#8 - "The Darkness and The Light"

The thought 'when in doubt, complicate things' came to Jim's mind. He could vaguely remember hearing that phrase somewhere in his past, but couldn't pinpoint exactly where. Regardless, it seemed to fit his current situation perfectly.

Still trying to make contact with his estranged father, Jim had flown to his house during the middle of the night. Dressed in an all-black bodysuit, so as to not openly identify himself as Spectrum, he entered the home via a second story window. Jim heard a noise in the hallway and waited invisibly as the door slowly opened. To his great surprise, it was not his father, but rather a shadowy man-like figure with no discernible features.

Jim, more by reflex than intent, let loose with a blast of light. It squarely hit the dark form and sent it sprawling into the hallway. Jim rushed into the hallway, prepared to follow up his attack on the intruder. But there was no need as the shadow man lay on the floor unmoving. The darkness enveloping the man melted away to reveal an old man. Once more, Jim was surprised as the man lying unconscious on the floor was his own father!

"Dad!" Jim willed away the portion of his costume that covered his head and knelt down next to his father. Jordan Sculley had seen better days. He hadn't shaved in weeks and now had a sizeable beer belly. His father reeked of booze and sweat. "What happened to you?"

Jim looked around and quickly located the bathroom. He filled a paper cup with water and returned to his father. After sitting Jordan up against the wall, Jim tossed the water into his face.

The older man's eyes opened and blinked a few times. "What the hell are you doing here?", he asked in an annoyed voice.

"Looking for you," Jim replied. "What's the deal with the shadow stuff? Why didn't you call?"

The older Sculley looked around, trying to get his bearings. "Didn't have nuthin' to say, I guess."

"Why are you still carrying a grudge after all this time?" Jim wasn't quite sure to make of this. Apparently whatever did happen between the two was strong enough to last this long. "I don't even remember what we were fighting about. I don't remember much at all..."

"A likely story."

"It's the truth." After a pause Jim added, "If I didn't care I wouldn't have come here so many times."

"So whatdaya want?" Jordan sure wasn't making this any easier.

"What do I want?" Jim considered the question thoughtfully. "I would hope some answers. A year and a half of my life is missing and I don't know why. As far as I can tell, I didn't have any super powers before I disappeared and now I do. Apparently you do too."

"Don't know what yer talkin' about." Jordan edged himself up the wall and tried to stand. "How 'bout a drink?"

"No thanks, and you don't need one either." Jim offered his hand to Jordan, but it was refused.

"Ya don't know what yer missin'."

"Uhm, a shot liver, a large gut, and bad breath?" Jordan didn't appear amused by Jim's comment.

"You've been gone for years now--," the old man shot out as he moved down the hallway. "Why all the sudden concern now?"

"It wasn't my choice to be gone that long. I honestly have amnesia. My memories are very foggy-- bits and pieces that don't make much sense."

"Works for me."

Following his father down the hall, Jim continued with, "Drowning yourself in alcohol to forget things isn't very bright. You're just slowly killing yourself."

Jordan came to a stop at the top of the stairs and turned to face his son. "Since when should I be takin' advice from my kid?"

"Since you can't seem to make any decisions for yourself anymore. You're a mess." The worst part was that it was the truth.

"It's none of yer damn business," Jordan growled and headed down the stairs.

That was all Jim needed to hear. His patience had been wearing thin as the conversation progress, but that topped it all off. "Okay, fine! If you want to sober up and talk, you know where to call." Jim turned and headed back the way he came. He flew out the window he had entered and streaked off into the night without looking back.

The next day was spent on doing more shopping. Jim purchased a laptop computer so that he could review disks that he had in storage. He primarily was interested in word processing at this moment and didn't see the need for a larger, more versatile system. They also stopped at a travel agency and made arrangements for a flight to Seattle that would leave Friday morning.

That night he called his sister Stephanie to tell her the news.

"That's great, big brother! I can get out of work early and pick you up at the airport."

"Wonderful," Jim said. "I'm really looking forward to this."

"Me too. We always did get along pretty well. Bryan can be such a jerk at times."

"I managed to talk to dad."

"So how is he?" Stephanie's voice seemed to indicate that she didn't have high hopes about her father's condition.

Jim proceeded to relay his encounter with Jordan Sculley, eliminating the part about his super powers or the strange shadow abilities that his father demonstrated.

"He hasn't changed much," Stephanie said with a sigh. "I've begged him to get help, but he ignored me. With his attitude, it makes it really hard to even want to help him."

"What was he like before mom's death?"

"Dad was the best. He was a good and honest man. But you don't remember any of that?"

"Bits and pieces, but nothing specific," Jim conceded. "But perhaps if you told me more about him it might triggers some memories."

"I can do that. Dad was a police officer for some thirty years. Made it to Captain, in fact."

Jim was surprised to find out that his father had been a cop. Perhaps that was what had triggered his odd reaction to going to the police station with Whitney a few days ago. Stephanie spoke a great length about Jordan Sculley, how he taught his children right from wrong.

There was no mention of any super powers by Stephanie. Perhaps she didn't know. Still, if Jordan did have powers of his own that may explain why Jim had them now. Perhaps getting super powers was the reason he disappeared for so long. Since Jordan was LAPD for so many years, then him also being a criminal seemed like a remote possibility. Maybe his father had been a superhero during his younger days? Jim would have to look into that later on.

"You say that he taught us right from wrong," Jim asked his sister, "Could you clarify that?"

"Sure, just think about it. Dad was a policeman-- he worked for law and order. You were an investigative reporter-- you worked to uncover the truth. I became an attorney-- to represent the innocent and try the guilty."

"Yeah, I can see your point. Really hadn't considered it from that angle." Jim could also see where the rift with his father had begun. If Jordan was aware that Jim had super powers and was a criminal, it would sure hurt him pretty bad. It also explained the feelings that Jim had. He was raised with a strong sense of right and wrong. No wonder he didn't feel like a criminal.

That pretty much settled the issue right there. Jim had thought about retiring Spectrum. He knew that deep down he was not a criminal. The problem was that he enjoyed being Spectrum too much to simply quit. The only alternative was to become a hero. Jim found that idea appealing. He talked to his sister for several hours before hanging up late that night.

Whitney had already turned in for the night. She wasn't quite the night owl that Jim was.

"Okay, if I'm gonna do this hero gig, then I'll need to change costumes. That 'Lifesaver' one is just so bad!"

Jim booted the encyclopedia that came with his laptop and looked up the word spectrum, seeking inspiration for a new costume. Turns out that his old costume consisted of stripes of the colors of the rainbow. "Not a bad idea, just awful to look at."

Closing the bedroom door, Jim used the mirror to model outfits. Since he took the name Spectrum, he figured that color would play an important part in the motif. He started with a complete black body suit with a large white star burst pattern on his chest. The top of the star burst came part way up his face. The sides met in the back, and the lower portion went between his legs and up to meet the sides on the back. It essentially divided his body into three sections.

The top section-- the head, shoulders, upper chest, and arms he made a dark shade of blue. The remainder of the right side became red, the left yellow. The gloves came next. The right hand was violet-- red and blue make violet. Likewise, the same formula yielded green for the left glove-- blue and yellow make green. Orange boots finished the costume-- red and yellow made orange. "Much better," Jim thought to himself.

Jim thought about going out flying tonight, but decided against it. His current knowledge of the super community was too limited. Spectrum would be unable to tell the good guys from the bad guys at this point.

Jim still didn't know what to make of his encounter with the man with electrical powers the night before. He made it seems as if the answer to whether Spectrum was a hero or a villain was very important. It was as if he would have attacked Spectrum for giving the wrong answer. Or course, Charger did attack anyway. Apparently, 'not being sure' wasn't what the man had wanted to hear.

Instead, he connected to the Hero Net web site with his laptop and explored until the wee hours of the morning. Jim started out with the folks that he had encountered at the Genocide base.

Icicle came across as he pretty much imagined. She appeared on the super scene a little over a year before the fiasco in Denver. The icy mutant seemed to be a very minor villain-- mostly robberies and the like. She had worked as an enforcer for VIPER on occasion as well.

Shadow Queen was a very different story. She seemed to fluctuate between being a hero and being a villain, which tended to annoy more than a few folks. At best she was a disturbing shade of gray. Clearly, her own personal welfare came above all else. What really disturbed Jim was the long list of lovers. "This girl falls in love at the drop of a hat!", Jim thought shifting through the roughly two dozen names on the list.

Black Mamba was another who was difficult to classify. Apparently he had been mutated into his present state by a supervillain named King Cobra. Since that time, Black Mamba's sole reason for living was to exact vengeance on the serpentine villain. While no law a bidding citizen minded anyone going after King Cobra, the Black Mamba didn't care what got in his way when it came to his goal. As such, there had been many crimes, assaults, and worse acts committed on his quest.

Raccoon and Panda were an interesting pair. Panda had been a PSI operative from Britain who was sent to the states to deal with a VIPER agent who had been destroying PSI's Mid-west operations, the Raccoon. The two finally met and ended up falling in love with each other. Needless to say, that really annoyed both of their employers. They are on the run from both criminal organizations to this day.

The information on Mind Slayer was sketchy. It was guessed that she was also a PSI operative, but another who escaped their organization. However, unlike many of the others he had met, Mind Slayer was clearly a supervillainess. Likewise, Brother Basilisk and the enigmatic Void were clear-cut criminals.

Next Jim turned his attention to the superheroes of Los Angeles. It would be in bad form for Spectrum to accidentally come into conflict with one of the local crime fighters simply because he didn't recognize them!

The primary hero team of Los Angeles was the Guardians. The group had been together for over six years by now and for a little over two years were the officially recognized sister-team to the Avengers. The current roster included the Hornet-- a man in armor who could shrink; Sidewinder-- a martial artist who phase in and out of reality; Spinnerette-- a web-slinging heroine; Duplicator-- a man who copy the powers of others; Lazerblast-- a sharp-shooter with a laser rifle that had a variety of settings; and lastly Density and Warlock. The last two were husband and wife. Warlock was a practitioner of bad-luck magic, while his wife could alter her body's density to become as light as air or as hard as diamond.

The Freedom Squad was the second Los Angeles hero team. The group had been organized for some fifteen years, but never quite achieved the popularity of the Guardians. Nor were they as powerful as the Guardians. The Freedom Squad was lead by the legendary American Eagle, more precisely the second American Eagle. The current American Eagle had been the side kick of the original as a teenager during World War II. "The guy has to be in sixties by now," Jim mused.

The remainder of the team was filled out by the Black Phantom-- a gadget-using crime fighter; Jo-Tan-- an extremely tall Japanese strong man; Victrix-- a young woman with telekinetic powers; Dimension Man-- a teleporter; and Hard Hat-- a gadgeteer with an industrial motif.

Notable soloists included Morningstar-- a super strong woman who had been in the Guardians and still worked together with Spinnerette on occasion; Nightwind-- a street level martial artist; and a pair of recent arrivals: Blizzard-- a man with ice projecting powers; and Shockwave-- a woman in armor who could literally shake things up.

The next several days passed quickly. Whitney was involved on a case, leaving Jim by himself most of the time. Jim had used the time to review the files on the disks found in his storage boxes. As expected, they held the various short stories that he had written. They were all there-- the few very good ones and some very bad ones as well. While the first stories were not very good, they did have some good ideas in them. With polishing, they could be upgraded to a more professional level of quality.

That was a good thing, as sooner or later Jim would need to be generating income. He had enough in the bank to last many months, but it wouldn't last forever. Jim had always wanted to be a professional writer and now seemed like the best time ever. Jim picked up a laser-jet printer during the week to handle making printouts of his stories.

Being a writer would mesh nicely with his being Spectrum. Heroes rarely maintained any semblance of normal hours. There were problems of balancing the two jobs and protecting your identity from your co-workers. A writer primarily worked alone and at his convenience. No foreseeable problems there. Plus, Jim's reflexes were super-humanly fast as well. He estimated that he could easily type over 200 words per minute.

The later disks held works that he had in progress. Thankfully, Jim wrote outline files for his tales. Apparently he had big plans for his works. Primarily he had written stories in a fantasy setting complete with powerful warriors, mysterious wizards, and mighty dragons. But his outlines also included several science fiction and mystery tales.

Most importantly, the disks contained notes and rough chapters about Jim's first novel. To Jim's great surprise, the book opened with a narrative that was word per word what he had written while in Genocide's arena. (Editor's Note: See Spectrum #1)

"I guess that makes sense," Jim rationalized. "If what occurred there was drawn from my memories, then those words were there as well. But it still doesn't explain why I imagined waking up in Whitney's apartment-- then and now."

The novel incorporated many characters from his short stories having them join forces on a great adventure. As Jim wrote his stories, the notes on his created world grew as well. By now it was a fairly well developed world. Given that, it would be a simple task to make another pass through his earlier works and give then an upgrade. That would also allow him to have them mesh better with the older tales.

The first short story, "Edge of the Borderlands", nearly doubled in size after a day's work on it. Jim was especially proud of it and let Whitney read it. She enjoyed the tale, commenting on how good his story telling had become. He made a hard copy the next day and began to shop it around to various fantasy magazines.

That night they celebrated with a fine dinner and ended it in each other's arms. The two had grown closer and closer over the days and both seemed genuinely happy. Whitney had fallen asleep, her head resting on Jim's shoulder. He absentmindedly stroked her hair as he thought about the state of their relationship. Jim wasn't exactly sure if Whitney's affection for him was completely genuine or stemmed from some feelings of sympathy. He wasn't completely sure of his own feelings, but he was feeling pretty good about things between them right now.

For the time being, Jim decided it best to not tell Whitney about Spectrum, even though he felt guilty about keeping secrets from her. At least not until his reputation had seriously improved.

Interlude:

Driving up and down the Los Angeles freeway were hundreds, perhaps thousands of semi trucks. Most of them were occupied by one or two man teams intent on getting their next shipment to its location as quickly as possible. One in particular, heading north, was a bit different than most. In the passenger seat was an orange and red garbed individual. He sat in contemplative thought, his red-gloved fingers rubbing his chin.

"Everything is perfectly in place," the super villain known as Pulsar stated out loud, even though he was hardly speaking to the driver of the semi. That didn't stop the man from answering however.

"I don't get what a load a' dry ice, a compressor trailer, and a couple a' air hammers, heading to that private airport is gonna do," the man said to Pulsar. Pulsar looked over at the man with contempt irritated that his thoughts had been interrupted. He considered blasting the offending driver where he sat, but thought better of it.

"I wouldn't expect one of your limited intelligence to begin to comprehend the magnitude of this operation. The only thing you need to know is how much you are being paid and what I need you to do. Just drive to the last stop." The man swallowed uncomfortably and turned back to watch the road. Seeing the intimidating look in Pulsar's eyes, the driver would not try and speak with him again the rest of the trip.

"No one understands," Pulsar said to himself again. "No one can comprehend. But, soon, very soon, with the power of Mechanon, Pulsar will be the King of Crime! Sheila Grace will be mine at last!"

End of Interlude:

It was Thursday evening and Whitney's sports car was speeding along the highways leaving Los Angeles.

"So where's this place you're taking me too?" Jim sat in the passenger seat wondering. Whitney had been very quiet about their dining destination for the evening.

"Just a little place I found while on a case. It's called the Flying Beagle Cafe and it's located adjacent to a small, private airstrip."

"A flying beagle, huh? Sounds different."

"You'll like the food," Whitney said with a smile. "I wanted something unique for our last night together."

"I'm only going to be gone the weekend, Whitney."

"My point is: It'll just seem long."

"I went down to the newspaper this morning," Jim said changing the subject. "Talked to my old editor and some of the other folks."

"That's great. Did it trigger any memories?"

"Some, but nothing exact."

"Are you going to try your hand at reporting again?", Whitney wondered.

"I don't think so. I want to try my hand at full-time writing first. Although, they said they would accept freelance material if I had the inclination."

Whitney eased the car onto the off-ramp and away from the congested thruway. A few minutes later, the airstrip came into sight. It was as small as Whitney described, having only two runways. It primarily served small, private planes that could easily be crowded out by the larger aircraft at the commercial airports. Whitney brought the car to a stop outside the Flying Beagle Cafe.

The two were situated and eating their meal in short order.

"You're right," Jim said, "this is pretty good."

"I know your tastes by now, Mr. Sculley. Got everything ready for your trip tomorrow?"

"All packed and ready to go. I'll take my laptop as carry on luggage and work during the flight. I'm about halfway through my next short story, 'Caves of the Unknown'."

"I'd like to see it first, naturally," Whitney said. "I guess all that time spent playing Dungeons and Dragons is finally paying off."

"Looks that way. I'm trying to get the story world a bit more organized and consistent. Lots of details to work out. Then I'll take a stab at the novel."

"At least you have a plan of attack," Whitney observed. "That's good to see. The old you seemed to do things only as the mood struck you."

"I have a great deal of motivation. I'm honestly happy with my life right now. There are all these stories in me screaming to be let out. I just sit down at the keyboard and let'm loose." Turning more serious, Jim held Whitney's hand and added, "Much of the credit goes to you."

"Jim, you're embarrassing me..." Whitney started to blush.

The sentence was cut off unexpectedly, as a huge explosion was heard and felt on the far side of the airport. The cafe looked out onto the runways and right now a huge ball of fire was rising into the air near the hangars! The force of the explosion blew out the windows in the cafe forcing the patrons to dive for cover. Alarms and sirens began to wail.

Both Jim and Whitney had ducked under their table to avoid the jagged shrapnel. "You okay?", Jim asked. Whitney nodded yes. "Stay here, I'm going to check this out."

"You're going to what!?", Whitney said loudly and with great concern.

"Whatever's going on is news, I'll be able to break the story first!" Jim made a beeline to the cafe door.

While that certainly made sense, Whitney wasn't about to let Jim do this alone. As a private investigator, she was used to tough situations much more than he was. Whitney made her way out from under the table and gave pursuit. Jim was long gone by the time she reached the front of the cafe. She circled around the building and headed towards the main airport. A small crowd was beginning to gather already. Oddly enough, a thick fog had started to roll in, dramatically reducing visibility.

Near the source of the fire, a costumed man stood on top of a jeep with a bullhorn in his hand. Whitney recognized him as the supervillain Pulsar.

"This is the great Pulsar!" The villain screamed into the bullhorn. "Unless my demands are met, I'll blow up all the gas tanks on the airport!"

"Jim," Whitney thought, "where ever you are out here, please be careful..."

Unnoticed by Whitney and the crowd around her, the colorfully clad Spectrum flew overhead and was quickly lost in the fog....