Hello, people of the city! Now, everyone knows that your subway system is in real bad shape, and everyone is real angry that no one seems to be doing anything about it. That is why I am so honored to officially announce that I, Zippy the Jetpack Boy, have been hired by your Mayor to fix it all up and send it zooooming on its way!

Now, some vocal critics have suggested I might not be qualified to fix the subway system, being, as I am, a twelve-year-old boy who flies around fighting street-level crime thanks to the steam-powered jetpack left to me by my inventor father. A little Jetpack Boy who has never known what it’s like to be tethered to the ground, let alone what it means to be underneath it.

This is a fair point, but I’d point out that no one knows more about getting from point A to point B with lethal efficiency than Zippy the Jetpack Boy, and I’m sure that this is bound to rub off on the job.

Perhaps attaching a 3 million dollar jetpack to the trains will make them go faster?

Now, other equally vocal critics have pointed out that the state of the subway system is largely due to financial mismanagement at the highest levels of city and state government, and that the topic might be too heady for a twelve year old whose only qualification is going ‘puff puff puff’ around the city in his little blue jetpack, catching bank robbers with his tiny friend Miyoko the Helpful Robot, who also has never needed to use the subway because he doesn’t have a job to go to.

Now, these mean comments hurt me almost as deeply as the mysterious death of my inventor father at the hands of Dr. Gizmoto. Yes, the same father who left me with gyrocopters and laser-laces that’d make my classmates jetpack-blue in the face.

Look, if nothing else: we mean well. Just because the one time I even went to check out what a subway platform looked like, the fumes from my little blue jetpack knocked out a dozen people waiting for a G train—and then Miyoko caused four hours of delays because he kind of looks like a little walking bomb—that doesn’t mean that we don’t have the best of intentions.

And, at the end of the day, that subway’s only gonna get fixed a very general idea of what a commuter might experience, and the support of the police, who, as a reactionary boy vigilante, I obviously support and assist.

Now, my radio-watch says that one of Dr. Gizmoto’s Moto-cycles is wreaking havoc outside the train station! Zip-zip! I’m outta here! Miyoko, away! It only takes four minutes to get from City Hall to Midtown!

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