"What if he doesn’t have a secret identity?
"I mean, I’m familiar with the patterns. These holes in his
schedule, of fifteen minutes or two hours or seemingly random nights when he
doesn’t stop crimes. His activity is localized on this city, and radiates
outward from there. There’s video of him seeming distracted. I get where the
double-life theory comes from.
"But as best as I understand it, he’s a fucking invincible
alien. He owns a private ice palace full of extinct monsters and can pop into
space on a whim. What if he has priorities other than saving people?
"Maybe we’re his hobby. We’re the X-Box. We’re the toy chest.
When he’s not making dinner or doing homework, he puts out our forest fires and
punts missiles out of the sky. And because a boy likes his videogames, he does
it a lot. But he doesn’t do it all the time.
"How do you know he doesn’t vibrate out of this reality
during those time-holes? Maybe he’s on another plane of existence. Maybe he
goes to Heaven. Maybe he wages secret wars grander than anything we’ve seen.
I’m saying: there’s an infinity of things he could do with his time rather than
pretend he’s a hotdog vendor.
"I don’t see why he’d want a double-life. That’s been problem
from the start. Our lives are miniscule to him. We’re so much smaller that
we’ve spent billions of dollars and countless tech-hours trying to track a
second life of his that may not even exist. He is the important thing. Why
masquerade as unimportant? What does he get out of that?
"And even if he does go to an apartment today and dress up
as, I don’t know, a goofy reporter, what prevents him from being a mechanic
tomorrow? Or a janitor? Or a mercenary in Afghanistan? Because if being us is
his hobby, then he can just go around assuming new roles all the time. You
don’t fantasize about the same stuff all the time. You imagine different girls,
different destinations. So why wouldn’t he?
Another brilliant thought - excellent.
ReplyDeleteI haven't passed by here in a while and I sure have missed you. :o)
Oh man. This was good. I liked this little quip: "And even if he does go to an apartment today and dress up as, I don’t know, a goofy reporter" :)
ReplyDeleteI really like the idea of a new secret identity every day. If I were a super hero, that's what I'd do.
You know, that's a really good point about pissing him off. If he really does have a secret identity, and someone uncovers it, there goes all the time & energy he spent in building it. Maybe that's why he's a reporter… Clark Kent figured it out, and now he's gone & Superman is living his life.
ReplyDeleteSurely a superhero can play with time. If he can, he could do all of the things you suggest. If not, he is no superhero of mine.
ReplyDeleteOf course they have a secret identity, they are sworn to save the people of this world, so he goes to the Daily Planet to get to know us better and she grabs her mop and bucket so that she can keep an eye of things. PS what they do in their spare time is their business, even superheroes need time off. ^_^ Teee -heee
ReplyDeleteI sympathise with the narrator. If you you have a super alien solving mankind's problems maybe it's wise to leave them a little mystique but I think the reality is they want to know the alien's movements, location of loved ones, etc so that they can control it if necessary.
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