"GREETINGS, YOU IGNORANT TWIT. WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE, SCOTTO OF THE PLANET EARTH, STAR CIVILIZATION OF THE DIMENSION OF BANALITY. WE HAVE BEEN FOLLOWING YOUR PROGRESS FOR QUITE SOME TIME. WE ARE FROM A DISTANT GALAXY WHERE THINGS ARE MUCH COOLER AND MORE PLEASANT AND ENJOYABLE. OUR HAIR IS QUITE SOFT AND MANAGEABLE, TOO. PERHAPS YOU REMEMBER THAT OLD TELEVISION SHOW, THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO? WELL, WE RECENTLY KICKED THOSE ALIENS' ASSES AND STOLE THEIR SUIT BACK FROM WILLIAM KATT, WHO WAS LIVING IN A TRAILER PARK IN ARIZONA, DRINKING NOTHING BUT MOONSHINE AND SLEEPING WITH 12-YEAR-OLDS. THE HONOR OF WEARING THAT SUIT IS NOW BEING PASSED TO YOU.
"FROM THIS DAY FORTH, YOUR IDENTITY WILL BE
"NO LONGER WILL YOU WASTE YOUR LIFE AWAY AS A GROSS OFFENSE AGAINST CARBON MOLECULES. NOW YOU WILL BE A FULL FLEDGED SUPERHERO, COMPLETE WITH SILLY CAPE! YOUR HAIR ALREADY LOOKS VERY MUCH LIKE WILLIAM KATT'S, SO YOU ARE OFF TO A GREAT START. YOUR MISSION IN THIS LIFE WILL BE TO PROTECT THE PEOPLE OF PLANET EARTH FROM THE HOSTILE ACTS OF INSANE SUPER VILLAINS, TRAFFIC COPS, AND OF COURSE, THE DRUG ENFORCEMENT ADMINISTRATION. YOU WILL BE THE DEFENDER OF TRUTH, JUSTICE, AND... AND.... UMM. WELL, DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT, WE'LL REMEMBER IT EVENTUALLY.
"OH, AND THAT INSTRUCTION MANUAL THAT THEY WERE ALWAYS LOOKING FOR? WE FOUND A COPY OF THAT FOR YOU, BUT UNFORTUNATELY IT WAS ONLY SEVEN PAGES LONG AND WAS ACTUALLY INSTRUCTIONS FOR HOW TO USE THE SUIT AS A FOUR-SLICE TOASTER, SO.
"NOW GET TO WORK, CAPTAIN SCOTTO. DON'T DISAPPOINT US! WE'VE GOT A LOT OF MONEY DOWN ON THIS ONE!"
And with that, the electricity was gone, and I was left standing atop a burning Space Needle, wearing a strange spandex super hero costume with a silly cape and everything. The police had gathered all around the base of the Space Needle, and helicopters were starting to arrive from local television stations. My face was very likely being beamed all over Seattle, if not all over the Pacific Northwest.
"Put your hands up!" shouted a voice over a loudspeaker. I was a little unclear if someone from the helicopter was gonna just hop out and actually arrest me, or if they expected me to climb back inside the burning Space Needle and make my way downstairs, all the while holding my hands up. So I fingered them instead.
"Yeah, suck on that!" I shouted. I had come here to kill myself, and no ninny in a police copter was gonna get in my way. "I have something to say!" I shouted, doing my best Kurgan impression from Highlander. "It's better to burn out...it's..." And then I started coughing horribly. Turns out the only way to do a good Kurgan is to have somebody slice a hole in your throat. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered. Nothing mattered, not since the day my dog ran away and never came back, or the day that one girl I used to like told me she'd rather suck the bile out of a cow's intestine than spend two seconds in the same hemisphere as me, or the day I took too much LSD and wigged out -- yeah, that one day when that happened, uh huh. Sure.
So then I leapt. I leapt off the World's Tallest Space Needle, and watched the pavement rush toward me. I saw my life flash before my eyes, and I kept wanting to fast forward to the good parts, only there weren't any good parts that I could find. If I had ever lived any good parts, some bastard had gone back to the master tapes and chopped all of them out. They were lying on the cosmic cutting room floor somewhere, and I was about to join them. There wasn't even a sense of liberation as I fell. No sense of, "Man, it's about fookin time," as I had hoped. I wasn't curious, either, about what was right on the other side of that splotch I was going to make. I was too exhausted with things to bother with even so much as apathy about it.
And then -- god mother fucking damn it all to hell -- I realized with a sudden spurt of horror that there was some woman directly below me. Watching. Transfixed. Stupidly. I started waving my hands and shouting, "MOVE OUT OF THE WAY, YOU FOOKIN NUMBSKULL!" but either she didn't hear me, or she didn't understand English, or she didn't give a flying fuck through a rolling donut if some dumbass was about to obliterate her. Some thoroughly buried instinct inside me woke up at the last minute (and believe me, I have since tried to hunt that instinct down and have it taken out and maimed), and with that, I altered my trajectory and began to fly.
And then my brain asked, "Uh, excuse me there, Scotto, but JUST WHAT IN THE SAM HELL ARE YOU TRYING TO DO HERE? You don't know how to FLY!!"
A horrible creeping realization crept horribly over me. It was the suit. The fookin spandex suit.
I actually did have super powers now.
Jesus fucking Christ, this was all I needed...