By Cornelius Fortune
Artwork by Jose Baetas.
I have a super power.
No, don't laugh. This is serious; this concerns you. You'll find this information useful.
First, let's define what a super power is: a super power makes an ordinary person extraordinary. We've come to expect such things as flight, super speed, X-Ray vision and super strength as the cornerstones of super powered ability; it's ingrained in our collective consciousness somehow.
Here's what's extraordinary about me: I can make all types of milk. Chocolate; strawberry; blueberry; buttermilk; and on my more creative days, pineapple/orange/raspberry swirl with little mint chocolate chips. I'd prefer to retain some secrets of the trade by electing not to tell you where it all comes from. It's like if everyone knew what went into the making of hot dogs and sausages they probably wouldn't eat them. Same here--you don't want to know, let's just say I have several "delivery" options.
I guess it wouldn't be much of a superpower if I couldn't make super human quantities of it, which I can. Call me the Milk Man if you like. I won't be offended. Honest.
Ladies and gentlemen, honored guests, UN delegates, I don't have to remind you of the state of the world, which you know all too well.
I've struggled all my life--living on Ramen noodles, peanut butter, Kool-Aid, and I'm ashamed to say, yes, even my own milk. I've been homeless more times than I've had a permanent mailing address. But here I am before you: a super-powered being among a world of ordinary men and women.
After the plague struck I spent many a night wandering the streets, seeing headlines, watching the panic in people's faces: a world without dairy products. OMG. How scary is that? Suddenly all the dispenser buttons were switched to "off" on nursing mothers across the world; cattle died, and it wasn't because of alien invaders with a ground chuck fetish, as the extremists would have you believe. I watched the devastation, a detached observer in a world without a milkman, or any milk for that matter; we slipped into a world of imitation unlimited.
And I finally understood my purpose, at least part of it.
If you open your press kits, you'll see a list of what many of you would think of as demands, but they're not really demands--think of them more as a mutual exchange.
I'll tell you why I decided to do this now.
I've built a small army over the past year. It started as a man on the street movement, passing samples around, building friends in the neighborhood. But something strange and wonderful happened: these kids started developing mutant powers and their intelligence went off the scale. Hell, it broke the scale something awful, then they got this crazy idea about world domination, and I said as politely as I could: "Not before my morning coffee."
We started to build our PR machine, which led to you being here, listening to me.
I have a super-powered army of children with milk mustaches waiting outside these doors; we can flood the world or remake it in our image. The milk I produce alters genetic structure. I suppose old farts like yourselves could ride the wave to immortality, but what you're really here for is to provide balanced coverage of the New World Order, so I don't come off like a dairy dictator "frothing" you might say, at the mouth.
Like all movements in its infancy, we need funding. There's a collection plate going round. Feel free to place coins, dollars, valuables, and other trinkets in there. I mean, from now on, we're one big happy family.
I think when you consider the benefits, you'll see the value of full cooperation. Maybe my genetic mutation can be added as a new genetic strain for the coming generation.
And by the way, resistance is...stupid.
I'm the Milk Man, and nobody does it better than me, so let's see those pretty smiles.
There. That's better.
Children, you can come in now.