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correlated information shined a spotlight on the doings of the criminally insane. Villains were so . . . so predictable.
    Doctor Mighty folded his fingers behind his head and shut his tired eyes. He should have been up and at his heroic duties. There were newspapers to be scanned, parole hearings to attend, and The Violet Penumbra was taking a pension after forty years, and he needed to pick up a gift for the retirement party. So much to do, yet he just didn’t feel like doing anything.
    *
    Sometimes Curt wished he’d opted for a surgical mask to hide his face. But when his powers had manifested during his first year of medical school, he’d felt no need for an alter ego. He’d just started fighting crime in some scrubs he’d picked up at a used clothes store. A mask had seemed such a bother. It constrained his field of vision, messed up his hair, and made it hard to brag at the singles bar about his deeds.
    Of course, once he started getting good at superheroing, he’d seen the benefit of being able to walk down the street and not be mobbed by autograph seekers and old ladies who wanted to describe their pancreas for him.
    “I’m not a real doctor,” he tried to explain, but they always brushed that aside. He wished he could help them. He wished he did know what to do about that goiter.
    “I dropped out of medical school,” he said. “I don’t have a degree.” But still they described the pain in their arm when they moved it just so.
    “Then stop moving it like that,” he said, and they laughed.
    What always worked though was, “Hark! I think I hear someone in peril!” And then he would sprint down the street until he was out of sight. No one knew he didn’t have super-human hearing. In the parlance of the Guild, his was a uni-power. Unlike the Dread Snark who could jump fifty feet from a standing position and turn invisible, Doctor Mighty only had super strength. Multi-powers got much better endorsement deals and better match-ups with villains.
    Curt wasn’t interested in endorsements or cage-matches with the Angry Motorist or the Sharper Shooter. In fact, he wasn’t sure what he was interested in all. It became such a bother going out that he started staying in all the time.
    There were other superheroes on duty, heroes with multi-powers, heroes who enjoyed signing autographs and cutting ribbons. Let them handle the Split Infinitive and Dirty Dunkirk and Nuclear Winter. Then Curt could sleep in for once. Let Doctor Mighty take a break. He wasn’t on call anymore.
    *
    “Don’t you see?” said the Intern. “It’s the Skinner Boxer’s plan to get you to give up superheroing!”
    “I don’t think he has anything to do with it,” Doctor Mighty said. Steve, dressed in burgundy scrubs, complete with booties over his shoes, had brought him a six-pack of KryptoLite and pizza. He’d had to wipe a six-inch layer of debris off the operating table to find someplace to put the pizza.
    “Sure you don’t. It’s all part of his mind game. Well, I’m here as your trusty sidekick to help you snap out of it, man! He shot you with his doldrum ray, Mighty.”
    “Steve, you’re not my sidekick. I thought you had something going with Alligator Joe? You were Crocodile Kid, or something.” Curt had gone through a few sidekicks early on; there’d been the Human Ambulance, who was as big as an ambulance, but had trouble keeping up; he would arrive, heaving, at the scene after the villain had been subdued. Once they’d had to call an ambulance for him. Then he’d tried out the X-Ray Boy, but his vision only seemed to work through woman’s clothing. The Defibrillator couldn’t work near water or in the rain. Steve the Intern had no super power at all; he was a pure sidekick, which meant Curt spent a lot of time freeing him from traps, pushing him out of the way of death rays, and explaining the villains’ plots slowly and in small words.
    Steve the Intern looked stricken. “Did you know he uses real