JUSTICE FOR THE PUPPET MASTER

Much of the pulp fiction of the 1930s and ‘40s was created in response to the crisis of the Depression and the horror of Fascism. In that spirit, here’s my fanciful response to current crises.

Catharsis is no substitute for action. But it does serve a purpose.

JUSTICE FOR THE PUPPET MASTER 

A darkness had fallen upon the land of the free.

In the nation’s capital, an oafish felon had become its Commander-In-Chief. The criminal’s unthinkable rise to power had been accomplished in large part due to the blind allegiance of a huddled and hateful mass, a willful rabble who adored the felon nearly as much as he loathed them and everybody else.

But these sycophants, though vast in number, were not a majority. No, this had been a coup, engineered by an evil cabal, armed with riches and influence. The cabal was led by a malevolent puppet master, a despot with endless wealth and sinister tech at his disposal. With his puppet installed, the puppet master was emboldened to emerge from the background, to instigate his odious final solutions at the expense of the innocent.

And the innocent, helpless to protect themselves from such a powerful evil, cried out for justice. Justice was not forthcoming.

At least, not through normal means.

Meanwhile….

Nineteen miles from an urban center that was not called New York City, a stately manor stood in enforced solitude. The Gothic mansion’s aura of mystery belied the opulence of its origin. And it hid a far greater secret below its visible structure.

In caverns beneath this stately manor, a masked detective—the lord of the manor—brooded alone. He had himself been a child of wealth and privilege. But he was also a product and victim of tragedy. He had spent his life battling so no child would ever know such tragedy again.

The detective had studied the turmoil in the country he loved. HE would deliver justice.There would be no signal in the sky. Not tonight. The detective would act on his own, as he often did.

The detective donned his cloak and gauntlets. He fired up his mobile fortress and drove away from the cave. 

Criminals are a superstitious and cowardly lot. The masked detective would strike fear into their hearts.

Across the ocean from the detective’s home outside five boroughs that were not New York City, an operative of the British government sat in the back room of a no-name pub in a remote spot in the south of England. The tuxedoed gentleman sipped a martini, disappointed that it had been stirred, not shaken. His superior sat with him at a small table, both of them far from the intrusion of prying eyes and ears. The superior spoke:

“This shall be even more secret than any of your previous missions on behalf of the Crown. We cannot dare even address you by your name, nor your number. We cannot risk publicly angering our friends in America, if indeed we have any friends left there at all.

“But nor can we allow this unchecked monstrosity to continue. You must stop it, agent. You know what you have license to do.

“Agent, His Majesty needs you.”

Some say the paths of the agent and the masked detective must have crossed before. If so, that meeting has never been chronicled. Now, the detective and the agent made their separate ways to Washington, the detective deducing and persuading, the agent using charm and wiles, and both employing brute force as needed. They soon found themselves face to face at the puppet master’s threshold, a trail of incapacitated henchmen left in each of their wakes.

“Team-up?,” asked the agent.

“Team-up,” the detective replied.

Our heroes burst into the puppet master’s stronghold. The villain’s armed goons were dispatched and laid low in seconds. His unarmed young lackeys—an ineffectual gaggle of incels and geeks—all but soiled themselves in fear., their false bravado reduced to pleading and tears.

The puppet master’s glowering demeanor remained as smug and scornful as always. The evil bastard reached for his control board, knowing the heroes would not be able to reach him before he transferred the wealth and personal information of all Americans into his own bloated coffers. The villain seemed on the verge of cackling aloud.

The detective acted quickly. With pinpoint accuracy, he threw his oddly-shaped weapon—a customized, razor-sharp boomerang with winglike scallops—and the puppet master’s hand was crippled before he could commence his cyber theft. The puppet master howled in pathetic pain and indignation as the agent aimed his Walther PPK at the enemy. But there was no need for the agent to invoke his unique license. The detective decked the puppet master with one punch, a blow accompanied by neither a BIFF! nor a POW!, but most definitely a KRUNCH! as the puppet master fell to the floor.

The detective used his own computer wizardry to undo all of the puppet master’s machinations. The agent introduced a specially designed virus into the villain’s system, permanently disabling all computer systems in the puppet master’s network, from Russia to South Africa. Evidence of the evil mastermind’s crimes was uploaded to national and international law enforcement agencies. With a phone call to his own tech expert in London, the agent restored U.S. funding to charities all over the world. The detective removed a comm from his belt and contacted his best friend, a mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper:

"I've just deauthorized ICE's current detention scheme. You have deportees to rescue. Truth, justice, and the American way.".

The people were saved. 

With that, the heroes left the scene seconds before police arrived to take the puppet master and his accomplices into custody.

The detective and the agent were off to the White House. It was at long last time to put away the puppet himself.

In our pop fiction and pulp fiction, we can rely upon fantasy heroes to save the day. These fantasies offer an important catharsis.

But here on Earth, in this real world, our heroes’ work must truly be our own.

The deck is stacked against us. Always was, always will be. But we fight. And we paraphrase an observation made by Richard Pryor so many years ago:

You go out there looking for justice, that’s what you’ll find: 

Just us.

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