As grandiose as the public memorial was, with all its speeches and pomp, the burial was just me, my two remaining aunts on my mom’s side, and a few friends. And when that was done, I went back to his house—back home—by myself.
The house was already mostly cleaned out, thanks to the industrious help of said aunts. Only one room was left. I creaked down the familiar basement steps, searched for the loose brick in the foundation, pulled the handle behind it, and then went down again into the cool deep dark. I breathed in the familiar smell.
Down there, for the first time since Dad had died, I felt safe again, sheltered utterly from the behemoth approaching Earth, visible in the sky sometimes like a bright, inexorable orb of death. The news channels had dubbed it the Doom Star ever since it was detected on the edge of the solar system, the same day news of my father’s passing broke. I guess it just felt easier to call it that instead of what everyone knew it was.
It was tempting to just stay down there and wait for the end.
I groped the cold wall until I found the light switch. A smattering of old fluorescent tubes suspended among the exposed I-beams flickered reluctantly to life. It wasn’t as big as I remembered. Was anything ever? I had been maybe ten or eleven when I’d last been down there.
I went to the large steel doors opposite the stairs, placed my thumb on the finger-print reader and my eye on the retinal scanner, just like I’d watched him do all those years ago. I held my breath for an interminable moment before I heard the bolts in the lock click open and felt the handles give. I hauled the heavy doors open, relieved that he’d left it to open for me.
If you’ve ever read a comic book, you can pretty much imagine what that locker looked like with all his old gear. Seeing it now as an adult, with him in the ground, brought the grief back like one of Dad’s super punches into some bad guy’s gut.
It was all there like I remembered, along with one other thing that I had known about but never actually seen.
The Spark.
It was the tiniest imaginable mote of light, suspended within a crystal sphere the size of a baseball.
As I stood agape at this unexpected remnant of my father, its light grew and brightened, orange and red and blue and white, and blinded me. When my vision had cleared, there he stood, a miracle made of a light shimmering with all the colors of fire’s palette. And he smiled at me, and it seared my soul.
“Dad?”
“My child!” he said, his voice warm and bright as a flame, strong and sonorous as I remembered from childhood, not rasping and ashen like it was in the end. “You’re sound asleep up in your bed as I record this, safe and peaceful, as I fear the world will not always be. My enemies’ power is outstripped only by their fear of me, and that fear will evaporate one day when I am gone. But what they do not know is that my Spark will remain.”
“How?” I said, though I doubted this projection of my father from decades ago could reply. I had only ever known the Spark as something that dwelt within my father, the source of his power. I thought its light had gone out with him.
“No, the Spark did not die with me,” he said, anticipating my astonishment across the years, “and if you accept it, it can live on through you.”
My mouth went dry, my fingers numb.
“You’ve always known about the hero I was, even if I seldom spoke of it. But before I can ask you to take on this burden, this gift, I owe you my story—the story of three times I saved the world, and one time I didn’t.”
My father’s figure stepped aside and gestured, and the same lively light that made his ghost illuminated all his heroic possessions: a bionic suit, a pair of boots, a set of bracers and greaves, and a metallic club with a strange and vibrant sheen.
A halo grew around the suit then flashed into a sequence of images painted in light, showing my father in action as a young man—younger than I was now!
“First was the Exo-Suit—a bionic exoskeleton,” his voice said, “the first way I learned to harness the power of the Spark. Useless to anyone else, it was this suit that took the Spark energy that was inside of me and turned it into a power I could use: strength, speed, endurance. It was the Exo-Suit that let me stop the Behemoth before he could destroy the United Nations. He was attacking the global peace summit that ended the Brink War—every world leader was inside.”
Rapid sequences flashed by of a battle between my father and a figure that looked like an army tank had had a child with a rhinoceros.
“Your mother was working there that day, although I only knew her at first as the sharp-eyed interpreter who was not afraid.”
I glimpsed my father in his Exo-Suit directing a group of survivors to safety. A young version of my mother, swift and confident, led them through the wreckage away from the fight, with a lingering glance back at my father.
The light faded around the suit and pulsed around the boots underneath.
“My Flare Boots. A pair of ionized wave repulsors in these boots harnessed the power of the Spark into the gift of flight. When the Jet Pack terrorized the skies, I couldn’t fight them from the ground.”
I saw squadrons of jet-packed people zooming chaos above the world’s cities.
“Even in the air, I couldn’t save every plane they pulled out of the sky, and I’ve lived with that regret every day since.”
My father, weeping over the wreckage of a 747.
“But those were decoy attacks, and it was with these Flare Boots that I stopped the Jet Pack from hijacking a nuclear-armed stealth bomber, their true target all along. I had never flown so high, but it was nothing compared to the next day, when your mother told me ‘Yes.’”
My father on one knee. My mother, hands on his cheeks.
The glow faded from the boots and lighted on a pair of greaves and bracers, like something out of an old gladiator movie.
“I know, I know, they look good, right?” He chuckled. “They’re not just a fashion statement, though, and not just combat armor either. These repulsor field generators tapped the Spark’s power to surround me in a protective energy field.”
My father, tapping the bracers together and sparking to life a shield of light around him before masked men opened fire with submachine guns.
“Before I had these, I was mostly lucky not to get shot. With them, though, not only were bullets not a concern, neither was the vacuum of space.”
A gargantuan spaceship, casting its shadow over the Moon—identical to the ship approaching Earth at that same moment.
“Nor was the inside of the Rorgon dreadnought’s star drive. A picture of your first ultrasound was in my pocket the whole time.”
My father, flying back to Earth as the Rorgon ship exploded behind him.
The Spark’s glow rose on the last item in the locker, the one I used to be most excited by as a child. I even remembered being allowed to play with it once or twice.
“And of course, you’ve always loved the Cosmic Truncheon. It was my only real offensive weapon, other than old Left Fist and Right Fist.”
My father pummeling the bad guys at a bank hold-up with his bare hands.
“This club harnessed the raw cosmic energy of the Spark, with which I could do terrible damage to terrible villains. Using it gave me no more joy than it did my enemies.”
My father, striking a blow with the truncheon on a man in an armored power suit and… ruining him.
“It caught the eyes of the world’s governments, and ours gambled that I’d side with them if war broke out again.”
Armies, navies, warplanes, mobilizing to battle.
“If it was the truncheon they wanted, they could have it—I Fed-Exed it to them. I could only imagine the looks on their faces when they saw the thing, useless in any hands but my own, because I was watching your dimpled, chubby face try to smile for the first time.”
My dad, cradling an infant, his eyes glistening.
“I went and took my truncheon back later, because you never know when the Rorgons might show up again, but in the meantime, the politicians could have their war—they wouldn’t have the Spark.”
My tears fought their way up again as the light faded from the truncheon and reformed as my father.
“But you, my child? You can take the Spark if the world needs it. It will give you power beyond belief, and if one day you decide your life demands a different choice, then you, too, can restore it to the cosmic artifact,” he indicated the Spark where it twinkled infinitesimally in its crystal sphere, “where I have left it for you, and from whence it came to me.” He gestured to the locker. “Everything else I used to save the world is yours, too,” he pointed at the truncheon, “along with the one thing I wouldn’t use so that I could have my life with you.” He smiled again, long and warm. “Best decision of my life.”
The light faded.
My dad, gone again.
Thousands of miles above, and growing closer every moment, loomed a Rorgon dreadnought, set on vengeance against the world of a departed hero.
The Spark burned on.
I reached for it, my dad’s smile alight on my face.
