The age of heroes is almost over, they say. Whispering it on the streets or shouting it to a chorus of broken glass in the darker corners of cities. It's gone, that light, when you could look into the sky and see bright trails overhead, or spy wonders through the window. The old war was won, and the good guys grew quiet and retreated into a splendid sort of ordinariness. The bad guys live down the street, not so different after all. No more bright colors and stunning smiles lighting up bright, blue screens hanging in museums, only artifacts mounted in quiet repose.

There are still marvels in the world. There are still wonders, but they're quiet, the work of a thousand thoughts and an ordinary, uninspiring sort of magnificence. The Machine Princess in her great white spire, turning the Gobi to farmland, and the lights twinkling on the moon speak to it.

They say there's no more fire, no more rush of speed, no more fists raised in cheering salute when heroes sweep through the world. There's only cops and robbers now, aren't there? Bigger cops and robbers more clever than before, but it's a humdrum game by now.

We know better, though, don't we?

Yeah, the bird's damn well stolen, but it practically flies itself, and it'll hold people. The right people, we both know. Me, come hell or high water until we get where we're going. To save the damn Princess, like all the old movies, as her machines turn against her.

You remember that feeling, I know. What it's like to see kids arguing in the street with TP-tube pistols and armor made of tinfoil and cardboard, hearts alight with belief. Belief that there's someone out there. Someone they can be, if they try their hardest. My niece wants to be a doctor, even the kind who doesn't soar in and stare down the grim reaper, and her brother yearns to fly. To have rockets at his back and the great blue sky open in front of him. Because they dream, because they want to be someone better.

Because of heroes.

They say the age of heroes is almost over. They say it's gone, over, that the world's all orderly and simple, even as it begins to fray at the edges again. They say that those big dreams need to be made smaller, even if they don't use those words.

Climb aboard.

I know you want to; come with me and feel the hand of God slam you back as we watch the earth fall away and see destiny on the horizon.

The age of heroes may be almost over, but it's saved its best for last.

I've always loved the sort of larger-than-life adventures and heroics that wake up the little kid inside you and fill your head with dreams.

Inspired by this picture, partly. Not, uh, that that says anything about what I've been spending my Saturday doing.

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