Kill Me or Cure Me: Difference between revisions

Monday morning, and [[Machine Man|Aaron Stack]] and [[Peter Spaulding]] are getting ready to head out for work. Despite Peter finding Aaron's mechanical side a bit much first thing in the day, they elect to share a cab downtown after Aaron puts on his face.

At [[Delmar Insurance]], [[Eddie Harris]] gossips with [[Maggie Jones]] as Aaron walks through, saying the company's top investigator is highly impersonal and working at a rate that makes them look bad. The two jokers are chided by [[Pamela Quinn]] that they should spend less time at the water cooler themselves, and his quick to dismiss Eddie's assertion that she has a crush on Aaron.

Across town, at the [[Alternative Resources Centre]], the rueful [[Ion|Dr. Voletta Todd]] is also facing gossip, as a pair of [[sexist lab technicians]] struggle to reconcile her accomplishments in hydrogen fusion with her good looks. In her private lab, Dr Todd considers her year-long failure to produce an unlimited, clean energy source from ionised gas. In her overtired state, she makes a mistake that causes a power overload, and as the other scientists scramble to evacuate, she is hit by a barrage of electro-magnetic energies.

Shortly, at Delmar, bossman [[Byron J. Benjamin]] invites Aaron into his office (via messenger Pamela). Benjamin informs Aaron of the explosion at the Alternative Resources Centre, one of their biggest clients, and encourages him to go and help. Arriving at the scene, Aaron quizzes a [[FDNY|firefighter]] for a situation report, and learns that the blaze has written off the building and that people are still inside. Aaron ducks into an alley and returns as Machine Man!

He enters the burning building thanks to his flame-resistant body and gravity negation and finds two technicians trapped under a heavy beam. Machine Man detaches one leg to serve as a fulcrum, allowing him to rescue the technicians – though they are less than grateful at the attempt, causing Machine Man to briefly reflect on the xenophobia of humans before returning to the lab.

Machine Man uses the monitors on his finger sensors to search the many rooms of the complex. He detects a scrambled reading from a laboratory, but has no time to analyse it, with time being of the essence – and finds himself face to face with Dr Todd, now transformed into a hideous, gaseous creature contained in an electromagnetic field! Considering herself to be a monster, she now struggles to maintain a corporeal form, and with her humanity fading, she begs Machine Man for death!

Machine Man insists that the process could be reversible but, sensing he is not human himself, Dr Todd goes berserk, randomly blasting bolts of electro-magnetic energy around the room. Dodging the blasts, Machine Man attempts to contain her under a sheet of computer insulation, but as a gas, she seeps out form underneath it. One last blast causes the floor to cave in, trapping Machine Man, and the Dr Todd creature escapes, trying to find somewhere to gather her scattered thoughts.

Meanwhile, Machine Man reviews the damage to his legs and the blown circuits in his right arm, and he feels the building's foundations start to give way. Straining his circuity, he negates his gravity and escapes the collapsing facility, but his dead limbs disrupt his momentum – and, after hitting an updraught and getting a spasm in his leg, he begins to plummet to the busy streets below!

"Old stone face is making things rough for the rest of us. He begins the job promptly at nine and his paperwork is never late."

:—'''Eddie''' is outraged at Aaron's audacity.

"Keep away! You're a blasted freak!"<br>

"No, I'm a machine... a machine who just saved your life! If you object to the way I did it, you'll have to file a written grievance!"

:—The '''lab technicians''' prove ungrateful for '''Machine Man'''{{'}}s rescue.

'''Ion:''' "'''''IIYEE!''''' I sense you are a machine -- what would a thing of metal and wire know of compassion?"<br>

'''Machine Man:''' "Plenty -- but this is hardly a time to debate the issue!"

This was [[Tom DeFalco]]'s first issue penning ''Machine Man''. The credits are drawn into the opening splash page, appearing on diegetic pieces of rubble. DeFalco brings with him a Silver Age-style ''in medias res'' action teaser to open each story.

*Myriad U.S. spellings slip through this issue, including "realize", "utilizes", "realizing", "ionized", "patronize", "pulverize", and "energize". A non -ize related example is "updraft", which is traditionally spelled "updraught" in British English.

*In "[[Byte of the Binary Bug!]]", Eddie's surname was White. Here, it's Harris.

*Despite what certain other wikis may tell you, this is the debut story of [[Pamela Quinn]], whose interest in Aaron would confuse and confound him for the rest of the book.