The Legacy of Supercar.
When Supercar appeared, it was only in rumours and hearsay until it became fact, and the stories of Mike Mercury aided by Professor Popkiss and Doctor Beaker, James 'Jimmy' Gibson and his elder brother William 'Bill' Gibson spread like wildfire.
For years Professor Popkiss and Doctor Beaker had worked with Mike to design and build a new form of super vehicle. As time passed and their ideas for the criteria of the vehicle grew, Supercar began to take shape. They had already planned and agreed on developing a new form of a power plant.
Highly efficient, environmentally friendly without any of the toxic side effects you'd find in a nuclear reactor or in an ordinary internal combustion engine. Supercar's power systems were small and extremely compact, and while Professor Popkiss and Doctor Beaker were both more than aware of how efficient nuclear energy was, they did not want to use it, even in battery form.
They created a hydrogen-powered system which released small amounts of water vapour as waste, so it was highly efficient and environmentally friendly, but it took them a long time to develop it; as with dozens of new technologies, many of Supercar's features were highly experimental and nothing like them had ever been seen before.
They envisioned Supercar being a road vehicle, a submarine, a boat, a plane, and even for brief periods a small spacecraft, although as they built the craft, the two scientists and Mercury hadn't thought too far ahead about the long-term purpose of the vehicle. They had merely wished to design and build a new form of a vehicle with the most advanced technologies imaginable, but they hadn't thought that far ahead. But it wasn't until the Gibson brothers and their pet monkey, Mitch was stranded at sea following a plane disaster. Once that happened, the new Supercar team was born and they had a purpose, to help those in need and to investigate any cases of unusual activity, such as the Phantom Piper incident, or the runaway atomic train incident, or the terrorist threat using nuclear weapons to attack the United States of America. The team were responsible for the investigation of hundreds of mysteries, and they were instrumental in solving numerous crimes and in the ending of numerous criminal groups.
But like all things, it came to an end.
Professor Popkiss and Doctor Beaker continued to work on Supercar for many years, but they eventually moved on to new things and they eventually died while Mike Mercury found love, and got married and had a family of his own. Mercury and Jimmy and Bill Gibson both mutually agreed to hide the Supercar. While technology had moved on over the years, Supercar's technology was still far more sophisticated by a large margin, and as there were still many criminals who wished to possess its secrets, the three men either hide or disposed of the car, and they got rid of whatever scientific documents existed on Supercar. It was all gone, kaput.
It was not only the criminals who had a vested interest in Supercar's technologies, but it was the governments as well. They took a long hard look at Supercar and what the vehicle was capable of, with its multi-functional approach, and they realised the benefits and the possibilities.
But Supercar had left a legacy in itself. While the technology was irretrievably gone for good and without any kind of sample of Supercar itself for scientists other than Popkiss and Beaker to work on it, the early experiments floundered. But many realised over time they could approach the problem from different avenues.
The first vehicles and machines were built with, at the time, cutting edge technology but it wasn't until the 21st century new vehicles appeared with, ironically, the technology used to construct the first vehicles. When they were constructed they were not designed to be multipurpose vehicles, the scientists were good but not that good. To make matters worse, the scientists did try to experiment with the same basic environmentally friendly technology Supercar used for an energy source - they had enough clues to show water vapour had been a byproduct of the power system, so they guessed hydrogen was the key, but they didn't know how Supercar's original engine was powered or what the principle behind it was. Several times the scientists got killed in a careless accident, so nuclear energy was used. Many scientists were disappointed by this, as they felt to come close to Supercar's level, they would need technology close and identical to Supercar.
The World Aquanaut Security Patrol and International Rescue were the two organisations that came remarkably close to designing and building vehicles that were similar to being super craft like Supercar. The World Security Patrol had already orchestrated the construction of the nutomic hyperdrive, which was a side effect of the rapid scientific and technological growth which was caused by the decision to design and build a new Supercar, but while the Fireball XL5 rocket fleet was impressive, it was the World Aquanaut Security Patrol which provided the most Supercar-like technologies, in the form of the submarine vessels which incorporated the advanced hydrojet and magneto-hydrodynamic propulsion systems, which brought the submarines to an impressive and growing speed from 100 knots to 600+ knots, but the vessels were capable of manoeuvres a normal submarine would find impossible to execute.
At the time of their appearance, the secret International Rescue organisation boasted the most advanced and sophisticated vehicles known to man. While the organisation did not care about developing Supercar-like vehicles, they used advanced technology many scientists claimed rivalled that of Supercar, and like Doctor Beaker and Professor Popkiss, they kept their technology and their base a closely guarded secret, only to far greater extremes since much of the technology could have been used to destroy life, rather than preserve.
The developments of International Rescue and the World Security Patrol have only continued to inspire the design and the growth of ideas related to the building of a Supercar-like vehicle. Indeed, it was thanks to the decision to even build a second Supercar in the first place which led to the development of advanced machines, spearheading the growth of humanity, and likely still will. The hyperdrive technology is putting us into contact with other worlds, giving us access to new technologies and ideas.
It's only a matter of time before we all have a Supercar.
- Extract from New Scientist magazine, Professor Hackenbacker (yes, the scientist believed to be responsible for the building of International rescue, although unproven).
Author's note - I thought the inclusion of Brains was a nice touch, and besides as a scientist like Fireball XL5's Matthew Matic, I felt it likely there were dozens of scientists in that reality