Gojiro Read Free

Maybe the Evolloo moves slow for zards, but it speeds along at a vicious clip for mutants, faster and faster. So fast that now I, who once had next to forever to think a single thought, to know the smallest detail, have only these three dozen hours to tell everything.
    Outside this volcano, I can hear Komodo’s hammer. Bang , bang , bang . He’s outside with the Atoms, those sad, misformed children who arrived uninvited on our Island of lost souls and stayed to become equal citizens. They’re working on my death raft. When it’s done, they’ll strap me across the bamboo, and, no doubt amid much somber pomp, send me out past the Cloudcover, where my thermoregulation will stutter to a stop and I’ll finally be no more.
    So listen up, ever-faithful G-fans: I ain’t got time to waste. Probably this is just nostalgia for my long-lost Bunch, but, at least for these next few hours, I want my life story to be your life story, and yours to be mine. I know this can never happen, that no one mutant can share everything with another. That is the very definition of who we are—the separateness, the being apart. But still, I wish it. It is, perhaps, my last wish: that when I lie down on Komodo’s raft, I won’t be the only one in the world who knows my story. Maybe then you’ll be better equipped to make up your mind about the sanity of your trusty correspondent here. Too bad I’m not going to be leaving any descendants. Otherwise, maybe your descendants, those poets Komodo is so wild about, could hook up with mine and give each other great ecumenicalism.
    Sure.
    But still, if you want to tell everything, you’ve got to find the beginning. As I said, that’s no cinch. Most likely it’ll be best to start from last year or, rather, last year minus thirty-seven hours and fifty-four minutes now, back to that terrible night when Gojiro and Komodo swore the Triple Ring Promise Amendment.

· Part One ·

A Death Escaped
    K OMODO COULD ALWAYS TELL when Gojiro was trying to snuff himself. He just knew . The feeling got around his heart like the Tingler, made his chest so tight he couldn’t breathe right. Then, if need be, he’d jump through a black hole like a circus hoop, swim across two thousand miles of hostile sea. It didn’t matter where from or how far, Komodo would come, never cease to seek until he found. This particular time, though, he wasn’t thousands of miles away. He was right there on Radioactive Island, beside Gojiro’s volcanic home, trying to teach a sub-beginner genetics course to a clot of real slow Atoms.
    Not that the monster tried to kill himself all that often. Suicide’s no snap for the invulnerable, you know. Where does the fatal blow go when no blow is fatal? This was the problem, and not a new one. It came up while they were making the first of those King of Monsters, Friend to Atoms home movies Shig stole and spread around the world.
    “So what’s my weakness?” Gojiro said to Komodo. “Never been no Hero that didn’t have a weakness. Not a single paragon of Right who didn’t have a heel where to shoot the kryptonite. Got to have a weakness, something to overcome, or how else can I be brave?”
    “You make a good point, my own true friend,” Komodo said thoughtfully. Experiments ensued. Poison, guns, fire, and flames. Tests were taken that made for tales no Timex ever lived to tell. But not a dent was made, no soft spot was revealed. No physical phenomenon, particular phraseology, or pernicious Pentagon-like ploy had the stuff to lay that greenest leviathan low.
    “Has to be something .” Gojiro shouted.
    “Don’t worry,” Komodo said, harried and contrite at what he saw as still another in a series of his failures to find answers to his friend’s ever-pressing problems. “It will appear. Your weakness is within you. It will come out.”
    “Yeah,” Gojiro said, “for sure.”
    In lieu of certifiable shortcomings, they made some up. The sad truth is those films were laced with lies