The Value of Influence

Last Thursday, I went to have lunch with Tony Kord, the multimillionaire owner of Kord Technologies. We went to Foracini’s, a really nice Italian restaraunt in The Promenade. The host recognized me from a little favor I had worked on for the owner a while back involving keeping some Hellions from bothering the staff at night, so although there is usually a long wait at lunchtime, we managed to get seated right away. One of the other patrons took exception to our quick seating and started protesting. Tony, always the diplomat (and apparently quite hungry), quickly stepped in and offered to pay the bill of other patron and his friends for the inconvenience. The patron agreed and walked away still somewhat irritated, but placated.

Tony and I started chatting about things going on in the city when his assistant buzzed him on his walkie-talkie cell phone from the office and said that a hero named Xiphias needed some new Wetware auxiliary boosters, that he was running out of “juice” during battles.

Tony whipped out his PDA, poked at it for a few seconds, and replied, “Sure, Richard, send four of them over to his base. The location is in our encrypted contact database.”

I found it slightly strange that Tony was willing to simply hand over four Wetware boosters, which retail for over $15,000 each, to a hero that I had never heard of before. I asked him who this Xiphias hero was and why he rated so high in Tony’s book to simply hand over equipment like that.

Tony explained that Xiphias has been protecting commercial fishing vessels from attack for over a decade, and at his request in the late 1990’s, Xiphias expanded his activities to protect all commercial vessels travelling to or from Independence Port. As it turns out, these vessels are in constant peril from the Tsoo, who wish to expand the Pacific shipping market—and the Asian companies that use it—to the Unites States. Also, of course, the organized crime families want a cut of all action in Independence Port and were a persistent threat as well.

The reason Tony got involved with Xiphias is that Independence Port is a major shipping terminus for Kord Technologies to its European markets, and several of the company’s boats were hijacked over the course of several years in the 1990’s, costing the company millions of dollars. So Xiphias agreed to curb the crime in the area, and in exchange, Tony provides Xiphias with funds and resources he would not otherwise have access to.

Both the incident with the restaraunt patron and the relationship between Tony Kord and Xiphias show something that readers sometimes write to me about: Heroes have influence. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, but always some amount that they leverage to get what they need to continue the battle against evil. In Paragon City, a hero soon learns that influence is even more valuable than dollars. A hero’s influence, if high enough, allows him or her to get any equipment that is needed. The influence provided by high-level contacts such as Tony Kord and others around the city is what drives many heroes to engage in most of the missions they undertake. In short, in Paragon City, it is what makes the world go ’round.

I stopped by City Hall after lunch to pick up my assault rifle that I use on my missions, and I started talking with Chalise Hardy, the armament inventory control clerk for the Freedom Corps in Galaxy City. I asked her if she thought that influence played an important part of a hero’s status in Paragon City.

She walked to a weapons rack and pulled out an axe. “This is the Axe of Nidhor. The Persian Princess retrieved it from the Circle of Thorns a few weeks ago. Today, a hero called Korfell is coming to pick it up to use. Last week, he saved Azuria’s aunt. Do you think that is a coincidence?” She walked back to the weapons rack and picked up a sword. “This is Mirabelle Kowalski’s katana that she’s used for the last two years. She left it here to have it sharpened and for the handle to be re-wrapped. Know where she got it? She rescued Susan Davies’ son from the Hellions. You know Susan, the ELITE hero liason? Do you think she just gives her weapons collection away for nothing?” She went back to the weapons rack and picked up my LXR-804 Super Assault Rifle that I had left to be cleaned. “Where did you get your weapon, by the way?” Chay already knew, because she is the one that approved my weapons registration form when I arrived here in 2002.

But it was only then that it occurred to me that she was right. I got my weapon from a contact I used to work with when I went on missions in foreign countries. He gave it to me after a covert operation to take out a secret weapons manufacturing plant in Honduras. The target was a really nasty place run by really nasty people, and it definitely had to be taken out, but the fact that it was run by rivals of my contact probably put him in a little more of a gracious mood than he would have normally been, which is why he gave to me—free of charge—the latest test model weapon that his company had been working on.

I like to think that influence is a good thing. The more respect I have from my contacts, the more tools and gadgets I have access to. The more trust I have from them, the more important the missions I get assigned to.

So whether it’s getting a new enhancement for your weapon, a new gadget to help in your fights, or just getting a good table at a nice Italian restaraunt, there is no doubt that influence is a very important part of the hero’s life in Paragon City.

The Fall of a Hero

I apologize for the delay in submitting this column, but I have found something so important, it has taken me more than a week to process it all and compose a cohesive column about it. A week ago from last Tuesday, while on a task force, I found one of the most disturbing things I have ever seen: the chronicle of a gradual slip into the depths of madness. It was the personal journal of Dr. Benjamin Owens.

For those who aren't familiar with Dr. Owens, he was a former hero who called himself Gearsmith. From an early age, he had an uncanny knack for everything mechanical. By the age of 14, he had obtained PhD's in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and the relatively new field of Computer Science. He worked for Crey Biotech's Advanced Computer Applications division for a couple of years, then he was hired by Hero Corps to be the lead researcher for the Department of Advanced Technology Application. While there, he helped to develop the city's medical transportation grid and published the technology papers underlying most of the city's hero robots on the streets today. The work that Gearsmith performed while at Hero Corp made him a multi-millionaire, and by using statistical market simulators, he turned that money into billions.

Before the Rikti War, Gearsmith went to work for a secret government project called "Clockwork," a project that was formed to investiage the military application of using highly mobile "smart" robots. While other scientists toiled endlessly searching for more and more complex solutions, Gearsmith took a pioneering new approach, researching the possibility of controlling massive numbers of very simple self-replicating machines from a central command location. However, he was constantly stymied by the complexity of the control system; it had to be simple enough to use by a small team but smart enough to coordinate the activities of thousands of robots operating independently and simultaneously.

While working on the Clockwork project, Gearsmith's reputation changed from brilliant scientist to insatiable perfectionist. He relentlessly insisted that the control system he designed for the project was adequate, but it required a highly advanced mind to drive it. Some started to say that he had given up trying to find such an intellect and was focusing instead on creating it. The rumors kept gaining momentum until late 1999, when Gearsmith lost any illusion of respectability he had been able to maintain. It was discovered that he had been performing experiments in a secret biotech lab on terminally ill cancer patients in an attempt to separate their consciousnesses from their bodies.

When the authorities showed up to arrest Gearsmith, a large raging fire consumed the lab with him still in it, and everyone thought that was the end of a good hero gone bad.

Until a week ago from last Tuesday.

The book I found was a detailed journal kept by Gearsmith, and it turns out that he did not perish in the fire as everyone thought. The Paragon Mirror will publish a more complete synopsis of the journal at a later date, but I will continue the story in his own words by quoting excertps here.

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February 12, 2000
Finally! I found the breakthrough I've been seeking since before they forced me to destroy the lab! I was so close, and I knew that a person's mind and body were separate, one able to exist without the other. It's so easy, I do not understand why more people don't see how obvious it is. We can keep a body alive for years, even decades, without a living mind; why would we not be able to do the opposite? They mocked my experiments. They called me "mad." But I will show them, the brilliant Dr. Owens will once again reclaim his former glory. Those who judge me because I killed a few people who were going to die anyway will now live with the disgrace of knowing that I was right, and that people can now live forever. I am glad I made this discovery, even if it was a mere hobby. Now I must find something new on which to focus my mind...

June 18, 2000
As Archimedes once said, eureka! However, Archimedes's simple machines are but tiny electrons revolving around the nucleus of this momentous discovery, and his works will soon be forgotten when I can once again proudly show the world my achievements. Although it has been almost a year since I worked on the Clockwork project, I finally have the answer that I sought for so long. With the neural interface I have developed, I am now able to control hundreds of simple machines in the confined space of the warehouse. If only I had more raw mental processing power to concentrate, I could control millions of advanced machines!

August 2, 2000
I am so close. The answer is within my grasp. Why didn't I think of it before? Probably because of the mass idiocy of most average dullards spewing that we only use a fraction of our brains. Every educated person knows that we use almost all of our brains for the menial task of running our inefficient bodies. [News Man's Note: In this statement, Dr. Owens is actually correct.] Pumping the heart, inflating and deflating the lungs, even the disgusting task of mere defecation has to take up the time of millions of glorious neurons. If God designed these hideous shells of our bodies to be so clumsy, then He was an idiot, and they might even start worshipping me instead! At any rate, I must now concentrate, because I believe that my earlier work in separating mind from body will now prove useful beyond even my wild imagination...

February 29, 2001
I think I have finally succeeded. I installed one of the cancer patient's brains that I preserved into a new model shell I created, and it was able to move and manipulate small objects around it. Of course, I destroyed any higher thought centers of the brain first. By automating the maintenance of the shell, in fact, I was able to remove almost everything behind the frontal lobe and much of the cortex, but I see no reason that it can't be left intact or even expanded to maintain consciousness. The neurons in the parietal lobe can be retrained to control external interfaces instead of muscular systems... [News Man's Note: A couple hundred pages of highly technical notes and biomechanical diagrams follow. I had no idea that Dr. Owens had become a genius in several medical fields as well.]

September 11, 2001
While the world turns its attention to attacks in New York City this morning, I am in the beginning stages of testing my most advanced shell design yet. The shell is completely self-contained, mobile, and self-sustaining. There is no reason it should ever die! I used the last of the preserved brains several months ago, so I have been forced to appropriate additional specimens among the homeless population. I am keeping a detailed record of all of their names, though. I am not a monster, and when I am restored to my former glory, I will remember the contributions of those who sacrificed themselves for my cause. Really, I will never understand why I am so gracious. In truth, they do not deserve the credit to be mentioned in anything with my name on it, since they were all so unwilling to become test subjects. In other matters, I fear that in my efforts, I may have attracted some unwanted attention from someone called Chrysis.

January 4, 2002
The experiments with my new shell design have been more successful than even I had anticipated! By using very carefully placed electrical impulses to implanted brains, I have been able to conduct a series of tests with repeatable results. The combined unit is able to control dozens of my sprockets and cogs that I have reconstructed from my days on the Clockwork project, and the combined unit's lifetime was determined at the whim of my termination button. If a brain as highly superior as mine were implanted, the unit could surpass the most ambitious expectations of the original project. I have never really considered this as a possibility, but I may actually be the perfect specimen to control this unit! This progress has not come without hinderance, however. Chrysis continues to plague my reserach. Today, ten crates of supplies I desperately needed were intercepted, which will set me back by a week. A week! That's like a year to most of the normal twits out there doing their petty research. I am afraid that I might have to put an end to these interruptions once and for all.

March 27, 2002
Another setback. It seems that I have my own personal nemesis now in this damned vigilante. The citizens of Paragon City are calling Chrysis a hero, a defender of justice. How dare they! If they only knew what I was working on, this Chrysis person would be immediately killed as an archvillain! I will definitely have to deal with this matter very soon. However, I also have good news. The simulated intelligence system has been evolving my designs for the Clockwork drones. They now have fully-developed weapons systems. Some of the more advanced models are quite powerful. I am starting to believe that I no longer want the glory that I have so desperately searched for in vain among the inferiors of this world who think they are my peers. If we are to ever continue evolving, they need a guide or a leader, no, a king! A king who will direct them benevolently towards the pursuit of the perfection of our species. I envision a day when all humans are enhanced by the machines on which I am working. Free of their worthless bodies they will never have to labor with a Clockwork kingdom to provide for their every need.

March 30, 2002
I have indeed dealt with Chrysis, but at what cost? In the battle, a bullet I fired ricocheted and punctured my left lung. I fear that I may not have much time left. These past few days, I have been working on the final preparations for the transfer of my own mind into my newest shell. It is a fully automated process, but I have not had enough time to test it. I am certain that it will work fine. After all, it was developed by me. However, I had not prepared to engage the process so early! Still, I cannot allow my knowledge to be lost when the world so needs it. I WILL NOT allow it to be lost!

[News Man's Note: The handwriting drastically changes.]

April 1, 2002
The process is complete. I have been made whole again. The shell is working perfectly. However, I did not realize what affect being removed from my body would have. I have completely lost all tactile, olfactory, and gustatory sensations. It will also take some time to become accustomed to the visual and aural sensory input interfaces. The Clockwork interface system seems to be working perfectly. I can not only control the robots, but I can actually "see" and "hear" through them as well. I do wish I had had more time to perfect the sensory inputs and the aesthetic appearance of the shell. Still, it is better than nothing. I have also given more thought to what I shall do now. The more I ponder my situation, the more I realize that the only logical way to proceed is to become king of this world and restore my access to research and materials through force if necessary. The Clockwork will serve not only as my subjects, but as my workforce and my army. I have started construction of a new batch of drones and instructed them to collect everything necessary to build even more. The simulated intelligence has began building additional advanced models of Clockwork. I facetiously named them Knights, Dukes and Princes until I thought of a better designation, but the more I think about these names, the more appropriate I think they are. These models will serve as my personal Court and field commanders, since humans are currently unworthy to function in this capacity. I have ordered that my former biological body be preserved in case the DNA might be useful at some point in the future. I do miss the sensations that have been removed, and some day, I will research how to improve this shell with advanced sensory inputs.

[News Man's Note: After that last entry, there was a long span of time during which there were no entries. The next one is vaguely unsettling.]

(No date)
There is a new villain seeking me out. I have dealt with many villains before, but this one is proving particularly noisome. Why must I be tasked so? It matters not; for soon, all of mankind will bow before the benevolent rule of the Clockwork King and his Court. Still, this new villain could prove dangerous. Many of my drones have been attacked and defeated, so many that I am having to dedicate extra drones to mere replication duties. This new villain reminds me so much of the vigilante who destroyed my body and left me to this metal shell. I must eliminate this new threat. I have absorbed the simulated intelligence into my my own body and together, we are working on the construction of the most powerful Clockwork yet: a mighty Paladin who will be my avatar in the world, and a personal guard I shall call Babbage that will defend me against all villains, including this new nemesis if need be. The world will soon know the true glory of the achievements I have made!

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The following photograph was tucked in the back of the journal, and on the back, these words were written: "Shell Test Subject Epsilon, able to maintain cerebral sustenance and control functions. A promising prototype."

I have written in the past about what motivates a hero to be a hero. Now I have some insight into what motivates a villain to be a villain, and frankly, this scares me much more than any enemy I have ever fought. Gearsmith was a great man, and it is hard to imagine what could cause his mind to become so twisted. I hope that there are heroes out there who will address this problem. I talked to Brighid Moreira, the City Representative, on Friday. She said that Synapse is working on a way to end the threat of the Clockwork King. If you see any of the Clockwork King's drones, I urge you to stay away. If you are a hero interested in possibly working to put an end to this, please seek out Synapse, usually found close to the PTA train station in Skyway City.

On a personal note, I hope that all heroes take notice. The Clockwork King was a hero, too. He still remains convinced that what he is doing is for the benefit of humankind. It just goes to show that there is sometimes a very thin line between virtue and vice, a line that is usually obscured by obsession.

Toño "News Man" Vasquez

The Not-So-Heroic Life

Hey, all. Today, I would like to bring to you a side of being a hero that most heroes do not like to admit exists: failure.

Most heroes would like the public--and especially, the bad guys--to think that they always succeed with stunning glory. Every mission ends with a lot of heroes celebrating their victory with high-fives and dancing on the bodies of their fallen enemies, right?

Unfortunately, as you can see from the number of bad guys still out there, from street thugs to powerful archvillains, this is not always the case. Sometimes a hero even contributes to the failure of a mission or battle.

I think the closest call I have ever created myself was about a year ago. I was on what should have been a cakewalk of a mission. All we had to do was retrieve a stolen list of police officers who worked undercover on a high-profile organized crime case. In our group, we had a light controller who made the entire group of us invisible, and another hero who lent us all hover belts so that we could move through the building in absolute silence.

We knew that the list was somewhere in a four-story office building, so the four of us picked different floors and started silently searching. I maneuvered in and out among what had to be dozens of a mysterious group that called themselves "Malta Operatives." I was hovering down a hallway towards the last office on the floor when all of a sudden, one of the Operatives started pointing right at me and yelling, "There! Metahuman!" The way my assault rifle was hanging over my shoulder had caused it to stick out past the refractive horizon of our light controller's invisibility shell.

Now at this point, you have to realize that I am actually not a metahuman. I'm used to being called various things by enemies such as a hero, "cape" (which is funny, since I do not wear one), and some things that are unprintable here, but I think this is the first time anyone had called me a metahuman. And at the time, it did not occur to me that an invisibly obscured floating normal flesh-and-blood person would seem as if he were a metahuman to these people. So naturally, I spun around to find out what type of metahuman the Operative was yelling at, completely obvlivious that it was, in fact, me.

To add insult to injury, when I spun around, a pin on one of my web grenades caught on the hoverbelt I was wearing, and before I knew it, I was smack in the middle of a congregation of enemy Operatives, completely covered in strands of sticky glue and unable to move. I was suddenly enveloped in a bright blue light and passed out due to extreme weakness, and the next thing I remember, I woke up in a hospital with a young pretty nurse still pulling globs of goo off of me with a pair of forceps.

As if that weren't embarrassing enough, I looked around and saw the other three members of my team in the next three beds over. When the Operatives were alerted to my presence, they locked down the building, including the stairwells and elevators, and started searching floor-by-floor with infrared goggles. Since we were split up across floors, my team members were sitting ducks, and the only reason we're still alive now is because of the city's medical transporatation grid.

It ended up that the list was sold on the black market, and eight undercover officers had to leave the force and go into a protection program because of my blundering mistake. The ruined lives of those eight officers and their families still haunt me to this day, and this mission's failure is why today, I treat every single mission, no matter how easy it may look, as if it is the most important mission in the world.

Sometimes failure isn't limited to a hero's mistake, and such failure is quite possibly the most frustrating part of being a hero. I was on a special task force last week assembled by none other than Positron himself. It was a dream team of heroes, including such renowned names as Exskotia, Lily the Blade, Rainbow Aradia, Sycorax, U-232, Tyger Paw, and the Princess Bratt. After about five minutes, we managed to iron out the confusion over calling U-232 by the letter "U" over the comm channel (seven heroes responding to what they thought was someone shouting "Hey you!"), and I thought we were ready to kick some serious butt.

For several long hours, we battled all manner of enemies. We especially had a tough time with some Vahzilok, considering my ealier experience with them. Still, we persevered and were on our way to rescue some FEMA workers from Rollister, a powerful Circle of Thorns mage, when as far as we could tell, the entire universe "blipped." We still don't know exactly what happened. Some have theorized that it was due to some unexplained side effect of portal use. Some even believe that it was ripple effects from a great battle between the lost Omega Team and the Rikti on their homeworld. Whatever caused it, the entire city was thrown into confusion for several minutes during our battle with Rollister's minions, and it was enough time for Rollister to escape. The comm channels were dead silent and several members of the team lost contact with each other for around half an hour. When things returned to normal, we contacted Positron to find out what he wanted to do. He said that in the confusion, we needed to stand down and wait until another day to fight Rollister.

I cannot help but feel that it was a waste of a fantastic team's talents and hard work, but Positron is known for his insight and intelligence, so we split apart in the hopes that we may some day, on this team or another, be able to complete the mission we were assigned.

So if the hero's life looks like nothing but glamour and glory, I hope you realize that while it can be personally rewarding, it can also sometimes be extremely frustrating. At the end of the day, when all is said and done, the bodies being danced on just may be your own. I am very glad for Paragon City that we have heroes that fight on and manage to find reward even in the midst of failure.

Toño "News Man" Vasquez