SCRANTON, PENNSYLVANIA—It’s been over 13 years since the U.S. government and the United Superheroes Union (USU) has had an agreement in place, but President Obama is feeling more pressure than any of his predecessors to move those negotiations along, which have entered week 785.

Not since Compound Fracture Man disconnected his right leg at the tendons, then clubbed a bank robber with his disengaged limb until police arrived, has the U.S. government paid a super hero for any act of service. The day after he was awarded $75,000 by President George Bush, the last agreement in place expired; the two sides have been negotiating on terms—primarily related to pensions and health insurance—since then. But once WikiLeaks, the international organization that publishes anonymous government and corporate information, released hundreds of U.S. diplomatic cables to the Web last week, the need to get an agreement in place has never been more pressing.

According to White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, what the U.S. government needs right now is a guy from Scranton, Pennsylvania, a meek super hero who’s terrified to cross the picket line, even if doing so might stave off another deep economic recession. “[Julian] Assange [WikiLeaks’ founder and president] is threatening to release critical information about several large U.S. corporations,” said Gibbs, addressing a kindergarten class as part of its Bring Your Grandpa to School Day. “Ones I own stock in!

“If we can’t get an agreement in place with the USU—or get this twit to cross the picket line—your parents probably won’t be able to afford to pay your college tuition…not that a 6-year-old would care. How ‘bout this—I wouldn’t be surprised if they won’t be able to afford Christmas presents this year!”

Tucker Orville, the twit about whom Gibbs spoke, was granted his USU card upon graduating from Monmouth College in 2008 with a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science. His Algorithm Design and Analysis professor jokingly called him Byte Man after Orville aced his final exam. The name stuck. And when Orville delivered a pizza to the USU headquarters, the receptionist was quick to notice his whimsical Byte Man name badge. The USU, always long on physical prowess, is often criticized for being painfully short on technological acumen, a critical shortcoming in the information age. They offered Orville a union card on the spot, and promptly took his first year’s dues from his tips pouch.

“I guess being a superhero is kinda’ cool,” said Orville, exiting his blue Prius while balancing two stacked pizza boxes in his right hand. “But I thought there would be some money in it. Some money. I’m still driving pizzas all over town, and I’ve got a lot of student loans to pay off. I hope they get the agreement signed soon. If nothing else,” he said, gesturing to the super hero costume he wore, a light blue, Lycra Spandex body suit, “I’d really like to hire an outfit pro to work on my get-up. A “B” and “M” made out of electrical tape and stuck to my chest doesn’t impress many people.”

So Orville found himself caught in the middle of a time-honored struggle, one involving strikes, picket lines, physical threats, hairy backs, and seedy, smoke-filled backroom negotiations, primarily involving politicians. It’s a world Orville knew little—or even cared—about until Gibbs ordered a pizza one day and requested Byte Man personally deliver it to his office in Washington, D.C., a three hour drive from Scranton.

“I told young Mr. Orville who he was dealing with,” said Gibbs, smiling. “And I’m not talking about the U.S. government. Unfortunately, he’ll grow more and more disillusioned about us as he gets older. But I wanted to give him a little history lesson about the USU. I told him how talks broke down with them when we needed to find Bin Laden because we discovered their superheroes were crappy map readers and directionally-challenged. We didn’t need somebody who could lift a train, we needed somebody who could find a gangly bearded guy in the mountains of Afghanistan.”

Gibbs insists the days of needing superheroes who can lift buildings and see through walls are over, that it’s time for the geeks to step forward, the people who know how to hack into the servers and computers of super villains like Assante. But even though he believes the USU’s time has come and gone, he’s quick to point out that their members have done good work in the past. He cited Ollie the Odiferous, the superhero who smelled the Unibomber’s body odor from Denmark, then tracked him to a shanty in the mountains of Montana.

“As I mentioned to Tucker,” continued Gibbs, “he could make a lot more money working directly for the government. And we could give him a good outfit, one befitting a real Byte Man, maybe something covered with sequined ‘1’s’ and ‘0’s’.

“And we’ve offered him protection if he crosses the picket line—not that he’ll need it. Most of the USU superheroes are old and fat, and just sit around drinking coffee, eating cereal, and talking about the good old days when superheroes were strong and super villains didn’t flinkle around with computers and electronics.”

But Orville hasn’t decided what to do, not, he says, because he has anything against the government, but because he’s just plain scared. “Mr. Gibbs says he’ll protect me if I cross the picket line, whatever the picket line is. I just know it ultimately means a lot of old dudes will want to kick my ass. He says, ‘They’re old, they’re fat’, but I’m 25 and can’t lift a dining room chair over my head. At my age, these dudes could change the Earth’s rotation. So they can only lift something like my car? You don’t think they could kick my ass now?

“And I haven’t told him [Gibbs] this yet, but I don’t even know if I’m a real super hero. It’s obvious he didn’t do any research on me. I just aced one test in college, but that was due to a lot of coffee and a handful of diet pills. I guess he just figured if I was in the USU, I could stop WikiLeaks, whatever that is.” Orville scratches his head, then brightens. “I wonder if there’s an Xbox game about it. If there is, it’s Game On WikiLeaks.”—Citizen Dick Arneson reporting