The Exploding Man
Part One of Four: “Soft Machine”
Illustrated by Giovanni Ricco · Solar Storm Press
The story
Winston Sherper is a suicide bomber without the suicide. Possessing the unique ability to build and store a powerful bio-charge, Winston can release the energy explosively, destroying everything and everyone within range — a talent, as one might imagine, sought out by the intelligence agencies of the world.
Snapped up by ONI — the Office of Naval Intelligence — at a young age, Winston is perhaps too green to see beyond that Bourne/Bauer/Bond world of glorified “spies.” Sent into some of the planet’s worst places, his job is simple: find his man, and explode. The only hitch is a four-day coma afterward, meaning his Navy SEAL protection detail has to be ready to move the second they see that detonation.
It may look like a cinch on paper. Winston is finding the work is hard, gadget-free, dirty, and occasionally life-threatening.
A weapon with a chain of custody problem
Issue One opens mid-interrogation — Winston, beaten and tied to a chair in a trawler’s brig, giving up nothing until he decides, mid-sentence, that he’s “ready now.” What he’s ready for is the joke underneath the whole premise: the most dangerous weapon in this world isn’t a device ONI can lose control of, misplace, or have stolen — it’s wearing a person’s face, has opinions, and occasionally needs a bathroom break. Command has to track where “the beacon” is at all times for reasons that are, technically, anatomical. Nobody on the bridge particularly enjoys saying so out loud, and someone always has to.
“Gadget-free, dirty, and occasionally life-threatening — a spy thriller about the one asset your own chain of command can never fully control.”
— house pitch, Solar Storm Press
