In certain cases the distinction between classifications is blurred, as in the aforementioned Ernie, whose slightly-greater-than-human strength and the protection offered by his scaly hide are insufficient to make him a true ace. Another, more horrific example is the tragic Burning Woman incident of the late 1970s, in which the virus affected a young woman by causing her body to burn with an inextinguishable flame, but to regenerate itself even as her flesh was consumed. The victim begged passersby to kill her, and finally died in Jokertown's Blythe van Renssaeler Memorial Clinic, apparently as a result of euthanasia—a resulting indictment against Dr. Tachyon was quashed. Whether her card qualified as joker or black queen cannot be determined.
Because it is designed to interact with its host's individual code, no two expressions of wild card are alike. Moreover, its behavior differs from subject to subject. . . .
. . . That as many as ten percent of those who contracted the virus survived its effects is a tribute to the skill of Takisian genetic software and hardware artistes. For a first large-scale test, among a subject population different from that for which it was originally designed, the release of the virus on Terra was a tremendous success which would greatly have pleased its creators, had they learned of its outcome.
Earth, on the other hand, had a different point of view.
—Sara Morgenstern, “Blues for
Jokertown: Forty Years of
Wild Cards,” Rolling Stone,
September 16, 1986
Excerpts from the Minutes of the American Metabiological Society Conference on Metahuman Abilities
(Clarion Hotel, Albuquerque, New Mexico, March 14-17, 1987)
Talk presented March 16, 1987, by Dr. Sharon Pao K'ang-sh'i of the Harvard University Department of Metabiophysics.
Gentlepersons of the Society, I thank you. I shall come directly to the point. Research by our team at Harvard indicates that metahuman abilities, the colloquially called “superpowers” engendered by the Takisian wild card virus, are exclusively of psychic origin, and in all but rare cases are exercised through the instrumentality of psi.
(Session called to order by Chairperson Ozawa.)
I understand that my preceding statement might be considered a rhetorical excess of the kind perpetrated by certain of my predecessors, which caused the still-fledgling field of metabiophysics to be considered a pseudoscience of the caliber of numerology and astrology by a number of serious scientists. Yet honesty, and the press of empirical evidence, compel me to reiterate: metahuman abilities are specialized forms of psychic power.
We now have a better idea of just what wild card did to its victims. In so-called ace cases the virus appears to have acted first by enhancing innate psychic ability, which gave direction to the overall progress of the gene-code rewrite. This explains the high degrees of correspondence between the personalities and proclivities of known aces and their metahuman abilities—why, for example, devoted pilots such as Black Eagle acquired powers including that of flight, why the obsessed “avenger of the night” Black Shadow has such control over darkness, why the reclusive Aquarius presents a half-human, half-delfin appearance and can in fact transform himself into a sort of super-Tursiops. A microscale telekinesis appears to be one of the mechanisms by which wild card effects its changes, enabling the subject subconsciously to choose, or at least influence, the nature of the transformation she or he undergoes.
I understand the enormity of the implication that people might, in some sense, have “chosen” to draw a joker or black queen. Speculation in that direction is, however, beyond the scope of our present researches.
One of the great puzzles of the post-wild card epoch has been precisely how the alien virus, however advanced the technology that produced it, was able to give certain individuals the ability to violate well-established natural laws, such as conservation of mass and energy, the square-cube law, the inviolability of the speed of light itself. At the time the virus was unleashed, science was inalterably hostile to the existence even of psychic powers—justifiably, given the lack of compelling experimental corroboration for such phenomena. It has now been compelled to accept people being able to project fire and lightning, to transform themselves into animals, to fly, or to contrive mechanical appliances that enabled them to do these and similar things in flagrant disregard for principles of mechanics and engineer- ing.
Of course, even by 1946 clues were available in the theoretical reaches of quantum physics. In fact, then-modern technology, up to and including nuclear weapons and the fusion devices in the process of development, was largely based upon quantum mechanics, much of the work being done on the basis of “we know it works, but we don't know how.” Given the impetus of the reality of wild card, psi powers were quickly given a quantum mechanical rationale; “action over distance” without apparent recourse to the strong, electroweak, or gravitic forces being a feature, for example, of the curious interconnectedness of particles that have interacted, postulated by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen in their famous “paradox,” and established with some finality by the Aspect experiment in France in 1982. . . .
. . . A fairly obvious instance of TK-based power is shape changing. The subject—in almost all cases subconsciously—rearranges her or his component atoms to produce a gross structure that differs considerably from the original: for example, Elephant Girl's rather unsettling transformation into a flying Elephas maximus in apparent violation of the mass-energy conservation principle. At least in the case of Elephant Girl, this is explained by subconscious TK on the subatomic level; Ms. O'Reilly can apparently summon into being a cloud of virtual particles and maintain them in existence immensely longer than they would normally exist. (A discussion of virtual particles is, of course, likewise beyond the scope of this presentation. I refer the interested to articles concerning, for example, the particles that “carry” the strong interaction, and that for an infinitesimal instant violate the conservation principle.) As part of restoring herself to her original appearance, Ms. O'Reilly permits the virtual particles that made up the “phantom” mass to lapse into nonexistence.
It was Elephant Girl's ability to fly in defiance of all known aero-nautical principles that sparked the line of inquiry leading to the conclusions expressed in this paper. Simply put, Elephant Girl's, Peregrine's, and all known aces' flight or levitation is simply a variation on TK. In this sense, the Great and Powerful Turtle is the archetypal flying ace, in that he acknowledgedly flies by means of his telekinetic ability. But no trick of physics would permit Elephant Girl's ears or even Peregrine's magnificent wings to uphold even a small human in flight, to say nothing of a full-grown Asiatic elephant. They, like the Turtle, fly through use of mind power alone. . . .
. . . Energy projections provide another thorny problem simply explained by—again—TK. Jumpin' Jack Flash appears to project blasts of flame from the palms of his hands, and moreover can manipulate the fire the produces in remarkable ways. But this individual does not actually project the flame, in the sense that it is not emitted from his own body; in point of fact, it isn't strictly speaking flame. His TK enables him to regulate the Brownian motion of the circumambient air. He creates a “hot spot” of highly excited particles approximately one micron from the flesh of his palm, and then uses TK to direct the resultant stream of incandescent gas.
. . . Superluminal-flight powers present a special case. In most cases (and it's beneficial to keep in mind that each wild card transformation is unique) the individual with the capacity for light-speed or faster-than-light travel has the ability to emulate a single photon, or tachyon in the latter instance, becoming a “macrophoton” or “macrotachyon” in a manner similar to the “macroatom” devices University of Sussex researchers under Terry Clark, which can emulate the behavior of a single boson. The spaceships that conveyed the wild card virus to this planet, as well as the humanoid alien known as Dr. Tachyon, employed the same principle for their superluminal drive—which led to the coining of the word by which the only earth reside
nt not born on this planet is known to this day.
Faster-than-light travel has proven of only limited utility to aces to date, owing to limits of duration and the problems of navigation over long distances, so far insuperable to our technology. Or so we infer from the fact that no ace has ever journeyed beyond the limits of the solar system (present orbit of Neptune) and returned. . . .
. . . A salient feature of the so-called “gadgets”—antigravity belts, dimensional portals, armored suits—is the fact that none of them can be replicated. On disassembly and examination they're often found to make no mechanical or electrical sense. Each is a nonreproducible result. This explains why some enterprising gadget-master hasn't marketed, say, a personal light-speed flying belt, or an antigravity forklift. Only the creator could make one that would work. In some cases, the components consist of ludicrous assemblages of debris, up to and including apple cores, hairpins, and the torsos of Barbie dolls. Others consist only of a diagram of a circuit, which, like the chimerical Hieronymus machine, work as an actual circuit “should.”
The explanation is, once again, a manifestation of psychic ability. The creator has in effect impressed himself upon his work in a meta-physical (in the current scientific meaning) sense. This explanation makes sense of the frequently observed phenomenon that there seems to be a limit to certain “gadget-masters'“ creativity, that they will sometimes have to disassemble an old device to get a new one to work. This explanation also makes it simple to predict that attempts by governments all over the world to replicate the astounding Modular Man android are doomed to failure, unless one or more contract the services of “wild talents” of their own . . .
. . . A feature of almost all aces is a higher-energy metabolism than “normal” humans possess. Some seem able to summon up the energy to fuel their abilities from within themselves, or (for want of a better way of putting it) from the Cosmos. Others either need external sources of energy to power their talents, or find themselves aided by the availability of such sources. The black strongman known as the Harlem Hammer, for example, finds it necessary to consume a substantial amount of heavy-metal salts in his diet to maintain the high-level reactions of his metabolism, as well as a number of “bone-seekers” such as strontium-90 and barium-140, which seem to be replacing the calcium in his bones, giving them greater-than-normal durability and strength. Jumpin' Jack Flash draws strength and sustenance from exposure to fire and heat. Others derive their extrahuman energy from “batteries,” which generally prove to be of the same genus as the Hieronymus-type devices. Whatever the source of this energy, no ace has yet been discovered who could not exhaust her or his supply, in a reasonably short time, by intensive exertion of metahuman abilities. Some can “recharge” simply by resting for a time, others actually require an external power supply. Again, each case is unique. . . .
Further confirmation of the “psychic” hypothesis comes from the case of the so-called Sleeper, who possesses a different set of meta-abilities every time he awakens from sleep. Any other model for the function of ace powers would have difficulty accounting for this phenomenon. . . .
My colleagues and I are willing, in sum, to go so far as to say that psi can account for all observed ace abilities—and that no other explanation can. . . .
WILD CARDS
THE MIKE ZECK GALLERY
Frontispiece: Dr. Tachyon and Albert Einstein meet shortly before the world is forever changed by the release of the “Wild Card” virus.
Gallery title page: When a dangerous, teleporting “Ace” goes on the loose, there “Comes a Huntsman” named Yeoman to track him down.
Page 411: Jetboy and Dr. Tod battle to the death atop the “Wild Card” virus bomb in “Thirty Minutes Over Broadway.”
Pages 412–413: In “The Sleeper,” Croyd Crenson watches in horror as the streets of New York erupt in chaos shortly after the “Wild Card” virus is unleashed.
Page 414: The Four Aces (clockwise from left: Braintrust, The Envoy, Black Eagle, and Golden Boy) at the height of their popularity.
Page 415: A down-on-his-luck Dr. Tachyon watches as the Volkswagen Beetle “shell” of The Turtle passes overhead in “Shell Games.”
Page 416: Who's the Wild Card pimp that's a sex machine to all the chicks? “The Long, Dark Night of Fortunato” provides the answer.
Page 417: The peace and love of 1960s Berkeley, California are shattered by the destructive battle between The Radical and Hardhat in “Transfigurations.”
Page 418: “Down Deep” beneath the street of New York is the lair of Sewerjack, who has his own way of dealing with trespassers.
Page 419: The price of political aspirations becomes a costly one when the Puppetman starts pulling the “Strings” on the campaign of Senator Gregg Hartmann.
AFTERWORD
by George R.R. Martin
In the books, Wild Cards Day is celebrated every September 15, in memory of September 15, 1946, the day that Jetboy spoke his immortal last words while Dr. Tod loosed an alien virus over Manhattan.
In real life, September 15, 1946 happens to be the day that Howard Waldrop was born . . . and Howard, coincidentally, wrote “Thirty Minutes Over Broadway,” the opening story of the first Wild Cards book, wherein all these events take place.
In the books, September 20 is a day of no special note. In real life, however, it marks the day of my birth, two years and five days after H'ard. September 20 is the true Wild Cards Day. It was on that day in 1983 that Vic Milan gave me a role-playing game called SuperWorld as a birthday present, thereby unknowingly planting the first seed of the Wild Cards universe.
As I unwrapped that gift, I was still a relative innocent where role-playing games were concerned. Mind you, I had played plenty of games over the years. I had paid my bills directing chess tournaments in the early '70s, while trying to establish myself as an SF writer. Before that I had been captain of my college chess team, and of my high school chess team before that. Role-playing had not yet been invented when I was a kid, but we had checkers and Sorry and Parcheesi for rainy days, and Hide and Seek and Ringoleavio and Oh O'Clock for warm summer evenings. Although my parents never owned a house, that did not stop me from building vast real estate empires across a Monopoly board. There was Broadside and Stratego as well, and all through childhood I never lost a game of Risk (I always commanded the red armies, and refused to play if denied “my” color). After a while none of my friends dared to face me, so I'd set up the board in the bedroom and fight wars against myself, playing all six armies, inventing kings and generals to command them, merrily invading, attacking, and betraying myself for hours. And maybe that was role-playing of a sorts, now that I come to think of it.
But it was not until I arrived in New Mexico in 1980 that I began to game regularly. Some of the Albuquerque writers had a small gaming group, and they invited me to come sit in on a session. I was pretty dubious at the time. I had seen kids playing D&D at cons, pretending to be Thongor the Barbarian and Pipsqueak the Hobbit while killing monsters and looking for treasure. I had read too much bad sword and sorcery in my youth for that to have much appeal. And there were all these weirdly shaped dice you had to roll to determine whether you lived or died. I would sooner have joined a weekly poker game or an on-going game of Diplomacy. I was much too old and sophisticated for this role-playing stuff, after all. Still, if this was what the local writers were into, I figured I might as well give it a try.
Famous last words, those.
This Albuquerque gaming group included Walter Jon Williams, Victor W. Milan, John J. Miller, his wife Gail Gerstner Miller, and Melinda M. Snodgrass, all of whom would eventually become important contributors to the Wild Cards anthologies. Royce Wideman and Jim Moore were also part of the group, and my own sweet lady Parris joined in with me. At the time we got involved, they were mostly playing a Call of Cthulhu campaign run by Walter, and less fre- quently Vic's Morrow Project scenario, so those were the first two games I sampled.
They were great
fun . . . and nothing like I had imagined role-playing to be. I had fallen in with writers, and these games were stories. Playing Walter's game was like stepping into the pages of an H.P. Lovecraft story, except that the characters were more fully realized than Lovecraft's ever were. There was triumph and tragedy, heroism and cowardice, love affairs and betrayals, and every now and again a Shuggoth, too. Our weekly sessions were part communal storytelling and part improv theatre, part group therapy and part mass psychosis, part adventure and part soap opera. We created some wonderful characters and lived inside them, and many a night never rolled those funny twenty-sided dice at all.
After a few months, I began to make noises about wanting to try and run a game myself. As much fun as the players were having, it seemed to me that the GM was having even more. He was the creator, the conductor leading the orchestra, the team captain and the opposing team rolled up in one omnipotent package. “God,” the group called our GMs. Who doesn't want to play god? I finally succumbed to temptation and designed my own Cthulhu adventure for the gang. Once I had tasted the joys of godhood there was no turning back . . . even though this particular lot of players was so damned sharp that they unraveled the central mystery of my game about sixteen minutes into the action.
That was more or less where things stood when my birthday rolled around, and Vic gave me that fatal copy of SuperWorld. The gang had tried another superhero game before my time and hadn't liked it much . . . but this was a new system, and Vic knew that I was a comic book fan from way back. I had cut my teeth on funny books while growing up in Bayonne, New Jersey. Superman and Batman had more to do with me learning to read than Dick and Jane ever did, and the first stories I ever published were amateur superhero “text stories” in the dittoed comics fanzines. SuperWorld seemed made for me, and me for SuperWorld.