Creating Some Content

Grindopolis was equatorial, but the climes to which Neetra and Joe’s interplanetary teleport brought them would on Earth have been somewhere in the darkest South Pacific. Waves blasted themselves white against a coastline of sheer basalt cliffs, while volcanoes grumbled redly in the distance. All Nereynis would have been thus before the world so much as froze, and the universe itself was still cooling. Lingering vestiges of sunset hung on a sky of luminous black.

“It begins with a dream I had,” Joe said to Neetra, then added, “as it always does.”

She returned his smile.

With outstretched hand Joe sought through his Four Heroes powers the peristaltic initializations of Scientooth’s machine. Once he had isolated their distinctive rhythm he allowed himself to fall smoothly into synthesis, and from there it was merely a matter of letting it happen.

Joe’s fingertips, though they held still, might have softly struck from spectral harpsichord-keys the first sonorous notes whose visual manifestation took the form of glow-globes populating the night. On each rising chord more tiny worlds illumined, such that by the first variations there were solar-systems, and the spaces between where grander resonance had yet to be felt were clustered with the promise of magisterial cosmos. Joe had seen Intelligentsor do this, stirring a song from the very beginning and casting fairy-lights across such chocolate-box constellations. It was a harmony all Joe’s own to be before an audience as sweet to him as the latter’s Mini-Flash fan-base had been.

She however was no spectator when there was cheering afoot. For one of Neetra’s psionic potential it was as easy as picking up her pom-poms to slip into the etherium actualizor’s groove, and the moment she did so, string-quartets reigned over Joe’s refrain. These were gymnastic ribbons weaving and wheeling throughout the planets in hoops of heart-halting hue. It was the same as any pep rally. As long as Neetra made sure her body was coordinated correctly, the trailing flicks and loops of those fabulous streamers would wow the crowd. She had that tingle which until recently she’d thought only a full-tilt routine could bestow.

The symphony played. The universe dawned. This continued until Neetra and Joe arrived at a stage which Scientooth had advised them about in advance, whereat his systems and their powers once properly synchronized might safely be left to get on with it. Thus of one unspoken accord the two members of The Four Heroes disengaged, and sure enough, the spectacle they had sparked from nothingness went on without a hint of interruption.

On the rocky terrain of this primordial shore now sat a table and two chairs. Off to one side were all the trappings of a fitted kitchen, though devoid of walls or ceiling such that the sky’s transcendent dome alight with spinning entwining rings of gold was backdrop to marble work-surfaces and the sink. None of this was surprising to Joe or Neetra, for it surely followed that under their present circumstances, anything they wanted would be here. That after all was the whole point.

Joe insisted on cooking, so Neetra took her place at table and they chatted fondly while overhead the celestial ballet moved through ever more elaborate figures, keeping step with the music of the spheres. Dinner was served, and Neetra’s first mouthful coincided with invisible violas hitting such a pitch that the taste of maple syrup glaze made her close her eyes for rapture.

“I don’t think I could have done better myself,” she confessed honestly.

By the end of the main course the orbs had so swelled as to be rolling in the giant ambits originally described by Neetra’s dance. Her energies and Joe’s were becoming one. The celestial score was mounting to new peaks and as the diners dug their spoons into dessert each circumference transformed into a star-shell, sprouting spires and steeples as if the Renaissance were exploding amid strains of baroque jubilation. Into a sky bedecked with stellate architectural baubles the table for two commenced a stately ascent, that Joe and Neetra still seated were escalading past continents jungled with ever-growing towers and turrets, rainforests of honey-coloured stone lushly leafed in lacquered tile. Joe took up the decanter which sat between plates scraped lovingly clean of strawberry sauce, and poured.

After everything he and Neetra had been through, it was almost absurd that drinking wine should have felt such a grown-up thing to do. Nevertheless, wine was only proper for what needed to be said. Joe began:

“Garrett and Obos. Jackie and Laura. Tiffany, Proteus, Noctes and Diem.”

“Then there were the ones who just didn’t understand,” Neetra continued gently. “Dimension Borg. Banthal, The One Below, Brentwood Hawkman...”

“And his father,” added Joe, “who did find his way to our cause. The memory of Clayton Hawkman should bring us hope. Even Harbin, before the end, may learn there is good within him.”

They touched their glasses together, and held them there.

By now the whole galaxy was tuning in. With Nereynis already ground zero for the civilised sector’s biggest breaking news item of the solar cycle so far, Grindopolis had not been slow to detect massive unidentified emanations over on the nightside. That colony, by far the best-equipped on all the worlds around, had sent its swiftest reporter-shuttles skimming over the ocean at once. So it was that viewers in their billions made no plans to stray from the holo-screen, no matter what time of day it was where they dwelled, and wondering what could possibly be next gazed upon Grindopolis’s satellite network as live feed began to air.

Therewith a galactic general public beheld colossal sky-shapes completing the process of blending and merging and taking possession of the jagged hills and steeply plunging valleys which had hitherto been the sum of these Nereynaean tropics. Some otherworldly orchestral arrangement was apparently nearing crescendo, too glorious to have been a mere soundtrack inserted by the Grindoes, impossible as it was to determine whence it came otherwise. Joe and Neetra’s table meanwhile had come at rest atop a stone-flagged roof which by now existed, soaring on Olympian pillars hundreds of feet from the floor.

Among the populations watching from home, those who had fought in the Solidity War saw it first. Then many of the young, who had but been told, knew without ever having had to have seen.

For behind the two diners was a mighty dome, and from its summit to the land’s horizon, a lit-up city stretched.

Nottingham.

A Nottingham as new and unaltered as the one on Earth had been the day it was brought into being.

One half of The Four Heroes, with Scientooth’s devisings to fill in the gaps, had created Nottingham all over again.

The flying cameras were starting to flock as Joe pushed back his chair and stood. He would not have chosen to wage the struggle on these terms, and remained privately incredulous that this alien quadrant’s mass media should ever have come to occupy a position of significance relative to his cause. He knew now however that what he had affirmed to Dylan on Grindotron must hold true, that while the cause still mattered, the struggle had to be. So Joe looked to the multitudinous gaping lenses, and not without regret made his first words those of that same once friend.

“What The Four Heroes’ powers achieved on Earth,” said he, “The Four Heroes’ powers have achieved on Nereynis.”

It was the shot heard round the sector. Suddenly the strange ratings-war between rival interpretations of Four Heroes ideology admitted of no one official version. Joe and his circle had exited the clandestine realm of space-lounge and beach-party, ever overshadowed by Alliance disapproval, via a televised advertisement that could only expand exponentially their target demographic. Indeed, as this nascent Nottingham shrugged off gravity’s grip and began to rise steadily heavenward on its rocky base, it did so not only as city but as symbol. The cameras swarmed as long as they were able to, until atmospheric altitudes for which they were never designed cast them seaward again. For several sizzling seconds, streams of brilliant sparks coursed through sky-bound streets and fell in flaming cataracts down to the deep. Then Nottingham won free. Spinnet and strings carried clear through orbital space. And a fellowship of followers, their number greater than many might have guessed, were henceforth a presence. Joe’s faction had staked its claim on the establishment galaxy.

Nereynis shone blue below as he and Neetra, having descended the Town Hall and gained New Nottingham’s craggy boundary, kissed goodbye to the canon’s closing chords. It was a bittersweet parting, but not a heart-sore one, for as each left the other’s arms it was in the safe and certain surety they would be there again soon.

“Discover the truth,” he told her, and stepped over the edge.

In the twin planets’ interstitial gulf two hot-rods idled. Flashtease on cue shifted his pants to the passenger-seat so that Joe could drop in beside him.

“You’re done making with the smoochies, dad, let’s shut down this drag-race and head for home,” Mini-Flash Splitsville proposed.

If her addressee’s gaze lingered a little on the lights and the loved one he had left behind, it did so at last with acceptance as that scintillating site sailed for starry infinity far above. Then with a determined expression to match those of his three Mini-Flash adherents Joe seized the steering-wheel, and put the red racer in gear.