Work Text:
The man, somewhere in his early thirties, was sitting in his study. His hair was dyed a sandy blonde, but the black roots had been growing out for a while. In front of him was a simple recording setup. A camera affixed to a tripod, and a basic ring light.
“Hi there, the name’s stickman. Well, that’s my hero name. Super name? Nickname? Ahhh, I dunno.”
“My real name’s Tyson. Which technically isn’t true but I’ll get to that in a minute. Now I said I’m a hero, which also isn’t technically true. I don’t go out and punch guys in spandex. I’m not nearly trim enough to copy Superman’s whole deal.”
“I’ll start from the beginning.”
“When I was very young, I developed superpowers. I can put things back together. A broken plate, an xbox controller covered in water, that kind of thing. Again, not much for crime fighting. At best, I’d make their jammed guns work better. But I liked my powers. I thought they were pretty cool, and my parents thought so too. I enrolled in civil engineering, and did pretty well. Got to understand how all the big stuff worked. And wouldn’t you know it, the more I learned, the more expansive my powers got.”
“I took all kinds of classes, even aside from my degree. I ate it up! I’m no super genius either, I just thought it was dope. Art restoration, architecture, hell I even took a few weeks of pottery just to see what I could learn.”
“I was the first in my family not just to finish highschool, but to get a degree. With honours! Lots of late nights and coffee, but man the look on my folks’ faces was worth it. But I was… I dunno. I came out of all of that learning, all of that buzz and excitement and stuff and I just… I didn’t know what to do with myself. I kept learning, but I also got this feeling of ‘When’s my life supposed to begin?’, yknow?”
“I applied to a few places, sure. Did work as a welder, spent some time in construction, did a few stints as a delivery driver when I wasn’t getting anything else, but nothing really… got me. And none of those let me use my gifts.”
“That was until the Flash came to town. He was having this big fight with Captain Cold. You know, the dork with the shit sunglasses and mean scowl? And that fight got out of control. I got home really late, just as Flash was on our street. He was wrapping the dickhead up, giving him away to the cops. But all I could see was my parent’s house.”
“My great, great grandparents got that land not long after they stopped being slaves. It was dirt cheap back then. My great great grandpa built the whole house himself. And the generations since? Well we never stopped building. We kept getting offers, threats, the whole shebang, but we never sold. We never moved, and never let ourselves get pushed around.“
“And here it was. Destroyed.”
“It ran deep. The roof had collapsed, the soil was permafrost, and anything that wasn’t trashed was water damaged. Five generations, all gone.”
“At that point in time, I hadn’t been using my powers much at all. Repairing an old toaster here, keeping my TV from breaking there. Selfish stuff. Small stuff. But seeing that? Seeing that kind of destruction? Seeing the pain on my parent’s face as they stood on our fucked up lawn? Nah. Nah.”
“I pulled together every bit of power, every scrap of energy. And I saved it. The ice vanished. The roof lifted itself back up. The dirt bounced back. I couldn’t save the grass, since my powers don’t work on living stuff, but dammit I tried!”
“My parents were so happy. I mean obviously right? But the Flash saw too, right as he was about to leave. He came over and asked me if I was a hero. I said what I’m saying now, which is that I’m not. He told me what I’d done was pretty damn heroic. I said hey man, it’s my parents. I couldn’t leave them out to dry.”
“And he just looked at me. And smiled. He said:”
“I get it. But you know, beating up a bad guy’s easy. It’s a ten second job. Less if you’re me. This is life changing stuff. This is the kind of thing that takes me a whole lot of work and time and effort and you… you can just do it. I mean jeez kid, if you’re ever looking to help people, the justice league could really use a guy like you.”
“I know it’s a little corny, but that was it man. That was what I needed to hear. That was that purpose I’d been looking for. I could even feel that energy inside me, thrumming and puffing up at his words. Like it was alive. A part of me, and yet something that thought separate from my brain. I dunno, it was really cool.”
“And me, being a dumbass just out of school, told him I’d think about it. Oh you would not believe how much of a lecture I got from my folks about that. They started on the lawn that day! Said I should use my talents, take the opportunity, achieve what I’d always been wanting.”
“That’s my folks for you. So supportive they’ll lecture you about how you should be following your dreams.”
“That night, I went around fixing other houses. Like I said, that fight got way out of hand. But I did it quietly, y’know? I waited until everyone had been hauled off to those super-fight refuge centers. I don’t know why I waited.”
“I think… I think I didn’t want everyone thanking me, y’know? I didn’t want the glory. I’m not batman, or green lantern, or wonder woman. I’m just some guy. I’m not nearly that fit, even back then.”
“But with no-one around, I got to feel it. Feel the energy. Feel how happy it was. How it leapt and bounced around in my stomach every time we put a house back together, or peeled someone’s car out of an ice block. I got so into it I didn’t even realise how long I’d been working until the sun came up.”
“And when I went back home, I didn’t sleep. Just sat at the window. Waiting. And they came. People came back, to try to salvage what they could from their homes. And I’ll never forget it. The cries. The hugs. The smiles. I caught one little girl who couldn’t even speak. Just kept waving around her little stuffed monkey she was sure she’d lost.”
“Fuck, man. I still don’t like being thanked, but I will never get sick of seeing that look on people’s faces.”
“I sat on my hands for a few more weeks, but eventually I got sick of not being able to leave my room without a lecture. I got in touch with the flash through the number he’d given me, and not long after I got called in for an interview.”
“And man, let me tell you, that first time on the watchtower was unbelievable. I never thought I’d go to space in my whole damn life, but once I was up there I was sure I’d fight them if they tried to send me back down. Gazing down at the earth, all those clouds spinning over seas of green and blue… man.”
“Then I stepped into the meeting room and got the wind knocked outta me. Metaphorically. Man, being in the same room as batman, superman, and wonder woman turned my brain inside out. I’m pretty sure I was still in my ‘Batman isn’t real’ phase too.”
“They had a chat with me. Superman was so… nice? Is that weird? It feels weird. He was just some dude. Like a guy you meet at the subway who you happen to have a conversation with before you never see him again. It was honestly crazy how friendly he was. Wonder woman was also really cool, though I think she was going through some stuff cuz she was way less chill she turned out to be. Batman though… I mean he’s so sick, but man he was fucking terrifying.”
“They asked me a bunch of questions. Wanted to know what my intentions were, which was a layup. Wanted to know what my powers could do, and what my limits were. Wanted to know how I wanted to help.”
“I was pretty clear. I wasn’t looking to do any fighting. I just wanted to rebuild things that got broken, simple as that. They all nodded, even Batman. They told me the Flash had really sold me, talked me up a lot, which felt insane to hear coming out of Superman’s mouth.”
“Then they basically hired me on the spot. I was brought on full time, doing repairs after superhero fights. They gave me an ever updating list of things to fix, often ordered by how much a place got fucked up, and free range on the teleporter. I even got paid! Quite a lot, actually.”
“And I was happy. Really damn happy.”
“But the superhero world isn’t exactly known for long term stability. So eventually, things changed. I was doing some work after one of Di- Wonder woman’s fights, and I found this weird crystal. I know, I know, rookie mistake picking up a glowing red crystal, but I was wearing my work suit and that’s protected me from way worse.”
“Anyway, a flash of light goes off, and suddenly, I’m not holding a crystal anymore. But I am standing next to a thousand copies of me.”
“I tell you, having a conversation with yourself, while watching a dozen other versions of yourself having a conversation with a dozen more versions of yourself will do your head in. Eventually one of us, the guy who’d later take the name Rook who we’re all 90% sure is the original, got up front. He said we could sort out what the hell that crystal was later, but that as long as none of us were evil, we should get to fixing up the city.”
“Now of course, we all thought that was a great idea. And on top of copying our bodies and clothes, we also each got a copy of our powers. What would’ve taken me a week before took an hour, and only because some of us had to run to find something to fix. We then phoned home, and told the league what went down. We all got a physical, a body scan, a few soul scans and way too many telepathic brain scans for my liking. And it confirmed that we were all perfect, distinct copies of the original us.”
“Now in the early days, this was great for our work, and absolutely terrible for our lives. We were all given space in a dormant super-fight refuge over in Guatemala so that we’d all have a place to stay, at least temporarily. Seeing as we could all do the same work, the league was more than happy to pay every single one of us provided we kept doing it. We got so much work done that there were whole weeks where 99% of our dockets were empty.”
“But we were also getting antsy. We had no idea how we were going to reverse this, and to be honest, a lot of us weren’t sure we wanted to. We don’t share minds or anything, so while we’ve got the same 25 years worth of memories, every day we were diverging from each other in small ways. We were becoming our own people.”
“But that came with all sorts of new challenges. We all had the same family. Same parents. Same friends. Same crushes. I mean god, what were we gonna tell our parents? How were we gonna break the news?”
“Eventually, we decided it was better to make peace with it. To really separate ourselves from being copies to being brothers. We each took a name of our own. Nobody got to keep the original name, as we decided that just wasn’t fair. But then came the hard part. Relationships.”
“Friends were hard. We all tried to remain friendly with those we’d gotten to know in the league. Some succeeded better than others, but we agreed to try to be cool about it. Friends back home were harder. We tried to make it work, but there were just too many of us. The situation was too weird and we all had too deep a history.”
“Eventually, we decided to really double down. To separate, and start building our own lives. It’s too hard, sharing with 999 brothers. Even when you love em. So we took a vote, and of course, we let Rook be the one to keep the old friends. He really didn’t want the honour. I mean, he was angry we were even giving up on trying to make it work. But we know it’s better this way.”
“But we didn’t give up on family. Part of Rook’s responsibility was telling our parents about all this. And of course, they were as stubborn as he is. Dad spent the next three months basically bullying the local council into letting them rent out a park for a week just so he could throw all of us a birthday party. He wanted to hug and speak to every single one of us. The old fart barely got any sleep, but he’ll tell you to this day it was worth it.”
“We ended up deciding, as part of the split, to get set up in a major city each. The league was able to help all of us get settled, though the project ended up taking about a year. We figured that if we each had our own corner, we could all be more efficient and responsive. Plus it gave each of us a chance to meet new people, try for a new life.”
“Some struggled. Marky, up in Siberia, I know he had it hard. He was lonely for a long time before he met his wife. And Two-cent, down in Lomé, has been pulling his hair out since he got there. Trying to fix infrastructure that’s been crumbling even without all the supervillains, gangs and terrorists.”
“Some loved it though. Dinkum was practically salivating to go to Sydney, hence the name. Nothing short of Braniac dropping a nuke has been able to pull him away from the waves. And I know Tony has been living it up in his Metropolis penthouse. Credit where it’s due though, when he works, he works.”
“And even after all this time, we still find time to come home. To beam up to the watchtower. To connect with each other. The longer it’s been since the crystal, the more it feels like catching up with your brothers. I was an only child before all this, but I can’t imagine going back.”
“And of course, we always go to visit mum and dad. Not all of us, true, and not at the same time. But there’s always at least ten of us back home, milling about in the kitchen using up all the good butter. I’m sure one day they’ll get sick of having that many of us around, but it hasn’t happened yet.”
“Oh, right. Stickman. Started as a joke, actually. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen those cars with the stickers on the back, depicting all the members of that person’s family? Yeah well, we saw an image of one of those with like, twenty people on it. And then I think it was Bryson who joked that if mum did that to her car, it’d be nothing but stickmen. After that, nothing could stop that inside joke from rolling through. We all thought it was the funniest idea, just a mass of stickers that blotted out every window, leaving four wheels the only way to tell it’s a car.”
“Even now, I still love it. Our old Codename was Rebuild, which just… I dunno, it had no personality, honestly. It was just so basic.”
“And so even now, five years later, that’s what we call ourselves. We’ve all got our own names, sure, but we’re joined by our last name, and our superhero name. By blood, and by power. I was never much for poetry, but I still think that’s awfully poetic.”
“Something else, actually, that I wanna tell you. Because the story of the crystal isn’t over. See, in year two, we lost Terry. He was killed by Martian Manhunter that time he got mind controlled. Got his head exploded, and that’s as far on details as I’m willing to go. And then we get a call from Jamaica, because Angus was in a pub when suddenly he had another Angus standing right next to him.”
“So not only are there a thousand of us, there can’t be less than a thousand of us. The moment one of us kicks the bucket, a new clone gets created at random.”
“Terry’s funeral… Ah, god. Who can forget burying family? We had the first service just between the brothers, mum, and dad. The chapel didn’t even fit all of us, but we made the effort. Then a few of us organised a second funeral for everyone else in his life.”
“It was a strange thing. Because when I got into the superhero world, I made some peace with the idea of dying on the job. I really felt like it was worth it, on some level.”
“I still do, obviously. But losing him. Losing a part of me. Of us. It was a lot to take. I’m still not sure I’m over it. But fate’s hand doesn’t care how well you’re handling things, now does it. In the time since, we’ve lost ten more. Not many, in the scale of how many brothers there are, but I still felt every single one.”
“The most recent one, Naomi, was my turn. My clone appeared while I was changing my kid’s diaper, which I actually appreciated. Though by that point we knew what him being there meant, and that was pretty awful news.”
“He ended up naming himself Polo, the cheeky fuck, and it wasn’t long before he flew out to cover Naomi’s old stomping grounds in Pakistan. We still talk, but it’s a little fresh and very awkward. I can admit that, we both feel it.”
“But now, after all that, I’ve finally got to the reason I’m recording this. I know I’m one of many. Very literally, in this case. But I have a family. Two kids. Friends. People who know me as me, not as an interchangeable part of a set. And even though they’ve got a big family to fall back on when I’m gone, who are like me in so many ways, I want them to have some record of me. Some record of me as I was. The ways I was like, and unlike, all my brothers.”
“I’d never resent my life. I’m a blessed man doing work I’m proud of with brothers I love and family who I couldn’t live without. But I also want to remind everyone that I am a person, all on my own. With or without some fancy crystal making me.”
“So hi. I was born as Tyson. Some call me Stickman. But my name is Marko.”