Star Harbor Nights

The lab coat the young woman wore over her skintight bodysuit was the only thing about her that said "scientist." Her spiky hair, long nails, lips, teeth, and the irises of her eyes were all a vivid metallic magenta color which, as she walked down the hallway, smoothly melted into a cool violet. The air around her literally hummed, and a barely visible cloud of glittering particles surrounded her head. A denser cloud of the same surrounded the strange object which floated just behind her, a long cylinder of white plastic and gleaming metal, bisected crosswise and down the middle, with a series of knobs on each of the four resulting components. Flexible straps kept the four pieces together.

"Oh, there you are, Anna," Dr. Jonathon Day said as she came into the laboratory where the injured hero Hollis "Hollywood" Woodrow lay.

"Nana," she corrected firmly.

Dr. Day sighed and covered his face with his hand.

"Can I call you Nano instead?" he asked. "It's more accurately descriptive of your abilities... and makes me feel considerably less creepy."

"The right to choose and be called by one's chosen designation is an important part of the posthuman rights manifesto," Nana said.

"I'll make you a deal," he said. "Call yourself a 'parahuman' instead of a 'posthuman' and I'll call you whatever you like."

"So if I call myself 'parahuman', will you call me a 'posthuman'?" she asked rather smugly.

"I most certainly will not. It's a deliberately inflammatory term, with dangerous implications for humanity," Day countered.

"Exactly... for humanity," Nana said.

"Just give me the device, Nana," Day said, holding out his hands.

"I thought you said you were going to put a cast on me, Doc," Holly said, looking at the device suspiciously.

"In a manner of speaking, yes," Day said. He placed the two halves of the device around Hollywood's broken leg, from just above the knee all the way down to the ankle, then strapped them in place with a pair of canvas belts.

"This is a magnetic containment system," he explained. "It was originally constructed to hold small samples of antimatter, but I cancelled that project when I realized how easy it would be to weaponize the technology. We here at DELPHI have a bit of an unwritten rule: we undertake no project that we'd have a difficult time explaining to an international tribunal. In any event, the basic containment technology, while ancillary to the principle experiment, was itself innocuous and far too interesting to simply dismantle even in the absence of its intended purpose, so I... uh, well," he said, stopping upon seeing the look of bafflement spreading across Holly's face. "I thought it was neat, so I kept it... and modified it into its current form to aid in your predicament."

"It's going to fix my leg?" Holly asked.

"It will allow me to set your bones and then hold them in place until they've quite healed," Day said, taking off his glasses and laying them on the tray beside the bed. "Your, ah, inner workings are somewhat insubstantial even when your outer shell is solid... hardly remarkable, of course. The remarkable thing is that any part of you is solid at all."

"Aren't most people?"

"Most people aren't made up of light," Day said. "While the popular media and bits of entertainment inspired by folks such as ourselves enjoy such sound bytes as 'solid light' and 'pure energy', the fact is that such terms explain very little. Light in its natural state is solid, to the extent that it has mass and can take on the characteristics of a particle... the question is how you're able to be made of photons and not moving in a straight line at the speed of light."

"Uh... how am I?"

"As far as I can see... and I don't mind saying that I can see pretty bloody far," Day said, "your power somehow compels photons into a series of stable interlocking orbits... they are moving at the prescribed speed, but in the manner of electrons orbiting the nucleus of an atom."

"If you say so," Holly said doubtfully. "I always thought that I turned between light and, you know, real... like, flesh."

"Presumably, at some point, you were flesh and blood," Day said. "But as your powers have matured, you've... transformed, I think would be the best word for it."

"Transcended, more like," Nana said, somehow managing a look of awe and superiority at the same time. "Don't mourn the loss of what made you human... look at it is an improvement."

"What makes you human," Day said, shooting a disapproving look at his assistant, "isn't in what makes up your body but in what makes up your spirit. Your photonic form is merely one more type of body, along with all the many varied types that make up the human race... encompassing all skin tones, body shapes, genders..."

"This is a great P.S.A., really," Holly said. "But... my leg?"

"Oh, right," Day said. He knelt down beside the bed, and began adjusting the knobs on the containment unit.

"Yee!" Holly exclaimed.

"Does that hurt?"

"It feels... weird," Holly said.

"That would be your bones sliding around," Day said, continuing his minute adjustments. "I have to move them into place, and then I'll lock the field. You won't be able to move your leg at all once it's in place... or shapeshift, fly, or alter your body's tangibility."

"Does that thingy let you see what you're doing?"

"No," Day said. "That's merely a function of me being me... and... almost... yes. Done."

He pressed a button on each of the segments, and Holly felt his leg go numb.

"That's it?" Holly asked, amazed.

"That's it," the doctor confirmed.

"So, how long will I have to wear this thing?"

"I would think no more than a couple weeks," Day said. "But it's hard to say. Your power might allow you to heal faster than a normal human, or it might require additional help. I'll want to check back on you in a couple days... I expect any earlier would be too soon to tell."

"Great, so I guess I'm just going to be stuck here, then," Holly said. "Or are am I going to be dumped into a regular hospital?"

"Neither, as it happens," Day said. "It seems you have a couple of... fans... who have graciously offered to put you up for the duration of your recovery."

"You guys are really fans?" Holly asked, as Allison gently levitated him over the bed and even more gently lowered him onto it. "I didn't know I had fans."

"We're huge fans," Allison said. "We probably wouldn't even have watched Hero if we hadn't heard there was going to be a gay mutant on it."

"Well, we would have watched, but we might not have admitted to it," Amy said. "Social relevance makes for a nice alibi, you know?"

"This is so weird," Holly said. "I mean, you are huge," he said to Amy. "I have your twelve inch action figure and all the variant costumes. How can you be my fan?"

"Oh, those things?" Amy said. "My uncle's idea. I try not to think about them."

"See? I actually got dragged into this thing because I wanted my own action figures," Holly said. "You have them, and you don't even care... that's what a real hero is like."

"Zeus loves his action figures, and he's a real hero," Allison pointed out.

"Well, I could still kick myself... if my leg wasn't immobilized. I'm just glad I didn't end up killing anybody," Holly said. "Or wind up stranded like thousands of miles out into space because the person pulling my strings jerked a little too hard."

"Is that really very likely?" Allison asked.

"I don't know," Holly said. "But it's been one of my big fears ever since I learned what I can do. When I go light, I can feel gravity as a kind of pull... well, as a different kind of pull than it normally is... on my body, so the few times I did stray really far I managed to get back. Some of the DELPHI guys were trying to talk me into doing some kind of mission out to Jupiter, but that's a little bit farther than I want to go. When you look at a picture of the solar system, everything's flat and it looks like you could just kind of follow everything in a straight line... but I really don't think I could find my way back home if the earth wasn't the closest really big thing any more."

"I always thought if my power would let me, I'd love to fly into space," Allison said. "I guess I never thought about getting back."

"I did go to the moon and back a couple times," Holly said. "That's easy. You can see where you're going."

"Did you bring back any rocks?" Allison asked.

"Better... I got a golf ball," Holly said. "I was hoping to find both of them, so I could tell my friends..."

"...that you'd got your hands on Alan Shephard's balls?" Allison guessed.

"Great minds sink alike," Amy said, rolling her eyes.

"Well, anyway, you guys have a really nice place," Holly said.

"Thanks," Allison said. "We'll give you the grand tour when you're up and about again. It's funny, we've never really used this room for much before this whole mess got started. When we first got this place, it seemed like we'd need another bedroom... but that didn't last, and so it's kind of became the guest room."

"Only, we never seem to have very many guests," Amy said. "Something about trying to keep up a secret identity discourages it, you know?"

"Even when my family comes for a visit, I usually put them up in a hotel," Allison said. "It's not that they're not supportive, but there are aspects of my life I'd like to keep from exposing them to."

"I just hope I'm not putting you out..."

"Oh, please," Amy said with a laugh. "We just got rid of a house full of superheroes, and I'm sure you'll be much more well-behaved than any of them were."

"It's funny how you can say that with such a huge smile on your face and it still sounds like a threat," Holly said.

"They weren't all bad," Allison said. "Minerva..."

"...got crumbs all over the sheets," Amy said. "The good sheets. After I told her not to eat cookies in here."

"Um, I'd promise not to eat in bed, but," Holly said, gesturing down at his injured leg, "I'm afraid it wouldn't be very sincere."

"You, sir, are a huge gigantic celebrity," Amy said. "You could expect the whole four star breakfast-in-bed treatment even if you weren't injured."

"I am not as big a celebrity as Minerva Wisdom," Holly protested. "Or you. Or either of you, from the news stories I've been seeing."

"Believe me, I know how you feel," Allison said. "I'm still recovering from special guest star syndrome... but Minerva's not a celebrity to Amy... and Amy isn't a celebrity to me. It's not a big deal. You are. The first superhero to get up in front of the whole country and say 'I'm queer', since... well, pretty much since the Trinity got outted. I think if Destroyer's Daughter hadn't been kind of overshadowing you, you might have made it to the final round."

"In her defense, it's hard for her not overshadow people," Holly said. "Being, you know, like, two stories tall. Anyway, it's like Simon said... America just wasn't ready."

"Simon Hood wasn't ready," Allison said. "I think America can make up its own mind. Anyway, we promised Dr. Day we'd let you get some rest... so we're going to leave you alone... but as soon as we've fulfilled the letter of that promise, we are totally having an American Hero DVD marathon."

"Oh, God... would you believe I haven't watched the show, ever?" Holly said. "I'm not sure whether I'd laugh or cry."

"Laugh," Allison said. "You'll be watching it with friends. And if it gets to be too much, we'll pop out the disc and put in some porn. You don't know how long I've waited to have a proper sexual deviant to share my collection with... Miss Prissy Gills won't even watch it to make fun of the dialogue."

"If we're watching it to make fun of the dialogue, why can't we skip the sex scenes?" Amy asked.

"It's porn," Allison said. "It's all sex scenes."

"Exactly!" Amy said, throwing up her hands, turning, and moving away... just in time to walk into the pillow that Allison had been levitating to hit her. "Ooh, you're going to get it," she said, grabbing the pillow out of the air.

"Not in the sick room," Allison said, laughing. She took the pillow out of Amy's hands and put it back on the bed.

"Fine, but you're still going to get it."

"Promises, promises," Allison said, ushering Amy out the door. "Goodnight, Holly... call if you need anything."

"I will," the injured mutant said, yawning. "Turn out the lights?"

Allison did, closing the door behind her.

"Such a nice couple," Holly said to himself as he settled back and started to drift off.