Just Another Clark Kent

I am Clark Kent. I am every man, although certainly not any more. I am just one ordinary person cowering in the shadows of this brave new extraordinary world.

Of course Clark Kent isn't really my name, but it fits me better than the name my parents gave me, when they dumped my unmutated genes into the world. I am the last normal human being, or at least one of the last. If there are others, they're even better hidden than I am, because I haven't seen one in many years.

I don't know how it started, or when, or where. I'm not even sure that's important any more. I just know that somewhere along the line the rules changed, and humanity changed with them. Mutations, accidents, technological marvels -- things that used be impossible, or just fatal -- began creating beings with ever more wondrous abilities.

It was a boon, at first. There were only a handful of them, these supermen. They did all of the marvellous things that mythic heroes have always done, and we loved them for it. There were a few bad apples of course, here and there, the so-called super-villains, but aren't there always?

Then there more of them, and more, and more. For a brief time, there was a bit of a backlash, a kind of 'us versus them' mentality, but it soon passed. Before long, there were so many more of 'them' than 'us', that the very idea of 'us versus them' became a joke.

With their strength, and speed, and all of the amazing things they could do, they began to do, well, everything. There just didn't seem much for the rest of us to do, and there were precious few of the rest of us left anyway.

They needed us though. Who else were they going to rescue? Before long it became impossible to walk down the street without a dozen brightly-clad figures swooping down to offer their services.

Now it's even worse.

They get so bored. Some of them takes turns being villains, just to give the others something to do. Others set up their own disasters, so they can prevent them. And a few of them have just gone insane, with boredom and power. You only have to look at the smoking crater that used to be Cleveland to see what just a single one of these mad godlings is capable of.

I wear a costume now, cape and all. I have to. If I don't, I stand out too much, draw too much attention. For a while I just wore it under my clothes, but secret identities have gone out of fashion these days. After all, nobody here but us supermen, right?

Maybe I'll get lucky, and be bitten by some kind of radioactive bug or get hit by some stray cosmic rays or something. With my luck though, it seems far more likely that I'll just be crushed by a falling building, or blasted by an errant death beam.