Inaction Man

Chapter 1
A Day in the Life

Why he was called Inaction Man he did not really know. Nor did he truly understand his purpose. He was also often unsure of where he was, what he was doing, and why he was doing it. He was a man of his time, gripped by uncertainty. The only thing he did know for certain was that what he saw was reality and not the fog of illusion. In the world of the blind, he was the one-eyed monarch. He alone could see the Cracks and what spilled forth from the Cracks.
My own name, dear reader, is not relevant to this tale and how I came to know the facts that I am about to recount will remain a mystery to you. However, I thought it just and fair that the world should know the great debt that it owes Inaction Man and that his epic tale be told.
We join Inaction Man on November 15, 2008, but he did not know the date, being above petty mortal concerns like date keeping and clock watching. He finds himself in a large rectangular park, not knowing how he got there or where he would go afterwards. He is staring into the weak sun, made weaker by the thin web of cloud that hangs over the park. He is looking for answers, but he does not know where to find them, so he looks at all things and tries to see if they contain the answers, or at least better define the questions.
Tiring of staring at the hidden sun, he looked instead for signs of meaning in the yellowed leaves that the death winds of autumn had strangled and left lifeless on the ground. He paid attention to the patterns in the gentle and intermittent rain and the movement of the clouds in the sky.
He studied everything in his search of signs from his masters, messages from the Immortals, those pan-dimensional angels that had set him on his quest all those years ago.
There were hidden messages everywhere. The difficult part was knowing how to read them, and as a relatively new Superhero, he often found himself, like an illiterate staring at a poster, knowing that he was looking at a message of some kind, but unable to fathom its meaning.
So on he went, wandering the cold and maudlin streets of Paris, the city of light and the centre of darkness, wondering why they had chosen him and not another, and trying to solve the mystery of his name. For most of us, a name is merely something our parents give us and ultimately a thing of little or no consequence, but for Inaction Man, it was the key to understanding his destiny, and only by truly understanding his purpose could he effectively complete his mission.
In his darker moments, he wished that the Immortals had chosen someone else for their mission. He sometimes even wished he still had his old name, his mortal name, a name and identity whose place in time and space he chose not to remember, fearing the nostalgia of memories might blind him.
Whether he wanted it or not, the Immortals had blest him with the power of sight, but it brought with it such a heavy burden, and such hideous visions. He sometimes felt like he was living in Hell, but he alone was cursed with having the power to actually see it. And how many of us, were we to find ourselves passing through the gates of Hades, would not wish to be blinded, to be freed from having to face its hideous sights? But Inaction Man is a Superhero and braver than you and I will ever be. He sees things as they are and not as he would like them to be.
As he walked under a long row of trees, undressed by winter, their branches like an arch, he looked inwards, and thought about a recurring dream of his, searching for a hidden message in it, a message from the Immortals, whoever and wherever they were. In the dream he was ice skating on a lake with his hands tied behind his back. The lake was covered in a thick blanket of fog and he could not make out the shoreline. Everything was grey: the ice, the fog, even the wind itself. He could hear the ice begin to crack beneath him and he knew it was dangerously thin. He knew that if he stopped skating his weight would crack the ice and he would fall into the grey lake, never to return. So he continued skating, hoping to reach the shore he could not see.
Unable to decide between the many different possible messages the dream might contain, he gave up thinking about it, knowing that he would redream the dream at some future date, and he thought that he might be able to discern its meaning then.

He cleared his mind of the dream and the search for meaning among the signs. He moved from a thought phase to an action phase, or rather an action of inaction phase. It may seem strange that a Superhero called Inaction Man has an action phase, but these action phases were necessary to promote inaction. In the same way that an anarchist or a communist might reject the capitalist system but still rob a bank, Inaction Man rejected action but was still forced to act.
The problem, however, was that the Immortals had not actually told him what his specific Superhero responsibilities were, or how he should act in any given situation. They had told him little, apart from his Superhero name, and he had to try and decide this for himself what he should do and how he should do it.
Before acting, Inaction Man cleared his mind of all distractions and acted from the heart, knowing his heart to be good and true. He acted without thinking, but with feeling. This is more difficult than it sounds, raised as we are to do the opposite, to think before we act, and to help Inaction Man act though feeling, he often consumed large quantities of alcohol, as he had done today.
Inaction Man took the half-empty bottle of vodka from his chapped lips, and suddenly saw himself standing on a bench in the park. He was out of his mind, in the sense that his mind was sitting on a thick branch above the park bench, watching himself act from the heart, rather than the head, watching the Superhero below, trapped in a human body swaying from side to side, promoting the philosophy of Inaction.
One of the best ways to promote inaction and spread the Word was for Inaction Man to simply speak to himself out loud. He did this more and more lately, knowing that words which are spoken are more powerful than words which are merely thought. They have a physical force, a presence, and he believed that his words, being the words of a Superhero, were so powerful that could even affect the Action/Inaction continuum, as well as bringing people to the path of righteosness through convincing them of the morality of inaction.
He cleared his throat and began to speak:

“I am Inaction Man: I am the Light and the Way. Look on thy works, foolish mortals and despair; for works are actions, and all action is evil.”
Some passers-by, realising that they were in the company of greatness, stopped to listen. However, recognising that they were mere mortals and not Superheroes, they kept their distance, out of respect for this great being, so different from themselves.

“Know thee this, mortal men: To act is evil, to inact divine. Actions are the destroyers of worlds.
Only through inaction can our world be saved. By inaction shall action be undone.
Heed my prophesy, thou wretched sinners, despicable actors on this stage of death. Act not!
I am Inaction Man: Bringer of Peace. Follow me!”

Whenever Inaction Man spoke this way, people tended to move away from him; mothers clutched children closer to themselves and watched him closely, pretending to do exactly the opposite, pretending he was invisible, but invisibility was not one of Inaction Man’s superpowers.
Inaction Man saw peoples’ indifference and hostility to his words. He saw all things: he was a Superhero and his senses were highly acute. His senses were so great, in fact, that they sometimes crowded his consciousness, overpowering him, and preventing him from worrying about what people thought of him.
He experienced one of these moments in the middle of his speech, his head suddenly spinning in a vortex of sensual experience, explaining the bizarre end to his diatribe:
“I am Inaction Man, and I am very …sensitive!”

Having explained this to the crowd, he fell off the bench and stumbled into a nearby flowerbed, collapsing into it, and tried to wrap himself in flowers, which he suddenly realised could be used as a blanket in emergencies.
However, the laughing crowd of onlookers failed to realise was that Inaction Man was experiencing one of his periodic visions. They were so powerful that he could see and hear things that other mortal people were completely unaware of. We mere mortals see only a tiny fraction of what goes on around us. We are blind to vast numbers of dimensions and whole realms of experience completely pass us by.
Inaction Man, however, was blessed with the gift of sight, and as he lay on the grass, a broken bottle of vodka at this feet, wrapping himself in dandelions, he could hear the cries of pain from the last of the autumn leaves as they fell to the ground, dancing with the wind in their death throes. He heard the slow munching sound of earlier casualties in this perennial war of life against death being eaten by bacteria on the ground. He saw their ghosts being swept up by the Yellow Wind, back to the void, screaming and tumbling in a whirlwind of pain.
It was at times like these that he wished he could be free of his special powers. He saw too much. He saw things a man is not meant to see, things a man is not evolved to see, and they pained him. Sometimes the pain was physical sometimes it was psychological. Even for a Superhero, the truth can be painful. He knew that for mere mortals, the truth of how brutal the struggle between life and death can be must be far too frightening to even contemplate, and he recognised that was why they fought so hard against the truth, why they reused to see, and why they treated him so shabbily. Inaction Man had a gentle and forgiving nature, and sought to understand and explain, and not to condemn and punish.

“If you cannot bear the message,” he explained to some nearby rhododendrons and roses, “…and you cannot kill the messenger, then you must deny the message thrice: deny the veracity of the message; deny the messenger’s authority to bring the message; and deny your own act of denial.”

Inaction Man also knew that many mortals were being unconsciously influenced and even controlled by the FOG of the Status Quo, which I will explain later. The FOG was why they ignored him, moved away from him, and despised him.
Inaction Man’s philosophical treatise with the flower bed was brought to an abrupt end by the sudden appearance of some Shape Changers. All Superheroes have their enemies, of course, and Inaction Man was no exception. One of his most feared enemies were the Shape Changers, who could take different forms at will.
On this day, they came in the guise of policemen. There were two of them; tall, austere and with an air of death about them. They looked at each other and then rolled their eyes up to the skies, communicating with the Dark Lords above.
Inaction Man could always tell a Shape Changer from a living being easily enough. Their faces did not hold together the way a real face did. They were like wax works, they were essentially unreal; they were mere imitations of life, not real life. These two Shape Changers were no different. In fact, one of them was particularly badly made and his eyes seemed to be attached to the wrong part of his face, being slightly too high on his forehead. The other one spoke to him, but as he did so, his nose began to melt, and drops of it fell to the ground, killing the bacteria that fed off the leaves, for Shape Changers are not of this dimension and bring death to all they touch. Inaction Man, being a Superhero, was protected against this ‘touch of death’, but he had seen many others fall prey to it.
He could not understand what the Shape Changers were saying to him because their voices had not been effectively scrambled. Or to be more precise, they had been scrambled so they appeared to be human voices to mortal ears, but to his superhero ears the voices sounded as they actually were; dark, guttural alien voices. Their words were flowing backwards rather than forwards, and slowed to half their normal speed. He thought he could make out the words ‘park’ and ‘leave’ and ‘dirty wino’ among the distortions, and assumed that the Shape Changers were claiming this Jardin des Plants as part of their sovereign territory, as they had claimed the Louvre complex the month before, and banished Inaction Man from it, on pain of imprisonment in the Dark Towers.
Inaction Man briefly considered defending the park against the Shape Changer invasion, but decided against it. He was outnumbered and night was drawing in, and the FOE, the Forces Of Evil, should never be challenged at night because this was when their powers were strongest.
Moreover, he had spent time before locked in a cell in the Dark Towers and it was not to his liking. All Superheroes have their weak spots, and confinement to Inaction Man was like kryptonite to Superman. Imprisonment left him weak and almost powerless, and he needed to roam free, like a lion in an African savannah.
He told the Shape Changers this when he beat a hasty but tactically necessary retreat. In the real world, even Superheroes have to compromise.
“I am Inaction Man, lion of Paris, defender of the one true faith, and I shall see thee vanquished, Shape Changers …but not today.
Know thee this, foul demons: a battle doth not a war make, and victory will be won by the just, not by the mighty. All evil will fall to power of truth and beauty, and their handmaiden, inaction.
Thus spake Inaction Man.”

Having achieved a moral victory over the Shape Changers, a victory of words if not of fact, he moved away from them and left the park, relinquishing it to the hands of the Dark Forces, as he had been forced to hand over so much of Paris in this dismal year of 2008, when the FOE had reached unparalleled strength, and all had seemed lost.
Inaction Man was careful, as always, not to turn his back on the Shape Changers because he knew that that was when they are at their most dangerous, preferring, as they do, to attack from behind and stab you in the back. There is no word for chivalry in the Shape Changer’s lexicon, but there are 62 different words for evil; each one defining a different shade of it, subtleties of evil lost on the human mind. So, Inaction Man walked backwards through the park to the gated exit by the river, keeping the Shape Changers in sight at all times. This meant walking into things like rubbish bins and people, and falling over benches, and the Shape Changers often laughed at his misfortunes, but it was the only way to keep safe.
Eventually he found himself on the banks of the Seine and he could walk forwards again, which was a relief. He had had a couple of particularly nasty falls when he was coming backwards down the steps to the river, and his nose was bloodied and his cheek grazed. The blood quickly congealed in his long and matted, shaggy grey and black beard, adding another colour to its kaleidoscopic intensity, thereby adding to its superbeard power.
Inaction Man and his Superbeard, whom Inaction Man often conversed with, were always happy to find themselves by the river. Inaction Man always headed to the river when he came across Shape Changers, since rivers are a source of life, and anathema to most Shape Changers, who are a death force.
In fact, he had once seen a Shape Changer who came too close to the river burst into flames; such is the power of running fresh water.
However, not all Shape Changers are allergic to running water. He remembered a couple of particularly violent Shape Changers who wore the mask of common street thugs and who beat him mercilessly in the dead of night under a lonely bridge, le Petit Pont. As they became swept away by the joy of violence, and all Shape Changers are addicted to violence, they forgot to maintain their human mask and showed their true form: bipedal green pigs with black tusks and snouts covered in wriggling worms, but Inaction Man remembered their trotters and their squealing most of all.
Nevertheless, the Shape Changers were not the worst of the enemies Inaction Man had to face on an almost daily basis as 2008 drew to a close. Occasionally, the Forces of Evil enlisted the assistance of altogether darker forms: beings that the Age of Science believed it had banished to the realm of Superstition; archaic, primordial beings like spectres, goblins and demons. However, these inhuman forms had not all been vanquished, as mortal man believed.
Some remained, and waited for the coming of the Great Darkness, when they would emerge from the shadows and claim dominion. For now, they laid low and wore a cloak of invisibility, but Inaction Man could see through their cloak and he knew them. They were allergic to Superhero urine, and whenever possible Inaction Man saved his urine to attack them with.
They would appear from behind trees, always dead or dying trees, and drag themselves before him, using their bat like claws to bring themselves nearer to him. Few of them could walk upright, squashed as they were between Hell and Earth, so they crawled rather than walked. They could not move very quickly, being dead and therefore largely inanimate, but to compensate they used their fear fog, a greenish mist that made it difficult to move, even for Superheroes. So, when Inaction Man fought one of the Undead, it was usually a slow motion battle.
They would pull themselves up and rest on to their bony knees, their long curving claws longing to grab him and take him back with them into the haunted tree, eager to clasp him to their breast and wrap him in their bat wings, carrying him off to the eternal night of the Undead.
He had to quickly unleash his urine weaponry from his trousers and then carefully aim his mighty hose of virtue in the direction of whatever spectre or demons was crawling toward him, and then fight the demonic fear fog which sought to impede public urination.
The demon’s yellow bloodshot eyes saw who he was, saw what he was, and hatred seeped from them, even in death. Even when his urine of power burnt into their rotten flesh and melted them into the cobblestones their eyes still shone with hatred and promised revenge. Thus far he had managed to elude their mortal embrace. They relied on fear, and if you controlled your fear, it rendered them powerless. Thus far he had been safe behind his urine firewall, but there was always the risk of mortals objecting to him unleashing his weaponry in public.
However, Inaction Man’s biggest fear was what might happen if they approached you when you slept. They could enter your dreams and in the unconscious mind they were far more powerful and dangerous, fear being something far less easily controlled when we sleep. To guard against this eventuality, Inaction Man always slept during the day, and prowled the night-time streets of Paris carefully, even watchful for the Forces of Evil, ever suspicious of trees, and always with a ready supply of urine in case of attack. He was also conscious of the need to imbibe large quantities of beer to maintain his P-Stock. He even carried emergency supplies around with him, in a baby bottle and a water pistol, in case he should be ambushed by a demon squad, like in May.
Generally these night creatures could not speak, at least not in the sense that humans understand it. They were primitive and primordial creatures, born before time in the conventional sense, and incapable of the calm rational forms of thought that speech requires.
However, this very night, Inaction Man was to meet a Changeling; a once-human girl who had been taken by the Undead and was being converted. They were taking more and more people, Inaction Man realised, in preparation for the coming of the Great Darkness. He did not know when the great battle would commence, nor even if he would live to see it, but he also knew that a baby bottle of pee would not be enough to win the battle for the future of humanity. While the dark side grew stronger, he could barely keep himself alive.
Inaction Man, lost in these grim thoughts, looked up and realised that he was under a bridge near Notre Dame.
Things like this often happened to him. He would look up, suddenly realise he was in such and such a place, but have no memory of how he had gotten there or what he had been doing beforehand. He concluded this must be a new Super Power: The Power of Not Noticing Things, but he did not understand how he could use this power to his advantage yet.
He noted that it was the dead of night and his super powers of perception went into fifth gear. He was on his guard, as he always was between two and three in the early morning, for this was when the forces of Darkness are at their most powerful. He drank another beer to help him concentrate and keep him alert.
From a distance the Changeling looked human, but as she got nearer, her shuffling gait told Inaction Man that something was wrong, that she was not what she had at first appeared to be.
Inaction Man stood his ground like a good Superhero and waited for the Changeling to make her move. He fought the fear rising inside him; the fear that is the greatest weapon of all the forces of the Netherworld. He put his hand in his trouser pocket and prepared to unleash his weapon should the need arise. He had to be careful though. There had been several regrettable incidents in the past when he had unleashed his urine hose of demon death too soon, and mortals had taken great offense at being exposed to it, and not been reassured by his explanation that he was only preparing for a spectre attack.
He reminded himself that even without his magic anti-demon urine the FOE were powerless without fear. At least, it is this way now, but Inaction Man knew that if the forces of darkness were victorious in the upcoming battle that black suns will beam coldness across the universe, and the universe we know would be inverted. It would be us, or the few of us who would survive the attack, who would be powerless to harm them. But for now, Inaction Man knew that all he had to do was control his fear.
The Changeling approached and stopped right in front of him. Her clothes were filthy and she smelled rank. She removed the hood of her tracksuit and met his eyes. She was shaking and jittery, having already lost that human poise and grace that marks the living from the dead.

It is the eyes of the dead that mark them out most, even when they walk amongst us. There is a glazed and unfeeling aspect to them; a joylessness in these eyes that cannot love. Her skin showed the decay of death, demonstrating a plasticity that is missing from human skin. There was also a greyness about her, another sign of her Changeling status; trapped as she was between life and death, between light and darkness.
Her mouth opened, and Inaction Man noticed that the decay had spread to her teeth, which were rotten and barely held in place by blue and yellowed gums. He also noticed how gaunt she was; so thin that her skin seemed to be tied around her bones. When she spoke it was with a raspy and broken voice that knew only pain and suffering and was being twisted by it.
Changelings are slowly twisted by the Undead who kidnap them until, over a period of a decade, all humanity is wrung out of them, and they become almost indistinguishable from the Undead who catch and mould them. When they reach maturity, having killed at least a hundred people and eaten no less than 5 babies, they develop the power to make Changelings themselves, the Power of Change.
This Changeling, Inaction Man guessed from her eyes, was about midway through the process of becoming a Changeling, and while there was still something human in her, the process had gone too far and could not be reversed. However, she was not yet fully Undead, so his urine would be powerless against her, and he needed to be extra vigilant.
It was the Changeling who spoke first:

“Mister, spare us a bit of change, would ye, for a cup of tea, like.”

She held out her hand and Inaction man noticed the needle marks running down it. In a junkie they would be called ‘tracks’, but Inaction Man knew this was no ordinary drug addict. He saw that these marks had been made by the tiny incisors of a Vampire Rat, a blood sucking creature of darkness, a predator that grew ever more common in the sewers of Paris. He looked down at the cobblestones, making sure not to look into her eyes, avoiding dead-eye contact, watchful of the need to avoid a Changeling Hypnosis, and also keeping an ear out for sewer Vampire Rats.
He spoke to her with a false air of confidence, masking a quiver in his voice through bellowing, an effective method to deal with the Forces of Evil.

“I know thee Changeling and thou Knowest me. I am Inaction Man; knower of many things and a Force for Light.”
“Wot? All I askt for woz a bit of change, gov. All I said…”

Suddenly the Changeling appeared to realise something and her demeanour altered. She appeared to be smiling now.

“Err…you’re off yer head, aren’t you? What’re yah on, eh? Got some to spare? Go on mate. I need a hit. I’m really sick man. I’ll do anything you want.”
“Be gone pitiful Changeling wretch! You are beyond hope, beyond the Light. I can offer you no salvation.”

The Changeling recognised the Powers of Inaction Man and staggered off into the darkness, clutching her stomach and swallowing the night; disappearing into it; vanishing into what she had come from.
It had been another epic victory for Inaction Man; a victory of reason over fear; a victory of good over evil. And yet the victory brought him little solace. He felt depressed and brow-beaten as he walked along the deserted banks of the Seine; a lone figure, ‘a tattered coat upon a stick’; hugging the river as the cold November wind fought with the water, trying to push it underground. Every so often he could make out the rustle of Vampire Rats in the undergrowth, waiting for him to fall asleep; waiting to pounce.
To Inaction Man, the Forces of Evil seemed to be getting ever stronger. On this day alone, he had met two Shape Changers in Jardins des Plants and battled a Changeling by Notre Dame. There were monsters all around him, and for every one you defeated there seemed to be ten more ready to take its place. He had never been attacked twice in one day before. In the beginning, the attacks had been months apart, and his main battles had been with the cold, rain and hunger.

It seemed the Forces Of Evil were growing more numerous all the time, and more daring. In contrast, he was alone: Earth’s only Superhero, its one defender and champion.
As the sun rose and Inaction Man prepared to end his nightly travails and return to the solace of sleep, he knew the Day of Reckoning was close at hand. He knew he must struggle even harder to prevent that day. He knew he must spread inaction before it was too late.
He knew what needed to be done, but he did not know how to do it.

Chapter 2
The Making of a Superhero

Some men are born superheroes, some learn to become superheroes, but others have it thrust upon them. The Inaction Man was most definitely in the last category.
Before becoming a Superhero, he was known as Peter and he worked as a civil servant. It was here that I met him, and to be honest, I considered him to be distant, aloof and rather disinterested in his job and in the world at large, which seemed to him a cold and unforgiving place.
Perhaps we might have become friends, united in misanthropy and misery, but Peter was, by the time I met him, already too far on the path of enlightenment to allow himself to be distracted by something as ephemeral as friendship.
As year followed year, he found that his life had become a matter of complete routine, as all of our lives are, including mine and even yours, dear reader. If you do not believe me, ask yourself what you did last week that was out of the ordinary. Anything?
What marked Peter out, however, were his powers and analysis and his unwillingness to accept what merely appeared to be the truth. Peter was determined to know what was really the truth. He looked around him and noticed that everybody else had also become stuck in the same rut as himself. He was one among many prisoners of habit, hostages of the human need for predictability. At first Peter told himself that if everyone lived this way, that it must be normal, that it must be life.
However, he was never really satisfied with this reasoning. In a way he could never rationally explain, he simply felt it to be a flawed argument. Something deep within him told him that there was something fundamentally wrong with the current state of affairs, but he did not know what. Like a bear born and brought up in a circus, he could perform the tricks required of him, but he knew at some deeper level that it was not what he was meant to be doing.

As he approached 40, and the patterns of his life so far and the life that awaited him seemed to be setting themselves in stone, he noticed something strange was happening to his body. Firstly, he started to feel disconnected from it in some way, like it was not really his body, like it belonged to someone else. It was becoming merely an organic car to move his mind from place to place. The eyes that he saw with and the hands that he typed with seemed mechanised. His body was also, he realised, dying. It was turning to stone. He noticed it first in his stomach, but the effect was spreading to his other organs as well. It was getting harder and harder to move quickly, and there was less and less feeling. Everything was growing cold, lifeless, and infinitesimally grey.
He noticed how the world at large also seemed to be growing greyer and greyer, covering itself with dust, and in an almost imperceptible way, falling apart. He dreamt repeatedly that cracks were appearing in the city, but that only he could see them, and through these cracks unearthly demons were appearing.
He kept these dreams to himself. He kept more and more to himself, suspecting that he had come across information that was dangerous; that he had discovered something that he was not meant to know. He was also still well enough aware of the norms and dictates of the society he lived in to realise that if he spoke of his living fossilisation, he would almost certainly be incarcerated, and Peter had a morbid fear of prisons and confinement. For him, a prison cell was just a large coffin.
However, he needed to tell someone what was happening; he needed to give the monologue in his head some kind of concrete form; he needed to tease out his theories and organise them. The best way to do this, he reasoned, would be to write them down, and to imagine he was writing to someone who would understand; someone who also knew that the universe was cracking.
He gave this imaginary friend the name Secrecy, because she was sworn to secrecy and could never act on any of the information Peter told her. One cold November day in 2005, Peter began the first of what was to become many e-mails to Secrecy, noting down how he felt and what he had seen, finding in her the non-judgemental confidant that had always been lacking in his life.

He typed more and more messages to her, and even started to ascribe a personality to her. He knew that she did not exist, of course, but he was still far more interested in her than in any one who actually did exist.
It was at this stage that he started to have serious problems at work, his e-mails to Secrecy taking up more and more of his time. He continued to be civil with his work colleagues, when absolutely necessary, but he also avoided all contact with them whenever possible. This was not, of course, a dismissible offence, as unsociability is not yet a criminal offence, and probably never will be in Paris, but the quality of his work began to slip and then to slide and then collapsed entirely. While efficiency is hardly the hallmark of any civil service, there are minimum standards. For example, when asked to write an in-depth report on waste water management in the fifth arrondisement in Paris, Peter took three whole months to create the report, which to his supervisor’s horror, consisted of only seven words: “Not too bad, but could be better.”
While this was true, and had captured the essence of the matter, it was not seen by his superior as a satisfactory piece of work, but he had great difficulty explaining to Peter that the report’s brevity robbed it of a certain gravitas, and failed to investigate issues as thoroughly as they needed to be. Peter, anxious to return to typing to his imaginary friend, and oddly nauseated by his supervisor’s nasal hair, accepted his line manager’s critique and promised to rewrite the report immediately.
However, no sooner had he got back to his desk than he lost himself in a long e-mail to Secrecy on the cracking universe they were surrounded by and the incipient fossilisation of humanity. As a consequence of what he justifiably considered to be a far more serious issue, he failed to rewrite the report on waste water management.
However, this was not to be the reason for his dismissal, which happened later in the afternoon on the very same day. Distracted at a crucial moment by a fly on his sandwich, Peter inadvertently saved the following Word Document on the company’s shared drive, rather than his home drive. In other words, he accidentally saved his thoughts in public, rather than private. It was only at this point that we in the office realised how strange Peter actually was.
Dearest Secrecy,
I have just come from a meeting with my supervisor, whose purpose I cannot remember, but during the meeting I had some interesting insights into the Status Quo force that I have told you so much about over the last few months, knowing that I can trust you with my thoughts, and with my life.
Without further adieu, let me put these thoughts on your screen. I think I may have made a major breakthrough! Indeed, this could be the beginning of something truly beautiful, something really real.

The Status Quo Force

People whose lives have become complete routine object to anything and anyone that threatens that routine. This is not, as is commonly imagined, a psychological trait, but rather the effects of a mysterious and dangerous force, which I will refer to as the Status Quo.
The Status Quo is a living force that grows within us, wraps itself around our spine and spreads its tentacles throughout our body, taking dominion eventually even over our minds. Most of us are now controlled by this invisible force, which has probably made its way from another dimension though one of the cracks in the space time continuum.
However, the force is so powerful that after turning your organs into mechanised copies of your real organs, it gains control over what you see, and what you do not see; what you hear and do not hear.
It is for this reason that the cracks in our world are invisible to all but you and I, dearest Secrecy, and if we were to even speak of them to our colleagues and family, who are now almost all controlled by the force of the Status Quo, the Force would surely have them imprison us to keep us silent.

We must move stealthily, gentle Secrecy, or they will discover us, and cast us out. We must be as quiet as the computer mouse I hold, and as silent as the grave.

“’Tis worse than thou know”
“What?! Who are you?”
“I am the Reader, the one to whom you write, the one you call Secrecy”
“But…how can this be? You are imaginary.”
“I am as real as the Status Quo.”
“What is your name?”
“I am an Immortal, and my real name thou cannot yet know. You may call me Secrecy, if you wish.”
“…What are you?
“I am a Superhero, one of the Immortals, charged with the protection of this galaxy from the Forces of Darkness. However, there are many worlds, and I am but one, so I create two worthy knights on each planet to act as its guardians and sentinels, to prevent the forces of darkness from breaking through and turning the planet to a Dark World”
“Who is Earth’s second Superhero?”
“The time has not come for you to know this yet.”
“The Forces of Darkness-you mean the Status Quo?”
“The Status Quo is merely a weapon, a tool to prevent humanity from perceiving that your world is being taken over.”
“If the status quo is a weapon, then who wields it? Who are the Forces of Darkness?”
“They are the life forms that preceded us; creatures from before the Big Bang that gave birth to this blessed Age of Light; pan-dimensional beings from before time and space.”
“What do they want?”
“They want to return to the Age of Darkness, to turn off time, to close space.”
“How can they do that?”
“By spreading dark matter, by subsuming worlds, by turning off suns?”
“But… why me? Why have you chosen me?”
“You have recognised the Status Quo and are immune to its power. You can see the Cracks and soon, with the addition of your Super Powers, you will be able to see the Forces of Evil themselves, the FOE. You will henceforth be known to the Immortals as the Inaction Man.”
“The Inaction Man? Why?”
“That is your first quest, noble Inaction Man. To discover the secret of your name, and in so doing, to discover your purpose.”
“But… why don’t you just tell me?”
“You must prove yourself worthy of greater Super Powers. As of now, you have the Power of Sight. We will also give you the Power of Archaic Speech, but before we further enhance your powers you must show yourself worthy of your current powers and prove yourself incorruptible.”
“I see…”
“No, you do not yet see, but you shall. You shall see things people will not believe. You shall save your world or die trying. Walk tall, brave knight, and keep these warnings in thy memory locked: Beware the night and fear only fear.”

[Transmission Ends]

In his surprise, Peter accidentally saved the document, as mentioned earlier, in the wrong drive, and gossip spread around the office like wildfire. When word reached his superior and he saw the document, Peter was called into a private office, and asked to consider spending more time at home to help him deal with the complex emotional issues he seemed to be experiencing.
He left the office never to return and began his second life; the life of a superhero; never looking back and soon forgetting that he had once been someone else.
Peter the mild-mannered civil servant was dead. He was now the Superhero Inaction Man. He was sighted, he was keen, and he was ready for his first mission; to solve the riddle of his name.

From this point on, I will keep any interactions I had with the man who was once called Peter but is now Inaction Man a secret. I will, as if I were a superhero myself, adopt a cloak of invisibility, and merely know things without actually visibly being there. I will even look inside Action Man’s and others’ heads, and explain what they were thinking or planning. I will travel to other dimensions in space and time. We are now going three years forward in time, to November 2008.
All this I can do because of my own special power. I am the author: I am omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent. I make this world and this world is mine, but I will share it with you, the reader.
But as I said, I am about to become invisible…

Chapter 3-The Symbol

Inaction Man disliked bicycles. They were a force for action and therefore anathema to a superhero who opposed all action. However, the next morning, at about 11.00am, one hour before noon, which was Action Man’s bedtime, he happened to come across the exception to the rule. In the bushes in which he habitually slept, near Pont de la Tournelle, with a stunning view of Ile de Saint Louis, he found a broken and rusted bicycle; a bike that could not be ridden; a bike that celebrated inaction. This was a bike worthy of Inaction Man.
However Inaction Man was not one to make friends lightly. And besides, as a Superhero, he had to choose his friends carefully, not wanting his image tarnished by friendships that would later come to haunt him. He needed to converse with the bicycle first, and learn something of its history.
Conversing with inanimate objects is not easy. Mere mortals cannot manage it, for example. Even Dr Doolittle only managed to speak with animals; communicating with the world of the inanimate was quite beyond him. It requires the powers of a Superhero, and even for Superheroes, it is not easy, and often requires chemical assistance.
To aid him to reach a state of spiritual openness in which he could commune with the bicycle, Inaction Man dug up a bottle of methalated spirits that he had previously buried in the ground, under the magic rock that had first alerted him to his superpower of meta-biological speech. He drank it quickly because it tasted vile, but the worst a medicine tastes, the better it is for you. As always he had to repress the urge to vomit when the meth hit his stomach, and after he had finished the bottle even his steely superhero determination and special powers could not stop him from having to lie squirming on the sodden earth, like a worm in acid, his lined face creased in pain, and mucus streaming from his nostrils. Slowly the pain subsided and he waited for the spiritual awakening the magical meth potion always brought, the mud he was now covered in beginning to freeze and cake his clothes and body.
Colours began to blur and then melt into one another as the dimensional shift took hold. He felt the ground beneath him begin to undulate as the universal cosmic waves entered his body, making it move in time with the waves of the earth.
He saw, heard, felt, smelt and touched the universal truth that matter is energy and energy is matter: two sides of the same coin, but one fundamental force. He shivered slightly, feeling the energy that is the Earth; and felt a blissful oneness in the knowledge that matter is just slowly vibrating energy, and energy is just matter vibrating improbably quickly.
He could hear the insects talking to each other about work-related matters. It was all insects ever talked about, being single-minded and purposeful creatures with no social life whatsoever.
When he felt ready, he brought the bicycle over to him and hugged its rusty frame. He rocked it gently from one side to another; trying to make it feel comfortable in his presence; trying to show the bicycle that he was not a mere mortal man, but a superhero which it could truly relate to, which it could share its secrets with.
The bicycle was coy at first. It had known many men and it had learned to be wary of them. In the bike’s experience, men simply rode you from one place to another, and then abandoned you without a second thought. Men were exploitative and only interested in one thing. Once you had served your purpose, they discarded you, until the next time they needed you. Most never even spoke to you, except to utter expletives at you when a part of you broke, like a chain or a tyre. Men were animals!
However, right from the very beginning, the bike knew that this man was different. There was something in him that marked him out as being a breed apart. His eyes clearly saw the world in a way other men did not. Moreover, it was the first time a man had ever hugged the bicycle, and there was something emotionally cathartic in it. Against its better judgement, the bike decided to open a dialogue with this strange man.

“I am Velib 5247, but you can call me Velo.”
“I am Inaction Man, Superhero.”
“A Superhero! Wow! I’ve never met a Superhero before. What are your Special Powers?”
“The gift of Sight. I can see things as they really are and I am immune to the illusionary force of the Status Quo.”

Velo tried to hide its disappointment. It was hoping for something along the lines of laser eyes or the ability to fly, but it was pleased to have someone to talk to nonetheless, and it turned a blind eye to the disappointing superpowers.

“How have you come here, brave Velo? What has brought you to this state?”
“I was ridden dangerously and recklessly and then I was crashed into a wall. I tried to warn the drunken fool who was riding me that he was going too fast, but would he listen? Would he heck as like! Men never listen, do they! And then, to rub salt in me wounds, and with not the tiniest sign of remorse, I was thrown into these bushes here and left to rust and die… Cast aside for the piece of old junk that I am. It’s enough to make you wish for the crusher’s yard, it really is, I tell you.”
“This is indeed a sad and bitter tale, brother Velo. On behalf of my race, by which I mean the race of men, and not the race of superheroes, I apologise, and beg thy pardon. Man’s inhumanity to bicycles knows no bounds, and is a sure sign that evil begets evil. For let us speak the truth, you and I. Bicycles are, in essence, evil, and born with original sin-the devil’s tool! This is irrefutable”
“Eh? Well I never! So, it’s like that is it? What are you anyway, mister? One of those bike sadists, some kind of pervert…”
“A bicycle is the embodiment of the evil that man does: his need for motion; his craving for action; his drive toward destruction. Heed my words.”
“We are? Well… I never asked to be a bicycle, did I? How can I be born with sin when I didn’t ask to be born then? Tell me that, clever clogs?”
“Watch thy tongue, impudent bicycle! I am a Superhero, out of thy ken, bound by sacred oath to defend this world of light and matter, and I shall not be spoken to in this way by a bicycle! And know you this also, vexatious Velo, thou art no ordinary bicycle. Thou were meant for a higher purpose!”
“…Really? A higher purpose, eh? What purpose is that then?”

Inaction Man stood up at this point, picked up a nearby branch, and gently placed it on each wheel of the bicycle, mumbling some incantation to himself as he did so and then placed his arm reassuringly on Velo’s handlebars.

“Velo 5247 of Paris: I have dubbed you a Knight of the Order of Inaction. From this day forth, thou shalt be known as The Symbol, if thou wilt take this honour, as I believe thou will, having seen into your soul, and seen it to be good and true.”
“The Symbol? So, I’ve got a real name? I’m not just plain ole Velo anymore, a name shared by thousands all across this city of bikes. If I’ve got a real name, I really exist. Great!”
“Thou art sorely needed, Symbol. I need you for my mission.”
“What’s your mission?”
“I do not fully comprehend the exact nature of my mission as of yet, but know I am responsible for defending Planet Earth against the Dark Forces.”
“Sounds a bit difficult to me. Does it pay well then, this superhero lark?”
“What needs a Superhero with money?! ‘Tis a corrupting and evil influence. What every Superhero really needs is a worthy assistant in their fight against evil, and I would like you to be my assistant, brave Symbol. Wilt thou accept thy commission? It will be dangerous, it will be difficult, but the fate of the city, nay the fate of the entire world and beyond, it all hangs in the balance, and I need someone beside me I can trust, someone I can rely on. Will you join me?”

This was the first time Velo had been referred to as ‘someone’ rather than just ‘something’, and it was delighted. For that alone, it would have followed Inaction Man anywhere.

“I accept! I will defend you always and fight the Dark Forces and all of that stuff.”
“Excellent! From this day forth, you shall be known as ‘The Symbol’. You shall be a beacon, a warning of the dangers of action and a calling to inaction.”

Inaction Man and The Symbol fell asleep together under the bushes near the Seine; hugging each other for comfort and safety. Cars and bicycles whizzed past them, completely oblivious to their existence.
They were sure that this day would go down in history, the day that Inaction Man met The Symbol. As they fell asleep, they thought about the great books that would one day be written over their crucial role in defeating the Dark Forces and averting the Day of Reckoning.

The only thing they didn’t know was what their role would be. The future was still uncertain, but they took comfort in the fact that at least they would be facing it together.