Superhero Portal: Dice Ford, Superhero

By Linda Maye Adams

Being a superhero could kill her…

Plumber Dice Ford has her hands full. While on a plumbing job at the convention center, she accidentally touches the Superhero Portal.

Zap! She's suddenly a superhero.

But it's got the aliens who brought the portal all up in her business. Quanta, nefarious alien head honcho, covets the power the suit will give him. He'll kill anyone in his path, including Dice's family.

Dice must learn to use her new suit on the run, try not to crash into trees, and stay out of the aliens' greedy three-fingered hands. If she has enough time…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Linda Maye Adams
• Release date: Jan 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9781393428732

Linda Maye Adams

Linda Maye Adams is published in Kevin J. Anderson’s anthology Monsters, Movies, & Mayhem.  She is the author of the military-based GALCOM Universe series, including the novel Crying Planet, featured in the 2018 Military Science Fiction StoryBundle, and is working on a superhero novel. 

Book preview

Book Description

Being a superhero could kill her…

Plumber Dice Ford has her hands full. While on a plumbing job at the convention center, she accidentally touches the Superhero Portal.

Zap! She's suddenly a superhero.

But it's got the aliens who brought the portal all up in her business. Quanta, nefarious alien head honcho, covets the power the suit will give him. He'll kill anyone in his path, including Dice's family.

Dice must learn to use her new suit on the run, try not to crash into trees, and stay out of the aliens' greedy three-fingered hands. If she has enough time…

Superhero Portal

Linda Maye Adams

image-placeholder

Bad Gnome Press

Copyright © 2022 by Linda Maye Adams

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

Cover artwork and design by Linda Adams, Graphics Designer

Superhero Copyright © DenisSmile | DepositPhotos

Shield Copyright © koblizeek | DepositPhotos

Published by

Bad Gnome Press, January 2022

SUPERHERO PORTAL / LINDA MAYE ADAMS — 1st ed.

Version_2

Contents

1. No One’s Calling Me A Food

2. You’re Just Another Lavender Dude

3. Beware Of Quanta

4. It’s So Good For You To Almost Arrive On Time

5. You’re Named After Spotted Cubes?

6. Trust An Alien To Screw Up Your Life

7. As Long As No Cheetah Guys Are Involved

8. Best Hall Pass Ever

9. No One Was Ever Truly Neutral

10. Spotted Cube Human

11. How Did Superheroes In Movies Do This?

12. How Do I Turn The Suit Off?

13. Squirrels In My Brain

14. Heroing Seemed So Simple

15. The Chocolate Wanted to Win the Argument

16. A Stranger Today

17. An Alien in My Car

18. Party God

19. Wetsuit Woman

20. I Wanted Words with a Certain Party God

21. Advised On Fashion by an Alien In a Loincloth

22. Woo-Hoo To A God?

23. Chocolate Could Speak, Honest

24. Ruins The Evil Plans

25. A Lovesick Joule Fan

26. Welding Fumes

27. Maybe No One Would Notice I’d Broken Their Statue

28. Explain Comic Books to a God

29. What If

30. Perfect Superhero Comfort Food

31. Sidekick Mode

32. The Fans Have Questions

33. Life of a Superhero

34. Show Time

35. Whoop! Whoop! Whoop!

36. Cats Would Have Been Better

37. I’m Always Extra Special

38. 911

39. The Enemy of My Enemy Is My Friend

40. I’m Standing With You

41. Evil Came Ahead Of Chili Dogs

42. So Polite, So Civil, So Cold

43. Never Piss Off Dice Ford

44. Wasps. Thousands Of Them

45. Epilogue

Welcome to your next adventure!

Acknowledgments

About Author

1

No One’s Calling Me A Food

Plumbing is never routine. There’s always something for me to puzzle out, math to work out, or physics to think out. But aliens?

You know, green guys. Well, lavender guys.

Their spaceship hovered above Metro City’s convention center, its two-mile-long body providing shade against the sun deciding to drop summer on us on time.

My name is Dice Ford. The Dice is short for Candice. Yeah, you’re making that face, too. I hate the name, and Candy…just… no. no one’s calling me a food. My parents hate Dice. I’m okay with it. Besides, they hate me for being a plumber, too.

Well, okay, journeyman plumber. I worked for Hank Alden Plumbing. Hank kept saying I wasn’t ready for the test.

This call came in as a late afternoon emergency. Busted pipe in the sprinkler system, flooding the exhibition hall with the Superhero Portal. Tomorrow, the portal opened. No one wanted to tell this Quanta dude to postpone, so building maintenance called for reinforcements.

One of the Shar waited in the hallway by the open double doors. Two men in black suits and sunglasses lingered alongside him, resembling twins. A third, his hair cut so flat on top it qualified as a landing strip, watched me lug the huge-ass floor fan. His lips curved in a smirk.

Want some help? he said. Fan’s bigger than you are.

I felt my face heat with anger. Seriously, dude, don’t mess with me.

I’m fine, I growled.

Adjusting my sweaty grip on the fan’s handle, I lifted my chin defiantly.

The Shar stepped in my path, his burnished nickel eyes tracking me. Lavender skin, plum lips. A spill of curls in a blue so pale it appeared white. The Medusa-curls reminded me of my hair, which remained a mystery to my family. I expected him to wear a white bodysuit like everyone in the future did on TV. He wore a screaming red Hawaiian shirt with white plumerias over plaid pants I thought suspiciously resembled pajama bottoms..

Lurching to a stop, I set the fan on the ugly carpet and flexed stiff fingers.

Good afternoon? I said uncertainly.

The alien made me nervous. Lavender skin, the three fingers. My brain wanted to stare to make sense of it.

He held out both hands. I’m Planck, he said.

I expected him to smell like lilacs because of his lavender skin. Silly, yeah. Instead, he reminded me of rocks in a river after a storm.

Qualms battered at the butterflies in my stomach. I wiped off my hands on my navy blue sateen coveralls and checked for goop. Nope. Alien-safe. Yeah, I hoped Planck found something more interesting than me.

Hello, Planck, I said.

His fingers folded around mine, feverishly warm against my icy hands. The warmth rushed into me. The sounds of the crew inside the exhibition hall came to me sharp and clear. I felt the leaden wetness in my coveralls hanging against my skin and the weight of a Phillips screwdriver in the right pocket. Water pooled in my steel-toed boots, squishing between my toes. Warmth wiggled through my toes, up into my aching knees. It burrowed into a bruise from whacking my thigh this morning, swirling up my body. The warmth loosened the tension between my shoulders and eased the ache in my left arm from carrying the fan. A cloak of cobwebs settled across my shoulders, filling cracks inside me.

Huh? What happened? I blinked, feeling as if I’d lost time.

Planck gave me an affable smile and stepped back, bowing his head three times.

Dice! Hank’s voice bellowed from inside the exhibition hall.

Right, right. I kneeled to use my legs to lift the heavy fan and lurched through the open exhibition hall doors. The stench of moldy water made me grimace. An army of floor fans whirred and buzzed, drying the floor in the cavernous room.

I didn’t look at the Superhero Portal in the back third of the exhibition hall. The air vibrated with the hum of its energy.

I squeezed my free hand into a fist until the thunderstorm in my belly calmed.

Hank strode out to me, his scarred boots splashing in the water accumulating in the low spots. Six foot five put him a foot taller than me. Hair the shade of coffee with a lot of sugar and eyes like an old Golden Retriever. His thin and wiry build made his elbows into sharp points jutting out of the short sleeves of his navy coveralls.

Here, I got it, Hank said, taking the fan easily from me. His right sleeve pulled back to expose a three-inch raised white scar. Check around the portal and see if we need to give it any fan love. After that, cut out of here for dinner.

The reminder of dinner with my parents made the thunderstorm flee from my belly. Even it wanted nothing to do with my parents. Instead, I said, You want me to go near that creepy alien thing?

Yup. Creeps me out, too.

I didn’t know guys got the creeps, I said. Hank was thirty-eight. Seemed like anyone that old wouldn’t be creeped out by anything.

It’s called instincts, Dice. We all get them. Always respect them. Hank waved at me. Go. Fan love.

I glared up at said creepy alien thing. You aren’t going to bite me, are you?

Of course, the Superhero Portal didn’t answer.

How did it make superheroes, anyway? Walk right through and zap, instant superhero? Not good at it, if you asked me. So far, the portal had produced seven heroes after ten months of touring.

Sounded way too much like a TV show.

Still. becoming a superhero sounded cool, and the portal looked pretty impressive. Its construction reminded me of Stone Henge. The warmth of connection swept across me, as if all my ancestors reached forward in time to welcome me. The portal brushed the paneled fifteen-foot high ceiling, making me wonder how the Shar brought it in here. Did they dissemble it? Or beam it down with a space elevator? Two fat legs supported the boxy top beam, all of it made from dark blue metal. Water ran down the legs like teardrops.

I reminded myself to get back to work and to stop gawping.

As I adjusted one of the nearby fans so it blew directly on a wet spot at the base of the steps, I wondered if anyone cared if I sneaked through the portal. You know, see if I transformed into a superhero. Did I need to say a power word? Be cool to fly, stop a bank robbery, put out a fire.

But not like the people camping out on the first floor. The tremulous hope and desperation on their faces sent my heart tumbling. Their words horrified me:

This is my last chance.

I deserve this.

It’s my dream.

Ever since the Shar announced the Superhero Portal’s tour of the country, people treated it like winning the lottery. My ex-boyfriend drooled at the thought of having one of the suits and wanted me to buy him first class airline tickets to California so he could have the suit he felt entitled to (because a superhero always travels first class, he explained as if I took stupid pills).

Seemed like a superhero suit added more problems to your life.

Still, a closer look wouldn’t hurt. I fished out a rag torn from an old t-shirt from my left cargo pocket. The granite steps were slick with water. Welding fumes swelled around me as I reached the base of the portal.

Graffiti covered the portal’s legs, scratched into the metal surface. Crude images mostly. I spotted sturdy shields and fierce swords; lopsided hourglasses; footprints of many animals, including birds, large cats, bears, and horses. A smile filled me as I wiped away water from a childish drawing of a cat’s head. A kitty from long ago.

My fingers lingered on the cat graffiti. A tingle of electricity spread up my fingertips, through my hand, and into my arm. Fear powered through me. I struggled to pull my hand away.

Time winked out.

2

You’re Just Another Lavender Dude

When I touched the Superhero Portal, energy crackled across my skin. It snaked across the lines in my palms, itching fiercely; traced every strand of my curls like tributaries of a river; lingered on my pinky fingers and toes. Puzzlement, and curiosity,

fluttered over me, a child discovering something new to explore.

Sound roared around me, thousands of voices talking at the same time. I picked out tones here and there, some voices sharpening to clearness before the energy whisked them away.

Can I have your autograph?

Please. Stay. I insist.

Don’t pet the dog. You’ll get your hands dirty.

My mother’s voice? Here? I opened my mouth to call out to her. My throat closed up. Nothing came out.

How did my mother get here? Chaos swam around me, spinning so fast everything blurred into mush. Color blinked, from murky ocean green to a scalding red. I covered my face with my hands, a scream lodging in my throat. Awful smells assaulted my nose. The foulness of decay and rot mingled with my mother’s powdery perfume and the dry eraser fumes of my father.

A fierce wind gusted in, peeling my hair back from my face as it carried away the smells. The voices disappeared with the wind.

Whump! I thumped on stone, hard enough to jar the air from my lungs. My palms smacked the ground, stinging fiercely. Orange dust puffed up, getting into my throat. I came to my hands and knees, coughing my lungs out.

My vision spun crazily. I stayed put, breathing slowly, deeply, finding comfort in the overwhelming ode de horse and the rotting scent of decay. My throat tightened. If an animal died nearby, I didn’t want to see it.

A honk crossed with a baby’s cry made me open my eyes. I lay at the base of an immense circle of orange sherbet limestone. The Superhero Portal towered above me. In the bright sunlight, the deep blue metal glowed, the graffiti sharp images. It seemed newer, somehow, if that was possible. A dirt road barely big enough to accommodate a roller skate car led away from the sherbet circle, disappearing over a blind hill.

The cry came again. An incredible bird strutted into view, opening an enormous fan of feathers. Like a Victorian lady’s fan, nature’s best decorated the feathered plumes with brilliant blues, sea greens, and black spots shaped like eyeballs. The bird paraded in front of me, plainly showing off. With the feather fan, he easily reached seven feet tall.

Looking for the ladies, huh? I teased.

Some things never changed. I sat back on my heels, gazing up at this place. An enormous golden moon, three times the size of Earth’s moon, hung low above a smoking volcano, a bite taken out of it like a chocolate chip cookie. Smaller moons scattered around it like discarded crumbs. Strange seeing all the moons with the sun at its highest point in the sky. Moons should be for the night.

Not Earth. A hallucination? I glanced down at myself. Still in the navy coveralls. I patted my pockets, finding the scrap of t-shirt and the Phillips screwdriver. Hefted it. It’d have to do.

How had I gotten here? Where was here?

Slowly, I lugged myself to my feet. A simple thing, felt like I wore a lead apron from the dentist. Heavier gravity?

The pretty bird bobbed its head in annoyance, trotting away. A single blue feather dropped off, fluttered to the limestone.

I won’t hurt you, I called to it.

The bird honked at me. Says you, I translated.

I kneeled, picked the feather up. Used to do that a lot as a kid. Feathers were marvelous things of magic. My mother always yelled at me, saying I’d catch diseases and my arms would drop off.

A sob caught in my throat. It’s your fault! I told the portal.

A man appeared right next to me.

A scream erupted from my throat as I spun, hopping back three steps. The lead apron weight knocked me off balance. I landed on my butt on the sherbet stone, pain jarring up into my teeth. The Phillips flew out of my hand, skittering across the dusty stone.

The taste of rusty metal pipes