Dangerous Roger

Roger was a dangerous guy to be around. The last agent on the case, with only one Ph.D. in physics, and none in materials science, had vanished and was presumed dead. Agent Dick knew he had a better chance, but he wished the assignment had gone to someone else. Despite Chief Guzman’s denial of the reports of melting walls and soupy concrete, Dick was still wary. The job tore at his conscience, too.

Dick wiped his sticky hands, and blotted a drop of sweat that trickled down his neck. At the Fair Trade Cafe on 9th Street, he was listening to his earpod read poetry. It relaxed him. The espresso here was the best available in a town with a reputation for otherwise crappy coffee, but he had another reason for being at this place at this time. A distant siren’s warble brought a twinge of foreboding as it echoed down the canyon of ancient skyscrapers. Bad news travels fast--as fast as the speed of sound. An eerie rumbling, like a rogue garbage truck, vibrated the sidewalk. Professor Roger was coming this way.

“It must be painful, or those people would not be screaming, “ Dick thought, holding his fear in a mental force field. Was it the impact of concrete chunks falling on them or the violence of their atoms being stretched apart that was killing all those people? In the space near Roger, the distance between an atomic nucleus and its electrons could collapse to a few picometers or expand to a mile. Time had no meaning--the arrow of time changing speed and direction like a DJ scratching a song track. Reality warped as Roger approached. Adults became babies, swallowed up by their own clothes before dropping into plasma car seats; tower clocks spiraled backwards; and rocks hung in mid air, as if Schrödinger’s cat had stepped on a universal remote control.

A few seconds remained before confrontation. Dick had calculated that the steel in the structures around him would weaken or at least distort Roger’s ability to pervert the local continuum. Magnetism was central to his horrific power and these particular buildings should have enough ferromagnetism in them to thwart Roger’s advance. He withdrew and examined his ceramic gun. He imagined the low-temperature superconducting magnetic bullets affecting Roger like silver bullets do a werewolf. But this mutant was worse than any werewolf ever was. He was real and he hadn’t waited for a full moon to cause mayhem.

Someone screamed as a city bus glittered into nothingness. Shapes began to blur past the jittering cafe. Dick sipped the last precious thimbleful of espresso and nabbed the last corner of a biscotto before something knocked over his table. He popped the cookie in his mouth and crunched it in the coffee, savoring the sweet and earthy mixture. He swallowed and aimed the weapon. If only the formula hadn't turned the professor into a monster. Then, to save the world, Dick wouldn't have to shoot the father of the only woman he ever loved.