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Joel LaMignon is a brilliant MIT student with a penchant for high risk behavior. One night after a party, Joel takes his roomate, Sang, for a joy ride down the "Austin Speedway" and breaks the local record of 114 MPH. But he loses control and totals his car right down the block from his professor's house. Joel is instantly killed and Sang is paralyzed from the waist down.
But Joel's professor, Dr. Ash, is a pioneer of macrotechnology, and rushes Joel to a governmental lab. Dr. Ash brings Joel back to life using an injection of molecule-sized robots that are programmed to repair the damage caused by the crash. Joel is given a funeral and his family and friends take him for dead. Now the US government owns him. They give him a new face, a new life and a new name - Joe Magnolia. Joe is forbidden to make contact with his girlfriend, his roommate or his family, and a tracking device is injected into his blood, along with the macrorobots.
The macrobots give Joe new enhanced strength and performance. The "Governmentals", as he calls them, want to exploit Joe's powers to their advantage, and use him as their Special Agent. However, unbeknownst to them, Joe's transcendence from his first life has given him second sight, and he is now capable of seeing "energies" from the spirit realm. These energies exist both within the people in our dimension, and as completely separate, invisible beings. The energies are made up of light and dark particles, and the ability to see them gives Joe an added advantage in his work as an agent. For example, he can see that the light energy outweighs the dark inside of a potential suspect, and see which side is pulling on him more. The only thing is, now Joe is being recruited by Sunrise (the Agency of the Light energies), to help fight Dusk (the Agency of the Dark energies), and he's not quite sure which one is good and which is bad. When he looks in the mirror, Joe sees more dark than light.
Date Written: November 06, 2004
Author: Benny Maniacs
Average Vote: 4
Comments:
11/15/2004 qualcomm: did the government take the "L" from joel's first name and transplant it into his new last name? or did they generate all of the needed new letters from scratch?
11/15/2004 qualcomm: oh, they used the "L" from his old last name, right? so wait, where did the "L" from his first name go?
11/15/2004 anonymous: In response to your question, Sarcasticomm, Dr. Ash used macrotechnology to free the "L" from Joel's name. He uses macrotechnology for most things.
11/15/2004 Will Disney: Wait - is this like the *The Matrix* or *Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins*? Or both.
11/15/2004 anonymous: And yes, Dr. Ash also uses macrotechnology to fix the lingering "L" onto "Joe"'s last name. Macrotechnology. Macrotechnology.
11/15/2004 qualcomm: macrotechnology? i know when you're lying, author. oh my god, they "liquidated" the "L," didn't they? didn't they!?
11/15/2004 anonymous: Wait a second - how did there get to be a second "L" in Joel LaMignon? Dr. Ash's macrotechnology is usually infallible. His anagram algorythm must be in need of a tweak. Disney?
11/15/2004 The Rid: I got the impression that Joel/Joe was basically a good guy, except for his penchant for high risk behavior. Am I reading this incorrectly?
11/15/2004 scoop: I thought this was a fiction website?
11/15/2004 anonymous: Yes, The Rid, he's basically a good guy. Except for that he paralyzed his roomate, Sang. One of the contributing factors to Joel's accident was that he saw his girlfriend making-out with a meat-head Lacrosse player. The meat-head Lacrosse player was pretty much a good guy too, except that he has been known to mock Sang, for being Asian.
11/15/2004 Mr. Pony: Some more questions, Author: How does Ash get ahold of Joel's body? Was he waiting at the hospital? Why are molecule-sized robots (which are small in my book) called macrobots instead of minibots or microbots or nanobots or something? "Macrobots" seems to indicate to me that they're bigger than regular robots, which are too big to fit in anybody's bloodstream to begin with. Speaking of which, wouldn't it make more sense to embed a tracking device into hard tissue, like bone or something, rather than into his blood? And why do the two agencies, the light and dark agencies, sound like they were named by the same person at the same time? I think I appreciate what you are trying to do with the light/dark/good/evil question, but aren't you setting yourself up for either a really obvious resolution or a really obvious surprise resolution there? And finally, I am troubled by your use of a token person of presumably Korean ancestry in such a manner. Korean Americans have long struggled with the stereotype of owning convenience stores; and now you seek to saddle them with the additional stereotype of being crippled sidekicks? Why would you do this, author? Why?
11/15/2004 qualcomm: yeah, i thought author was baiting me with an intentional malapropism in "macro," so i didn't bite
11/15/2004 Dick Vomit: Another question, Author. Did Dr. Ash employ a laserblade at all during the implantation procedure?
11/15/2004 Mr. Pony: If so, I hope he keeps it well charged.
11/15/2004 The Rid: And you know, just because Joel/Joe caused his roommate's paralysis doesn't make him a bad guy. He's a good guy who got drunk and did a fucked-up thing. I'm not trying to see the accident with rose colored glasses, but Sang could have said no. Perhaps when he looks in the mirror his own sense of self-loathing causes him to see more dark than light? Even though it's not necessarily true?
11/15/2004 Mr. Pony: Rid, I'm assuming you're not from the Orient, so I forgive you for not understanding how hard it is for Asians to say no to white people.
11/15/2004 Dylan Danko: That's just as it should be, Mr. Pony.
11/15/2004 Mr. Pony: Yes, Dylan.
11/15/2004 John Slocum: Mr. Pony, Dylan's not white. You don't have to say 'yes' to him.
11/15/2004 The Rid: Yeah, I guess I don't know how hard it is for my Asian brothers. I'll try to be more understanding.
11/15/2004 Mr. Pony: Yes, you're right, Slocum.
11/15/2004 TheBuyer (5): Well, I thought this was stupidly, innaccurately terrific.
11/15/2004 Litcube (4): I found myself half laughing and mumbling "what the fuck" by the time I hit the third paragraph. I had realized that this story was going nowhere. While traveling to that destination, it was wearing a clown outfit and riding a unicycle with a straight face.
11/15/2004 anonymous: The use of the word "macro" in this was a slip-up. "Nano" is what Dr. Ash's technology was refered to in real life. I'm just basically reporting a summarized form of the facts. This is also why the Light and Dark forces sound like they were named by the same person; because they were. I named both in order to more clearly convey the nature of each side to you, the readers. As for the transportation of Joel's body: Joel's car hit a tree down the block from Dr. Ash. Dr. Ash then had the ambulance take Joel and Sang to the government hospital/lab. Thanks for having me elucidate on these points. Hopefully this will help clarify what actually transpired those many months ago.
11/15/2004 TheBuyer: I liked it better when I thought you did it on purpose. It had that really poorly researched/casted movie synopsis feel circa 1986 featuring some gobshite television actor, or the guy from "V".
11/15/2004 Mr. Pony (4): Mark Singer?
11/15/2004 anonymous: No, The Buyer; I am completely serious about this story.
11/15/2004 TheBuyer: That's him! See also, characters on 'Dallas', I forgot about that.
11/15/2004 qualcomm: didn't do anything for me. f u.
11/15/2004 qualcomm (3):
11/15/2004 Turgid: That's Marc with a 'c,' Pony.
11/15/2004 Mr. Pony: Thanks, Turgid!!
11/15/2004 Turgid: Don't thank me. Thank the ferrets that told me.
11/15/2004 Mr. Pony: Podo and Kodo?
11/15/2004 Turgid: That's right. But they wouldn't point me towards Tonya Roberts.
11/15/2004 The Rid (4): I sympathize with paralyzing the roommate. Sang.
11/15/2004 TREE (4): Does Joe feel he is dark because he lost his L's? or is it because he paralyzed his friend Sang?
11/15/2004 Benny Maniacs: Well, I'll give away the ending. The dark energy particles are actually representative of goodness (however flexible that term can be), because they absorb all of the light, and the light energy represents badness, because it reflects all the light. It's only after Sunrise Agents (the Light energy spirit realm dudes) set Joe up to take out the P.O.T.U.S. that he discovers he's been playing for the wrong team. I know this sounds like a WB11 series or something, but it actually happened.
11/16/2004 Mr. Pony: Turgid, maybe you should ask John Alcott how he "saw" things!