THE HEADY KNIGHT
Chapter 1
While Superman managed to maintain a precarious peace within the vast expanse of Metropolis, via his ongoing struggle against villainy and violence, much of it micro-managed by the illustrious billionaire Lex Luthor. And while his crimefighting colleague, Batman, also a billionaire, from the structurally despotic Gotham City, did much the same within his urban battlefield…
…one using a laundry list of super-powers, the other a Bat-belt filled with inventive devices conceived by the brilliant brain of the Dark Knight Detective…
A far distant star system's single inhabited homeworld, at least six centuries more advanced in its intrinsic technologies than the planetary home of Humans, was about to undergo a decidedly dangerous, yet extremely necessary, power upheaval. One in which the overly oppressed, by their very own supercomputers controlling all, would follow a single, solitary member of their green-skinned species in a radical attempt to free their race from cybernetic slavery.
"Are you sure this will work?" apprehensively asked one of the brave, bald, green-hued freedom fighters, relying solely upon primitive pre-computer weaponry on the same uncomplicated level of projectile-spewing pistols and rifles currently used so savagely on faraway Earth.
"Yes," promptly replied the green rebel-leader of untold trillions, both on and off their homeworld, with a certainty unseen for centuries. "If we act as a unified force of flesh-and-bone, the Computer Tyrants shall, at long last, fall. Forever freeing our people from artificial rule. First, on Colu, then on our colonized planets. A freedom not known except by our ancient ancestors before our computers took total control over our complex lives. Making them ours to ultimately control! Just as it was before the rise of a Syntho-Mind! If we fail…let it be in a bloody bid for what was over what is."
In an unexpressed surge of duty and determination, fueled by outlawed feelings over the sterility of super-intelligence promoted and permitted by the Computer Tyrants exerting such autocratic command. Not only over the many billions on the planet and, by way of carefully duplicated satellite supercomputers, the trillions more existing on colonized planets situated several light-years away…
"Attack!" loudly yelled this bald, green revolutionary as he led a veritable flood of fellow Coluans against the centrally located seat of cybernetic brains that had held the reins of complete power for far too many cerebrally-enslaved generations.
"Alert! Alert! Alert!" came the automated alarm from within the mechanical heart of the hive-minded supercomputers, even as beings of green flesh and greener blood opened fire with archaic weaponry specifically designed to do what those of energy could not.
Pierce anti-energy force fields and physically destroy the intricate connections meant to maintain faster-than-thought Syntho-Mind contemplation.
In other words, bring centuries-old supercomputers to a sudden, screeching halt.
But not before hundreds of thousands of Coluan rebels fell before computer-controlled cannons unleashing destructive streams of semi-solid plasma into their mutinous midst.
Fortunately for the flesh-and-bone freedom fighters, their singular leader endured…
"I, Vril Drox, declare our interstellar independence!" resolutely shouted the bald, green-skinned anarchistic commander as he spearheaded the final assault upon the actual electronic core of the Computer Tyrants. "Now…and forevermore!"
Unfortunately, just as it seemed cybernetic slavery was about to be obliterated along with the proverbial brains of the Computer Tyrants…
"Initiate," a computerized voice announced above the destructive din of the firing of rifles and pistols from a distant past, "Operation: Brainiac!"
The entirety of the planet Colu was almost instantly reduced to rubble. Their race, those existing and resisting on the world of their evolutionary development, dating back nearly a million civilized years, atomized.
With only a single physical consciousness, that which happened to be not only closest to the Computer Tyrants but belonging to the bringer of such anti-societal action, becoming the physical/metaphysical recipient of the Syntho-Mind, itself…
Vril Drox, flesh-and-bone freedom fighter, was no more. Now and ever after what would remain was referred to by the self-same codename given to the anti-anarchy operation preprogrammed, for hundreds of years, into said cybernetic super-intelligence.
"I…am…Brainiac!"
END OF CHAPTER 1