Vanishing Wave Part Three

THE VANISHING WAVES Part three, “Eye of the Storm Waves” : Johnny Storm, a.k.a. the Human Torch Any time you can fly where the mountains stand and still smell the ocean... It’s the same type of temperature here in So Cal that I choose to maintain. For me, being hot is a state of mind. Sky high sights roll to me over bits of the city poised in the mountain peaks that descend into the city, just as we do. Reed is a channel, I admit, I like to turn down when I can, so I can take in my own observations... In every direction I look, there’s a beautiful girl. Every one else is okay, too. If no one needs the Fantastic Four today, why not find out what’s hidden in Escondido? We’re there from San Diego in 3 minutes. Ben is making some joke about visitin’ the wild animal safari. I’ve flamed on as our craft decelerates in a freakishly efficient use of inertia. Typical inside California city limits, every space set out as space is already serving someone’s needs. Though in this economy, maybe an actual parking space... I land in the shady little tennis court by the poolside of a hotel on Mission Avenue. The lady looked younger from five hundred feet... She looked worried from about that far, too, which isn’t a good sign.
“Russ was just shaving, and I...I told him he missed a spot, and ...and we laughed...”
Oh, no, better lend her some energy...she’s trembling...
“And--- I could see THROUGH him! And then...he just...stopped happening.”
She feels like wailing. But we both know there’s something going on, maybe something that can be explained. How do you say that to a person?
“You mean he---just seemed to stop being there?”
“How? Why? He’s been with me night and day, and then he moves somewhere? *Sniff* Moves somewhere into somewhere out of plain sight?” “Look, you’re helping me understand why we are here,” I say, putting a hand out to her fallen shoulder. “You’re not alone, okay? Hang on, I gotta mr. fantastic twitter.”
Mmm! “Listen, center yourself. You’re actually doing a great job of it. I’ll have to do it, too...but we’re looking for patterns. There are more forms of existence than you’d think about , as many as you can imagine. Just feel him with you. And don’t give up on yourself. ‘Kay?”
“Okay.” Wow. I feel a tension, too, like everything I know or previously thought of as my life is going into a freefall......with no bottom in sight.
No point in telling her the pattern’s breaking out all over Escondido; Reed’s telling me he calculates about eight percent of the city’s 150,000—from a glance--- or so people “seem to have disassociated with the third dimensional plane.”
Ben:”I seen it myself, Stretch. They wuz just bein there, when suddenly people started vanishin’ like someone running the Lou Dobbs Report in reverse! They just calmly dissolve into some bigger reality. How we gonna know the location of these cosmic potholes, chief?”
Reed: That’s an excellent question.
Sue: The people are delirious, but they’re pulling together. This problem’s hidden so deep beneath the surface, I think they are profoundly worried for each other rather than projecting their fear onto one another. Not vanishing is some kind of common bond!
Reed: That’s our one advantage, then, Sue. We can focus on identifying the conditions, which seem to be progressing. Torch, I need you about forty kilometres that way, it’s not a surge but rather something like the eye of the storm. We must know why.
Let’s get two more then, won’t there? Forty kilometres...If I see a Corner Gas Station I’ll yell.
Ben: Pick me up some oatmeal road cookies, why don’tcha?
Sue: Here's one thing we all know: matter cannot created or destroyed. I believe something's transforming the state of the people. We need to know more before the effects become irreversible. You don’t need highway five to drive when you’re the Human Torch,
but it’s good for drawing a quick bead on this
mountside lake.
I hear Reed babbling about energy currents, satellite detection and some gimcrack he’s rigged in the past half hour, and it’s like waves are rolling out a spider web towards people at intervals, and taking them like the tides. One side effect is seismic energy, which in Southern California could mean earthquakes. Let’s hope we figure out what’s going down first!
(~ comics page 12) Absolutely have to call in my heat energies tightly as I descend...last thing we need is a forest fire, too! Black leather jacket, red stripes down the sleeves---what can I say, a new friend felt generous and I lucked out.
This is the part I loathe. I’m not even sure which direction to run. Not the best use of my impulsive nature...‘till I get an update, the Human Torch is just a dude wandering the woods.
Never ‘just’ anything; Sue's always telling me I should be more empathic at times, let's try it with about half logic and half gut instinct...maybe the vanishing waves radiate outside this nexus...but you can feel the trouble concentrated out here in the nature walk... old habits tell me I’m in absolute danger...next thing I see is just a guy younger than me, sitting amidst some branches twisting like fingers to the ground, doodling on a sketch pad. That feeling, though---it’s gone NO where.