FANFIC: LNH: Particle Man Annual #1, Part 2 of 2

[Harith Jameel Alkhafiz]

Back in the good old days (went the message, played out alongside Particle
Man as the HoloDeck swirled into representational colors and shapes),
back in the U.S.A., back even before the Agents of P.U.L.P. helped fill
out our history, there was one Legionnaire that stood for it all. One
for courage, honor, and honesty. One who wasn't afraid to give crime a
little kick in the old patooey. I'm talking, of course, about Boy Lad.

In those days, Boy Lad fought crime with a grin and a gun. With his
youthful sidekick, Boy Lad Jr. at his side, the streets were kept clean,
the criminals behind bars, and all the trains ran on time. I'm not quite
sure if Boy Lad had anything to do with all of those, of course; usually
he just stood around and posed for Saving Bonds commericals. But anyway.

And what a time it was! There was Boy Lad's archnemisis, Bad Guy. Lurking
in the wings would be Villain Ness, ready to seduce our hero into a
debauched life in the suburbs, white picket fence and all.

But the story nobody knew, the thing that never got the headlines, was how
lonely it all was.

"I feel I'm all alone!" Boy Lad would say. Then he'd look around the
empty Legion headquarters, and there would be no one around to agree with
him (Legion by-laws at that time kept young sidekicks from attending
meetings). Being the first Legionnaire had its drawbacks.

Boy Lad would open up the window, and look over the bustling town that would
become Net.ropolis, and see all the people. They'd smile and wave up to
the Hero with a Grin, and he'd smile back. But he didn't know any of them.
They didn't know him. He felt... so empty.

Without knowing it, Boy Lad had done a serious thing. He had introduced
personal angst to a comic book about fifty years before its time. He had
opened the door to the land of Retcon, and only a dangerous adventure
kept things the way the Were, instead of Would Have Become.

But the story about Love is a different thing.

Once upon a time, there was a woman named Liz. I'd like to remember that her
last name was Ardor, but there's a lot of phonesex lines messing up my
transmission, so don't quote me on that.

Anyway. Liz was as beautiful as she possibly could be to have an effect on
our story. Use your imagination, kid, you're the living one. And Boy Guy
wanted her. Man, did he want her.

He'd do thirteen sets of decathalons in the morning just to work off his
cold sweats. Jumping jacks, up and down for hours, just to keep his hands
were he could see them. He'd lift weights, climb walls, polish windows; the
man was a lunatic. Utterly in love.

Occasionally, he'd stay up nights just to watch the moon. He used to think
that if the moon could inspire him to do something, anything, superhuman, to
just get her attention, he'd be a happy man forevermore. So, occasionally
he'd sing songs to her.

This took a lot of guts; Boy Lad had never sung before, and about the only
song he knew was "Does Your Spearmint Lose Its Flavor?". But you know
something? Out there, with just him and the moon and his thoughts, his voice
raised up and out and across the sky like a velvet noose. The darkness that
he was afraid would never leave his soul was eased into the soft wading pool
of the moon's happiness. Step by step, line by line, he sung out his heart
to her, let her know of his true love.

Then he finally decided to actually go and sing where she could hear him.
The nights were really brisk back then, brisk while being warm; you could
feel the flowers on the trees radiate the day's warmth as you headed up the
shaded paths of the old city. Soft macadam would crunch under his feet, and
he'd eventually come, crouching by the lilac tree, to the corner of Liz's
house.

Now, Liz lived all the way across town, and while there wasn't a man, woman,
child, or dog in those days in Net.ropolis that didn't owe their life to Boy
Lad, and would have toted him on their back blindfolded through a backalley
on a Chinese New Year if he'd have so much as hinted, Boy Lad had one big
problem. He was shy, and he was too young to drive a car. What was usually
left was for him to call up a taxi or a rental, and have them drive him all
the way across town, taking different routes so horrible fiends like the
FourHead or the Golfing Gorilla couldn't trace him down and threaten the
innocent life of the rentacar driver.

And of course Boy Lad always went incognito. His love was so painful that he
couldn't bear to even think of himself bearing it, let alone exposing poor,
dear Liz to the burden. But isn't that the way that damn crank Love is? The
more you want it, the tighter it slams shut your mouth. Pretty soon, people
are wonderin' what sort of sadistic freak your dentist is, wirin' your mouth
shut, makin' your eyes bug out like that.

Well, Boy Lad wasn't about to give up so easily, not when he had even gotten
two stanzas down of "Don't Get Around Much Anymore." Now, an average night
would go like this:

Refreshed and happy after another shootout with the criminal element of
Net.ropolis, Boy Lad would drop off his youthful sidekick, Boy Lad Jr., at
the bonded orphanage where Boy Lad Jr. would study his fine arts for the
night. Then, winging home at the top speed possible in his rented car, Boy
Lad would rush into the Legion headquarters. There were only three floors in
those days, and his toned legs would take him up to the third floor without
even stopping for air, up the large marble staircases that were in the front
of the building in those days.

Boy Lad would then change out of his costume, and carefully manicure every
little finger, so that no dirt may smudge the hand of his beloved. He'd
spend long minutes in front of the mirror, weeping at his wilting hair.
Inevitably, he'd run over to Mabel, across the street, who ran a hair salon
for veterans and homeless people, just because those were the days when
people would do stuff like that. And he always had to take care to disguise
his voice so Mabel, who, as you know from reading your comic histories was
always the Number One fan of Boy Lad, would never, ever find out that the
man whose hair she was styling so delicately every night was the man that
she longed for, the man that she was certain would make her nights into days
and her days into a blazing fire of love. It was Mabel that Boy Lad saved in
his very first adventure, from the blazing guns of the Kaiser, and ever
since he had found himself stepping in to save her from a variety of
misadventures and troubles, always chastly leaving her with nothing more
than the promise of a kiss on her saintly cheek.

Poor Mabel! All those long hours, scrubbing on her hands and knees to make
enough money to open a shop right across from Legion Headquarters, just to
have the man of her dreams come in for a crimp and tips. And don't you
believe that Boy Lad ever thought of her while he was there, twisting with
anxiety in his chair. No sir, he felt those hands push his bold, joking
bangs to one side, and he'd close his eyes and see Liz, laying on her
lounge, smoothing his hair after a hard-won fight. He'd look into the mirror
as she carefully cut the roguish strands that stuck out so handsomely after
getting tousseled in a fight, and her face was Liz's. And Mabel, she wasn't
half-fine herself, mind you, but she wasn't Liz. She wasn't Liz, that Boy
Lad hadn't even exchanged the time of day with.

And, when the grooming was done, Boy Lad would carefully hop out of the
salon, and take a back way into Headquarters. And then he'd carefully
rehearse the speech for the night, over and over, though the only person who
usually was awake to hear it after a night of pining would be himself. He'd
search through the flowers sent to him from the leading women of the city,
and every day there'd be five or six new ones, celebrating the hero that
kept them safe, and he'd pick the one that looked the most fresh and
delicate, that felt most like how he knew Liz's fair wrist would feel, and
he'd put it in his lapel. And wouldn't you know it that he did look the most
dapper and fresh of any young buck on the strip?

So after finally getting ready, he'd swallow scented water to prepare his
breath, and fiddle with his fingers, and always worry that he should have
had one more manicure, just in case this night would be the night that Liz,
dear sweet Liz, would finally be his.

Now, at this time, there was only one rentacar guy in Net.ropolis. Yeah, I
know you can't spit downtown without pissing off seventy taxi drivers now,
but back then, there was one driver, and he had one car. And every night,
Boy Lad, in his duded civvies, would sneak to a different phone booth across
town and call up for his services. And every night, the man would show up,
smooth as silk, and take Boy Lad across town to the house where Liz lived.
He'd leave him there, trembling on the lip of darkness, and then drive off
to get hammered on the tip money.

Most of the times, the driver would be conscious by the time he was supposed
to pick Boy Lad up. Those times he wasn't, though, it didn't seem to make
any difference; Boy Lad would still be there, mooning at her yard, pacing
back and forth, trying to get up the courage you need to walk into someone's
heart. There ain't no courage in the world that'll take you into a Nazi's
machinegun nest that will get you anywhere near that private den, let me
assure you, and Boy Lad, he had it real bad.

So, the driver would pick him up, and offer him comments on the drive back
home. Yeah, that's right: the driver would drop him back at the
Headquarters, at all hours of the night. He had a pretty good idea what was
going on at the time, but the way he figured, if Boy Lad wanted to keep him
up in hootch and stacks, hey, that was his public service to the city.

So, the driver, he always egged on Boy Lad in subtle little ways. "So ya
didn't get to see her tonight, eh, kid?" he'd ask, half way through the city
and his bottle, respectively.

"Ya ever think of, like, hidin' on the other side of the house. I hear the
northwest is really romantic to those dames, right?"

Or, he'd say:

"Nah, broads hate plays. They gotta go get all dressed up just to see some
tart that looks better than they do, and then all their men can do is just
drool over the babes. Man, don't ask her out to some play. You gotta be
subtle. Broads love that subtle type."

And he'd go on like this, while the moon bounced along the rooftops following
the rickety old car, preaching sweet procrastinations in Boy Lad's ear, mind
always dwelling on how Boy Lad was the main source for his fuel, not to
mention his gasolene.

Now occasionally, Boy Lad would ask the driver to do things for him. The
driver, always willing to make a quick sawback, usually agreed, as long as
he was sober enough to figure out what was going on. So, Liz's house
occasionally got oddly accented poetry read out to her from the depths of
the lilac bushes near her garbage cans. After a while, the cats would start
yowling, and there would usually be a big scruffle and a curse, so Liz was
never quite sure what was going on out there.

Then there was the time she would open her window to hear the softly lilting
songs of a big band, drifting across the night. Smiling, she'd lean out,
until her window would catch the radio being lowered from a fishing pole by
a nearby tree, and knock both the radio and the midnight serenader out of
their perch with a drunken oath.

And one night, she was sitting down, enjoying a book of foreign travel and
delights, when there came a rustle and a sudden, horrid twang. Leaping up
with a cry, she noticed that a poorly-aimed arrow had bounced off her
lounge, scattering the box of chocolates tied to it across the floor, and
into the fireplace, where they slowly vaporized into a carmel cloud. She
picked up the card from the scattered box, but the melting pool of chocolate
had covered the dedication with a sticky, dark mystery.

And Boy Lad? He just sat back, and held his knees, and cried. His good
friend, the cab driver, was getting all beat up over his love affair, and he
still hadn't so much as introduced himself to Liz.

So, after being dropped off home, Boy Lad would climb the stairs with heavy
legs. Those stairs added half their height again after midnight, let me
assure you. He'd sit in the study, the moon wrapping its comforting light
around him, and sing the songs he'd rehearsed so well until his throat
turned soft with tears. He'd fall asleep, and wake up the next day, fresh
poems to his beloved Liz scattered across the cocktail napkins that he had
slept on.

And that went on pretty much every night. Mornings, of course, he'd be over
at the greasy spoon across the street. It was run by Mabel, and Boy Lad
would sit in his hidden identity of Joe Norm and listen to the common salt-
of-the-earth people that he knew and loved. If you ever wondered why the
Legion Headquarters was this far uptown, well, now ya know: Boy Lad loved
the people, and he liked being around them every single morning, to know
what he was fighting for.

Mabel, she'd spend her mornings talking to Norma and Rachel, smiling when
her back was turned to them as she put the finishing touches on the flowers
she picked fresh grown every morning from the flowershop she owned down the
street. She pruned them herself, having ached back and bone for ten years to
earn enough money to put herself through the top arts program in the
country. That Mabel could do a table setting that would make Piccaso cry,
although she did admit afterwards that she never knew old Pablo'd be
allergic to stinging nettles. She did a lot of charity work this way,
selling her art to needy causes across the country, but you wouldn't be
surprised to know that the best flowers, first every day, she sent across
the street to Legion Headquarters, and there were just two words on the
envelope that they were adressed to, and those two words were the ones she
knew up-and-down, backwards-and-forwards better than the guy that wore 'em.

And Mabel, all she could do was scheme to how she was going to meet Boy Lad
next. And Boy Lad, sitting right across the room from her, why all he could
do is suck down that coffee till his brain was finally up, and wonder, just
wonder how that Liz made her coffee, early in the morning. He imagined
himself, down at the general store, picking out just the right type of sugar
for their morning coffee, so it wouldn't clash with her lily-white
fingertips. He imagined she probably didn't even eat strawberries, for
shame that her lips would be more enticing than the food. He imagined a lot
of things, that Boy Lad.

And that's the way things would pretty much stay, for a summer or so. Boy
Lad would spend his days fighting crime (heaven knows you didn't have to
fight crime in the dead of night, back in those days), and his evenings
spent in useless cameraderie with the rental owner, still plying his dating
secrets to keep his cash flow coming. Mabel, she'd worked skin and blood to
the thin just to get enough money to open the chain of fine office supply
stores just across the street from the Legion Headquarters, just so there
was a greater chance that Boy Lad would buy her very own stationary. She
used to think about him, writing love poems to his true love by the light of
the weeping moon, and the thought would send warm shudders to her shoulders.
And every night Boy Lad would get his hair done by Mabel, and neither one
would be the wiser for what would be the better for both of them.

Liz, she just sat in her house and wondered who the man was who sent her a
crumpled valentine with bottle stains across the bottom. It was a sweet
gesture, but she hoped that someone kind was out there, to take care of this
suffering soul. She had taken to looking out her window at nights, now,
mainly so she could avoid any poorly-aimed love letters tied to bricks
through her windows. Once, she had heard violin music played just out of
sight, and she had just put on her coat to go outside and see who it was,
when the nervous sound of a retreating taxi left her standing cold in the
sidewalk light.

Now, in those days there was a dragon in Net.ropolis. It wasn't a particularly
big one, mind you, and it didn't do much except show up at the waterfront
now and again just to spook some bums and immigrants, which just shows you
how sad and lonely the whole thing was, a fine dragon being reduced to
scaring unemployed farmers for a moment's glory.

Well, around about this time, this dragon decided enough was enough, and he
wanted access back into the land of all dragons. The Book of Phil, which is
only the holy book of all dragonkind, told that it could be possible, but
was a bit unclear on the whole matter of process to achieve it. I ain't ever
been able to say that I've looked through the Book of Phil, but I'm to
understand that that was usual for the book, which often advised its readers
to "save room for dessert before making your bed."

So, what's a fine dragon to do but kidnap an innocent lady, right? Well,
let's just say that one morning, sipping his morning Joe at Mabel's Big Boy
Diner, Joe Norm saw what had to be the most shocking news of his crime-
fighting career. And he apologized most profusely to the fine gentlemen
that were dining across the table from him, offering them his napkin to
clean up the java stains, and ran out without his customary doughnut and
newspaper that Mabel saved for him every morning. And Mabel chased him
out on the street, yellin' how he had forgot his doughnut, but Joe had
already scampered across the street into the Legion Headquarters without
anyone the wiser, where he sprung up the three flights of those marble
stairs like he was a comet come to heaven. And there he put on the Boy
Lad costume, and his dapper crime-fighting mask, and placed a call to his
rentacar to meet him at the Legion Post immediately.

Well, by the time Boy Lad and the driver got to the outskirts of town, the
Mayor and townspeople were all in a royal how-too, what with there being
what appeared to be a real-live dragon runnin' round the countryside, and
there being Miss Liz herself kidnapped and all from her very household by a
certain unidentified lizard, that it didn't take 'em two shakes of a dead
lamb's tail to get to figuring what was going on. And Boy Lad, he had never
fought a dragon before, but he figured it couldn't be worse than the
machinegun bunkers of the Kaiser, and he told the Mayor that himself, which
just made every last woman's heart in the crowd go flittering into the
noonday sun.

And so that brave, fine hero of a man went off into the dragon's cave to
rescue a fairest maiden that ever could qualify. Shucks, I'd be lying to say
if there wasn't more than a few tears of farewell on more than one cheek out
in that crowd, myself included, 'cause we all thought that while Boy Lad
was, of course, the bravest, finest, and most ablest man that ever did live,
this here was a real live dragon thing, and that broad, tapered back may
just have been the last sight of him that we'd ever be blessed to see.

Well, Boy Lad had a plan, as usual, 'cause his brain moved faster than
clockwork in an oil spill. He was gonna lure the old lizard out into the
open, where he hoped perhaps the bright noon sun could cause some troubles
for the night-dwelling creature, and there dart bravely around its gaping
claws to dash into the cave, there to rescue the fair maiden Liz herself.
You and me, we could have thought of a whole lot better plans, sure, but you
got to remember that Boy Lad was of an earlier type of hero, and that he
didn't have the advantage of being able to sit back in a nice comfy chair to
think things through.

No, sir, and that not thinking things through almost carried him through the
end, too. Y'see, up to this point, he was still in full hero mode, not
really realizing just who it was he was set on rescuing in that cave up
there. And even as he called out, his perfect bassotenor rolling out over
the hills as the dragon yawned up out of the ground, he stared that beast so
hard that the dragon himself blinked, like he couldn't believe what he was
seeing.

So the beast charged, with flames yipping and roaring, and Boy Lad found out
that those dragons are pretty fast critters when you get them up out of bed
under the hot noonday sun. And there he was, all ready to get set to fake
past the creature, when suddenly he caught a sight of a pale, slender leg in
the murky depths of the cave before him, and he realized that it was Liz
herself that he was comin' to rescue, and that in most dragon-rescue
circumstances, there usually is the presumption of social intercourse
between the members of the rescue party. And at that all he could think
about was the long, white nights of aching pain, and how she didn't even
know his face, but he still knew that she _had_ to know, and that she had to
think he was stupid and silly to never have properly introduced himself, and
that he could have gladly fought a hundred dragons, with a Kaiser on every
back, only to be slain by her mocking laugh.

And at that Boy Lad found his insides turning to his outsides, and his feet
lost all direction except some place to hide his blushing head. So, he ran
away from the cave, back up away from the dragon, who snorted in confusion
and jest as he trumpled over the scenery to chase after the youthful hero. He
ran and turned until he came to the banks of the old river itself where,
faced between the onrushing wall of burning teeth, or the raging waters of
the ancient stream, chose the deep, cool depths of water.

Now, roundabout this time the taxi driver, who had become quite the
accomplice of Boy Lad, and who in fact was responsible behind the scenes for
a lot of the adventures that were eventually attributed to Boy Lad Jr., now
that they're both dead and gone and no harm can come to the wiser, began to
swing into the backup plan. You see, Boy Lad had told him, before he walked
off to face down the dragon, that if things ever went really bad, that he
should try to get into the cave behind the dragon while Boy Lad kept the
creature busy, and thereby free Liz, and motor out of there quickly, down
into the deep parts of the city where the dragon couldn't find them for many
days. And it was a tribute to the nutured sense of public duty that the taxi
driver had developed under the gardenership of Boy Lad that this worthy
agreed top-right to do this task, at least as soon as ten dollars had been
slid his way.

So up behind the dragon's back, as the lizard went roaring away down the
countryside after Boy Lad, the old taxi came shuddering up. And the taxi
driver got out, took one sniff of dragon, and stopped right where he was,
until he had to use his smelling water to clean the aroma of old lizard from
his hide. Then, reeking of old whiskey, he stumbled into the dark cave, only
remembering that he could have turned on the headlights to help him look
after he'd tripped over the dainty Liz's leg.

Well, Liz helped him up, and he helped her out, and they both ran to the old
taxi, and backed out of there so fast you'd think there was a suit with a
stopwatch standing by to keep a record. And they piled back safely into
Net.ropolis, and holed up in a little diner that the driver knew of, and,
like all Net.ropolis itself, sat quietly listening by the radio with their
potential tears at ready to hear the news of Boy Lad.

Boy Lad escaped, that day, because by the time he surfaced a good fifty yards
away down the river, the dragon was nowhere to be seen. He was a might bit
tiffed at this, although he wasn't one to complain, especially seeing how
there had been no one hurt and all. He hadn't been quite sure how he was
going to take the dragon anyway, so he figured no news is good news, and
headed back to the cave only to find out that Liz had already escaped with
the taxi driver, and it was just left to him to pose for the pictures and
look heroic by the empty cave. It was a function he knew well, and the warm
glow of knowing that he saved Liz, and that she had to know it, made him
look thirty times more handsome than even he had ever managed before, so
much so that to this date there's no true lady that picked up the next
morning's newspaper that ever let it out of her hope chest.

I'm not too sure just what happened to the dragon, although the Mayor
himself led up a thirty-person crime squad, just to comb up and down the
riverside. Now that I'm dead, I've got a little bit of perspective, and I'm
thinking that maybe the dragon just finally found the door into the land of
the true dragons, right there by the riverbank, and was so pleased that he
just went right in, and the big old green door shut behind him with not even
a burp of air to mark him going. Like I said, I'm not too certain on this
being what God saw while watching the nearby sparrow, but if anybody else
can think of a better reason why fifty tons of fighting lizard just vanished
under the noonday sun, well, I'll be waiting here some time coming to hear
the reason.

Well sir, if anything could boost Boy Lad's popularity above the Everest
it had already become, this would have been it. The whole town gathered
out to celebrate their only hero, with Boy Lad Jr. waving the American
flag from atop the float, while Boy Lad posed for more pictures than Kodak
has cameras. And there were speeches given by big men in small suits,
about how glad they were that Boy Lad had chosen this town to set his
Legion of Net.Heroes into, and how the city fathers of this city in perpetuity
would never forget the self-sacrificing nature of the legend of Boy Lad.
And in the front, hands clasped before heart, there was Mabel in her best
Sunday whites, smiling at the Hero with a Grin like her cheeks were
chiseled, and all that day, and the week afterwards, no one paid anything
at Mabel's diner in recognition of the Hero of the Net.

But you want to know who wasn't in the celebration? You've already guessed
it, proberly, 'cause these sort of stories all move in the same sort of way.
Boy Lad was as happy and as proud as ever to have served the fine citizens
of Net.ropolis one more time, but there was something nagging at the back of
his heart, and that something was Liz. Try as he might, and he had tried
harder than most, he just couldn't find her.

He looked at her house, and the lights were never on. He went to where she
worked, just down the street from the dairy that Mabel had slaved for seven
hard years to be able to buy just to be able to produce the milk that Boy
Lad drank with his morning corn flakes, and everyone there said they hadn't
seen her. But it was a tribute to his better nature and trust in the good
side of humanity that he didn't suspect what really happened until he got
the letter in the post at the end of the week.

Now Liz, you may remember, she got rescued by the taxi driver out of the den
of a dragon itself. Now, any decent woman would be half-ways properly
inclined to any gentleman who had got her out of such a pickle, but when she
heard the familiar oath as the poor man fell to his face over her finely
trim leg, and even more as she smelled the familiar shape that was helping
her lurch out of the darkness, that Liz finally realized that here, at last,
was the man of her midnight serenades, the man who sent her perfume in a
sixpack, the man who had mowed her lawn with a dull razor just to leave a
lopsided heart as a sign of his devotion. And that pretty, dazzling Liz, she
was so happy she just up and kissed the guy.

Now, if I were you, I'd probably have kissed her back, and patted her on the
hand, and told her how everything was going to be alright. But the taxi
driver, as you may have noticed, was a man of rather direct and obvious
means, who took the cheerful thanks as a welcome to her most intimate self.
And Liz, she wasn't at all used to a man who could finally speak his mind in
front of her, and after a night or two above the bowling alley by the bar
downtown, she had their marriage papers all drawn up and the suitcases
packed for Las Vegas.

All of this was found out much too late, of course, for Boy Lad did not
get the letter until the end of the week. That night Mabel, closing up
after a long, tiring day, noticed Joe Norm in the back booth of her diner,
clutching a long-faded letter, stained by the salty tears of love. Mabel
wandered up, and asked what Joe was up to, because she had never figured
that he was the romantic type, and didn't know that he had a girl at his
side at any time.

The letter, of course, was from the cabbie, who had such a painful attack
of conscience that he had to write to pour out his aching soul to his
good comrade, Boy Lad, from the poolside suite of the Las Vegas Royale,
which had been paid for with the tip money Boy Lad had given him over the
past year. And Boy Lad, he had read the letter with a silent gasp in his
heart, and it was only the warm solace of Mabel's famous nine-o'clock
coffee that was keeping his feet on the ground and his heart in his chest.

And Boy Lad thought about Liz of the silken hair. Liz, who had the softest
wrists he had never touched, and the dearest voice he had never listened
to. And he looked up at the charming Mabel, who had stood behind Boy Lad
all these years, even once or twice bravely plucking his life from the
traps set for him by some nefarious foes, and all he could do was think
and shudder inside.

Mabel asked him what was wrong, and if he'd want to talk about it, but
Boy Lad could only shake his head. And he ran out from the diner, into the
cold hard night when the moon itself was grieving over lost love, and Mabel
called out into the night, but he never came back. Not that night.

Boy Lad had learned a powerful lesson about the nature of love that night.
Mabel, she had learned that every patron is an important patron, and made it
her point to personally help every man and woman she could, till her dying
days. Liz lived a happy life as the wife of a successful businessman in
downtown Atlanta, and Boy Lad never did hear her voice, I do believe. The
taxi driver; well, he became one of the richest, and most powerful rentacar
barons in these here united states. I'm sure you heard of him once or twice,
maybe even bothered to catch a ride from the airport in a car of his now or
then.

But you can't judge the cabbie too harshly. He was always ashamed of running
off with his first feelings, like that, and he never forgot that the man
whose love-torn tips every night had help found his car-rental empire was the
man whose truest love he had torn right from his heroic heart. And I think
it's safe to say that he never did sleep easily from that night on, although
his old friend the bottle certainly helped in more ways than one. And I do
believe that he did mean every single word he'd written that night, on that
final letter, which changed Boy Lad's life once and for all.

Things were never the same pretty soon after that. The Agents of P.U.L.P.
were starting to show up, and the sky was starting to look different, more
chilly, and Boy Lad never seemed to grin quite as large as he used to as he
fought down the forces of injustice and ingratitude. But he never gave up
fighting, because if nothing else, he was a hero, and his heart beat solely
to make the world a better place, for better men. And if he ever spoke of
his one great love, he said nothing that could not be learned in the pages
of that love-soaked letter. He never learned any greater lesson at all then
could be expressed in that bitter-dark passage of betrayal, summed up from
then on out in that final truth he never saw, compressed forever by that
letter that was signed "Love Hertz."
*****
"I understand," Particle Man said finally as he stared off into the
depths of the HoloDec sky. "This is the first piece of substantial
advice I've gotten! Thanks, Fancy..." His sentence trailed off as he
turned to face an empty, deactivated HoloDec.
"What the hell?" Had any of the Intangible Legion been real, or had
the computer, in an unprecedented moment of actual intuition, given
Particle Man some of it's own advice through a complex simulation. It
didn't matter, for, now, Particle Man felt that he knew what must be
done. He walked to his room, for he had a lot to sleep on that night.

[Looks like there's going to have to be a part 3, because this editor
won't take anymore characters...]