Minister Faust by From (html) (librera reader txt) 📕

for any number of reasons, Wally! Genetics, childhood trauma, cell phones…Maybe you got yours in one of those Mexican clinics—I really don’t know. Some of us don’t depend on powers to do our damned jobs—which you don’t manage to do anyway—we actually have to work, understand? Be productive? Actually possess our own working testicles?”

“I’m a—now, you see, Doctor Brain, sir, ma’am, this is where Festy has a tendency to take his horsing around a bit too far outta the barn—”

“You know what this keen little patriot did during the OPEC crisis?”

“—I’m a very hard worker, always have been, been working hard since I was nothing but Omni-Lad—”

“—eating omni-grits, no doubt. During the OPEC crisis—”

“—been savin folks in this here country since I was old enough to—”

“During the goddamned OPEC crisis Wally promised Carter he’d use his ‘omni-power’ to create a new energy source to free us from the tyranny of those tablecloth-headed hand-choppers. You know where Wally tested his brainchild? You recall a little gem of real estate called Three Mile Island? To this day the entire country still believes that was a nuclear power plant, instead of the argonium processor it actually was. Now that’s PR, when the president himself covers up for you. Covers up for you being a filthy junkie!”

“Now Festus, you wait just a gollyshocking minute! I aint never had no problem with argonium—”

“What she ever saw in you, I’ll never understand—”

“ ‘What she’—? Who ya talkin bout, Festy? Princess Astra?”

Mr. Piltdown shut his mouth, his eyes flashing at me and then away as if he was afraid he’d said too much. Then he regrouped and regained my gaze, thumbing his accusations toward his colleague.

“Those same hero card–collecting urchins who believe his rat-excrement nonsense about being from the planet Argon are true believers in his idiocy about argonium. That meteor fragments of his ‘exploded homeworld’ are the only substance that can kill ‘Omnipotent’ Man. Brilliant bit of logic, there, by the way, being allergic to his entire home planet. Just how does a species like that evolve, hm? Gloves? When the truth is, he’s as addicted to argonium as a common coolie is to opium!”

“Festus, now dontchu be, be spreading any a your, your…exaggerations again,” said Wally, as if the word were the foulest curse he’d said in years.

“Look at him, Miss Brain,” continued the Squirrel. “We’ve been trapped in your therapeutic clutches for more than a week now. Could even you be so dim as to’ve failed to notice how often he excused himself to go to the little cretin’s room, and how when he came back, his nostrils were dusted with a fine blue powder?”

I glanced at Wally nipping at the nail of his right index finger. Given the omni-density of his nails, his chewing sounded like a boxcar locking into place in a train.

“This man,” said the Squirrel, thumbing again, “so successfully hoodwinked that peanut-harvesting huckleberry of a president that he managed to turn the entire Department of Energy into his dealer! Three plum-sized glowing blue crystals per day back then. I haven’t a clue where he’s getting his supply now. Perhaps from somewhere out in the asteroid belt, which would explain all those ‘exploratory missions’ he’s been on of late, and probably explains his resignation itself! Instead of being up on Asteroid Zed today making himself useful, he was probably out getting his fix—”

“Doggoneit, Squirrel, y’all better hush now—”

“Did you know, Miss Brain, that this apple-gnawing rum-donkey doesn’t even restrict himself to one secret identity? He has at least five that I know of, presumably so he can be an utter failure in as many places as possible. How about it, Wally? Did you know I knew? Junkies tend not to hide things very well, but neither do they often realize what nakedly strolling emperors they actually are.”

Wally’s eyes became twin sunny-side-up eggs on the plate of his face, his lips an O of two crispy-curled slices of bacon.

“Wally,” I asked, “what does Mr. Piltdown mean when he says you have more than one secret identity?”

“Festy, you nuthin but a lyin, steamin heapa goat shit, j’know that?”

“Oh ho! The monkey finally finds his mouth. But which of the three monkeys? Nothing but a disgrace to Hawk King’s entire legacy—”

Suddenly the Flying Squirrel was flailing backward across the room because of a whipping, screeching tentacle of blue-white brilliance extending from Omnipotent Man’s mouth to the center of the Squirrel’s chest. Smashing into the opposite wall and crashing to the floor, Festus clutched the blackened, flaming hole in the tunic above his armor, gasping awfully.

I glimpsed myself reflected in the glass of a framed Munch print—my hair static-charged, upright, and stiffened into the shape of an upside-down daddy longlegs.

The entire room reeked of ozone.

“Festus,” said Omnipotent Man, electric sparks spraying out between his clenched teeth like neon spittle, “you’d better tuck-tail on outta here ’fore I lose my temper…suh’m fierce.”

Achilles’ Real Heel Was His Whole Body

If you’re like Omnipotent Man, you may have spent much of your career, if not your life, hiding behind the fig leaf of your physical indestructibility. But having a diamond-hard body doesn’t guarantee you freedom from having a costume-jewelry soul, or that the gold of your mental health won’t oxidize into an unsightly green.

Achilles, the “invulnerable” hero of the Trojan War, was vulnerable supposedly because of his very mortal heel. But a cursory reading of The Iliad shows that Achilles maintained very weak interpersonal relationships and was frozen at a child’s stage of ego development, sulking in his tent even while war raged around him. Clearly, Achilles’ true vulnerability was actually his invulnerability, or what I call the Achilles Threefold Folly of Superior Ability.

The Achilles Threefold Folly of Superior Ability

1. Achilles believed in the myth of his own invulnerability, so he never attempted to understand the meaning or ramifications of others’ vulnerability.

2. Achilles’ inexperience with physical pain meant that he never developed a common lexicon of misery, the key ingredient necessary for human connection.

3. Achilles,