Allen the Alien, Chapter 6

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And now Allen was alone with Ellie.

“You spoke of needing something to be done,” Allen said. “What is this ‘necessary’ thing you want the federation to do?”

“We’re all just so tired of all the fighting and bickering on our planet,” said Ellie. “We need to unite under one gentle and benevolent leader, and I was wondering how you all could play a role in that.”

“Do you have a particular gentle and benevolent leader in mind?”

Ellie’s wide smile grew even wider. “Why, me, of course.”

“I understand,” said Allen. “Well, I just told you that we don’t believe in bosses and we let each member planet go its own way.”

“Oh, I don’t want to boss anyone around,” Ellie said. “I just want to end all the divisiveness and make peace.”

“That will be up to you and your people,” Allen said. “As I said, we don’t typically interfere in each other’s business.”

Ellie was still smiling with her face, but her eyes seemed to grow darker. 

“I see,” said she. “Well, I guess that’s how it has to be.”

“Correct,” said Allen.

TriSight and Count Duckula returned.

“The boy is safe,” said TriSight.

“As he always would have been even without a babysitter,” said Count Duckula, who seemed a little irritated.

“Oh, I was hoping you boys would get to know each other along the way,” Ellie said.

Duckula and TriSight looked at each other and something was exchanged without words.

“We do understand each other better than we did before,” TriSight said.

“Splendid!” Ellie said, and her smile grew even wider — but Allen thought her eyes grew even darker. “Well, we will leave you to it, then. Thank you, Emissary Allen, for your graciousness.”

“I am in your service,” said Allen.

“Apparently not,” Ellie said, but then she shook her head. “I apologize, this has been a wonderful visit and truly historic. We have much to learn from you magnificent aliens.”

They watched Ellie and the count walk away for a while, and then TriSight raised all three eyebrows. “What was that all about?”

“It appears Tommy’s advice was sound. We have much to discuss with Fearless Leader,” Allen said. “But first, tell me why you said you understand each other better than you did before.”

“Ah, yes,” said TriSight. “We had a very enlightening conversation.”

Home

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I have a loveseat that faces my stereo set with its turntable and CD deck, in front of the windows that face the road and the highway up the hill. In the predawn darkness, the traffic from here to there and back is a series of white and red and yellow lights racing north and south. Everyone outside the window is on a mission to get somewhere.

They will probably reach their destinations, but there are no guarantees. The lack of a guarantee is motivation enough to push on toward the destination through any storm and any reluctance or resistance.

Here behind the glass, I set my imagination free.

I see a fairy tale setting, a house in the woods that could be built of gingerbread, or is it a rainy city alley with a rodent in my face — and why am I close enough to the ground that I am face-to-face with a rat? — or am I flying over the clouds (must be a storm down there), on my way to the next adventure, or do I fly so often that I don’t even bother to look out the window while I bathe in resentment that I am not somewhere else, anywhere except this steel, coffin-like tube?

Is that a common theme rolling across the fruited plain — disappointment that we are not somewhere else or someone else? In wishing for another place or another identity, do we miss the magic in the here and now? 

I write with a grateful heart with my right hand while a golden retriever licks my left hand and settles in beside me. I contemplate the restlessness in the land while rubbing a gentle dog’s shoulders. Why would I want to be somewhere else or someone else?

And there, perhaps, is the root of the restlessness: We want to be home, not flitting about from destination to destination. In the midst of every wild adventure is a yearning to be home with a golden retriever’s nose on our knee.

That’s why there are so many songs about going home and hymns about coming home after our trials are done. Home is shelter where our loved ones wait. We want to see the world and have adventures, but then we want to come home or find a home. The search for home — the instinct to make a home — is a powerful one. 

The untold history of Myke Phoenix

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I don’t know how these thoughts come to me. It occurs to me that if I had been able to follow through on my original idea for superhero Myke Phoenix, then Myke Phoenix Magazine #445 would have come out this month.

Why it came to me is fairly simple — I saw that Amazing Spider-Man #1,000 is due at the comic book stores later this month, and that got me thinking about what an amazing milestone that is.

I have always been a fan of Lester Dent, the pulp writer who produced most of the 182 Doc Savage novels that were published from 1933 to 1949 in a magazine that was monthly for most of its run. In the late 1980s I imagined a monthly magazine that would feature a superhero of my own creation. 

Myke Phoenix was/is the alter ego of Paul Phillips, a radio reporter who gains the ability to inhabit the body of a super-powered ancient hero named Mychus. Myke became the protector of Astor City, a medium-sized city somewhere in the Midwest.

Because I had a day job, I didn’t think I could pump out a 50,000-word novel every month, but 10,000 words felt doable, and I figured that since comic books had displaced pulp magazines in the marketplace, maybe I could manage a pulp that takes about as long to read as the average comic book, to accommodate modern attention spans.

Starting around January 1990, I finished four episodes and a short story, and I conceived a fifth story, “The Puzzle of the Talking Dinosaur,” which would reveal and introduce the arch-villain Deinonychus who had been behind much of the mayhem that had plagued Astor City in the first four stories. But in those days there was no way to self-publish books or magazines without expending a great deal of money, and so I let logistics scuttle the project before that fifth adventure, and I tucked it all away until I would have the money or the world changed, whichever came first. 

I still didn’t have the money in 2008, but the world changed. Print-on-demand services and the Kindle allowed me to publish The Adventures of Myke Phoenix for basically zero upfront cash, and the idea of a monthly feature tickled the back of my mind again. 

It stayed back there until 2013, when I finally wrote a new Myke Phoenix story, “Song of the Serial Kisser.” Not long afterward I came up with “Firespiders,” which is now known as “Spiders of Fire” for reasons I forget. And then my brain finally shifted to a place where my original concept might kick in.

I wrote down 10 more story titles for what would be a 12-story arc, and in 2014 I wrote and published Myke Phoenix ebooks once a month from February through November, including by the way The Puzzle of the Talking Dinosaur. “I can do this,” I realized, and I was having a grand old time until I failed to come up with a clear idea of where to take the series after that 12th episode. I did create a paperback edition of all 12 new novelettes called Year of the Dinosaur, so named because Deinonychus was again the central villain.

When the corporation eliminated my day job in late 2016, I started publishing the novelettes in short books, most of them 64 pages, and developed the first 12 before I was offered a new newspaper job, so that plan stalled before I could begin actively marketing it.

Three more years went by, and by 2019 I figured I was done with Myke, so with a bit of rewriting, I collected all 16 novelettes and two short stories into a 732-page behemoth titled Myke Phoenix: The Complete Novelettes, which is still available on print-on-demand to this day.

I think about Myke from time to time — I’ve even tinkered with the idea of a novel or two, so that I don’t turn “The Complete Novelettes” into false advertising. Will he ever return? I can’t say — not because I’m being coy, I just don’t know where the muse is taking me these days. 

Part of me is disappointed I was only able to maintain a monthly schedule for 10 months. Part of me is proud to have maintained a monthly schedule for 10 months. Those are the conflicting ways of looking at the idea of Myke Phoenix Magazine #445.