The Truth Be Told

This is a self-contained writing task, so here is the synopsis.

At Whit's End, Wooton Bassett unveils a superhero story he has invented to support Whit and Connie's new effort to teach kids about having a Christian worldview. His tale is set in a world with no right or wrong, where mild-mannered librarian Josiah King works late reshelving books while his best friend Darren Gray upgrades the library's computer, carelessly scattering sunflower seeds. When seeds slip into the machine, which is connected to the city's nuclear reactor, it explodes, hurling Josiah through a wall into a hidden room of banned books. Trapped in the rubble, he discovers shelves full of a book he has never heard of, the Holy Bible, and reads it all night while a radioactive leak fills the room with strange fumes. By morning, the knowledge that absolute truth comes from God has been transformed into superpowers, and the rescuers dig out not a librarian but a new hero: Captain Absolutely, sworn to defend "truth, justice, and lots more truth."

Meanwhile, in Odyssey, young reporter Jill Segler meets Mr. Beaumont, editor of the brand-new Odyssey Tribune. He offers her a tryout assignment: investigate rumors that Whit's End is brainwashing kids into becoming Christians. Jill has never seen anything like that there, but she agrees to get the scoop. Whit, who knows Beaumont once worked for a Chicago tabloid that manufactured dirt when it couldn't dig any up, greets Jill's arrival with a knowing hum and has Connie give her a tour. Another girl, Leslie, asks to tag along and begins taking careful notes of her own.

Connie explains that a worldview is what a person assumes to be true about the world, and that Whit's End's new displays help kids measure popular ideas against God's truth. In the Good Room, plugged into the Imagination Station, kids land in the middle of Hitler's 1939 invasion of Czechoslovakia and wrestle with what "good" and "evil" really mean - whether goodness is just not hurting people, or social conditioning, or something in your genes - before looking at the question in light of God's truth. In the Assumptive Language Room, a buzzer sounds every time a documentary narrator states an unproven claim as fact, teaching kids to notice when they're being told to assume something is true. Jill is impressed enough to wish her school had one, and begins to wonder aloud why Mr. Beaumont has a problem with any of it.

Back in Wooton's story, Captain Absolutely spars verbally with the cynical mayor, then answers an alarm at a computer plant, where he confronts a masked burglar who introduces himself as Dr. Relative. The villain insists stealing can't be wrong since everybody does it, and blasts the Captain with his Neutralizer, a weapon that weakens belief in absolute truth by dredging up all the wrongs its victim has ever done - even a pencil once taken from the library. Overcome, Captain Absolutely wakes in the doctor's hideout, bound in the "shackles of selfishness," and hears the evil plan: a lie-virus called the Lyrus that will spread through water, computers, television, food, and air until God's truth is wiped out forever.

The two showdowns come to a head together. Jill refuses Beaumont's assignment, telling him, "It would be a lie to do it the way you want" - and even catches him using assumptive language. Beaumont coolly replies that the story will be written anyway, by someone with ambition, and calls in Leslie, who has been gathering material for him all along. Jill walks out. In the story, Captain Absolutely spots sunflower seeds scattered across the hideout floor and unmasks Dr. Relative as his old friend Darren Gray, who was blown into the philosophy section during the explosion and discovered relative truth. When the Captain refuses one last invitation to join him, he snaps the invincible shackles - they only hold people who believe the lie of selfishness - declaring that he lives for God's eternal truth and will die for it if necessary. He captures Dr. Relative and thwarts the Lyrus.

When Wooton finishes, Whit springs a surprise of his own: he is reviving an old idea, a kids' newspaper called The Whole Truth, dedicated to honest stories about the town and the world. He invites Jill to write for it, since she won't be working for the Tribune, and asks Wooton to turn Captain Absolutely into a regular comic strip. Both delightedly accept, and the story closes with the Captain zooming into the sky toward his next adventure.