FBP: Federal Bureau of Physics #11

"Wish You Were Here," Part Four
written by Simon Oliver
art by Robbi Rodriguez

Is anything in Adam and Rosa's world real?  Nothing more than "the illusion of a 'quantum reality'" (FBP #11: 1)?  Adam finds himself the personal epicenter of a legion of gorgeous women's affection: his real-world affair with sassy Clara, his growing attraction to steely partner Rosa, the impossibly seductive Sheriff Bailey, and even his flirtatious diner waitress.  He also finds himself at the epicenter of a vast conspiracy spear-headed by his own father, the man whose disappearance instigated a childhood of alienation and loneliness.  Adam's world is one in which he is universally wanted but forever on the run from those who would take him down.

If "Wish You Were Here" is nothing but a psychoanalytic fable, Adam's is telling.  If, on the other hand, there is some truth to the experiences Adam and Rosa have, if the world they left behind really can leak into their shared illusion, it is a truly frightening place to be.

Despite alternate-Nakeet seeming more like Adam's fantasy than Rosa's, Professor Sen continues to insist that it is Rosa resisting re-entry.  But Rosa seems hellbent on taking her new world down.  From atop the observation tower, Rosa begins dismantling it.  Taciturn and cryptic, it's impossible to know what she aims exactly to do, only that she is determined that it be done.

FBP's finest asset continues to be Oliver and Rodriguez' effortless world-building.  A moment as small and casually clever as physics-defying fry-cooking—delightfully realized in Nathan Fox's predictably excellent cover illustration—takes a far more sinister turn when two gunmen fire at Adam into Newton's Gulch.  FBP's twisted physics is commonplace, not magic.

[August 2014]