Four Alternative Christmas Presents by Tam MacNeil Page A

bit?”
    “Yes,” Dr Destructo said, a little sulkily. He curled his top lip up at Matt. “And I won’t forget your face,” he added.
    “Yeah, well, we’ll just see how long he stays around,” Jake answered, and it was so offhanded and so damning that it hit Matt like a piano falling from a second-story window.
    The thing was, Matt had been following Jake’s career as a superhero from just about the moment the handsome, dark-haired sharpshooter with the x-ray eyes had hit the scene. When Matt was trying to decide if he really wanted to major in chemistry, Jake X-Ray had been saving kidnap victims from concrete tombs, and on every news channel and magazine cover. It was always a heartthrob picture—Jake smiling faintly, his pale blue eyes gazing forward, steady and certain. Not like Matt, who most days tried not to dump a vial of something dangerous on himself, and then one day couldn’t even manage that.
    When he realized the chemicals had given him superstrength, he went looking for Jake. Maybe he did that because it made sense, and maybe he did it because he’d been daydreaming up a fantasy of being admitted to the League, of rescuing Jake from peril, of that cinematic summer evening kiss. But summer ran into autumn before the League even got back to him, and it was November by the time he did tryouts, and in December, when he and Jake were paired up, Matt knew he’d made a terrible mistake. He’d heard the old saying “You should never meet your heroes.” He just thought it wouldn’t apply in this case.
    “You think you can get me to talk?” Dr. Destructo scoffed at Jake. Jake shrugged.
    “Aren’t you professionally obligated to?” he asked.
    Dr. Destructo paused for a moment, mouth pursed. “No. But if there was any breed of superhuman more eager to share their diabolical schemes than the villain, I have yet to encounter him. Tell me,” he added, turning his head to look directly at the machine they were standing near. The reason Matt had been given this mission. “Have you met my latest creation?”
    Matt looked up at the machine. It was tall enough to reach to the rafters in the huge vault of the warehouse and made mostly of metal components. It looked, he thought, kind of like the engine of a fan, the sort he’d had in labs and offices his whole life. The central housing enclosed something that, Matt figured, probably spun and whirred, and maybe even crawled with fingers of electricity when it was actually running. Jake glanced up at it too, but only glanced, didn’t gawk like Matt was doing.
    “C’mon, what is it?”
    “That, you garden-variety hominid, is a dimensional hopper. It is a work of art and science.”
    “Okay,” Jake said, nodding now. “Yeah. A dimensional hopper. But humor me here, Logan. What does that actually mean?”
    “Simple.”
    Dr. Destructo almost hissed the word. This was a thing villains seemed to like to do, Matt had noticed. Maybe it was a villainous affectation, like capes, or maybe it was from getting punched in the mouth so much. He’d have to ask Fiona later. He didn’t want to ask Jake and come off sounding stupid.
    “The universe is massive. All possible realities exist at the same time. My device merely moves the user from one reality into another and resets once every twenty-four hours.”
    “Merely?” Matt asked in something that sounded almost like a yelp.
    “Stealth boast,” Jake shot back. “Don’t humor him.”
    Well, Dr. Destructo did look pretty pleased with himself. His eyes were gleaming, bright as Christmas lights, almost inhuman. It was a little mesmerizing.
    “Hey,” Jake said, jogging him with his elbow, “pay attention.”
    Matt blinked and nodded. “Yeah, just… thinking,” he lied.
    He turned and looked at the device again. There was a single large red button in the middle of a control console, facing him. He might be new to superheroing, but even he knew better than to touch that . Instead he fingered the rail that