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<body class='hmmessage'><div dir='ltr'>[8FOLD/HCC] Journey Into #21 (HCC51)<br> <br>Eightfold Comics Group Presents<br>A High Concept Adventure<br>JOURNEY INTO #21: 'The Truth About Someone Else's Identity'<br>by Saxon Brenton<br>[8F-139]<br> <br> <br> The diabolical Professor Longitude was flying for the simple <br>pleasure of it.<br> In part he was pleased with the new toys he had to play with. The <br>various super abilities built into Doctor Longitude's costume (which, <br>like Doctor Longitude's body, had been stolen and were now at the <br>diabolical Professor's disposal) were moderately impressive. Mach 5 <br>flight capacity, combined with force field and life support to make <br>mach 5 flight survivable. Stealth capabilities, and tracking for any <br>nearby air traffic. A variety of exotic offensive and defensive <br>systems... The diabolical Professor was particularly looking forward <br>to investigating the latter.<br> But right now, he was looping through the sky for the sheer giddy <br>joy of having successfully pulled off his latest scheme. Ha! Take that <br>Doctor Longitude!<br> The diabolical Professor paused and took stock of his location. <br>He seemed to have wandered over the midwest, and was now floating above <br>the farmlands to the west of Detroit. He wondered if Doctor Longitude <br>had regained consciousness yet.<br> He took out device of his own construction and checked in on Doctor <br>Longitude. To his disappointment the young hero was still unconscious <br>back at the abandoned warehouse where he had left him. The black cape <br>briefly frowned to himself at this laziness. In the eternal conflict <br>between Good and Evil, the key word was 'conflict'. Or maybe it was the <br>'dynamic' in 'dynamic antagonism'...<br> He'd lost his train of thought again.<br> No, wait. The point that four colour heroes should damn well be <br>recovering from their latest setback and be setting about to overcome <br>their villainous nemeses. Doctor Longitude should be grateful that he <br>had merely been left unconscious on the floor of an abandoned warehouse, <br>with his mind swapped into someone else's body. If this had been a <br>proper death trap the hero would be dead by now. Killed before he'd <br>even woken up and had the chance to struggle against the diabolical <br>Professor Longitude's nefarious machinations! And where would be the <br>sense in that!?<br> Well, if the hero wasn't awake to keep the diabolical Professor <br>entertained with his struggles, then the black cape would take the time <br>to work on the mystery of who Doctor Longitude was.<br> Over the past few months the diabolical Professor Longitude had <br>been greatly entertained by Doctor Longitude's level best attempts to <br>murder him. During the course of this the diabolical Professor had been <br>able to confirm that Doctor Longitude was indeed genetically identical <br>to himself. This hadn't been particularly surprising. The four colour <br>had claimed to be one of his counterparts from another universe, after <br>all.<br> But which universe? The diabolical Professor had investigated, <br>only to discover that the quantum signature of Doctor Longitude's atoms <br>was identical to this one. The diabolical Professor Longitude was <br>briefly non-plussed by this - but only briefly. Had Doctor Longitude <br>lied? How dull. But wait! It was possible to recalibrate a quantum <br>signature and disguise what universe someone was native to. A type of <br>false flagging operation. And even if Doctor Longitude was native to <br>this continuum, at the very least he had to be a clone. Or maybe the <br>diabolical Professor had had sex with a reverse gender copy of himself, <br>and by use of a probability manipulator the genetic information passed <br>on within the gametes of both partners had produced offspring identical <br>to that of his male parent!<br> (Professor Longitude was pretty sure he would have noticed a <br>contrivance like that, however. Ninety percent sure, anyway.)<br> The black cape double checked his location again (he noted that in <br>the past few minutes he had drifted further westwards, towards Chicago). <br>That made his choice of emergency bases obvious. With the activation of <br>another device he dimensionally relocated himself to a small pocket <br>world that he had set up as a bolt hole - no more than a few hundred <br>square feet, but dimensionally tethered to this part of midwest so that <br>it could be accessed from anywhere in the geographic region.<br> Everything seemed to be in order. The diabolic Professor cracked <br>his knuckles (or at least, Doctor Longitude's knuckles) and set to work. <br>As was often the case when he went into creative ferment, he wasn't <br>quite sure what he was working on. However roughly 27 hours later when <br>it was finished he had a large scanner type device, all Kirbytech lines <br>and crackling energy, and consisting of a platform where he could stand <br>upright, plus a control panel and many involuted detection arrays. It <br>was a temporal scanner, meant to reveal the history of the thing being <br>probed.<br> The diabolical Professor could hardly wait. As usual when he was <br>in the excitement of working on a project he felt no sense of fatigue. <br>He could probably go for another day or three before crashing. So he <br>stepped into the device, set the controls, and began the procedure.<br> Lights flashed, and theremin type whines were produced. The <br>diabolical Professor watched the readouts with interest. The overview <br>indicated that Doctor Longitude's body seemed to have an extremely short <br>timeline. The diabolical Professor double checked to make sure that this <br>wasn't an artefact of having arrived in this universe recently, <br>but, no, it genuinely seemed that the four colour had only been in <br>existence for something over a year. It looked like Doctor Longitude <br>was a clone after all. Then an idea came to him, and he checked to see <br>whether the results would be the same if Doctor Longitude were some <br>innocent victim who had had the black cape's genetic profile overlaid <br>onto him, transforming him into a duplicate of the diabolical Professor <br>and setting him on a path of revenge. But, no, that made no difference <br>either. Okay then, whatever, clones it was.<br> The device gave a final, satisfied sounding ding, telling the <br>diabolical Professor that he could step out. He made himself some <br>coffee to keep himself going now that the device had been built and the <br>adrenaline from the first flush of his project was wearing off. He was <br>starting to feel weary, but he wanted to examine the data that he had <br>gathered in more detail.<br> In specific he wanted to examine the imagery of Doctor Longitude's <br>life, and so he had set the scanner up to produce video footage of the <br>person being scanned. There was a hefty amount of it of course, even <br>for the truncated life span of a clone. The diabolical Professor <br>decided to skim backwards to a time to when Doctor Longitude had been at <br>whatever his home base was.<br> That base turned out to be in the Chicagoland area. Beyond that he <br>discovered that Doctor Longitude typically rested in a sleep pod, being <br>programmed and given instructions while he was unconscious. The <br>diabolical Professor nodded. That seemed like a perfectly sensible way <br>to keep control of a creation. However it did mean that he was currently <br>using a body that probably had deep programming. He thought about the <br>coincidence that during his own random flight earlier he had just <br>happened to be drifting in that direction. With the sceptical mental <br>equivalent of a red circle drawn around a particularly pertinent fact <br>written on a notepad he made a mental note to take steps and remove <br>any subconscious commands.<br> There was still no indication of who was in control of Doctor <br>Longitude. The diabolical Professor continued searching. Finally he <br>began to find traces of person in charge.<br> Simon Throckmorton. The original, Silver Age Professor Longitude. <br> He was alive. <br> The diabolical Professor Longitude was genuinely surprised by that. <br>It wasn't as though his father had died in battle against four colours <br>or had been blown up in a freak airship accident. He hadn't been a <br>black cape, just a rather prosaic crime lord. He'd died in prison of a <br>heart attack and there'd been a full autopsy.<br> The diabolical Professor Longitude paused. After a *suspiciously <br>short* time in prison. And just because he hadn't been known as a <br>black cape didn't mean he didn't have any mad science resources at his <br>disposal. Hmmm...<br> The black cape continued on, no longer so much interested in Doctor <br>Longitude as he was with what the Silver Age Professor Longitude was up <br>to. Weariness was pressing in on him, but he set his own stubbornness <br>against it. He had to know what was going on.<br> It took him a while. Perhaps the diabolical Professor's tiredness <br>was making him careless, but eventually he found a clear and explicit <br>statement of what the Silver Age Professor Longitude intended.<br> "My offspring carries the genetic condition for mad science, and <br>has an active expression of it that is extreme," explained the Silver <br>Age Professor Longitude on screen to a blank-eyed Doctor Longitude. <br>(Later, when the diabolical Professor had calmed down a bit and was <br>rewatching this scene, he would take interest in the way that the <br>exuberant and snarky four colour hero that he had fought against was <br>revealed as nothing more than a facade.)<br> For now the diabolical Professor watched as his not-anywhere-near-<br>as-deceased-as-had-been-thought parent expressed his distrust for the <br>diabolical Professor's powers of mad science and his battles with the <br>four colour heroes: "At some point I expect his mad genius will reach a <br>plateau where playing games no longer interests him, and he will destroy <br>the world with one of his creations before they can intervene. And <br>probably do so by accident."<br> The diabolical professor Longitude scowled at the description of <br>his work as 'games'.<br> Onscreen the Silver Age Professor Longitude continued, "I will <br>plan a campaign against him. You will supply the mad science technology <br>to counter his inventions. Together we will harass him - and then when <br>he at his weakest, I will destroy him."<br> And for a second - just for a second - the diabolical Professor <br>found himself wishing he had just flat out killed Doctor Longitude when <br>he had held the young man in his power back at the warehouse base. It <br>was incredibly wasteful to dispose of a heroic opponent like that, but... <br>He felt angry. Not even, "Pitiful insects, I shall crush you!" angry, <br>with all the appropriate social niceties of declaring war on them and <br>composing a proper villainous rant. Rather, "You don't even understand <br>what I'm on about, and frankly you're in my way. Just f*ck off and die."<br> The mad scientist grimaced and then sighed. He lifted his coffee <br>cup to his lips, only to discover that it had gone cold. He could feel <br>the lack of sleep beginning to catch up on him, and knew that a proper <br>night's rest would do him a world of good. If nothing else, it would <br>let him sleep on the problem and compose a suitably epic revenge.<br> The diabolical Professor Longitude went to bed.<br> <br> <br>==========<br>Copyright 2015 Saxon Brenton. All characters created by me. <br> <br>Author's notes:<br> Written for High Concept Challenge #51: "The Truth About My <br>Identity".<br> This storyline has been developing sporadically as I occasionally <br>discover new things to say about it. I suppose what you would call the <br>prelude was _Jolt City Adventures_ #1, which introduced the diabolical <br>Professor Longitude. The actually struggle between the Silver Age <br>Professor Longitude (with Doctor Longitude as his proxy) and the <br>diabolical Professor Longitude appeared in _Journey Into_ #14 and #17.<br> This episode originally focused on Doctor Longitude as he regained <br>consciousness and went to get help, but I rewrote the start something <br>like four or five times. Now, with time running out on HCC51 I've <br>decided to can that aspect for the time being and shift the focus onto <br>the diabolical Professor Longitude.<br> The exuberance of the diabolical Professor makes him easy to write <br>for. This scene took about 3 hours or so to write, starting at about <br>1 o'clock in the morning on the 12th of February. By comparison I'm <br>beginning to wonder if I'll ever be able to get its counterpart scene <br>with Doctor Longitude into a fit condition to post. :-/<br> <br>-----<br>Saxon Brenton University of Technology, city library, Sydney Australia <br> <a href="mailto:saxon.brenton@uts.edu.au">saxon.brenton@uts.edu.au</a> <a href="mailto:saxonbrenton@hotmail.com">saxonbrenton@hotmail.com</a><br>"These 'no-nonsense' solutions of yours just don't hold water in a complex <br>world of jet-powered apes and time-travel." - Superman, JLA Classified #3<BR> <BR> </div></body>
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