H-Man

By Secret Agent X-9

Faster than a speeding beam of light? You bet! If he leaves here today for the nearest star, he can be there by yesterday! More powerful than a comic book full of superheroes? No doubt about it! Able to leap over Mt. Everest in a single bound? Are you kidding? Hey, the guy can fly!... he can leap over the moon if he wants to! Can he bend steel railroad tracks with his bare hands? Give me a break! He’s H-Man! He can do anything you can imagine... and then some! Wanna see a list of his super powers? Well, too bad. There ain’t no list. He has them all! He’s the new superhero for the new century! And he makes his debut appearance in this book... just in time to save the entire human race from extinction! If you prefer your superhero adventures written, not drawn (kinda like those martini’s that are shaken, not stirred... just the same, only different...), then this may be the book you’ve been looking for.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Secret Agent X-9
• Release date: Jan 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301690008

Book preview

H-MAN

By Secret Agent X-9

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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PUBLISHED BY

B. Kinton at Smashwords

H-Man

Copyright 2012 B. Kinton

All Rights Reserved

ISBN - 9781301690008

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Smashwords Edition License Notes

This E-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This E-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this Author.

(JUMP AHEAD TO TABLE OF CONTENTS)

FOREWARD

FOR THOSE WHO MAY HAVE COME IN LATE . . . . .

Once upon a time... as in, about 65 million years ago, give or take... a large asteroid crashed into the Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs. Scientists have explained that, sooner or later, another large object will again collide with the Earth.

Well... here it comes. A large comet is going to crash into the planet... and this time around, it’s going to wipe out a whole lot more than just dinosaurs... because it’s a whole lot bigger. As in, it’s about the size of Australia!

So this time around, most all life on Earth, including the entire human race, and even the Earth itself, is on the extinction list.

So, how can you stop a comet the size of Australia from hitting the Earth? Well... you can’t. Not all the worlds lasers, not all the worlds atomic bombs... not all the King’s horses and all the King’s men... nothing imaginable can stop something that big.

Ahh... hold on a sec.. What about that last thing?... imagination...

It’s been said that there’s no limit to imagination. So it could stop anything... even the biggest comet imaginable!

But of course, there’s one little problem there. Imagination isn’t real. It can’t affect reality.

But... what if imagination could affect reality?

The implications of a truly unlimited imagination are nothing less than mind boggling. And if imagination could indeed affect reality...

And there-in lies our story...

H-MAN

THE BOOK

(BACK TO FRONT COVER)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1-THE BEGINNING OF THE END

Chapter 2-PREPARING FOR THE ULTIMATE DISASTER

Chapter 3-THE COMET COMETH

Chapter 4-A TIME TO BELIEVE IN MIRACLES?

Chapter 5-A WORLD RETURNS TO NORMAL... WELL, SORT OF...

Chapter 6-H-MAN ARRIVES

Chapter 7-CAN HE REALLY DO THAT?

Chapter 8-WELL... YES, IT LOOKS LIKE HE CAN

Chapter 9-AN ARCH ENEMY SURFACES

Chapter 10-RECONSTITUTING SOME BAD APPLES

Chapter 11-NO WAY COULD THAT HAPPEN… UNTIL IT DID!

Chapter 12-THE ALIENS ARE COMING!

Chapter 13-AN ACCIDENTAL MEETING... DUE TO A CURSED DEER

Chapter 14-CAN TWO WARREN KLONES BE BETTER THAN ONE?

Chapter 15-‘TWAS THE DAY BEFORE THE MEETING...

Chapter 16-MEETING DAY ARRIVES

Chapter 17-SHOWDOWN AT THE O.K. CORRAL... WELL, SORT OF

Chapter 18-7 MILLION YEARS AND COUNTING...

Chapter 19-THE COMPUTER SWITCHES TO PLAN B FROM OUTER SPACE

Chapter 20-THE KING OF THE GODS STRIKES!

Chapter 21-BACK TO THE SAME OLD SAME OLD...

Chapter 22-ABOUT THE BOOK

Chapter 23-ABOUT THE AUTHOR

End Of Book

CHAPTER 1

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

START OF NEXT CHAPTER

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...

Well... actually, it's in this galaxy... and it wasn't a long time ago. In fact, it hasn't happened yet... but it might... you just never know...

Paula Nogreen shifted a bit in the anchor chair to get positioned more accurately for the robot studio camera now focused on her. Via her concealed earpiece, she heard the Director back in the control room give a 10 second warning. Live in 10 seconds...

She was nervous. But she had been doing the news for some years now, first in a medium market, and now in Boston, which was considered a major market, as well as one of the more sophisticated markets in the country. She had long since become at ease in front of camera's, giving newscsts. She was a pro at her craft now... there were none better.

She was also a veteran at giving breaking news bulletins, as she was about to do now. So interrupting the network wasn't what was now making her nervous.

And she had by now covered every sort of news event under the sun. There was hardly anything out there now that could get to her.

But this could... and was. This was different from anything she had ever reported on. There were hardly words to describe adequately how different this was.

But she would try to find the words... That was her job. This was the biggest breaking news that she had ever had occasion to bring to the public's attention. And by its very nature, there would probably never be anything bigger, ever, after this.

5 Seconds... Stand by... The Director's voice chimed in her ear. Here it comes, she thought. Do your job. She focused on the teleprompter screen in front of her, attached to the camera.

Three... tw... - Hold it! The Director sounded nervous now... Stand by...

The seconds ticked by. All was silent in the studio. Paula sat motionless... ready to go live... waiting to hear from the control room. What was going on in there?

She glanced over at the air monitor. Network programming was still in progress. The reality show was still running along... as if nothing were about to happen.

But something was about to happen. Something big. Really big.

Bigger than anything that had ever happened before, in all of known history...

The Producer's voice suddenly came out from the overhead studio intercom speaker, mounted up in the ceiling, somewhere above the studio lighting grid. O.K.... Change of plans... There was a pause. She held her breath. O.K., the Producer finally continued. I'm on the phone with the Network. And they're now on the phone with Washington. They've told Washington what we were about to do, and Washington has decided to announce the story. The President will make the announcement. They're signaling the other networks, and he'll go live in probably about 15 minutes... as soon as they all arrange for program break-ins. We'll have you do the interview with Hibbel on the full network, after the President finishes speaking. Right now, we're the only station with an Astronomer ready who knows what's going on. The Network will take our interview live, to all the other stations.

Paula's nervousness level went up a notch or two at all that news. So now she'd be live to the full network. And right after the President!

The whole country would be watching.

In fact, the network had arrangements with many other networks in other countries around the world. The whole world would be watching.

But then... none of that really mattered, did it. The story that was about to break made all of that rather inconsequential.

She turned to the middle-aged man sitting off to her side behind the anchor desk. Edward Hibbel was an astronomer from MIT. Light brown hair, blue eyes, in a brown suit with a tan vest and red necktie... Since he was an astronomer, one might be tempted to say that that was what an astronomer might look like. But that was assuming that he was a typical astronomer.

Edward Hibbel was not a typical astronomer. He was the astronomer that had first calculated out what was coming this way, back about three months ago. A number of other astronomers had since done the calculations, and had all arrived at the same end result.

And along with Hibbel, they had all sat on the story.

Washington and the military, of course, had both had a lot to do with that. And NASA, too. When the discovery had first been made, it was far enough away that not many observers on Earth were equipped to see it. And soon after its discovery, it had vanished behind the sun for a few months, so that only space based observatories could see and track it. By then, the major countries that had spacecraft that could watch it had all collaborated to keep the finding secret... on strong advice from Washington. But most all were in agreement... what had been discovered was going to cause a problem to end all problems, no matter when it became public knowledge. Most all agreed that it seemed best to delay the finding for as long as possible.

Most all... but still, not all. There was this astronomer up in Boston, at MIT, who had been among the first to chance upon the discovery, early on. Edward Hibbel had access to large enough telescopes to spot the thing just before it vanished behind the sun, and for just long enough to collect enough data to predict it's trajectory... it's path through the solar system. He had made his data available to other astronomers, and they had all done the calculations, and had all come out with the same end result.

The government had then quickly and quietly ordered everyone to keep quiet... on penalty of imprisonment. They warned in no uncertain terms that it was a national security issue.

Not every astronomer agreed with that. What made Hibbel different from the rest was that he looked carefully at the long term implications of the governments threats of imprisonment, and realized the truth of the matter... namely, that those threats were actually meaningless. He realized that most everything around was now about to become meaningless. And with that realization came a decision to act.

Hibbel felt strongly, in his moral fiber, that people in fact should know about this. They should know all about this, as soon as possible.

So he finally decided to ignore the Governments threats, and contacted a reporter at the news station in Boston, and spilled the beans. And he would even spill those beans live on the air, if they wanted him to. In fact, if they didn't want that, he made it clear that he would go to the next station down the dial, and make the same offer to them.

So his first station of choice quickly gathered a few experts together, and they all checked over Hibbels story, and checked his data, and did a little more probing and asking around, and determined that Hibbel was telling a truth to end all truths. And the News Director of the station felt as Hibbel did, that this was something that the public should know about, as soon as possible.

Quick inquiries were made to Washington and NASA, and were met with first silence, and then vague threats, and then threats in no uncertain terms. They were warned that if the station made public what they supposedly knew, which was in fact completely false, they would lose their license to broadcast.

The station executives held an emergency meeting to consider that, and quickly arrived at the same conclusion that Hibbel had reached earlier... So What? It no longer mattered! The threats didn't matter. Their FCC Licence to broadcast didn’t matter. Not even the government itself mattered any more, in view of what was coming.

But knowing the government as they did, the station executives realized that they must act quickly in this matter. There were still people in parts of government that would act to keep a lid on this, even though their actions no longer made any sense. If given the chance and the time, they might very well come in here and shut down the station, and throw everyone here in prison, and maybe even blow up the transmitter and tower… if given the chance and the time.

The News Director had come up with a strategy to either force the government to do the right thing, or go around them and do the right thing unilaterally. The News Director was fairly sure that, faced with a choice, the government would see the light and do the right thing.

So with unusual speed, the plan had been implemented. So here was Paula Nogreen, in the news studio and ready to go, with Ed Hibbel sitting beside her, ready to be interviewed. And the station had quickly notified the network of its plan to interrupt network programming, and the reason for the interruption... in quite some detail.

And the notification to the network, with most of the details, had resulted in exactly what the News Director had hoped for. It set of a chain reaction. The network's news operation immediately began pressuring Washington. They informed them of what was about to happen up in Boston, and demanded to know the whole story. They also informed Washington that they were going to carry the Boston news break-in live to the entire network, with or without Washington's o.k. or blessing. And they were already notifying their associated networks around the world of what was about to happen.

Washington, now realizing that the story could no longer be contained, did the only thing left open to them. They told the network to please prepare for an emergency announcement from the President. They notified all the other networks as well.

In fact, they prepared to activate the country's emergency action notification system. And they began contacting other countries around the world, to let them know what was about to happen in the U.S..

The cat was about to be released from the bag... and it was the baddest cat ever to be...

With no prior warning, the IDZ NEWS SPECIAL REPORT graphic came up on some 80 million HDTV screens around the country, replacing the routine programming that had been there seconds before. Around the entire world, millions more TV shows were interrupted, as the same thing happened on them. In seconds, most of the world was standing by, waiting for whatever would come next. It wasn't long in coming.

On the English speaking stations around the world that were tied in to the U.S. Networks, the respective network News Anchors appeared on the screen, and calmly announced that the President was about to speak. In short order, the feed live from the White House was switched on to all the networks, and the President Of The United States appeared, sitting behind a desk on which rested a main and backup microphones in the Oval Office. He looked fairly serious. As in, not too happy.

Good day... and good evening... to all of you everywhere, where ever you may be watching, he began. He paused for a moment, and his face seemed to get just a bit sad looking. I am going to ask all of you to please listen very carefully as I talk to you, and to please try to remain calm and respectful and civil, for your own sake, and the sake of those around you. For the time has come for you, and I,... we... to all keep uppermost in our minds that we are all human beings. As such, we are the highest form of life ever to exist on this planet... possibly in the entire universe. It is now time to remind ourselves of that, and to conduct ourselves accordingly.

If that didn't sound rather ominous, what he said next did.

It is with great regret and sorrow... that I now must deliver, to all of you, some very bad news. The President paused again. He was struggling within for the best way to say what he had to say. There was no easy way to say it.

Some two months ago, a number of astronomers around the world discovered a new comet entering our solar system. They were able to collect enough data about its path of travel to allow them to predict where it will go as it travels through the solar system. Right now, it is traveling on the opposite side of the sun from us, here on Earth. But we are still observing it with telescopes mounted aboard various space craft that are presently traveling around within the solar system. So we still know where it is, and where it is going.

He paused again, in part to gather his own thoughts, and then continued. "The information I am about to give you can not be doubted in its accuracy. It has been verified many times over, from continuous observations of the comet, by many independent observers.

In 41 days, at approximately 20:22 Universal time, which will be 2:22 p.m. Eastern Time, here in the United States... this newly discovered comet will collide with our planet.

The President took another pause. He took a deep breath, and went on. Astronomers have determined that the comet is about the size and mass of the continent of Australia. Another pause. "That makes it the largest object ever to strike the Earth... as far as we know.

"In the coming days, I do not doubt that the various broadcast networks and the rest of the media will provide many more details about this matter. Now is not the time or place for me to provide those details. My responsibility and duty now is to inform you of what is going to happen... so that each of you can prepare in your own way for this event. I would remind you again that, first and foremost, we are human beings. As such, we have our dignity, and our image, to maintain and uphold.

"Some of you undoubtedly have questions about this matter. I can not answer all of your questions, but I can answer some of them...

"This comet is too big, too massive, and too close for us to be able to do anything about it. We have nothing in our toolbox to prevent it from hitting the Earth. It is orders of magnitude beyond the collisions that we believe were responsible for wiping out the dinosaurs.

When it hits, it is going to disrupt the planet. The entire atmosphere will most likely be blown away into space. Any atmosphere that does remain will be saturated with so much dust and debris from the impact that no sunlight will reach the surface for dozens, if not hundreds, of years to come. Major chunks of the planet may also get blown into space. The rate of the planet's rotation is going to be slowed down, and the oceans will probably wash over every continent... even over the top of Mt. Everest... at speeds beyond the speed of sound.

Once more, he paused, this time to allow what he had said thus far to sink in to the minds of his viewers. But he didn't wait too long. He must continue before the viewers had a chance to get overly depressed before he finished.

"We became aware of this coming event some 2 months ago, but felt that everyone would be best served if we didn't mention it for a while, in order to allow all of you to continue with life as normal for as long as possible. Recent developments have indicated that we should now make all of you aware of what is coming, so that each of you has ample time to prepare for it.

"I will talk with all of you further about this matter in the coming days. I will say the following at this time. I am ordering all branches of government in the United States to continue operating as usual, until further notice, and I am urging all of you to continue on as usual also, along with the government. Because what is coming is unavoidable, I do not see it as a valid reason for any of us to descend into anarchy. As I mentioned before, we are all human beings. We have lived as such, and it is now our duty to remain as such, and meet what is coming as such. If some of you want to deal with what is coming in... unique, and perhaps enjoyable... ways, you are free to do so. But all actions and behaviors are to be kept... reasonably, lets say... within the current framework of our laws. They have served us well, and allowed us to become what we now are, and to insure our own well being for as long as we can, our laws must remain in effect.

"So make no mistake. Lawlessness will not be tolerated by any branch of this government. We are going to face what is coming in a proper manner that reflects what we are, and have been... We have been, and still are, human beings... the highest life forms that we know of in this universe. I now ask all of you to strive to the best of your ability to remain as such. Indeed, I might ask that you all strive to be even better human beings, in the days that are left to us all.

That's all for now. I will talk with you more in the coming days, Thank you all... and God bless America… and the world.

The image of the President in the Oval Office was replaced by the now solemn looking Brent Rotor, the Senior Anchor of the networks Nightly News program. He had been quickly located and ordered in while the President had been speaking, and had been briefed by the network producers, who had been somewhat filled in by their counterparts at their Boston Affiliate.

And there you have it, Brent started off smoothly. News from the President that has taken us all, and I dare say the entire rest of the world, totally by surprise. The President has just revealed that a large comet... reported to be the size of the continent of Australia, is on a collision course with our planet, and will strike the Earth in about 41 days. When it hits, it is going to destroy this planet, and all life on it.

He stopped to consider what he had just said, and what it meant. What else could he have said? How else could he have said it?

His Producer spoke to him in his ear... issued him instructions. Boston is ready...

IDZ News has managed to locate one of the astronomers who was among the first to discover the Killer Comet, back a few months ago. We have him in the studio of our Bostin Affiliate, along with Boston Evening News Anchor Paula Nogreen. Paula, over to you and your guest.

In Boston, the on air light went on at the far end of the news studio, and the active light came on atop the camera pointing at Paula. She saw herself appear on the air monitor screen, over to the side of the news set. The Director's voice came in her ear. You're on! Go!

Good evening, Brent. This is Paula Nogreen in Boston, and we have in the studio with us renowned MIT astronomer Doctor Edward Hibbel, who was among the first to discover the new comet, and determine its orbital path through our solar system. She turned to face her guest, as the camera pulled back to include him in the shot. Doctor Hibbel... could you tell us all what you and other astronomers now know about this comet?

Doctor Hibbel leaned forward in his chair a bit and looked into the live camera. Well... I'm sorry to say... that all our observations have confirmed that the comet will strike the Earth... in approximately 41 days.

Do you know just where it will land?

Most likely in the ocean, about 200 miles off the east coast of the Carolina's. But that is somewhat deceptive...

How so?

The comet is about the size of Australia. So while the so called 'center of impact' is off the coast of the Carolina's, the area directly hit will extend for thousands of miles beyond the center. Yes, it will include a good amount of the U.S. east coast, and extend well inland from that coast.

That is... very unfortunate.

You have to look at in prober perspective, though, the astronomer explained. It doesn't really matter where the impact point is. As long as it's a dead-on hit... which it is... it may as well be anywhere. The end result is going to be what counts... what matters in the end. And that is very clear. Most all life on this planet is going to go extinct, in about 41 days.

Paula was willing to grasp at any straw right now. "You say 'most' all life. Do you expect anything to survive? And if so, what?"

A good question. I've been in discussion about that with a couple of biologists over at MIT. We believe that some simple forms of bacteria may continue to exist... possibly below the earths surface, or in the deeper parts of whatever remains of the oceans... if there are any remains. Most of the planets atmosphere is likely going to be blown away into space by the shockwaves resulting from the comets impact. Sunlight will be blocked from reaching the earths surface for dozens, perhaps hundreds of years, so photosynthesis by algae will not be possible. With no light, and little or no atmosphere, subsurface bacteria is about the only thing possible. New plant life will not be possible, and dead and decaying plant and animal life will soon be consumed, or deteriorate beyond usefulness. Even insects need either other insects, or plants, or other living things, none of which will be possible.

So there will be nothing left except, possibly, some forms of bacteria...

"Correct. And even that is a bit 'iffy'. The collision is going to slow Earth's rate of rotation, and also change it's orbital path around the sun. It will become more elliptical, and move significantly closer to the sun at its nearest approach than it does now, and correspondingly farther away at its far point. Summer will be shorter, and winter longer, and both will be much more severe.