The Third String (excerpt)

Michael had long since stopped waiting for something special. He had spent a good portion of his early life with the unrealized expectation that something incredible was in store for him at the very next moment. It was not that he felt himself to be special. He simply went through life feeling as if something was about to happen.[1]

It was sometime shortly before he turned 40 that he stopped looking out windows with anticipation, stopped buying scratch off tickets, and generally put his nose to the grindstone. He focused on the mundane trifles of his daily routine. Michael resolved, as written in 1 Corinthians, to put away childish things.[2] Michael was, now in his life, an altogether sensible man. So it was Michael more than anyone else that was amazed at the moment of his divinity.

On Sunday, February the 5^th, at precisely 8:07 PM Eastern Time, the great collective unconsciousness of the species turned with significant focus to an upcoming summer movie blockbuster. A major motion picture studio, in limited partnership with one of its competitors, had produced the most highly anticipated superhero movie in Hollywood history[3]. And on that night, at that moment, the movie trailer was released during a primetime episode of You Did What?, the biggest television show of the season. It was a hip blend of Fear Factor and Jersey Shore but without all the subtlety.

At that moment, the world got its first glimpse of Captain Man, Danger Comics’ most popular hero, in his cinematic debut. The movie trailer lived up to the expectations created by the single largest marketing campaign ever. Humanity held its breath as, for 58 seconds, Captain Man came to life on their televisions, computer monitors and personal mobile devices[4]. A critical mass of the great collective unconsciousness thought- superhero.