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Volume 4, 5 December 2004 |
Our "heroes" are reduced to four. Zach Dyamond's head lies at their feet. With typical Chaykin charm, one companion notes, "Zach was a total douchebag, but even he didn't deserve to die like that." The remaining four - Harte, Crosse, Crowne, and Starr - might die anyway. They're out of ammo. But Tom Byshop (who blew up Long Beach and lured the Challs here) urges a cease fire to end "needless bloodshed." He adds enigmatically, "I'm just a cockeyed optimist [but] whatever they do to you, hold onto Zach's memory... He's the key to your future." Byshop then gets his brains blown out by Kingge, the new leader of the black-suited pawns. The sort-of Challengers are taken prisoner aboard the sub. Kingge has Byshop's ship torpedoed. The Challs know about Hegemony's plotting (they think). Byshop refused to be a pawn. Harte adds, "I'm no assassin. No automaton, either. And I'm nobody's mind slave." Kingge retorts, "Trust me. With the world slipping deeper into the toilet every day... Count yourself lucky you were picked by Hegemony." |
The conspiracy machine churns. KnowNowNet News reports the Long Beach terrorists were killed in a firefight. The Navy had to sink their pirate vessel. The pseudo-news names Byshop, Starr, and Crowne as the bad guys and pronounces them dead. The pace picks up. Dozens of people are beaten, arrested, and murdered by cops around the country. Meanwhile, the Challengers - still under guard - are flown to a lush tropical island. They meet the real brains behind the world-wide villainy. |
 Crosse, who evidently reads, is astonished. "You're Mae Nash Price! Renaissance woman... fashion model... politician... billionairess... who DIED in a tragic air crash in 1947!" True. Money miracles have kept her young. Among her other talents, she's a gene manipulator. Attending her are a pixie woman and a hunk with angel wings. Ms Price brags in great detail about Hegemony's accomplishments. This coalition of the world's richest people engineered the Stock Market crash of 1929, the Depression, World War II, the rulers of Communist Russia, the assassination of JFK and Marilyn Monroe (who learned about them through the Kennedys), etc etc. |
At various times in history, Ms Price babbles, "clues to our existence have surfaced... often in the form of speculative fiction and fantasy. There was even a quartet of escaped pawns who called themselves Challengers of the Unknown, inspiring a so-called comic book."  (The Challengers comics are in pretty good company along with the Cagliostro, Brave New World, and 1984. The two Chall comics pictured are issues 12 and 15. The other comic is some Strange Adventures-type with a blue-green gorilla. What's a DC comic without a gorilla?) |
But since the Hegemony controls popular culture as part of their social engineering, nobody took the stories seriously. Hegemony keeps people entertained and at each others' throats... "... Keeping the world distracted while we live and work in peace, privacy, and relative invisibility." Ms Price keeps talking, always with a wide smile that's downright eerie. "Work that includes identifying troublemakers, malcontents, and contrarians like yourselves... Kidnapping you, then genetically altering you into sleeping tigers." When a situation arises, Hegemony picks a pawn to wreak murder and mayhem, "leaving a dead contrarian to take the blame. Oswald, Ray, Sirhan? All my boys." Hegemony's methods are so advanced and subtle that most proles are happy to serve. "I'm no prole," snaps Crowne. Crosse counters, "Sorry, babe, but we're all proles." "Of course you are," says Ms Price sweetly. And all four Challengers collapse and sleep. (Obviously, something programmed into their altered bodies can drop them in their tracks.) Ms Price orders them bundled up. "We have a long trip ahead of us." |
The Challengers awake, very groggy. They're finally marked with their blazes: a crown, star, heart, and cross. Good thing too, because they're all bald. And lying at the feet of Ms Price, who's now dressed as a Moon Maid.  With good reason. She leads the Challengers to a window. "You've all been chosen for a momentous task... with huge responsibilites and enormous rewards. Take a look. Fabulous, isn't it?" Nothing could have prepared the Challengers for this. They're on the Moon! |
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The Hegemony has turned "a dead orb into a private paradise... Our new home, once we leave the Earth to the great unwashed." "Wait a minute," asks Crowne. "We're staying here?" "It's time for the true race to move on. You four have the opportunity to be valued employees. Trust me, it's going to be enormous fun!" |
Everyone goes "loony" in Part 6, the conclusion! |
Comments So now we know why the original tag for the series was, "Everything you know is a lie!" Apparently, nothing in history was random. Every event down to the tiniest detail was engineered by the Illuminati, the Masons, the Trilateral Commission, the Whoevers that conspiracy theorists love so well. OK... This story doesn't take place on OUR world anyway. Yes, we're subject to wacky events, but it's wackier to think someone's in control. |