Men weren’t telling him everything.
They seemed exhausted. They seemed on edge. Like they were waiting for someone to attack. And that was just the people who were here. Jono and the other New Mutants had apparently graduated and moved on with their lives. Well, except for Morph. But where was Victor? Where was Cal? Where was Professor Xavier?
Billy had every idea that something had happened, but Scott wasn’t offering anything up and Billy was a little too wiped out to have asked. Plus, it didn’t really seem like the polite thing to do, prying into that sort of thing.
Billy had a plate of food in front of him and a place to sleep tonight. He was happy to see the X-Men again, and they seemed somewhat relieved to have found him randomly sitting on the shores of Breakstone Lake.
It was enough to just enjoy the company for one evening.
He hadn’t had a bath in weeks.
...or, years, apparently.
Kymellian smartships had a finite amount of resources. Recycling stores of water for bathing wasn’t practical, so the Kymellians had developed a sort of sonic energy technology that was supposed to clean the body by using low energy pulses carried on sound waves to remove dead skin and dirt. It was supposed to be therapeutic, more like getting a massage than standing in a shower. But Billy thought that it just felt really, really alien.
With everything that had changed with computers and cellular telephones, at least the plumbing in the X-Mansion was something analog that he still knew how to operate.
Plus, the X-Mansion had hot water. When you relied on the showers in the local homeless shelter, hot water was a mythical phenomenon that only existed in fables and half-remembered dreams of what it was like before you lived on the streets.
“Megan said...”
Even before he could have stopped himself, Billy let out an involuntary sigh. Megan had scrounged up some clothes for him to wear. Mostly old stuff of Sammy’s that had been intended for donation. There was a spare bed in the dormitory room that Sammy occupied, so Billy was going to sleep there tonight.
Now the two roommates were getting acquainted. Or, at least, Sammy was trying to sort out just who the heck this strange kid was who was suddenly shacking up in the bed next to his, and Billy could already see where this was going.
“You...” the aquatic mutant began, stammering and hemming and hawing as the boy seemed completely uncertain of what he was asking. “That is, Megan, she... she said you. That you... you’re...”
“Yeah, Sam,” Billy began. Bringing his legs up so that he was seated cross-legged on the bed, the boy flexed his toes and stared down at his feet. Thirty years he’d been living like this. You’d think he could just own it now, but it wasn’t something he was proud of. Unable to raise his eyes, Billy just stared at a spot on the floor as he said, “I’m homeless.”
The statement hung in the air.
The silence was honestly starting to get uncomfortable.
“So... you... you really live on the street?”
Instinctively, Billy peeked up at the question. When people realized that you were a homeless person, they could get really funny acting around you. But Sammy? Sammy just seemed thoroughly confused.
Which was good. Most people had no idea what it was like to be turned out onto the street. And it wasn’t something Billy expected a lot of folks put much thought into. “I don’t live on the street,” the boy remarked, his head bobbing from side to side as he spoke. “Well, not all the time. Sometimes, yeah, if its warm then like... in a park, on a bench, or in a box or something. Or a junkyard. Junkyards can be cool.”
Shelters were bastions of good intentions. But, they weren’t always safe. And they were frequently over crowded and under resourced. Billy could survive in space. If he wanted, he could go be homeless in Atlantis or the Blue Area of the moon. Those were options that ordinary homeless folk didn’t have, so there were a lot of times that a shelter was available but Billy passed it by anyway.
No sense taking up a bed that someone else could use. And had more need of.
Sammy’s confusion didn’t seemed relieved by any of this. “But... you’re Captain Marvel.”
Billy’s eyes immediately ducked to the left. He fidgeted under Sammy’s innocent expression of shock. It was so genuine. But, there was something Billy found disquieting about hero worship.
“You’ve saved the world.”
Billy got the impression that his homelessness might be an inconvenient truth that was offending Sammy’s religion. The boy’s eyes found that spot on the floor again, lingering there a moment before he found the courage to look back up again. “Saving the world won’t even get you a Happy Meal, Sam.”
Judging by Sammy’s expression, Billy was the worst person in the world right now. He kicked puppies. Hated kittens. And was otherwise bringing the walls of Sammy’s own ignorance about his childhood hero crashing down around him.
Around both of them, as Billy saw in Sammy’s eyes an idealized version of Captain Marvel. Someone Billy didn’t know and was certain that he wasn’t capable of living up to. “But, even if it did... that’s not why I do it,” the young Marvel uttered.
He didn’t feel very much like Billy Batson now. Instead, the weight of decades spent adventuring in the shadow of Mar-Vell seemed like it was rapidly catching up with him. Unconsciously, the boy starting fidgeting with the bracelets on his forearms.
Once, he’d thought of Mar-Vell the way that Sammy thought of him. He thought that Mar-Vell had been a hero. Selfless.
Thirty years later, carrying the torch, and finding himself in the role of trying to clean up everything that Mar-Vell had left behind, Billy wondered if the bastard hadn’t simply taken the easy way out.
“Besides, there’s lots of people living on the streets. Some good. Some bad. But they’re still people.” Tired. Weary. And with far more battles before him than he could possibly take on by himself, the young Marvel raised his eyes back up as he said, “And as long as there’s some kid somewhere still living on the street... none of us have really saved anyone, have we?”
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