Where in the World is Professor Xavier?

I stepped away from the podium and looked around. It seemed like everywhere I turned, there was a microphone pointed at me or someone in a fedora barking a question. I couldn’t answer them now. Something’s not right here, I can feel it.

Professor Xavier didn’t even show up to the press conference that he set up. It’s possible that he’s busy with my campaign or attending to business at his school, but it didn’t seem likely to me. On top of that, if he was too busy to be here, I’m sure I would still feel his mental presence, something that I can’t detect right now. Without anything else to do, I dialed up his school to see if he was actually there or if they knew where he was.

“Xavier’s School for Higher Learning, Cyclops, er Professor Summers speaking,” came the answer.

“Cyclops, good to hear from you,” I said. “It’s Jon the Intergalactic Gladiator. I’m here at Liberty Island and Professor Xavier doesn’t seem to be around. Is he there?”

“Oh my gosh, he is,” he replied. “But you’re not going to believe this.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Professor Xavier’s brain is missing!” Cyclops replied dramatically.

“Missing? You mean like he’s gone or something?”

Cyclops explained “No, the Professor is here, right in his study, but his brain is gone. It’s been, like, cut out of his head.”

“Holy cow!” I exclaimed. “Are you serious?”

“I am,” he asserted. “I was there with him and I was talking to him about my issues with Jean Grey and Emma Frost and Madeline Pryor and he was just sitting there saying nothing, so I started talking about how I loved Jean so much but then how I kissed Audrey Hanson and—”

“Wait, do you mean Agent Audrey Hanson?” I interrupted.

“Yeah, her,” Cyclops answered.

“Agent Audrey Hanson, FBI?”

“Yeah her,” he said. “We were on that game show Sylar’s Bachelor together and then we kissed.”

“OK, I don’t think I needed to hear that,” I said.

“With tongue,” the mutant clarified.

“I’m sure I didn’t need to hear that,” I added.

“But then I heard that she slipped me a Mikey.”

“You mean a Mickey,” I corrected.

“Who’s Mickey?” he asked.

“Never mind that, what about the Professor?”

“No wait, how do you know Agent Hanson?” he asked.

“Yeah her,” I said. “Small world, huh? She was assigned to protect me just a little while ago, but then she got called away to help out on a Die Hard Scenario.”

“Oh yeah, Die Hard, I love that movie,” said the man who must always wear ruby quartz eyewear to stop his uncontrollable optic blasts. “Yippee ki yay, mother, uh…”

“Right, well thank you for helping me out with that dangling plot thread there,” I said. “But what about the Professor?”

“Oh yeah, I can’t stand dangling threads,” he replied. “If I have one on my uniform, sometimes I burn it off with a lighter. But don’t tell Jean that I have a lighter, OK?”

“OK, OK,” I sighed. “The Professor. What happened to Professor Xavier’s brain? You said it’s gone.”

“Oh yeah right, so I was talking to the Professor you know, relationship stuff,” he explained. “And then I notice that there’s a little dab of drool coming out of the corner of his mouth and then that’s when I looked closer and saw that his head was cut open. His body’s here, but his brain’s gone, Jon.”

“How long did it take you to figure this out about his brain?”

“I don’t know, ten or fifteen minutes, I guess.” I could almost see him shrugging with the reply.

“Well, does he usually just sit there quietly for fifteen minutes while you talk about your relationship problems?” I asked.

“Well sure,” he replied. “Sometimes longer I think.”

“And he doesn’t yell at you to shut up or anything?” I also asked.

“Well no, but I think sometimes he mentally sends me away,” he said. “Like sometimes I just wake up back in my room or something and I wonder how I got there. Wait a minute, Jean Grey, Emma Frost, Madeline Pryor, and Psycloche all have mental powers. I dated all of them. Are they a surrogate for my relationship with the Professor?”

“I wouldn’t know,” I answered. “I only took like three credits worth of psychology in college.”

I heard a heavy exhale over the phone. “Does that mean that I actually want to date Professor Xavier?”

“Honestly Cyclops? I don’t know,” I replied. “I have to tell you, the more you’re talking about it, the more it’s turning my stomach right now.”

“I love Professor Xavier,” Cyclops announced. “There I said it. Wow, I feel so much better now.”

I screamed in my head mentally. I almost pounded my head against the wall, but I didn’t think the wonderful caretakers of this area want to clean up bloodstains off their nice building.

“I don’t want to hear this,” I said slowly and carefully to him.

“Well, I don’t mean love as in the way a man loves a woman,” Cyclops said. “It’s like a platonic love. Wait a minute, if all the women that I’ve dated are surrogates of the Professor, maybe the Professor’s a surrogate of the father I never had because my dad flew off into outer space to become a space pirate. Wow, it’s mind boggling.”

“You aren’t kidding,” I exhaled. “OK, I’ve gotta go. I mean I’ve really gotta go, if I listen to any more of this I might just, I don’t know what I’d do. I just gotta go. I’ll start looking for clues, keep me updated if you hear anything.”

“OK, I will Jon,” Cyclops agreed. “This is Cyclops over and out.”

The line went silent as he hung up the phone on his end.

Great, on top of everything else going on around here, I’m probably going to have to find Professor Xavier’s brain now, too.