My master's voice is imprinted on my circuits. I cannot delineate where
his voice ends and mine begins.
Bzzt!
My master's scheme to kill King Orin in New York and damage Atlantis's
credibility before the United Nations and the world press failed.
I see now. There are blank spots in my
memor...memor...mmmmeeeemmmmmooooorrrrryyyyy.
Reboot!
Image
recovery in progress...
Aquaman in blue wave pattern uniform faced down the Neptune Perkins
droid. While in New York, he had uncovered the fact that Perkins had
been in Washington during the current session of the United States
Senate.
Aquaman knocked the Perkins-bot off a speaker's platform in a poor
eastern Atlantis neighborhood.
"I know you're not who you say you are," Aquaman gritted out.
Giving up the pretense, the Perkins-bot's eyes began to glow an ominous
red. "Very well, sea king. Meet your doom then," the robot said.
The skin shed from the creature's chassis. Without the need to squat
within the plastiform of Neptune Perkins anymore, the android rose to
its full 10-foot tall height.
The crowd was in a full rout, running from the speaker's platform into
the surrounding neighborhood. Some fell and were run over by the crowd
pressing from behind them.
KLONK! The Perkins-bot's metal shod fist cracked against Aquaman's
temple knocking him backwards.
Rubbing the side of his head, Orin found his feet amid a scattering of
chairs that had been set up for the political rally. "You'll have to do
better than that to kill me," Aquaman said, launching himself with the
speed of a breaching shark toward his prey.
"And so I shall," the android assured.
TA-ZAK! A blast of energy tore from the robot's eyes. Twinned force
blasts struck Aquaman knocking him back again.
"I have had enough of this robot," Aquaman grunted as he lifted one of
the horridly ostentatious statues that had been erected in his honor
all over the city in honor of his various triumphs. No matter how many
times he had complained that the finances for such things could be
better used feeding the poor or helping the homeless or for a million
other things that were more important he had been overruled.
Aquaman heaved a huge marble statue of himself at the Perkins-bot. Red
light flashed from its eyes as it tried to blast the statue...
Bzzt!
Memory
dump in progress.
The rubble of the statuary likeness of Aquaman lay atop the
Perkins-bot. Sparks and wires lay exposed from various places on the
chassis of the android.
My master had expected one or more of his agents to be revealed at some
point, but he hadn't expected them to fall in battle with Aquaman in so
public a way.
This misstep would sway more voters to Vulko.
Bzzt!
But, we're not done yet. We still have a living agent or two to play a
part.
Another voice answers, "Your plot. Your agents. My money. See that
you..."
SPLAT!
“Alloroc. Alloroc. Alloroc. You were never part of my long
range
plans for Atlantis,” the master’s voice said.
“Activate the Alloroc-bot,” the master said
breathlessly.
“Perhaps it can win the election where this moneyed simpleton
couldn't,” he added.
Bzzt!
Fish light. Jump jet. Knuckle sandwich.
Bzzt!
Reboot!
Weird flashing rainbow-colored lights wash over my optic sensors. Storm
waves sounds crashing on a surface shore come from the street outside.
Aquaman, again, dressed in his normal orange and green. He faced a
surface man, wearing an air helmet, a white uniform with multi-colored
circles covering it from head to toe. A large white globe floated
behind the man in white.
[Imagine The Spot from Marvel only with multi-colored spots instead of
the Dalmatian effect.]
Memory
retrieval in progress:
The white-uniformed surface man identified as Mr. Polka-Dot, the
Polka-Dot Man...freed from prison in Gotham to carry out missions for
the master here in Atlantis.
Bzzt!
Within the bubble, First Citizen candidate Vulko clawed at the surface
of the bubble, vainly trying to escape.
Mr. Polka-Dot snatched a red dot from his uniform and tossed it toward
Aquaman. The dot rotated as it sliced through the water. Its edge
became more and more serrated as it whisked along. The dot completed
its transformation becoming a buzz saw blade.
Arthur reacted spinning to the side as the blade sliced passed him.
Abner Krill, the Polka-Dot Man, touched the control panel built into
his belt causing the saw blade to circle and come streaking back at
Aquaman.
“Listen,” Arthur began, “whoever you are,
you’re out of your depth here. Whoever hired you is putting
you
in the middle of something that…”
The blade bit into Arthur’s shoulder with a horrid sound of
meat
being sliced and a grinding sound as the blade struck bone.
The red blade dissipated as its energy was exhausted.
Mr. Polka-Dot grabbed an orange dot from his battle suit and tossed it
toward Aquaman. The orange dot shot toward its target, splitting in the
moment before impact. Each smaller dot resolved itself into a
fist-shaped object.
SMACK! The first one struck Aquaman knocking him backward. CRACK!
SMACK! SLAP! SMASH! The robot fists pistoned, punching him one after
the other.
Arthur staggered as the robotic fists circled and charged in to attack
again. Back in the early days of the Justice League, Arthur had always
enjoyed seeing Hal employ a power-ringed boxing glove or Ollie firing
off a boxing glove arrow. This new perspective on the experience soured
the memory a touch.
As the energy of the boxing glove dot depleted, the gloves disappeared
one by one.
Concentric waves of telepathic force emanated from Aquaman. The mental
force swept the local area searching for his aquatic subjects.
The response came quickly. Swirling in from above, in their thousands,
a horde of small fish of multiple species responded to their
King’s entreaty.
The Polka-Dot Man found himself smacked backwards by flounder and
tarpon, halibut and tuna, butterflies and cod, all swarmed to their
King’s mission.
He slapped his hand on a white dot, calling forth another protective
sphere to shield himself from this new attack. With his other hand, he
grabbed a yellow dot from his uniform and tossed it at Aquaman.
TA-ZAK! A bolt of lightning struck forth across this Atlantean avenue,
blasting the Sea King backward.
From his hands and knees in the Atlantean street, Aquaman let a new
wave of telepathic signals race forth.
Mr. Polka-Dot’s hand closed on a black dot on his suit.
“This game is done. I get paid on your death,”
Abner Krill
said. “No more foreplay.”
A large shadow centered on him. He glanced up. “Oh
no!”
A whale dove from directly above.
CRACK! The protective shell provided by his white dot shattered under
the impact of the blue whale that came in answer to his
King’s
call.
The Polka-Dot Man threw himself to the side. Rolling, he came back to
his feet.
He smiled. “Ah well,” he said, “no jobs
worth getting
crushed by a whale.”
He grabbed a yellow dot from his uniform. This one formed a hovercraft
around him.
The yellow hovercraft began to accelerate away.
Aquaman called his small subjects back into action. One of the
butterflies struck the intended target, the black dot that Krill had
partially loosened when he grabbed it before.
The impact knocked the black dot loose. It fell toward the deck of the
small hovercraft.
Not sure of the effect or the range, Aquaman ordered all of his fishy
friends back away from the Polka-Dot Man and his conveyance.
Dammit!” Abner Krill yelled as he saw the black dot fall
toward
the deck of the small hovercraft.
KA-RUMP! The sound of a grenade echoed through the undersea
environs…along with a final screamed,
“Nooooooooo!”
The scream faded away into nothingness.
Aquaman rose to his feet and looked about. The damage to the street had
been kept to a minimum and the threat removed. His gaze turned toward
my video pickups and…
Bzzt!
Reboot!
“A localized heavy gravity event,” a voice on Radio
Atlantis said. “The Gotham villain, The Polka-Dot Man was
sucked
through the event horizon of his miniature black hole into a
containment area. After activation the black hole like aperture
returned to its normal state, appearing as a black round ball roughly
six inches diameter, which is being turned over to Gotham authorities
by Atlantean UN Ambassador Lord Triolus Brim for return to
prison…should they come up with a way to remove the villain
from
his self imposed exile within the black polka-dot. This is Radio
Atlantis.
Bzzt!
Gray haired and wizened, an old man stood over me. He made an
adjustment.
“You’ve done an excellent job reporting on all the
goings
on in Atlantis. But now, I’ve got a mission for you all your
own.
We’ll be using your circuitry to penetrate the systems
monitoring
and running the election. You’re going to fix the election so
the
Alloroc-bot wins,” he said as he pulled a sheaf of wires and
connections loose from my…
Tentacles reach from my android fish body into the connection nodes of
the super computer at the center of the main Atlantean government
building, charged with administering the First Citizen Election.
Results are already pouring in.
Bzzt!
Absently, my central processing unit notes a news report on the ether
saying that Alloroc had been revealed as an android. The real
Alloroc’s dead body was found on his family’s
estate in
Poseidonis.
The flow of data takes my focus as I try to penetrate the code.
A voice spoke to me. “You can’t get into the
computer,
little one. I’ve figured out what you are and why you kept
appearing everywhere over the last few weeks. You were
Weisbogg’s
spy. Androids in Atlantis…if it wasn’t the
Construct,
then, it had to be Weisbogg. He’s already in
custody.”
Bzzt!
Defense
mode coming online.
Electrified tentacles reached out for Orin Arthur Curry’s
face as
the small android fish jetted across the computer room in the basement
of the deserted government building. One of the electro-tentacles
jabbed him in the bandaged wound he sustained battling Mr. Polka-Dot.
“Aaarrggghhh!” The sea king cried out, slapping at
the
small fish with his other hand.
CLUNK! SMACK! Aquaman’s super-strength slammed the android
fish
across the room into the far wall and shattered.
Bzzt!
“So,” Vulko said, “this was all a plot by
Weisbogg.” He shook his head as he looked at the shattered
remains of the little fish droid.
Aquaman rubbed his hand over the spot where the android had shocked him.
“The scientists claim that they can retrieve its memory.
Since
Weisbogg escaped custody again, maybe there is a clue there
that’ll lead us to him,” Vulko said.
“Whatever you want to do, First Citizen,” Orin
Arthur
Curry, former King of Atlantis said. “After all,
you’re in
charge now. I’m just a former King.”
And Vulko was treated to something that had been all too rare in the
last ten years, Arthur smiled.
The End of 'Election Days', but the saga of Aquaman will continue...
