-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Doused with microwave radiation, Theodore
Wong gained the ability to glow and be detected
at great distances by anyone with a Geiger counter.
Forced to retire, Wong has left former sidekick Lite
to continue his battle against the forces of corruption,
chaos and common sense, and to carry on the legacy of
the fabulous EASILY-DISCOVERED MAN.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The following takes place sometime after
issue #8 of the Legion of Net.Heroes mini-series
"Beige Countdown."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

-----Previously on "The Adventures of Easily-Discovered Man"-----------

Searching for the killer of the nefarious WAFFLE QUEEN, Easily-Discovered Man Lite follows a trail that leads from
the villain's hometown of Mount Roosevelt, Ohio to the great city
of Net.ropolis. There, inspired by his mentor -- the former
Easily-Discovered Man -- Lite tracks down the sorcerer TREVOR
BLOUNT, who confirms what the sidekick had come to suspect: that he
had previously encountered a teenaged Waffle Queen while traveling
in time, and that Lite’s memory of these events had been repressed.

Blount reluctantly agrees to restore Lite’s lost memory --
but warns him that the experience, much like Facebook, will cause
him to relive the events of his past while being powerless to change
them. Lite then finds himself transported back to Mount Roosevelt,
two years younger than he is now -- and working once again
by Easily-Discovered Man’s side…

Before Lite goes back to Ohio (because his city is gone),
Decorum requires that we point out that because this story takes
place as part of a long-since concluded cross-over (Beige Countdown)
its events are set in the year 2007. What might our characters be
doing if they lived in the current golden age of peace and prosperity
that is 2021? Let’s pause for just a moment to answer that question...

--EDM-- --EDM-- --EDM--

“Do you think being a super-hero has made you uniquely qualified
to navigate this pandemic?” Cynical Lass asked.

“You mean,” I began.

“You’re still on mute,” she noted.

“Right,” I sighed, clicking on the part of my screen that showed
a little red icon with a crossed-out microphone -- a symbol that,
a little over a year and a half ago, I would only have associated
with people who really, really didn’t like Larry King.

“You mean because we’re sitting here communicating with each
other using futuristic technology named for a comic-book sound
effect?” I asked.

“I thought it was named for the super-villain from The Flash,”
said the voice of Substitute Lad, who had kept his camera turned off.

“I mean that there’s this worldwide crisis, which half the
population has responded to by putting on masks and behaving
as well, heroes, in order to protect others,” she said. “The
other half has cited actual ideals like liberty and individual
rights in order to selfishly run around doing whatever they
want, just like a comic book villain would do.”

“Now hold on a minute,” said the onscreen image of a tiny
cartoon astronaut with Substitute Lad’s voice. “There are perfectly
legitimate reasons why someone might not want to… okay. I can’t
actually say that with a straight face.”

“And all of the shouting and posturing and punching each other
in the face between the masked ‘heroes’ and their cartoonish ‘villains’
ends up distracting everyone from the thousands and thousands dead
and the hundreds of thousands of others left in poverty because of
the actual crisis,” Cynical Lass finished.

There was silence in the black void of cyberspace.

“I’m beginning to see why you didn’t end up with the name
‘Cockeyed Optimist Lass,’ ” Substitute Lad said.

“It’s not the same,” I said.

“Well, of course not. They’re antonyms.”

“No,” I said, taking Easily-Discovered Man’s glowing mask out
of my back pocket. “When the Prof puts this on, he’s doing it
because he’s brave. And, well, certifiably insane. When I put this
on,” I said, removing something from my other pocket.

“That’s a petrol receipt,” Cynical Lass said.

“Sorry. When I put this on,” I said, taking out a small
cotton mask with the letters “DON’T PANIC” emblazoned across
the front, “I’m not doing it because I’m a hero. I’m not even
really doing it to protect other people, although that’s what I
always tell them. I’m doing it because I’m scared. And those
people on the other side, the ones without the masks… if they
were being honest, they’d say they were doing what they’re doing
because they’re scared, too.”

“Even if what they’re scared of is bat@#$%^& insane,”
Substitute Lad said.

“I’m not saying they’re justified in thinking that,” I
said. “Or in putting other people’s lives at risk because of
their bat@#$%^& beliefs. Or trying to convince other people
that the things they believe have any basis in reality.”

“Good,” said Cynical Lass. “A world in which people
like Alex Jones don’t deserve to be continually punched in
the face is a world I don’t want to live in.”

“But there’s more to being a hero than wearing a mask,”
I said, looking down at the glowing Easily-Discovered Man mask
in my hand. “There’s got to be.”

We now present episode #58 of "The Adventures of
Easily-Discovered Man," "People Who Live in Glass Houses."
Please remember to wash your hands and wipe down your screen
with a soft,sanitized cloth after reading.

--EDM-- --EDM-- --EDM--

In case you’re wondering, time travel within your own
lifespan is a lot like the state of Net.braska, in that once
you’ve gone through it you realize why more people don’t. Parts
of it are, of course, almost achingly beautiful, but there are
many, many other parts that make you wince, and the whole process
is both long and frustrating enough to leave you with a gnawing,
numbing sense of regret, especially if you have stopped at more
than one Cracker Barrel along the way.

If you don’t believe me (and here I’m talking about time
travel, and not Net.braska, which through the efforts of the
U.S. legacy air carriers is only marginally more difficult to visit
than the distant past) think about the last time one of your
favorite social media sites decided to remind you of
something that happened several years ago. “Remember
this?” it said, below a picture of you with a truly
regrettable haircut, or in the throes of a passionate
relationship with someone whose departure would later lead
to six months’ worth of hard drinking and bad poetry, or
with a former best friend you haven’t spoken to since the
last decent Star Wars film, or wearing a Coldplay shirt.

Now imagine that instead of being able to scroll away
from that soul-killing memory in search of pictures of cats or
Avengers memes, you’re forced to watch the whole thing unfold in
real time -- a slideshow of your sweetest hopes and worst
mistakes -- without being able to do anything to change what
had happened, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what it felt
like once Trevor Blount decided that since I couldn’t remember
the past, I’d have to be doomed to repeat it.

Not that I had anyone to blame but myself. I’d asked Blount
-- a shoe-obsessed, trenchcoat-wearing wizard -- to send me on
a magical memory tour because I’d hoped it would help me figure
out who killed the Waffle Queen. Actually, that’s not true. I
already had a pretty good idea who had killed the Waffle Queen,
and how. What I couldn’t figure out was why. The police had found
her body, dressed for a night on the town, in the dining room of
her apartment. The table was set for two, and none of her guards
were around.

In any other city, police might have come to the conclusion
that it was a mob hit, ordered by one of her business rivals.
After all, in addition to running a pretty sizable criminal empire,
she also presided over a chain of Waffle Queen restaurants, coast
to coast. But this was Net.ropolis, a place where heroes, villains
and super-powers factored into pretty much everything. After
finding some unusual blood patterns on her dining room mirror,
the investigators came to the not unreasonable conclusion that
someone with the ability to control reflective surfaces -- a
profile that unfortunately fit my friend Aurora Jones, the Screen
Saver -- had committed the murder [as told in Easily-Discovered Man
#50 -- Footnote Girl]. And since the Waffle Queen had pretty
publicly screwed over Aurora with one of her schemes, it wasn’t
long before they’d issued a warrant for her arrest.

But I knew the Waffle Queen. I’d been threatened by her,
kidnapped by her, insulted by her -- and this was back when she
was working as my school guidance counselor, before she introduced
me to Easily-Discovered Man and took on her role as his arch-nemesis.
She had plans within plans within plans, and was careful to a fault.
Having someone like Aurora Jones come after her was exactly the sort
of thing she would have been prepared for. She was expecting
something else that night -- she’d literally let her guard
down, had dressed up and made herself vulnerable in a way I’d
never seen her (and I’d even gone on a triple date with her,
on an especially weird evening I usually chose not to remember)
[way back in Easily-Discovered Man #25 -- Footnote Girl].
Whoever had attacked her,whoever had killed was someone she
trusted completely, someone she had looked forward to seeing.
Aurora didn’t fit the picture, and neither did my prime suspect.
I needed to know more.

On Sunday, May 9, 2021 at 7:40:33 AM UTC-7, EDMLite wrote:

> --EDM-- --EDM-- --EDM--
>
> NEXT ISSUE: Is it wrong to have a crush on your
> arch-nemesis? Is it wrong to believe the past can be changed
> when you know it’s impossible? Is it wrong to hope that the next
> episode might be published before another year goes by? The answer
> to these questions should be fairly obvious, but we still humbly
> suggest that you read the episode in question, in which everything
> old is -- if not new, then at least somewhat refurbished: “The Boy
> in the Box.”

Yes! The Annual issue of Easily Discovered Man!

Oh, man 2007 -- I was 31 when this whole storyline began -- how old will
I be when it finally gets finished?

Arthur "70...?" Spitzer

On 5/9/21 10:40 AM, EDMLite wrote:
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Doused with microwave radiation, Theodore
> Wong gained the ability to glow and be detected
> at great distances by anyone with a Geiger counter.
> Forced to retire, Wong has left former sidekick Lite
> to continue his battle against the forces of corruption,
> chaos and common sense, and to carry on the legacy of
> the fabulous EASILY-DISCOVERED MAN.

FUCK YEAH HE HAS!

> Blount reluctantly agrees to restore Lite’s lost memory --
> but warns him that the experience, much like Facebook, will cause
> him to relive the events of his past while being powerless to change
> them.

heeheehee

> Decorum requires that we point out that because this story takes
> place as part of a long-since concluded cross-over (Beige Countdown)
> its events are set in the year 2007. What might our characters be
> doing if they lived in the current golden age of peace and prosperity
> that is 2021? Let’s pause for just a moment to answer that question...

heeheheehee yeah :D

> “You’re still on mute,” she noted.
>
> “Right,” I sighed, clicking on the part of my screen that showed
> a little red icon with a crossed-out microphone -- a symbol that,
> a little over a year and a half ago, I would only have associated
> with people who really, really didn’t like Larry King.

Heeheehee

> “I mean that there’s this worldwide crisis, which half the
> population has responded to by putting on masks and behaving
> as well, heroes, in order to protect others,” she said. “The
> other half has cited actual ideals like liberty and individual
> rights in order to selfishly run around doing whatever they
> want, just like a comic book villain would do.”

hahahaha oh god it's true @-@

> “Now hold on a minute,” said the onscreen image of a tiny
> cartoon astronaut with Substitute Lad’s voice.

X3

> “Sorry. When I put this on,” I said, taking out a small
> cotton mask with the letters “DON’T PANIC” emblazoned across
> the front, “I’m not doing it because I’m a hero. I’m not even
> really doing it to protect other people, although that’s what I
> always tell them. I’m doing it because I’m scared. And those
> people on the other side, the ones without the masks… if they
> were being honest, they’d say they were doing what they’re doing
> because they’re scared, too.”

Mmmmmm. Yeah, it's true. @.@

> “Good,” said Cynical Lass. “A world in which people
> like Alex Jones don’t deserve to be continually punched in
> the face is a world I don’t want to live in.”

Legiiiiiiiit

> “But there’s more to being a hero than wearing a mask,”
> I said, looking down at the glowing Easily-Discovered Man mask
> in my hand. “There’s got to be.”

Dun dun dunnnn....

> In case you’re wondering, time travel within your own
> lifespan is a lot like the state of Net.braska, in that once
> you’ve gone through it you realize why more people don’t. Parts
> of it are, of course, almost achingly beautiful, but there are
> many, many other parts that make you wince, and the whole process
> is both long and frustrating enough to leave you with a gnawing,
> numbing sense of regret, especially if you have stopped at more
> than one Cracker Barrel along the way.

I love these metaphors, holy heck

>
> If you don’t believe me (and here I’m talking about time
> travel, and not Net.braska, which through the efforts of the
> U.S. legacy air carriers is only marginally more difficult to visit
> than the distant past)

hahaha x-x;

> think about the last time one of your
> favorite social media sites decided to remind you of
> something that happened several years ago. “Remember
> this?” it said, below a picture of you with a truly
> regrettable haircut, or in the throes of a passionate
> relationship with someone whose departure would later lead
> to six months’ worth of hard drinking and bad poetry, or
> with a former best friend you haven’t spoken to since the
> last decent Star Wars film, or wearing a Coldplay shirt.

I've stopped using Facebook, but I still use Tumblr, which does the same thing
by occasionally bringing inane fandom discourse from 2011 back up.

> I
> already had a pretty good idea who had killed the Waffle Queen,
> and how. What I couldn’t figure out was why.

Oooooh. :o

The police had found
> her body, dressed for a night on the town, in the dining room of
> her apartment. The table was set for two, and none of her guards
> were around.
<snip>
> After
> finding some unusual blood patterns on her dining room mirror,
> the investigators came to the not unreasonable conclusion that
> someone with the ability to control reflective surfaces -- a
> profile that unfortunately fit my friend Aurora Jones, the Screen
> Saver -- had committed the murder [as told in Easily-Discovered Man
> #50 -- Footnote Girl]. And since the Waffle Queen had pretty
> publicly screwed over Aurora with one of her schemes, it wasn’t
> long before they’d issued a warrant for her arrest.

Oh wow. I forgot all these details. X3

> She was expecting
> something else that night -- she’d literally let her guard
> down, had dressed up and made herself vulnerable in a way I’d
> never seen her (and I’d even gone on a triple date with her,
> on an especially weird evening I usually chose not to remember)
> [way back in Easily-Discovered Man #25 -- Footnote Girl].

I love that issue. X3

> Whoever had attacked her,whoever had killed was someone she
> trusted completely, someone she had looked forward to seeing.
> Aurora didn’t fit the picture, and neither did my prime suspect.

*Fascinating*!

> Much like the modern
> Republican party, I’d recently been forced to acknowledge that the
> past I thought I remembered wasn’t really what had happened at all.

Have they, tho @-@

> In my case, I thought Easily-Discovered Man and I had ended up back
> in the great city of Net.ropolis just after we helped bring down a
> dimension of pure, middle-management evil called the Pocket
> Bureaucracy (which means the Prof and I had wandered about being
> confused and making jokes while Sig.Lad and his friends did all
> the actual down-bringing) [in Easily-Discovered Man #10 --
> Footnote Girl].

heeheehee :3 I love that issue too!

> In actual fact, the explosion that destroyed the Pocket
> Bureaucracy had sent us hurtling through space and time to Mount
> Roosevelt, Ohio -- which makes sense, since Mount Roosevelt is
> the kind of Midwestern small town that could cause Time itself
> to stop, look around, and wonder what in the world it was doing
> with its life.

X3

> He --
> me -- mostly stood gawping at the unnaturally fresh air, the smell
> of fresh, wet clover and the total lack of garbage, graffiti or
> any other perfectly natural signs of urban decay in the
> bucolic scene before us.
>
> My sixteen-year-old self had a lot to learn.

#relatable

> “Prof?” he/I said. “I don’t think we’re in Kan.sys any…
> Actually, I take that back. It’s entirely possible we might be in
> Kan.sys.”

X3

> “Unlikely, my stalwart supporter in the never-ending battle
> against crime and injustice,” Easily-Discovered Man said.
> “Behold yonder hills of verdant green -- a topographic detail one
> does not readily encounter on the Great Plains.”

I love how he talks.

> She was sitting -- I swear I am not making this up -- on a
> bale of hay, dressed in a plaid button-down shirt and the kind
> of denim cutoff shorts my dad referred to as “Daisy Dukes.” My
> eighteen-year-old self immediately recognized her as a younger
> version of the woman who would someday become the Waffle Queen.

Holy shit. :o

> My sixteen-year-old self didn’t know any of this, of course.
> My sixteen-year-old self, I realized to my growing horror, thought
> she was kind of cute.

X3 <3 <3 <3

> That got her attention. “You’re Easily-Discovered Man?
> _The_… Oh, Dad is going to want to hear about this,” she said,
> pushing herself off the bale of hay, landing gracefully, and
> then sprinting in the direction of a large white clapboard farmhouse.

....oh no I just remembered who her dad is @-@;;;;

> And doesn’t something about that girl seem familiar?”
>
> “Now that you mention it,” the Prof said, “I do see
> something of a young Shirley Temple about her.”

X3

> For after all it was just moments ago, as you
> and I reckon, that you and I were trapped in a dying universe,
> doing battle with that most resourceful of reprobates, the
> dread Deathstocker, whose power allowed him to requisition
> any article or armament he might need in order to vanquish his…”
>
> “And who appears to be walking towards us with the girl
> we just met,” I said, as the villain in question and the girl who
> was most probably his daughter strode toward us across the field.

On 2021-05-09 19:45, Drew Nilium wrote:
>
>>       “Well, well,” he said, folding his arms over his chest, with
>> the girl -- his daughter -- grinning by his side.  “Easily-Discovered
>> Man and Easily-Discovered Man Lite, after all these years.
>> I truly believed you had been destroyed, along with everyone
>> and everything I’d ever known.”
>>
>>       “About that…” I began, but he cut me off by throwing his
>> arms around both of us in a hug.
>>
>>       “It’s so good to see you at last,” Deathstocker said, in a
>> voice rich with emotion.  “Welcome home.”
>
> !!!! :o :o :o :D :D :D <3 <3 <3
>
> this is rad!!!!!!!

Yeah, this is unexpected. But totally in character for good fiction. :)

>>       NEXT ISSUE: Is it wrong to have a crush on your
>> arch-nemesis?
>
> NEVER.

But interesting.

>> Is it wrong to believe the past can be changed
>> when you know it’s impossible?
>
> NEVER!

But interesting.

>> Is it wrong to hope that the next
>> episode might be published before another year goes by?
>
> NEV-- well, I hope not.

And probably not interesting.

>>       SPECIAL THANKS: To Perry and Graham for recommending that I
>> get back to this and to Apocalypso for inspiration.
>
> Awwwww. :> <3 <3 <3 Thanks guys!
>
> Drew "eeeeeeeeee <3" Nilium

Oh, my, I doubt it's ever wrong to actively draw your family into
helping write your fiction.

--
-- (signed) Scott Eiler 8{D> ------ http://www.eilertech.com/ -------

"Your Royal Highness, instead of devoting yourself exclusively
to Minerva, should, instead, rather offer sacrifice at the altars
of Bacchus, Orpheus, Venus, and Morpheus."

- Advice to Prince Duarte of Portugal. From "The golden age of
Prince Henry the Navigator", by Joaquim Pedro Oliveira Martins.
Coming soon to Project Gutenberg.