The Last Dispatch of Marlon Katz

“And we are live in three, two, one…”

“Gary we are here broadcasting live from the scene and, well, Gary I, I don’t quite know what to tell you.”

“We can see your pictures, Marian. We can see it but we can’t quite believe it.”

“No, Gary, I’m here seeing it with my own eyes but I’m not sure I believe it. He looks so tired. He’s shrinking before our eyes. He’s visibly shrinking. It’s like… It can’t be, Gary. This can’t be happening.”

“We would like to remind our viewers that they should stay calm and remain in their homes. The President is monitoring developments closely and will address the nation soon.”

“Gary, are you seeing this? He’s still air-borne, but his suit seems to be disintegrating. Even the cape, Gary. The cape that stopped the bullet that would have killed President Edwards, it’s floating away, light as a spiderweb. He looks, my God, Gary, it’s not just the suit I think it’s him, his body is disintegrating.”

“Ladies and Gentlemen, I have been asked to repeat that you should stay in your homes. The President has reinstated the UN Security Council and world leaders are meeting as we speak. We must not panic. The situation appears bad, but we cannot yet be sure that The Thunderchild is dying.”

 “Gary, Dave has got a drone shot of him and… Are you seeing this, Gary? He’s smiling. Parts of him are floating away into the air like bonfire ash, but he’s laughing. It’s getting louder, Gary. Okay, we’ve lost the drone. He’s hundreds of feet above us but I can hear him. It’s so loud it hurts. There’s light now, and heat. It hurts, Gary. He’s glowing, no he’s… splitting, everything’s shaking, it’s… I can see… My God. No, Dave, run! Get to the…”

“Marian? Stewie, get the feed back up… Get her back. What, all of them? I see. No, it’s ok. We’ll just have to… No, there’s no need for that, I can do it. Ladies and Gentlemen, I have been ordered to inform you that martial law has been declared. All live broadcasts will now be suspended. We can replay our coverage of the build up to today’s events but I’m afraid we are now going off air. Are we showing that again? It’ll make her look… She was a good journalist, brave woman. Claire, Marian meant nothing to me, I love you, and may God bless America. This is Gary Stevens for Channel Six News. Roll VT.”

A shot of a cave painting filled the screen. Stylised human figures were captured in economical lines of brownish pigment on a torchlit, red rock face. The camera panned up from the main huddle of figures to another one that was depicted above them. Was this figure supposed to be in the distance? Was it a completely separate composition which happened to share the same rock face? Or was this figure levitating, flying above them? When the Drakensberg paintings were discovered in South Africa by Tobias Van Der Post in the thirties, academics could only speculate. The San people, whose ancestors had created the art, did not need to speculate, they were adamant: He was flying above them. The medicine man, a half human chimera depicted as one of the huddle, beneath the lone figure, had summoned Him and He had come to Earth on a lightening bolt that had hit a tree. Academics were fascinated by the metaphorical meaning of the works and their value as evidence of the development of early religious belief structures. It wasn’t until He returned in the fifties, after an absence of unknown length that the subject of the paintings became obvious. Yes, He was above them. The flowing lines were not additional limbs, or weapons, that was a cape. The San had been right all along.

“This is the first known depiction of The Thunderchild.” Marian O’Neal’s voiceover was hushed and respectful to match the ambience of the cave and acknowledge the long-doubted validity of the claims of the San People. The image was replaced by a smoothly cut montage of images, all doubly famous since their significance was realised. First, a medieval icon of what had been presumed to be a lesser-known saint with fire-casting gilt eyes. Next, a renaissance marble, with hindsight, so clearly a sculpture of that perfectly muscled body and noble aspect. Following this was the original suppressed and secretly replaced first panel of Heironymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights, depicting not Adam and Eve, but an individual who was clearly The Thunderchild, pale and nude (yet flatly unerotic) but for the cape. All of these images were retrospectively undeniable evidence of his presence among us in the premodern age. Then there were the nineteenth century daguerreotypes of a cautious but cooperative subject with an unearthly, timeless stare. Soon after the jump to moving pictures was made, and shaky black and white footage from the early twentieth century showed a dot blinking in and out of view in a grey sky. It moved faster than the technology of the time could capture, single-handedly repelling the first known extra-terrestrial invasion attempt, while soldiers cowered in trenches below. Then finally, in restored Kodachrome, we see 1966 and a brief, staring interaction with JFK before He lent his power to the Apollo 11 rocket, flying with it to the edge of the atmosphere like a father holding onto the seat of a wobbling bike.

“The Thunderchild has been humanity’s beloved protector for centuries, possibly since the beginning of recorded history.” Marian’s voice now assumed its usual authoritative, stateless, Ivy League tone. “So, people have not taken kindly to the rumours started by self-described ‘journalist’ and online content creator Marlon Katz that the beloved superhero is dying.”

A picture of Katz filled the screen. Ageless, but for a grey streak at the temple, and inconspicuously athletic, he would have been considered handsome if he had not been derided as a pariah. Thick, black-framed glasses only served to accentuate the clean lines of his flawless face and coldly staring eyes. It was generally accepted that the glasses were no more than a hipsterish affectation designed to create some kind of literary persona. Critics, irritated by his uncanny ability to predict the movements of The Thunderchild and the accuracy of rumours that he started about the saviour’s intentions, had gone so far as to analyse the way the much-mocked face furniture refracted the light in order to claim that the lenses were nothing but flat glass which offered no actual corrective effect.           

Katz came from a long line of print journalists that went way back, but in the digital age he had established himself as a low-level online commentator and influencer with a focus on the activities of The Thunderchild. His most prolific period had come at a time of peace and relative inactivity for his muse. He had initially limited himself to spreading rumours about where and when the hero might be going to appear, but it was the unsettling accuracy of the things that Katz posted on his blog or released to various online news outlets that made his most recent statement so profoundly troubling. The rumour that he had started about The Thunderchild beginning to take periods of rest in the Mariana Trench had been verified by a team of Japanese oceanographers who had been scanning for sources of deep-sea radiation. The rumour that He had entered a meditative state on the dark side of the moon, a near hibernation that only ended when He heard the muttered threat of the head of a rogue state to launch a WMD, had been proved to be true, verified by the surprised crew of Apollo Twenty-eight. Could his latest claim be true too?   

“Not content with making the crass allegation that the immortal and beloved Thunderchild is dying, Katz had the audacity to suggest that the indefatigable protector of humanity is dying of exhaustion.”  Marian threw away the last word with enough condescension to reassure the audience of the infantile stupidity of the idea.

But Katz had been right when he’d tweeted about the third wave. He’d started a rumour that the Xenos were planning another invasion attempt and that this time The Thunderchild would find it hard to repel it without help. His hawkish pleas for the governments of the world to rebuild their militaries had been dismissed as a wilfully subversive and attention-grabbing lack of faith in The Thunderchild. His claims that humanity must reassume some responsibility for their own security were dismissed as the arrogant boast of a self-publicist who professed to know the mind of The Protector. But he had started a rumour that The Thunderchild would begin to appear more slowly, that He would delay his interventions and more lives would be lost before He extinguished the dangers that stalked us. And so, it had come to pass. Begrudgingly, the governments of the world began to rearm.

When the third wave struck the fight had been bloody. Stratospheric jets had intercepted and engaged the descending invaders. Prototype laser weapons had picked out targets that would have been swooned-over stars had Katz not started rumours that they were orbiting weapons platforms. Ground forces had stood ready, watching and waiting for Katz’s predictions about where the first landing might occur. His declarations about the site of the main intended incursion had been secretly used as part of the justification for a tactical nuclear strike on Eastern Europe. Above the mess of human support, The Thunderchild had prevailed, just, and humanity had continued, just.

Katz himself somehow evaded all attempts by suspicious governments to track him down. Rumours of his whereabouts and allegiances swirled. It was months after the Battle of the Third Wave that a re-emerged Katz had started the rumour that The Thunderchild was dying.

“This is the last dispatch of Marlon Katz. You have taken The Thunderchild for granted for too long. He is exhausted. Humanity’s inability to preserve itself has exhausted the inexhaustible, broken the invulnerable. But invulnerable he is, and the only way he can rest is by his own will. I hope that my speculations on The Thunderchild have been sufficiently prescient over the years that you will hear me now. The ‘Child will soon appear in the sky for the last time. He will go to his rest. He will expire in the sky and leave you. He’ll leave you to fend for yourselves. Good luck with the fourth wave.”

The cataclysm of The Battle of the Third Wave was only a matter of months past when the statement was made, but humanity’s protectively short memory had already edited out Katz’s known role, and his true role as prophet to the world powers had never been fully revealed or exposed. So it was that Marian O’Neal now spoke for a people prepared to ignore the evidence of experience in order to sustain their belief that their Protector would endure forever.      

“There have been calls for Katz’s arrest and the authorities are now investigating his inflammatory and irresponsible comments. Online gossip and rumour-mongering can have real consequences when it concerns the heroic Thunderchild, and statements like Katz’s most recent one are as economically damaging as the most dire of stock market predictions.” Marian was in the bright Channel Six studio now, striding across the newsroom stage in front of screens showing footage of The Thunderchild hovering motionless and serene in the night sky above a huddle of the world’s media. “So, as I prepare to board the Channel Six chopper to head off to the site identified by Katz, it’s in the hope of hearing from The Thunderchild himself, quietly confident that he will be fit and well, and going nowhere anytime soon. Before we head off to bring you unrivalled coverage of the Great One’s most recent appearance, we have a Channel Six exclusive report that Federal agents are closing in on the last known location of the rumour-peddling subversive Marlon Katz. This is Marian O’Neal for Channel Six News, now over to Clay Mains with the weather.”

The screen went black for a second before a test card of the Presidential seal against a background of a softly rippling Old Glory snapped into view.

Federal agents descended on a non-descript dockside industrial complex. A SWAT team took down a spot lit door and charged, weapons hot, into a bland windowless room, empty except for a desk with an open laptop on it. On the screen was a drone shot of a tear-streaked face, noble and shining, laughing in relief. In front of the keyboard was a pair of heavy framed black spectacles. A blinding flash lit the night sky and the screen went blank.