Operation: StarCover was of utmost importance, for if the vile and violent Kako could obtain the third star and combine it with the other two triplos asteri already in his possession, he would receive a portion of the goddess Armonia, and thus become a god himself.

After more than 100 days of traveling throughout the cosmos with the alien armada on our tails, we were finally able to elude Kako’s warships long enough to deliver the star to a secret realm called the Stavro Dome, where the Everlife Celestial being called Pathfinder will keep the star safe until we find a better hiding place for it, or until we find a way to defeat and destroy Kako once and for all.

With the triplos secure and the entire universe saved from Kako’s wrath, we received new orders from NASA Central Command to investigate the origins of a powerful telepathic transmission originating from an extremely distant, and to this point unexplored, region in the cosmos. It’s really intriguing that, with all the advances in meta-physiology and technology, as well as the incredible amount of different alien races known throughout the cosmos, there are still portions of the universe that have yet to be discovered. But as we continue to push the limits of invention, it only makes sense that we will continue to make more and more fascinating and spectacular discoveries. The vessel I command is the perfect example of his idea, as no ship in the history of the cosmos has ever been as advanced as the Starship Stratalight.

This gives me a great opportunity to discuss the most innovative member of my crew, and the man responsible for the conceptualization and construction of the Stratalight, Powerline. Without his ideas we would have never had a ship capable of embarking on such an important and rigorous operation like StarCover, or the current far-reaching mission to find the origins of this mysterious telepathic transmission. He was the individual who initially cracked the psionic code of the new, rare element called psytanium, and figured out how to integrate it with other metals and materials. He was the individual who discovered the metaphysical equation that created a psionic hyper-consciousness within psytanium, allowing a certain percentage of telepathic psionic beings to synthesize the element for a near-infinite number of uses and practical applications. And he was the one who used these applications, along with a multitude of already proven scientific, mechanical, astrophysical, and hyper-morphological concepts to build the most advanced starship of all time.

Despite his supreme scientific and mechanical knowledge, however, Powerline is one of the most humble and good-natured men I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting and working with. He was born in the Baychester section of the North Bronx, where he quickly discovered his hyper-human ability to manipulate and bend metals and other alloys with his bare hands. This ability made him a whiz with appliances, machines, and especially vehicles. By the time he was 13, Powerline was considered a master mechanic, and he used his abilities to keep many of the old junkers and clunkers in his neighborhood up and running. Much to the consternation of his single mother of 3, he gave this service away for free. And despite her constant insistence, he just could not bring himself to make money off of people who were already struggling to make ends meet.

By the age of eighteen, Powerline had opened his own shop, “Powerline Car Repair” And while he still refused to take advantage of low-income and struggling families, he was now, at least, making enough money to support himself, his mother, and his younger siblings. He would have been content to remain there in the Bronx, if not for a visit from myself, General Hank Garrison, and Major Aphelion, who at the time was still serving with the U.S. Air Force. We offered him the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to assist in the planning and construction of experimental spaceships. And, having thoroughly reviewed his work, history, aptitude and hyper-abilities, offered him the chance to become a mechanical engineer, and thus an active duty mission officer for NASA Central Command.

He negotiated for a salary and a bonus that would allow him to gift his mother and younger siblings with enough money to live off of for the next several lifetimes, and left Powerline Car Repair in the capable hands of his best friend, Kadillac, and sister, Blueprint (who had discovered she possessed some of the same powers as her big brother), and within the month he relocated to Southern Platinum City, where he began work with NASA.

After quickly proving himself as the most capable mechanical engineer ever recruited by NASA, Powerline was given full access to the facility’s tools and inventory. It wasn’t long before he found NASA’s supply of psytanium – a half-ton vat in the west storage warehouse. It had been discovered in the late 21st century, after the Starship Palisades returned from a one-year mission to the Temika Quadrant. Large portions of the ship were coated in the substance.

It took about a month, but it was all safely removed from the Palisades, and collected into a container. For the next 20 years, scientists from all over the world attempted to figure out exactly what the substance was, and if it was able to be used for something more than slightly more efficient rocket fuel. Believing their efforts had been exhausted, NASA officials made the decision to store it away. 30 years later, Powerline found it, and as I explained earlier, he cracked the code. He was the one who gave it the name “psytanium”.

In the early days, Powerline worked closely with a team of telepathic and telekinetic NASA engineers, led by Radeema McClure. However, their psionic abilities proved to be limited when interfacing with the psytanium. Not even the mind of Radeema – one of the most powerful telekinetic hyper-beings in the country – could handle the psionic side effects of manipulating and synthesizing the element. After another year of struggling with the psytanium, a resume found its way to Powerline’s desk. It belonged to a woman we would all come to know as Placebo.

She had no experience in government or with engineering or with space travel, or with anything as far as we could tell. Her history was, and still is, quite mysterious. But regardless of all the questions her resume raised, there was one very definitive answer it claimed to provide – the ability to manipulate psytanium. Powerline immediately invited her to the NASA facility, where she quickly proved to be an insanely powerful psionic hyper-being. Furthermore, she had the capacity to manipulate the psytanium without the severe side effects others had suffered. Powerline needed her on his team. NASA officials, however, were skeptical.

The only official records they had of Placebo’s life was from her childhood. She and her sister, also a hyper-being, who would come to be known as the heroic leader of the Diamond Alliance, Magnifica (R.I.P.), were seemingly orphaned at a young age, and subsequently found their way into the home of a pair of married hyper-hero trainers. They were called Ebb and Flow, and together they helped both Magnifica and Placebo maximize their powers. But while Magnifica went on to have a well-documented career, Placebo all but disappeared after leaving the Ebb and Flow’s training house.

The NASA officials wanted to know where Placebo had been for the past 20 years. Powerline didn’t care; he just wanted to get her in the workshop with the psytanium. Eventually, she revealed that she’d spent the time continuing to cultivate her powers, while traveling all over the world. Her explanation was vague, and we still don’t know for sure the details of her adult life, but at the end of the day her talents and hyper-abilities far outweighed our need to know.

She was officially hired as a communications officer at NASA, and she and Powerline immediately went to work on constructing the Starship Stratalight. Using the psytanium and Placebo’s hyper-abilities, Powerline synthesized an alloy that could theoretically interface with the powers of its crewmembers, giving the craft any number of hyper-abilities, along with all of the latest state-of-the-art technology and artificial intelligence enhancements. With the ship near completion, I was invited to the facility to check on the progress. Powerline and Placebo took me to the NASA Flight Cube – a region of airspace above Platinum City – where they showed me how the Stratalight, crewed by just the two of them (a psionic hyper-cog and a metal manipulator), could perform a multitude of maneuvers and tasks no spaceship had ever performed before.

After the demonstration, I expressed to Powerline how impressed I was and that I would relay a glowing report to General Hank Garrison. Powerline, however, was hesitant to consider the projecta success, as he quickly filled me in on a huge hurdle he and Placebo had not been able to clear: the Stratalight could not interface with more than 2 hyper-beings at a time, without potentially causing severe metaphysical damage to its crew members. Tragically, a number of hyper-beings whom they’d attempted test runs with had either received severe psionic injuries, or had lost their powers altogether. The psytanium was simply too potent – they needed the equivalent of a surge protector for psionic energy. But there seemed to be nothing on Earth that could do the job.

A few weeks went by, and Powerline was on the verge of ordering the decommissioning of the Stratalight, when Placebo suddenly discovered the solution. That solution turned out to be Chief Two Strike. As I explained in one of my earliest log entries, Two Strike had developed a machine called the Hyper Modulator Unit, which was designed specifically to allow the an individual’s hyper-abilities to interface with elements outside of the said individual’s natural (or in the case, supernatural) body.

I admit, she used a rather unscrupulous method called a “tele-sweep” to find Two Strike, but with the discovery of a new frontier at our doorstep, my superiors and I decided to overlook the illegal telepathic act this one time. Placebo, Powerline and I went to visit Two Strike, and convinced him to bring the technology to NASA, where we were able to install the HMU and bring the Stratalight online at its full magnificent capacity. Two Strike, of course, along with his sister, Euphoria, would also eventually become part of the Stratalight Crew for this voyage.

I hope you can tell from this entry that Powerline is truly one of the great minds in the history of the galaxy. He single-handedly pushed humanity forward with his discoveries and innovations, and because of him NASA currently has plans to construct two more psytanium-based starships upon our return to Earth.

For now, we continue to push out toward the origins of the mysterious telepathic transmission from an unknown part of the galaxy. I am excited to see what we find…

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