Lavie Tidhar - The Apex Book of World SF 2

Spin-Man hovered over a crowd of green-skinned alien beings: inhabitants of the dimension he had just saved. It seems that I have found my true purpose, he thought. Whenever Chaos threatens to engulf meaning in the universe, it will have to reckon with the might of Spin-Man! Then a smile, a wink at the reader and, under the last panel on the last page, the words “to be continued” laid out in bold letters.

Now, this is the difficulty of my story. By all other accounts, I never had a brother named James. No-one else seems to remember him. There is no birth certificate, no extra toothbrush, no extra bed in my room—not even a picture. But I remember him. I can see him in my mind. I remember his preferences, his lactose-intolerance, his Cyclops T-shirt and his difficulties with Maths. I remember his birthday (June 15, 1983,) his favourite colour (green) his lucky number (4) and his best friend at school (Nicolo Suarez).

He was my little brother. He talked in his sleep. He loved Honey Stars and hated fruit-flavoured toothpaste. He was always our mother’s favourite, and it had frustrated me that she always took his side. We watched Ghostbusters every Friday night, and on Saturday mornings we would get the garden hose and water-blast each other. We stole a book once, from the library— The Illustrated Monkey King— and it was James who eventually convinced me to give it back.

I remember him. But if I position this as true, then you’ll think it absurd. I’m no scientist. I have no degree in quantum physics, no academic theory in my pocket, no hypotheses by which I can even begin to make you believe that he ever existed. I have no evidence, no proof. I only have what happened.

And now even that is just a memory: limited, intangible, decaying, and wide open to contention. If I die tomorrow, there will be nothing in this world to prove that James was ever real.

I kept Spin-Man #1 in a Mylar bag, in its own drawer beside my bed. It had become the most precious comic book in my collection. Months passed before I came to terms with the reality of my brother’s disappearance. My mother was very supportive. She took me to a psychiatrist and worked with me to uncover the root of my insistence on an imaginary brother. After the first few sessions, I learnt to stop openly asserting James’s existence. With nothing to back up my claims, it was a losing battle. No progress was to be made on that front.

I kept trying to contact Tito Fermin. At first, they told me that he was too busy to talk to me, but I later discovered that he had moved addresses upon his return to the States and left no numbers by which we could contact him. I searched for further issues of Spin-Man, but was unable find copies in CATS or in any of the direct market stores. Apparently, they had never carried the title. I learnt later, from a 1993 issue of The Comics Journal, that Echo Comics had been a print-on-demand publisher that had struggled through low sales for two whole years before finally declaring bankruptcy.

In the summer of 1996, I found out that Tito Fermin had died. He had quit making comics three years earlier due to lack of money, and had become an automobile dealer in California. One night, he drank too much and drove his car into a copse of trees, which was where they found him three days later, wide-eyed with a long piece of window lodged into his head. We held a memorial mass for him in Los Baňos. His body was buried in the States. He bequeathed a number of items to the family, amongst them a signed sketch of Spin-Man by Jim Lee, which was left in my care.

Years went by. I grew up. I had two girlfriends and one bad break-up. Peter Parker separated from Mary Jane, who moved away to become a supermodel. The X-Men’s line-up shifted multiple times. Their Jim Lee costumes changed with each turnover until they could only be glimpsed in flashbacks and back issues. The Hulk grew smart, then dumb, then bald. Gotham City survived a plague, a major earthquake and an army of ninjas. Superman died then came back to life. Green Lantern was corrupted, went rogue, died saving the universe and was replaced by another Green Lantern. Spin-Man never made it past issue two.

I know this because, on the day after my graduation, I found a battered old copy of Spin-Man #2 in a book sale bargain bin. James was on the cover, hovering in the void of the universe as the tell-tale blue-and-gold vortex, the one that had transformed him into Spin-Man, whirlpooled around him. In the comic, a black hole had turned sentient and was trudging across the cosmos in the shape of an impossible spider. The Forces of Chaos had returned. Spin-Man, as valiant as ever, rushed to combat the threat, but in a critical moment, the Chaos Spider spat a web of nebulae at our hero, disrupting his celestial abilities and forcing him to spin into another dimension.

Spin-Man awoke in a void, buffeted on all sides by peculiar purple rain. He bowed his head in shame. I’ve failed, he thought. I’ve fallen into the unknown, somewhere beyond the far reaches of the multiversal continuum. If I don’t find my way back, the Forces of Chaos will engulf the universe and all that I hold dear. Spin-Man coughed. For a moment, his visage shifted into that of James, his human alter-ego. His eyes glimmered with hope. Spin-Man’s course was clear. I have to find my way back, no matter how long it takes. With that, he launched himself into the void, away from the reader, as the words “never the end” appeared beneath him, like a promise. It was the last issue of Spin-Man to achieve publication. I swear, I broke down right there in the middle of the bookshop, holding onto that stupid little comic book. I realised, right then, that I needed to do something; anything, or else James would be lost forever.

These days, CATS no longer sells comic books. They’ve since turned into a specialty store for action figures, and though I visit it from time to time, the bargain bins I used to thumb through are no longer there. I still buy comics every Wednesday when I have the money. I keep track of my favourite superheroes’ lives. For me they affirm that, despite hardship, some things may still endure. I’ve taken a course in Fine Arts, and I’ve been applying it to my comics’ illustrations, working hard to improve to a professional level. As soon as I finish college, I’ll send off applications to the major comic book companies. I’ll get a job in the States, and when I’ve saved up enough money, I’ll look up Echo Comics and buy the rights to Spin-Man.

Then I’ll publish Spin-Man #3 , and in that issue, Spin-Man will be at the edge of the universe, contemplating his path home. A blue-and-gold wormhole will appear before him. With superhuman courage, Spin-Man will activate his cosmic powers, jump through the vortex, and spin his way back into our world.

Your hair, a centimetre or two longer, your skin maybe more tanned than the last time. Smooth, yes, like a shiny shell, without a single fold, without a scar. Me, on the other hand, my face could serve as the canvas for an astronavigation map: you could catalogue all my wrinkles by latitude and longitude. And locate all its globular clusters, wormholes, and black holes. There’s room for the entire universe on my face.

You don’t see my face. You have taken up residence on a spot on the terrace where you watch the stars fall—m-e-t-e-o-r-s, you make me repeat, letter by letter, helping me to spell it out with your hands. And even the perfume of the poplars in bloom seems to bother you. Serena-Ceti is a world without a future—you shake your fingers wildly and point at the night sky over the terrace.