Chapter Eighteen

Epilogue: THE NEW WORLD

Additional material by Steve Mollett and John Phillips

 

            It had been a little after midnight when Uncle Sam emerged at the top of the capital steps and addressed the growing crowd that had begun to gather as soon as the final Sentinels had been dispatched and the air defense sirens had sounded all clear. Behind Uncle Sam stood Captain America, Agent Buddy Smith and Senator John F. Kennedy, leader of the organized political resistance against Legion, who supported Dwight Eisenhower, still weak, but determined. Although all of his aids and Secret Service agents demanded that Eisenhower immediately leave for a hospital, he hotly refused. He’d been away from the country for too long.

 

            Uncle Sam looked out at the sea of faces stretching through the streets. These were people who had been buffeted by months of crisis and terror and who had peeked out their windows earlier in the night and seen an aerial battle unparalleled in the nation’s history. These were people who had turned on their televisions and seen America’s capital under siege; the attackers--once applauded, now vilified--fighting as no one had ever seen them fight before. They’d seen two Captain Americas clash, one revealed to be an imposter and dispatched, and they had seen something awful and blasphemous boil out of the President’s body--something that they vaguely suspected had been there for a while.

 

            The people had now come to see what was going to happen next and to decide, if necessary, which side they would take. Many had brought weapons. There was a faint tinge of hope in their faces that perhaps, just perhaps, it was finally over, but it was being overwhelmed by months’ worth of fear, paranoia and anxiety. The air was quiet, but filled with nervous electricity and barely restrained anger.

 

            Standing there, Uncle Sam suddenly realized that this was the moment he was put on earth for.

 

            Uncle Sam stepped forward and the words came. He spoke of the indomitable American will, of freedom and heroism, and the thousand tales that would soon spread throughout the land which would reveal the true heart of America. He talked of the future and vigilance; of the colossal responsibility that came with being Americans, and how fragile freedom could be. It was a cautious speech, but one of victory and joy. 

           

            It was also a speech of farewell.

 

"The wisdom we show...and the foolishness...the good we do...and the evil....is entirely up to US!” Uncle Sam said, voice ringing off the monuments. “There is nobody else...only US! Your future...America's future...is up to YOU...ALL of YOU!”

 

“In this form, I must leave you now. Do not grieve; I will not be gone. I shall always be here. As long as any American lives, so will I. As long as there is anyone in the world who believes in true freedom and fairness, I will walk the endless, bountiful stretches of this land. As you live inside me, I live inside all of you. Do me proud!"

 

            The familiar image of Uncle Sam then faded. The bright colors of red, white and blue now evaporated like smoke, solidifying into simple, drab 1930s work clothes. An old man now stood before the crowd. Like Uncle Sam, he had a neatly trimmed goatee of the whitest hair, but he was smaller and his face was older, more weathered. He looked out over the hopeful, innumerable faces of his fellow Americans and smiled. His work was, at last, done.

 

            The old man’s eyes closed and he fell backward. Captain America and Buddy Smith caught him in their arms and lowered him gently to the ground. Captain America felt for a pulse, but there was none. The old man had finally found peace.

 

Agent Buddy Smith removed his sunglasses, his eyes red with tears. He kneeled over the old man’s body. "Papa..." he whispered.

 

            Later, when the memorial was built to honor those who had fallen during the second struggle for American independence, resting right beside the names of the honored dead in polished bronze were all of Uncle Sam’s immortal words; the words he had uttered in a voice so strong it seemed that everyone in the country could hear them.

 

            The words that had restored the hope and promise of the new world.  

 

**********

 

            The parades and celebrations continued for two days. Already people were calling November 18th the Second American Independence Day and when President Eisenhower went ahead and declared it a national holiday no one was surprised.

 

            Just as Uncle Sam had promised, tales of heroism and sacrifice during the crisis from all over the country were now circulating wildly. Dissidents and political fugitives, whose lives were saved by a network of safe houses set up by families and churches throughout the Midwest, spoke glowingly of elemental human decency. Crowds laughed as they heard how a hapless Sentinel Of Liberty organizer in Los Angeles had attempted to order his Youth Vigilance Brigade to assist in enforcing Legion’s martial law decree, only to find himself talking to an empty room filled with tossed away armbands and empty uniforms. A grass roots effort to circumvent the Court Marshall of an entire army platoon that had refused to fire on civilian protesters in Chicago--choosing to arrest their commanding officer, instead--was already under way. People spoke in reverential whispers of Shelly Jassen, a Pentagon telephone operator, who’d cut National Security Advisor Albert Sunderland’s phone line just before he could issue an order redirecting the Sentinels to begin attacking civilian targets in order to better distract the JLA. Sunderland, himself, then summarily executed her for treason. The security tapes of NoMan’s final moments had been recovered from the island and widely shown, making him even more of folk hero than he already had been.

 

            While sometimes bittersweet, these were all tales of hope and they were everywhere.

 

            When word of the events in America circulated, the world let out a collective sigh of relief. The markets in Tokyo and London opened “up” for the first time in months. Trade was almost immediately normalized, as the U.S. immediately dropped several embargoes and blockades.

 

            Thousands of expatriates, who had feared the worst and fled America, now began to return to their homes and families. One of these individuals was Lex Luthor who returned to find his company in utter chaos. 

 

            Between IRS audits, anti-trust suits and other legal harassment, the financial damage to Lexcorp had been considerable. Similar things had happened to Stark Industries, although to a much lesser degree. Oddly, though, the situation at Stark Industries still seemed much more grave than at Lexcorp for some reason. It was as if the formerly sure hand in control of the company had completely disappeared, and chaos was reigning. It was whispered that Tony Stark had not handled the stress of the past few months particularly well and had become.... ill. All in all, it would be a good while before either Lexcorp or Stark Industries would be able to act as patrons for the JLA again.

 

            Yet that was probably just as well.

 

            For everyone involved had learned the hard lesson that the crisis had taught. It had been the public’s perception that too much unaccountable power had accumulated in the hands of a few metahumans and their technocrat allies that allowed Legion to fan a flame of resentment so large that it almost consumed the world.

 

            The JLA and their private sector patrons had been too insular and too closely connected for too long. Based on how intimately they had worked and consulted, it was not difficult to see why so many people had been willing to believe they were a clandestine cabal, rapidly becoming the de facto rulers of the country, if not the planet.

 

            The JLA had simply been careless and overconfident in not realizing how the public would perceive their actions. There had been no malice, but it didn’t matter. They had still created an undercurrent of distrust in the public, and this was what had almost doomed them all.

 

            Never again.

 

            Indeed, some members of the JLA wondered if, after everything that had happened, it would perhaps be better for all concerned if they just went their separate ways completely and formally disbanded the League, itself.

 

            President Eisenhower, quickly recovering from his ordeal, disagreed.

 

            Ike was a plainspoken man. When he called in representatives of the JLA after hearing murmurs that they were discussing disbanding, he simply told them that they were being stupid. While Ike agreed that the JLA’s relationship to certain commercial interests had perhaps been too cozy and, for the sake of propriety, those ties should be lessened, he was adamant that the JLA was simply too important to the safety and freedom of the world to be closed down. He said that he owed the JLA his life, and America its soul. The JLA members’ selfless actions and sacrifices had proven their patriotism beyond any doubt.

 

            Legion was gone. It was time for healing: A new beginning.

 

            Legion’s illegal executive orders had already been declared null and void, and now Ike made public policy: The JLA would again be a private organization, with all the freedoms and restrictions that this status entailed.

 

            “If I learned anything in the Army,” Ike said, “it’s that whenever you find something that works on its own, the last thing you do is mess with it. Metropolis held the winning bid for building the new Hall of Justice. It’s a gift from the American people. Work starts on Monday. Shouldn’t take long, with the Army Corps of Engineers lending a hand. Now scoot. I’m late for a meeting with my new VIP.

 

            “You’re back in business.”

 

**********

 

            The services for Archie Goodwin took place at the Red Knight memorial in San Francisco.

 

As dictated by Archie Goodwin’s Will, a large plaque was now set into marble at the base of the Red Knight statue. It read simply:

 

Jonathon Carlos Winchester

1870-1952

 

Archie Everett Goodwin

1912-1955

 

Only in death did the world know the real names of the men who had given their lives to help protect it.

 

At the service, many of Archie’s comrades took the podium to share their memories and give tribute, each in their own way. As one of the last surviving members of the original Justice Society of America, Blue Beetle spoke movingly of all the other fine men he’d worked with over the years; men he also had to performed this solemn duty for, Goodwin now joining their most esteemed company. The Joker told several uproarious anecdotes about Archie. Lex Luthor discussed Goodwin’s considerable philanthropic activities, most of which Archie never told anyone about. Tony Stark, disheveled and obviously miserable, mumbled a short speech in a cracking voice. But no one expected what came next from the usually shy, quiet little boy in the slightly over-sized black suit.

 

Warden Braffert’s eyes were red and puffy, with dark circles underneath them. He stepped onto a box to raise him to the level of the lectern and grasped its top edges by each side to steady his shaking hands. He looked nervously out across the crowd and sniffled one last time.

 

Warden began speaking in a soft quivering voice about Archie Goodwin’s humble beginnings as a Los Angeles police officer and how he became involved with both Jonathon Winchester and Annette Rosenberg. He talked of friendship and love. And he talked of loss. “The woman he loved, Annette Rosenberg, was the first. The romance that had blossomed between them was cut short when a confrontation with the Patchwork Man left her mind shattered. Alive, but withdrawn from the world, Miss Rosenberg’s fate was constantly on Archie’s mind. He would never be able to rest until he found a way to bring her back,” Warden said.

 

“Then Archie’s first true friend, his teacher, his mentor, Jonathan Winchester passed,” Warden continued, eyes furtively glancing between the top of the podium and the crowd. “Mr. Winchester, the first Red Knight, provided the example that shaped the rest of Archie’s life when he sacrificed himself to save the lives of thousands. His death left Archie rich and influential, but with a hole in his heart that never healed.

 

“Archie Goodwin lost the people who were closest to him; but don’t pity him for his loss. Through it all, Archie found his fulfillment by devoting himself to the service of others.

 

“As everyone close to him was torn from his life,” Warden said, his body starting to relax and move slightly with the rhythms of his speech, “Archie threw himself farther and farther into a life of serving and saving others. When it became possible for him to serve as the Red Knight, he did it without hesitation. Presented with the chance to lead a life of privilege and luxury, Archie instead chose to risk his life for the chance to help people he had never met. As Mr. Winchester had taught him over the years, Archie recognized the duty that every man has to the rest of the world: To provide whatever aid is within his ability without concern for the cost. In the case of Archie Goodwin, that ability and the dedication to use it wisely is what lead the world to call him a superhero.

 

“In striving to live up to the legacy of the Red Knight, Archie enlarged that legacy; but don’t lionize him for his accomplishments as a hero, they were secondary to his worth as a man.

 

“The loss of Archie Goodwin will be felt by everyone in the world,” Warden said, his eyes no longer red as he now looked directly at the assembly. “Miss Rosenberg will have the comfort and strength of his love for her only in memory. I and the other members of the Justice League will no longer be able to depend on his dedication, his humor in the face of danger, his focus and his intolerance of injustice. Thousands of people all over the world will go home tonight knowing that, without his work, they would never have had the chance to mourn him.

 

“There is a hole in the heart of the world at the passing of Archie Goodwin; but don’t fall into that hole in despair,” Warden called out, his voice now ringing out. “It is a hole that must be filled by everyone at this service, everyone in this city, everyone in the country, everyone in the world,” Warden yelled, slipping into the familiar tones and cadences of the country preachers he had grow up listening to, his arms now sweeping out to emphasize every point. “And there is only one way to fill this hole: Archie’s way.”

 

“When the woman he loved was taken from him, Archie gave his love to the world. When a man who he would have happily served for a lifetime died saving strangers, Archie choose to serve everyone,” Warden thundered, his words now being delivered in emotive flurry, sweat replacing tears. “And when his friends sacrificed comfort, security, reputation and health to save our country from evil and tyranny, Archibald Everett Goodwin joined Jonathan Winchester, Anthony Dunn, Rex Mason, The Spirit, and so many others whose names we don’t even know throughout history, in making the ultimate sacrifice.”

 

Warden paused to let his the word “sacrifice” echo for a moment. He then took a deep breath. “With Archie gone,” he said, now speaking softly again, but with strength emboldening every word, “the duty now rests on all the rest of us: To love unstintingly, to serve unreservedly, and to sacrifice without hesitation. We must each follow the course Archie laid out in his life as a private citizen and as the Red Knight. Archie Goodwin was a man whose like will not soon be seen again, but don’t mourn his passing. Celebrate his living, and maintain his memory by striving each day to live as though, without your help, it will be someone else’s last.”

 

Done, Warden then slumped visibly. His shoulders shook once as if stifling a sob. Annette Rosenberg, dressed in a flowing black dress and veil, rose from her seat and walked up to the podium. She opened her arms to him and they hugged. Walter then went back to his seat in the front row with the rest of the JLA, leaving Annette alone at the podium.

 

Her turn.

 

She looked out at her love’s friends and comrades. There was no way to top what had just transpired using mere words.

 

But then she never had any intention of using any.

 

Annette Rosenberg simply closed her eyes. And remembered.

 

Every moment, every detail, every word, every touch—all rendered in perfect clarity and spun through the sparkling glass of deepest affection. It was everything he had ever meant to her, everything he had ever made her feel. It was what poets write about and what people dream about, and she’d been one of the lucky few to have it. To her credit, she had never failed to realize that or treasure its true worth.

 

And now she shared what it had felt like with everyone present.

 

            Annette Rosenberg opened her eyes and turned to the table next to the podium. On top of the table was a small red urn that contained Archie Goodwin’s ashes. His body had been cremated, as per his instructions, and now there was only one last instruction to carry out. Annette picked up the urn and lifted slowly into the sky. She then flew west to San Francisco Bay. Out of the sight of prying eyes and cameras, she then fulfilled Archie Goodwin’s very last wish and scattered his ashes over the water, near where Jonathon Winchester had died three years earlier. 

           

            Afterward, the rest of the JLA adjourned to the Wake, which was held, in accordance with Archie’s Will, at the pub in the neighborhood where Archie had grown up. Later on, and again in strict accordance with Archie’s Will, the Joker’s drink was discreetly spiked with a variation of the “Joker Happy Juice” that had once caused Archie to wind up in bed with the Red Kommissar, leading directly to the highpoint of the evening when The Joker made a sloppy pass at Genni-Cide.

 

            After the JLA pulled Harley Quinn and Genni-Cide apart, and paid the bartender for a new wall, (Archie had already set aside funds in his Will for any damages that were accrued), everyone just smiled and realized that Archie would have wanted it this way. The Wake broke up around midnight and everyone went home, feeling that odd feeling of melancholy closure that is the very most such rituals can bring.

 

            Tony Stark never made it to the Wake. He held his own, by himself, in his office until his personal bar was empty again. He preferred to drink alone these days.

 

            Over the next few weeks, many people visited the memorial to the Red Knight, and anyone who approached the statue of Red Knight could still feel the warmth of Annette Rosenberg’s love for Archie Goodwin and see fleeting flashes of her fondest memories of him. Some of the people who visited said prayers or lit candles. A few children came and left their Red Knight action figures at the foot of the statue. A few people took pictures. Many left flowers.

 

            One left a bouquet of a dozen black roses accompanied by a small, simple card that showed the twin masks of Comedy & Tragedy.

 

            Another night, a bright flash of white light momentarily blinded a small group of sightseers at the memorial. When they could see again, the sightseers noticed that a large scrapbook had been left under the statue. Inside the book was a collection of newspaper articles about the Red Knight spanning his entire career; everything from his first appearance in the 1930s to Archie Goodwin’s memorial service, each article cut out of the newspaper and pasted inside the book with obvious affection and care.

 

            Later that night, around 3 a.m., when the park was almost utterly deserted and no one was near the memorial, a man approached. He wore a gray trench coat and its empty right sleeve flapped in the breeze. He slowly wandered to the memorial. When he felt the echo of a woman’s love that permeated the area, he shivered and growled.

 

            He looked at the flowers and the flickering candles and the cards and the other testaments to the Red Knight that lay underneath his stature. He saw Archie Goodwin’s name right underneath Jonathon Winchester’s on the bronze plaque.

 

            The one armed man spit on Archie Goodwin’s name.

 

            Bastard. Think you’re a hero. Not worth crap. I’ll show them.

 

            Someday I’ll show them all.

 

**********

 

"Yes, Jenkins?" Lex Luthor said, addressing his general manager who had just entered the chaotic office.

 

"The final report, Mr. Luthor. Between what was destroyed, what was confiscated and what was just, plain neglected, we’re in the hole pretty deep."

 

"What about the employees?" Luthor asked.

 

"Those who haven’t quit are up to the challenge, sir, though I suggest limited layoffs to cover the short-term costs of rebuilding our base."

 

"No layoffs; we’ve got good people!" Luthor replied with unshakable authority. "Stop my personal salary until we’re back on our feet. I’ve still got way more than enough of that filthy, green stuff in the bank still to keep me comfortable." After a pause Luthor smiled wistfully. "Isn’t it wonderful, Jenkins?"

 

"Sir?" the perplexed manager replied.

 

"Legion and his goons helped us sweep out years and years of mistakes." Luthor grinned, "Now we’re free to start again from scratch! Isn’t it wonderful?"

 

**********

 

            James Gordon stepped off the hospital elevator onto the twelfth floor and flashed his badge at the floor nurse. She nodded and he walked past the front desk and down the hall. It was after 10 p.m. and the corridor was quiet, the lights dim.

 

            Gordon saw the blue uniformed officer sitting in front of the door to room 672 as he rounded the corner. “Evening, Merkel.”

 

            Officer Merkel stood up, recognizing who was approaching. “Evening, Commissioner. Glad to have you back.”

 

            Gordon nodded with a slight, modest smile. “How’d the transfer from Hub City go?”

 

            “No problems, Commissioner.”

 

            “Good.”

 

            “If you don’t mind me asking, Commissioner, why’d we have him transferred to Gotham, anyway?” Officer Frankel asked.

 

            “Favor for a friend,” Gordon replied. Gordon glanced at the door. “The official word came through an hour ago. The charges against him have been dropped.”

 

            “Oh, right,” Merkel said and fumbled with the keys on his belt. He unlocked the hospital room’s door and they walked in. Rain splattered the window and lighting flashed outside, the low rumble coming a few seconds later. The window was open just a crack. There was a small puddle of water on the floor at the foot of the bed.

 

            “Storm’s passing,” Merkel said as he walked over and closed the window, locking it. He didn’t notice the puddle.

 

            Gordon did. “For us, yes. I think it is,” Gordon said. He stood beside the bed and turned on the bedside lamp. David MacAllister laid there silently, unmoving, his left hand still cuffed to the iron bedrail. Most of his injuries were healed by now.

 

            Most of them.

 

            Gordon removed a key from his brown coat pocket. “It’s almost nothing, but it’s all we can do for him right now, and I wanted to do it personally.”

 

            Gordon reached down and unlocked the handcuffs, releasing David MacAllister. “He’s not a prisoner anymore, Merkel,” Gordon said as he put the handcuffs in his pocket. “You can head on home now.”

 

            “Thanks, Commissioner,” Merkel said. “Good night.”

 

            “Good night. Give my best to Brenda.”

 

            Merkel left and closed the door behind him. Gordon looked at the man in the bed. Gordon turned off the bedside lamp and walked over to the window and unlocked it. Then he left.

 

            A familiar caped figure, standing on air outside the window, watched him go. He reached to open the window again, but paused. He turned from the window and looked toward the heart of the city. It was still raining, perhaps not as hard as it once had been, but it still came down. In Gotham, it always seemed to be raining.

 

            The Joker and Harley Quinn were still trying to put The Funhouse back together and needed help. Batman had been broken out of the hospital ward at Arkham Asylum by some crazy acolyte who called herself Batgirl. Electro and Moses Mayhem, two of the villains that Legion had enlisted for his metahuman goon squad, had successfully escaped the mop up in Washington D.C. and taken up residence in Gotham’s Park District, otherwise known as Crime Alley. They had been hoping to set themselves up as the head of the rackets, but all they really did was precipitate another violent mob war. And Catwoman was atoning for the help she’d given the Justice League during the crisis by using the mob war as cover for a series of daring jewel heists.

 

            He couldn’t stay long, but for every moment that he could, he would.

 

            Hunching his shoulders against the cold drizzle, The Amazing Ghost Fighter opened the window and re-entered his brother’s hospital room.

 

**********

 

            The storm near Sri Lanka had been pretty bad. From what little they heard from the radio, which still cut out with maddening frequency due to the damage it sustained, the two other freighters in the group had broken up and were lost.

 

            The crew of the Celeste had been lucky. While they were still off course and the captain had been swept overboard, the first mate had a sure hand for navigation and had plotted a course that everyone knew would get them to Malaysia before the week was out.

 

            The first mate stood outside the bridge in pale lamplight under a thin, crescent moon. The stars were out in force and thus he needed no other navigational aids at all. He looked up to the North Star and, based simply on its position, plotted a course in his head that would circumnavigate the globe and bring the ship back to this exact spot.

 

            He worked it in his mind until he was satisfied with the course’s elegance and then checked the navel chronometer through he bridge’s window. Thirty-five seconds. Not bad, but he could do better.

 

            The first mate only wished that the world made as much sense in general as it did from a navigational standpoint.

 

            He might have to do something about that someday.

 

            Yes. He probably would.

 

            He looked back up at the sky and at the moon. He scanned the familiar trajectories around it, wondering if this would be another night he would spy the blue luminescent line of Cherenkov radiation that accompanied Zero Man’s transit through the night’s sky. After a few minutes, one shimmered into view and curled around the moon, fading almost instantly.

 

            Adrian Veidt smiled and allowed himself one last breath of clean salt air before he went below deck and got back to work.

 

**********

 

            “You scream like a woman, Dimitri!”

 

The Crimson Dynamo laughed as he rained more fire down upon the KGBeast from 15 feet above. General Prokov’s armor was designed for maximum terror. The laser cannons which had been standard issue for the Red Army’s version of the suit had been removed and replaced with flame throwers and a nasty sonic weapon that made up for it’s ineffectiveness against armored or inorganic targets with its ability to literally rip the flesh off the bones of living ones.

 

            He had used it on the KGBeast. All it really did was make him angrier. At least the KGBeast was no longer thinking about stealing the food shipment from the burning train only a hundred feet away. This was good: It gave Prokov’s team a chance to steal it, instead.

 

            He hoped they were quick. Despite all his mocking, Prokov’s lack of heavy weapons was a series impediment in this fight. None of this armor’s weapons could piece the incredibly tough hide of the KGBeast. Still, this didn’t concern him all that much. Prokov wasn’t supposed to have been able to kill the NVKDemon when Volso’s faction split off and tried to take over Leningrad, either. Something would come up. It always did.

 

            Prokov never even heard the whistle of the artillery shell that blasted him out of the air.

 

            The KGBeast opened its fanged mouth unnaturally wide and brayed. “Idiot! These supplies rightfully belong to the strong and you and your pathetic faction are anything but!” He assumed the artillery burst had come from his allies. He was wrong.

 

            Hypersonic, the second artillery shell obliterated the patch of tundra the KGBeast was standing on and threw him into the air. He landed a dozen feet away, on his back. Only half conscious, he tried to sit up. A piston-like kick suddenly cam down, impacting precisely on the weak spot at the base of his hardened skull. He collapsed on his belly. He blacked out for only a second, but was too dizzy to get up. His cat-like eyes opened and could see only a pair of red, stiletto heeled boots standing right beside his head.

 

            “The shipment will reach its destination. The food belongs to the people,” the woman said, her voice as cold as the ground the KGBeast was laying on. “You have forgotten for whom you fight; I have not.”

 

            “Sentimental fool!” the KGBeast hissed. He craned his head up and looked at the Red Kommissar. “It is our destiny to rule! The old government was weak! Our just régime is strong! We deserve to lead!”

 

            “You deserve nothing,” the Red Kommissar replied. “My father fought power mad criminals just like you during The Great Patriotic War. Again, I have not forgotten.”

 

            “You have betrayed your former comrades, Kerensky. We save our long memories for traitors. A hundred years from now, your name will be a curse.”

 

            If the Red Kommissar felt anything, her face did not reveal it. “I have warned you before about fighting your little war this close to the city. This region and its people, including the refugees fleeing here from you and your enemy’s ‘just régimes,’ are under my protection. I do issue second warnings.” She removed a burnished, blue steel staff from the tight, red leather harness she wore. Unlike Prokov, the Red Kommissar had weapons that could pierce the hide of the KGBeast.

 

            When she was finished, the Red Kommissar looked back at the train. Her men had taken care of Prokov’s force and were already loading the food onto jeeps. The shipment would make it, one way or another.

 

            Moscow would be safe for another day.

 

**********

 

            Theresa Clark exited the MIT high-energy plasma lab, her nose in a book as usual. A short, intense, young woman, Theresa kept to herself, but everyone on campus still recognized her. This was partially because she was one of the few women enrolled, but mostly because everyone who saw her worried that she was going to walk into an open manhole someday. She always looked the same, striding through the campus purposefully, clad in a ridiculously puffy blue coat to ward off the Massachusetts winter, her brown hair in a bun so tight it threatened to collapse into a black hole, reading a book no less than 500 pages with a cover as exciting as a burlap sack. Many regarded her as a figure of fun; invariably these were people that had never taken any classes with her—those that had knew better.

 

            Benton Raymond suddenly appeared at her side as she continued to almost preternaturally avoid obstacles in her path. Benton thought she was kind of cute, despite the sometimes frosty reserve. He sat next to her in Physics 501. Being somewhat geeky himself, Benton’s dream of them someday becoming the perfect couple only grew as the semester wore on. “Hi, Theresa,” he said as he caught up to her.

 

            “Hmmm,” she replied noncommittally. She’d gotten to a good part in the book. She couldn’t be expected to be polite when she got to good parts.

 

            Benton was used to that. He had even convinced himself that he found it endearing. He leaned forward to check out the cover of the book she was reading.

 

            “Dr. Joy?” Benton said, remarking on the book’s author. “Didn’t he try to blow up Hub City six months ago?”

 

            “Wouldn’t know, was in the lab. All I know is that they cancelled the course he was going to teach this semester. I was registered for it. I’m still bitter.”

 

            Benton thought he caught a trace of a smile that may, or may not, have been there. They stopped at a crosswalk and waited for the light. “You know, I was wondering if you were ever free for dinner or something? You know, just a casual thing. No big deal.”

 

            Theresa looked up from the book. The light still hadn’t changed. “Will going out with you decrease the amount of time you spend bothering me while I read, or just increase it?” she asked.

 

            Benton wasn’t sure he liked the context she was putting this in, but pressed on anyway. “Decrease it. Definitely.”

 

            For the first time since he started walking with her, she looked at him. “Let me think about it.”

 

            “Oh, sure,” Benton said. “Of course. Well, whenever is….”

 

            “Okay, I’ve thought about it. Next Monday. Seven p.m. Wear the red sweater. Don’t be late.” She paused as the light changed to “Walk,” her face back in the book. “I think fast.”

 

            Benton smiled widely. “You got it!” he said as they both began to walk across the road. “You won’t be sorry! We’ll have a great time! I know this little place! It serves the best friend calamari!” Benton was so excited he didn’t hear the truck behind him gun its engine and run the red light.

 

            Out of the corner of her eye, Theresa saw the truck lurch forward. She dropped her book and pushed Benton out of the way. Benton was a little bulky, so she had to throw her whole body into him, causing her to loose her balance and fall down in the middle of the street.

 

            Benton rolled awkwardly across the road and looked back at Theresa. The truck wasn’t even trying to stop—it was accelerating.

 

            Theresa reflexively covered her head with her arms and screamed as the truck bore down on her. Benton didn’t want to see what would happen next, but things were moving too fast and the impulse to close his eyes or look away just wasn’t quick enough.

 

            The instant before the truck would have hit her, however, Theresa disappeared in a quick flash of silvery light that made a sound something like cymbals crashing.  The truck rolled through empty air.

 

            This was the very last time Benton Raymond saw Theresa Clark, with one tiny exception:

 

            Benton caught a glimpse of the truck’s driver as the semi roared by. Although it was impossible, he could have sworn that the driver, looking maybe twenty years older, her straight brown hair streaked with gray, was none other than Theresa Clark.

 

            The truck speed down the street and was gone. On the side of the road, the book Theresa had been reading lay open to its title page. It read: “On The Theory And Practice Of Time Travel: A Speculative Argument by Dr. Hieronymous Joy.”

 

**********

 

            A wise man is prepared to abandon his luggage several times during his life.

 

            It was a saying that Dr. Otto Rifenberg often thought back to. Indeed, back at Los Alamos, where the United States military had set up the American Knight project, Rifenberg had taped a card with that saying right above his desk. He never had any illusions about how that job was going to end.

 

            Indeed, perhaps Rifenberg’s true brilliance was in his unerring ability to always detect which way the wind was blowing and know when it was again time to abandon his baggage.

 

            Knowing that his job working for America would be short term and tumultuous, he spent a good part of his time planning his inevitable escape. That was actually rather easy. While most of The Sunderland Corporation was actually delusional enough to believe that they were on the ground floor of a true American Empire, and that the company would soon become an indispensable cross between McDonnell-Douglas and the S.S., some of its officers and scientists were more realistic. They assisted Rifenberg in his complex contingency planes and asked only for him to put in a good word for them with AIM if it was necessary.

 

            Two days before the JLA staged their grand assault on Washington, Rifenberg got that strange, familiar feeling in the pit of his stomach that told him it was necessary.

 

            And this time, Rifenberg had prepared well enough that he was at last able to take his luggage with him.

 

            Rifenberg drew himself a cup of strong black coffee and walked jauntily through his new lab, provided by AIM. The organization had been given new life as it offered safe haven to all the people sympathetic to Legion’s government. This was good. Anything that helped his patron helped him and his work. And he would need those resources to fully exploit the wonders he had brought with him: Advanced weapon designs and research left behind by The Patchwork Man, including a possible bio-weapon that could end metahuman meddling once and for all; cutting edge military hardware and intelligence; thorough reports on Tony Stark’s initial powered armor designs for Red Knight and War Machine; and “The Find” of course.

 

            Ah. “The Find.”

 

            It had been passed on to Rifenberg from deep black sources inside the U.S. government only a few weeks before he made his exit. His sources were predictably circumspect about where they had obtained it, saying only that it had come from interests sympathetic to keeping America and its new order strong.

 

            Rifenberg checked the seals on the large metal cabinet that currently held it. The cabinet looked something like a sarcophagus and was filled with sensors. Wires threaded from it to a mainframe based on a design pilfered from Tony Stark. “The Find” possessed a peculiar energy field that Dr. Rifenberg was again trying to pin down. That energy was the key, he was sure, to unleashing its full potential.

 

            Rifenberg had read Stark’s reports on his work with something very similar, and while a helpful guide, this one seemed so much more versatile, almost as if it had been designed to accept Rifenberg’s improvements. It was a marvel. Rifenberg’s work with the clumsy American Knight prototypes and the Sentinel robots had all been mere prologue to his work here. This is what he would be remembered for; especially when he found a way to tap into and control the armor’s own unique special abilities.

 

            The computer screen began to display long, green columns of numbers, its latest analysis complete. Rifenberg smiled, took a sip of coffee and flipped a switch. Dark purple steam poured out of the sarcophagus as its top half lifted up toward the ceiling, revealing its contents. The harsh fluorescent lights of AIM’s underground lair seemed to melt into the surface of the now heavily augmented Black Knight armor.

 

            “My masterpiece,” Dr. Rifenberg whispered.

 

**********

 

            If anyone had ever timed their own deaths well, it was they.

 

            Conveniently dead while their partners were arrested, tried and convicted, Sue Sorski and Ben Grimm were never charged with any crime relating to their activities as members of The Fearsome Foursome, and by the time they were alive again and could have been charged, they had engendered so much good will by assisting the JLA in their battle with Legion, that the Hub City District Attorney declined to file. Provided, of course, they could find someone responsible to take them in and make sure they stayed out of trouble.

 

            “Dr. Richards,” Sue Sorski said as she exited the elevator, “you really didn’t have to go to all this trouble.” She brushed a lifeless lock of brittle blond hair out of her eyes and privately cursed. Dying her hair green just for the sake of her super “look” had not been one of brighter ideas. It had pretty much wrecked her hair.

 

            But then she had plenty of regrets. This one was just an appetizer.

 

            “Oh, no trouble at all,” Dr. Reed Richards said. His voice still held traces of a northeastern accent. His features were handsome and his prematurely gray sideburns and well-polished, rich cherry wood pipe gave him an air of dignity. “I always intended to turn this floor into apartments for my company’s employees; I’m just moving a little ahead of schedule is all. Please forgive how spartan things are right now, though.”

           

            “You never lived on Yancey Street, have ya’, Doc?” Ben Grimm asked as a bunch of suitcases floated into the hallways. “A broom closet in this place will be bigger than the apartment I lived in growing up.”

 

            “You own this entire building?” Sue asked as they followed Richards down the hallway.

 

            “Actually, no,” Richards answered. “It belongs to a friend of mine, Elliot Baxter, but I keep leasing more and more of it from him as my company grows and the need for space with it.” He took a puff from his pipe and waved toward the ceiling. “The top five floors are nothing but laboratories and work shops these days.”

 

            “We remember,” Ben Grimm said.

 

            It was on those top floors that both he and Sue had been brought following their deaths in Hub City: The very first murders officially attributed to Legion. Dr. Reed Richards, who supervised the government comic ray study that had inadvertently lent a hand in giving them superpowers, wanted to do a few non-invasive tests on their DNA before they were interred, hoping to better understand the miraculous effects the cosmic rays had produced in their bodies.

 

            He had no idea.

 

            Richards, Grimm and Sorski soon came to the end of the hall, freshly painted and with new lighting fixtures hung. Sue noticed a new white door with a silver nameplate that read “ Mr. Johnny Storm.” She pointed at it and looked at Richards quizzically.

 

            “Just thinking ahead. Considering the way he acquitted himself in Washington--fighting Legion’s forces alongside the JLA and then turning himself back in to the civilian authorities when he could easily have simply escaped after the battle--I believe your brother will be paroled and joining us soon.”

 

            “From your lips to God’s ears,” Sue said with a sad sigh.

 

            “Aw, don’t get all mopey, Sue,” Ben said, slinging a friendly, beefy arm around the petite blond. “Old flame-brain will be out of the joint before you know it.”

 

            “And he’s not the only one I am optimistic about reuniting you with,” Reed said as he stepped in front of the white door next to Johnny Storm’s. Reed Richards pulled a key ring out of the pocket of his furry gray sweater and unlocked the door. The nameplate on the door read “James and Sue Sorski.”

 

            Sue read the nameplate and nodded. “I hope he turns up soon.”

 

            “I don’t,” Ben said simply.

 

            “Ben!” Sue snapped. A green glow silhouetted her for a faction of a second.

 

            “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Ben said, “It’s not that the crazy pipsqueak almost got us killed.... He *really did* get us killed! And then when he and Johnny were sprung from jail by the very thing that killed us...”

 

            ”He had no way of knowing that!” Sue interrupted sharply.

 

            “I don’t care! He still just slipped away when things got nasty and left your own brother high and dry! It’s just a good thing flame-brain wised up before things got too out of hand.”

 

            Sue glared at Ben Grimm, but said nothing.

 

            “I’m sorry, Sue, it’s just that...”

 

            “I know. I  know, “ Sue said. ”You don’t have to apologize. I know we all have a lot of things to talk about. That’s why I hope he contacts us soon. But remember, he is still my husband, and I still love him, for all his flaws. That’s why it’s called ‘love’ and not ‘like.’”

 

            Ben Grimm just gave a quick nod and pretended to concentrate on maintaining the null-gravity field that was buoying Sue’s suitcases in the middle of the air.

 

            Reed Richards let the awkward, uncomfortable moment pass without comment. He opened the door and handed the key to Sue. He stepped inside and turned on the electrical switch on the wall next to the door. A chandelier over the living room lit up.

 

            Sue Sorski walked inside. It was large and comfortable, but distant and just the slightest bit too formal. It was a lot like everything else she had seen in the building so far; elegant and reserved, but too utilitarian and calculated. All it really lacked, though, was a woman’s touch. Still, she stood transfixed for a moment before the huge bay windows that afforded a gorgeous view of the New York skyline.

 

            “Do you like it, Mrs. Sorski?” Reed Richards asked, a small note of uncertainty in his voice. “If you’d like something changed....”

 

            “It’s absolutely beautiful! I love it, Dr. Richards!” Sue exclaimed. A moment later, her face fell. “But this is just too much. You’re just being way too generous. We can’t accept....”

 

            “The Hell we can’t,” Ben Grimm interrupted, pushing Sue’s floating luggage into the living room with gentle nudges from a single finger. “Where’s mine?” he asked Reed directly.

 

            “Right across the hall.” Reed Richards held up a key. It drifted through the air and into the outstretched hand of Ben Grim, who quickly left. A yelp of glee was soon heard from across the way.

           

            Sue rubbed her forearms nervously and looked out the window again. “I understand how Ben feels. I feel the same way; we’ve dreamed about stuff like this our entire lives, but we just don’t deserve it. Not after everything we did. The stealing, the fighting; we helped that.... thing that possessed the President.”

 

            “You didn’t understand the ramifications of your actions,” Richards replied. “Now you do. You’ve moved beyond your ignorance and a worldview that began and ended in a tenement in Hub City. That is laudable. Yes, you’ve made mistakes, but you’re trying to make up for them. Let me help you.”

 

            “You really don’t have to take this all on yourself. It’s not like you’re responsible for what happened to us,” she said.

 

            “But I am,” Richards said. “At least, in part. If it weren’t for the satellite I designed, you would never have gotten into the trouble you did. Not to mention everything else you’ve had to suffer through because of it.”

 

            She sighed. “Great. Now I’m sure we’re taking advantage of you.”

 

            “Don’t be silly,” Reed Richards said, letting his accent breath a little and lengthen his vowels. “I just want to take responsibility for my actions. hust as you want to do. Am I wrong?”

 

            “Okay, okay, you win! I can see arguing with you is going to drive me crazy.”

 

            “Then don’t,” he said with a wry smile.

 

            “Not a chance, buster,” she said with a playful poke to his chest. “If you keep the whole world on those shoulders of yours, it will end up crushing you, and you’re too sweet a guy for that.”

 

            Reed Richards was surprised to find himself blushing a little. “Well. I should probably let you unpack and get settled in. Good night, Mrs. Sorski.” Richards started to leave.

 

            Sue watched him step out the door when she heard herself ask, “What are our chances? Of finding out?”

 

            Richards stopped at the open door, but didn’t turn around. “About what really happened the night you both came back?” He paused. “I’m a scientist. There is an answer and we will find it.”

 

            “Did you ever do that test you wanted to do on the surveillance movies from the lab that night?” she asked, trying to sound casual.

 

            “Yes. I did,” he answered, turning around. “They showed nothing like what your described.”

 

            “Ah,” she said simply blandly. “I’m not surprised, really. I mean Ben didn’t see her either, so why would the cameras be any different? I’m probably just crazy or was hallucinating or something. It’s okay. I wouldn’t believe me either.”

 

            Richards turned to face her. “I believe you, Mrs. Sorski.”

 

            “You do?”

 

            “The residual energy I discovered in both you and Mr. Grimm’s cells, presumably from the initial meteor impact that altered you, while sufficient to prevent decomposition for a time, putting you in some sort of stasis, wasn’t going to save you by itself. While I theorized that the energy could have regenerative properties if amplified, the energy was fading quickly from your cells, and there was no possible way to stimulate it. No way at all. Not even as a theory. And yet something did exactly that. Something that is, thus, by its very nature, unbelievable. By that reckoning, what you saw makes perfect sense, Mrs. Sorski,” Reed Richards said.

 

            She smiled. “I have a first name, too, you know?”

 

**********

 

            Windom carefully placed a cheap, red and black cardboard checkerboard on a simple wooden bench fashioned from a thick tree trunk. He set up the board with a set of small plastic chess pieces, the kind available at any dime store.

 

            The cabin was cold and drafty. Windom didn’t really feel the chill, but still walked over to the cabin’s smoky fireplace. It was all about being a good guest, even now. He stirred the dying fire with an old, blackened, iron poker. The fire strengthened and illuminated the many wooden rattles and charms--beads and crystals, feathers and fur--that covered the cabin’s meager hearth. Windom’s wild, bloodshot eyes slid over the talismans that had belonged to the cabin’s owner, whose body lay in the corner, blood still trickling from the gunshot wound at the back of his head.

           

            “He really did have an impressive collection here,” Windom said, addressing the chair that sat on the other side of the chessboard. “Superstition and magic are such marvelous things to loose oneself in. But then you know that.”

 

            Windom picked up a rattle wrapped in a pelt of black bear fur. He shook it. “I wonder what flights of fancy his dream catchers are plucking from the ether now.” Windom set the rattle back down and began humming “That Old Black Magic.”

 

            Still humming, Windom carried a battered stool over from in front of the fireplace and set it down next to the black side of the chessboard. He sat on the bench and stroked his chin, feeling rough, salt-and-pepper whiskers on his chapped fingers. He smiled tightly as he regarded the board, showing a thin line of teeth, slightly yellowed by weeks of neglect. His black suit was rumpled and dirty, as was his black turtleneck sweater. He’d have to clean up a bit when he left the cabin, he thought.

 

            But first things first. The sooner the last leg of his journey began, the sooner he would reach his destination.

 

            He looked up at the chair across from him. Hanging from the chair’s back was an ornate, wooden picture frame holding a grainy black and white newspaper photo of Windom’s opponent. Windom had been lucky enough to find a picture of him in one of the old newspapers that the cabin’s owner had stacked near the fireplace. The frame had also belonged to Windom’s gracious host. It had held a picture of his host’s family, but as his host wouldn’t be needing such things anymore, Windom simply tossed it in the fire.

 

            Windom looked into the shrouded eyes of his opponent in the picture. “White always moves first.”

 

            The man then gasped in mock surprise and sat up straight, placing his fingers on his chest modestly. “What? No, I couldn’t possibly.... Ah, yes, rules are meant to be broken. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? I’m glad you agree. But still....” The man paused and then smiled. “Well, only if you insist.”

 

            The man removed a pair of gold, wire framed glasses from his jacket pocket and put them on. He peered down at the chessboard thoughtfully. He sat, quietly thinking, for several minutes. The only sound in the cabin was the gentle crackling from the fireplace and the muted howl of an angry, night wind outside, wafting through the branches of the pine trees that surrounded the cabin for miles on every side.

 

            Finally, Windom Earl reached down for a black pawn and began his journey.

 

**********

 

Dr. Knight jotted down his findings. With the final effects of the cosmic rays apparently gone, Jimmy Reese was left with only those metahuman traits that the meteor’s radiation had triggered. Where Jimmy’s strange powers really came from was a greater mystery. Dr. Knight now believed Jimmy had been born with them, and that the cosmic rays had simply awakened them from dormancy. Jimmy’s power to morph, however, had apparently been a temporary effect of the cosmic rays.

 

"Try again, Jimmy."

 

"I can’t," Jimmy sighed, weary of the extensive tests. He had tried again and again to change into Mighty Mouse....and failed.

 

"Try," Dr. Knight repeated.

 

"Can’t," Jimmy responded.

 

"Try," Knight insisted.

 

"I Caaaaaaannnn’tttt!!!!!" Jimmy roared in frustrated rage, leaping up and grabbing Dr. Knight violently by the lab-coat lapels.

 

As Dr. Ted Knight was slammed against the wall by the enraged, super-strong boy, he saw something in Jimmy’s face he had never seen before and had never expected to see: the feral, untamed snarl of a wild, enraged animal!

 

**********

 

            Edgar Serafin woke up at 9:45 a.m. feeling great. He always felt great.

 

            It was almost enough to make him sick.

 

            Edgar sighed and rolled out of bed. He was a slow riser and had an important meeting with the IRS at 10 o’clock, but it didn’t matter. A little plump from his life-long sweet tooth, Edgar slowly ambled out of his bedroom. He was still a little unused to the new mansion, so it took him some time to find the bathroom.

 

After he showered, shaved, brushed his teeth and almost got lost in one of the mansion’s many cavernous walk-in closets, Edgar went downstairs to the kitchen, and the cook—an absolutely ravishing 29-year-old beauty and master chief—prepared him an English muffin, while again making it perfectly clear how available she was. Edgar demurred as usual and slathered his muffin, baked to crunchy perfection, with Sanson Strawberry Jam. Edgar had grown up with--and loved--Sanson Jam in New York, but it was a purely regional item. As soon as Edgar moved to Miami, however, Sanson Jam went nationwide, and it was now in every supermarket and restaurant in Florida.

 

            Edgar left the house and walked down the front yard to the main gate, still munching his English muffin. He passed his gardener, Fred, who was pruning the shrubbery that had won Edgar a Neighborhood Beautification Certificate two days after he had moved in.

 

            “’Morning, Fred,” Edgar said.

 

            “Good morning, Mr. Serafin,” Fred responded. “Something very strange happened last night, sir.”

 

            “What?”

 

“While we were digging in the back yard to plant the flower bed, I think we struck oil.”

 

“I’ll look into it when I get back,” Edgar said wearily as he walked toward the main gate.

 

“Don’t you want to use the car to go into town?” Fred called after him.

 

“It’s not like I’ll need it.”

 

“Have a good day, Mr. Serafin.”

 

“Like I could have anything else.”         

 

Edgar walked past the mansion’s gate and started down the road to Miami. He hadn’t taken three steps when a stretch limo came down the road and pulled up beside him. The back door opened. “Hey there, pal. You need a lift?”

           

What the hell? Edgar had always kind of wanted to meet Frank Sinatra.

 

When Sinatra’s limo let Edgar out in downtown Miami, Edgar was already an hour late for his meeting with the IRS. Keeping this in mind, he tried to find some new way to dawdle. He decided on getting munchies.

 

Edgar went to a drug store and upon entering, balloons and confetti fell from the ceiling. It turned out that Edger was the store’s 10 thousandth customer and had won a year’s supply of free toilet paper. He took it in stride and even managed a smile for the requisite pictures. He then bought the candy he’d come in for, unwrapped the Willy Wonka chocolate bar and threw yet another golden ticket over his shoulder.

 

Around noon, he wandered into the IRS building. He was led to the office of the agent who was handling his case and found it was empty. He sat down in front of the desk and wondered if this was the beginning of some sort of mind game.

 

Despite having made over $200 million dollars the year before, on April 15th Edgar had sent in an EZ form filled out in red crayon and signed with the words “Bite Me!” along with a check for 12 cents.

 

As he waited, he chewed the last piece of his candy bar with growing hope.                                                                             

 

A minute later the IRS agent entered, obviously flustered. He profusely apologized for the two-hour delay—a staff meeting had gone over and he couldn’t get away.

 

Edgar shook his head. Amazing.

 

The IRS man opened the folder in front of him and took out Edgar’s farcical excuse for a tax return. The agent grimly remarked that it had made the IRS very curious about Edgar’s past returns and that they had initiated an audit.

 

“Really?” Edgar asked eagerly and leaned forward, smiling.

 

The IRS agent was a little taken aback by Edgar’s response. After looking at him quizzically for a moment, the IRS agent then continued, sheepishly admitting that when they checked their own records, they found that the government had overtaxed Edgar several times in the past ten years, and that they owed him a sizable refund. When this refund was subtracted from what Edgar really owed for last year, the difference was….

 

“Twelve cents,” Edgar said blankly. He then buried his face in his hands and started to whimper.

 

Edgar spent the rest of the afternoon in Miami. During that time, he was offered a movie role, received a free airline ticket to Metropolis, won a boat, and found a Faberge egg that someone had kicked into a storm drain.

 

True, when night fell, Edgar was pulled into a dark alley by thugs who wanted to steel his wallet and leave him for dead, but as four of the seven members of the gang turned out to be undercover FBI agents on the trail of The Grand Dragon, all this really meant was that Edgar got a free ride home courtesy of the Feds.

 

Edgar entered his mansion, went to the living room, shooed away the cook who was reclining on the couch with not a stitch of clothing on, and sat down glumly in his easy chair across from the TV.

 

God almighty, he was bored!

 

What did he have to do, where did he have to go, to find something in the least bit challenging?!

 

Disgusted, he turned on the TV, hoping to find distraction. Instead, he found a news program discussing the reformation of the Justice League Of America.

 

Edgar Serafin smiled.

 

**********

 

"Cut the cosmic riddles, blue man, and get to the point!" Lobo snarled, clearly fed up with Metron’s enigmatic line of gab.

 

"The point is simple," Metron responded calmly. "There was an unprincipled, irresponsible and self-destructive woman on Earth...."

 

"Sounds like my type," Lobo quipped in a smart-ass growl.

 

"She WAS your type. That’s my point," Metron continued, unruffled. "You met her in one of Earth-America’s so-called ‘biker’ bars, a type of establishment you tend to frequent during your brief stops on that planet."

 

"I stop at joints like those all over the galaxy and do sluts in all of `em," Lobo spat. "So what’s so special about this Earth broad?"

 

"What is so special," Metron replied with a calm terseness, "is that this one bore you a son."

 

**********

 

            Arnold Muldoon looked down at the plans, illuminated by a single light bulb, skeptically. Or at least that was what Jimmy thought. It was hard to tell such subtleties in expression. Before Muldoon started renting himself out as a freelance leg-breaker for the local loan sharks, he was a amateur boxer, and his face looked like it had been rearranged a few times by a lug wrench. “Too tough. No chance of getting in,” he said. Almost instantly, the other five hoods standing around the table in the center of the drafty warehouse started nodding. “Too high profile.”

 

            Jimmy Shortround held up his hand and laughed nervously. Even after all the jobs they had pulled in the last week, Jimmy knew that he would have to convince Muldoon. The rest of the gang deferred to Muldoon. Indeed, they treated Muldoon like an elder statesman of hired muscle, as he had worked the big leagues as a number-three-man in the Hatter’s gang for a while.

 

            “No, no. Just look here,” Jimmy Shortround said as he pointed at the plans, “do you see this line? That’s the main electrical line for the entire street. We just have to drill a few feet and we’ll be able to tap in. Once I get a little juice, we won’t have to worry about the cops.”

 

            “That shipment is too high profile, we’d never get near there,” Muldoon said as he tapped the same spot on the plans with a dirty finger.

 

            Jimmy noted which finger it was. Not encouraging. “But the cops...”

 

            “I’m not talking about the cops,” Muldoon cut him off. “Gotham is different. You don’t have costumed freaks in Hub City.”

 

            Yeah, right. Jimmy Shortround choked it back down in his throat and tried to smile confidently. “I told you. We don’t have to worry about them. Too much is going on in Crime Alley with that gang war for them to give us any trouble. Besides, they’re still off their game from everything that happened to them. I mean, just look at this place!” Jimmy Shortround waved his arms around the warehouse. There were six trailer trucks and two armored cars and they had only partially been unloaded. There were islands of furniture, fur, cigarettes, televisions and piles of cash waiting to be fenced or divvied up. “Look what we’ve been able to pull off without anyone even noticing! But I’m tired of shrinking trucks and swiping them, never knowing what we are going to get. Or did we all forget Tuesday’s amazing petunia heist?”

 

            The thugs looked at the floor and shifted their weight form one foot to the other sheepishly.

 

            “No, this is the plan!” Jimmy said, again pointing at the plans. “Sure, it’s big: Big profit! One shot and we can all retire instead of pulling hit-or-miss truck heists like a bunch of amateurs whenever we need some cash. This...” His voice trailed off as images came to his mind unbidden: He’d be able to go back to Sue with something in hand besides empty promises. He would finally be able to give his wife everything she had ever wanted and always deserved. He would finally be worthy of her.

 

            He would finally be a good husband.

 

            “This,” Jimmy Sorski continued,  “is the best chance we’re ever going to have to make The Big Score!”

 

            Overhead, the skylight shattered. A dark form jumped down into the shadows of the warehouse. The white barrister’s wig he wore looked like spun silver in the glow of the moon above and spilled over a flowing black silk judge’s robe.

 

            “The Joker?” one of the thugs yelped, gaping up as the glass cascaded down.

 

            “Ghost Fighter?” another yelled in surprise, reaching for his gun.

 

            “No, it’s a new one,” Muldoon said, his automatic already drawn and pointed toward the figure as it landed on top of one of the stolen trucks. “In Gotham, there’s always a new one....” He fired and the figure dived as the impacting bullets threw sparks up from the top of the truck’s roof.

 

            Jimmy reached a hand into the right pocket of his raincoat. His fingers fumbled among the contents. It was like trying to find the right size screw only by touch. One shape finally felt kind of right and he grabbed it between thumb and index finger and yanked it out of his pocket.

 

            As soon as the bazooka cleared the rim of Jimmy Shortround’s pocket, it began to spring back to full size. Jimmy dropped it, completely unprepared for its size and shape. “Oh, crap!” he yelled and stuck his hand back in his coat pocket. “Where’s the machine gun!? Where’s the machine gun!?”

 

            The rest of Jimmy’s gang didn’t hear their boss as they had by now all opened fire on the intruder, filling the warehouse with booming echoes. The intruder hurled a small metal ball toward the gunmen and dived back down behind the other side of the truck. The ball hit the floor of the warehouse with a clang and bright white smoke began to billow out and snake towards the gunmen.

 

            “Gas bomb!” Muldoon yelled, digging a handkerchief out of his pocket and putting it over his nose and mouth. He was backing away from the smoke and aimed at the front of the truck should the maniac in the judge’s robes emerge.

 

            One of the gunmen coughed once from the gas and then sank to his knees crying. Another dropped his gun and just stood, staring into space and yelling, “Oh, God I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean it! Oh, God!”

 

            When Muldoon grimaced, it was ungodly looking. “There is always a new one in Gotham,” he muttered and fired again, shattering the truck’s windshield as the man in the judge’s robes bounded over the hood.

 

            It was finally possible to get a good look at the figure; he was muscular and tall. He wore a gold mask, a stylized representation of a bearded man’s stern face, like something out of ancient Greek drama.

 

            The robed vigilante landed in front of a gunman and kicked him in the chest, sending him flying backward into the white cloud slowly rising behind him. The gunman began gasping and weeping. The thug closest to the vigilante swung his gun around and fired just as the vigilante dodged around and grabbed the thug’s gun arm and wrenched it down with an audible crack. The last two thugs rushed to help their buddy, blocking Muldoon’s shot. Muldoon stepped back as the white cloud swept in between him and the melee.

 

            Muldoon had seen all this before. He had already stayed too long. He was turning to run when the vigilante leaped out of the white smoke right at him.

 

            “You have come before The Judge because you have committed crimes,” the vigilante rasped, sounding barely human. “I am here to balance the scales. You will finally understand the pain you have caused others.”

           

            The Judge landed an impeccably delivered punch across Muldoon’s jaw. It hurt, but Muldoon had felt worse. He put his entire body into pistol-whipping the vigilante across the side of the mask. It sounded like someone dropped a frying pan on the floor and the vigilante stumbled back.

 

            Not about to waste his chance, Muldoon ran for the door. He checked his gun; the barrel was bent now. He tossed it over his shoulder. The vigilante sidestepped out of the way of the gun as it flew through the air, sprinting after Muldoon and out of the warehouse.

 

            A few minutes later, the sound of police sirens could be heard inside the warehouse, but five of the people inside were beyond hearing them, each in a personal hell of crippling guilt and remorse. None of them had ever been exposed to The Scarecrow’s fear toxin; if they had, they might have noticed certain similarities--a tingling at the roof of the mouth when first inhaled, a tart smell of apple cider right before the first tidal wave of emotion hit.

 

            Very few people had access to a complete chemical analysis of Professor Crane’s fear toxin. But there were a few.

 

            The sixth person left in the warehouse was only one millimeter high. He sat glumly at the bottom of a crack in the floor. Sure, he’d get away, but what was the point? The cops would take everything. Weeks to accumulate and now it would all be gone again. One step forward, two steps back. Maybe he never would amount to anything. Maybe the only thing he was ever good at was screwing up and getting his friends killed. Maybe he never would be able to hit The Big Score and make it up to all of them for what he did.

 

            James Sorski had several lifetimes’ worth of regret, even without The Judge’s gas.

 

            Jimmy hoped that Muldoon would get away, but doubted it. He has seen how relentlessly The Judge was chasing him.

 

            Jimmy really didn’t care about The Judge--he was just another of the fanatics who seemed intent on ruining Jimmy’s life--so even though Jimmy had noticed an important detail about him as he ran out of the building, Jimmy almost instantly discarded it as meaningless.

 

            To someone else, it might not have been quite as meaningless.

 

            Peeking out from behind the white, braided wig, Jimmy had glimpsed a second golden, bearded mask covering the back of The Judge’s head, identical to the one on the front.

 

            Janus. One head.

 

            Two faces.       

 

**********

 

            Nehemiah Scutter trembled in the corner of the squalid, abandoned apartment. The building was empty except for other squatters. It was just after midnight and very dark. A cold wind blew through the cracked, smudged windows. He had never lived this way before, but he now deserved all of this and more.

 

            Weeks had passed since Nehemiah Scutter had pulled himself out of the Potomac River after the intangible demon had tricked him into defeat. The Hammer Of God was gone, washed away from his hand by the currents. It was fitting. He didn’t deserve it anymore.

 

            He had failed

 

            Scutter felt a cold weariness, that had nothing to do with the temperature, that bore down into the marrow of his bones. His joints ached and his vision was blurry. His skin sagged. For a while, as God had smiled down on him, he had felt better than he had in years, but that had all been taken away. Even his mind didn’t seem quite as clear as it once was. When he had been the chosen of God, everything had seemed so clear; everything had made sense. His purpose was so manifest. Now he looked back on everything he did and...

 

            No! These uncertainties were merely proof of how far he had fallen from the grace of God. They were signs of his own weakness. They were a curse, like the physical infirmities--a punishment to help him atone.

 

            And he had so much to atone for.

 

            He had walked the streets, unseen; another homeless, mumbling madman in tattered rags. From there, he had seen what his defeat had caused. The nation was reverting back to immortality. All of his hard work, all the progress that had been made, was being reversed almost overnight. Even now, heretics and unbelievers were again able to openly flout God.

 

            America was lost to Hell, and it was all Scutter’s fault.

 

            The front door to the apartment opened and the cold wind that was already streaming through the broken windows strengthened. In the dim light of the street lamp outside, Scutter saw another broken man, a bum, standing tentatively at the door. He looked old, his skin weathered like leather, but his beard a dirty gray. He wore a greasy cap and ill-fitting clothes. He was hunched over and held a garbage bag in both hands out in front of him.

 

            “Mister?” the man in the doorway asked. His voice was reedy. “I found this yesterday. I... knew I had to bring it here. It belongs to you.”

 

            Scutter didn’t move. The man wasn’t talking sense. Obviously another crazy.

 

            The man stood uncomfortably for a minute. Then he set the bag down and reached inside. He pulled out the mace that had once belonged to Baron Blitzkrieg, but which had now chosen its new owner.

 

            Nehemiah Scutter’s eyes became as wide as saucers. He clambered to his feet and scrambled over to the bum. He grabbed the mace.

 

            The heavens opened again. The pain in his joints was gone. The terrible uncertainly banished by the light. It was.... transcendent.

 

            His knees went weak and he dropped to them, head bowed. Now that his mind was so utterly crystal clear again, he understood what had happened.

 

            Yes, he had failed. Just as he was supposed to do.

 

            And “fail” was the wrong word. It was impossible to “fail” in carrying out God’s plan--He was omnipotent and omniscient. Everything would always happen exactly as it was supposed to. It was *necessary* that The Apostle be defeated; it was required that he would offer America one last chance at redemption only to be rejected, for in the end America had to fall to Hell in order to set the stage for the events predetermined in the first nanosecond of the universe’s creation and described in the ancient prophecies of Revelations.

 

            There was no shame in fulfilling God’ plan.

 

            And there were many events that needed to happen before Christ could return. So many. So many wars. So many diseases. So many disasters. Indeed, the torments of Hell had to be brought to Earth, the fallen planet irrevocably ruined before anything good could come of it.

 

            The sooner these events occurred, fulfilling prophecy and bringing the blocks into place, the sooner Gabriel’s trumpet would sound and The Lord would reign forever more.

 

            Scutter understood now. This was why he was here. He was the catalyst for prophecy. The Apostle had failed, as he was destined to, but now he would take on a new aspect and perform a new mission. He would do what was necessary. He would bring Revelations to pass, single-handedly, if he had to. He would find and foster an Anti-Christ. He would raze the world, in order to save it.

 

            He would immanentize the Eschaton.

 

            He now also knew who his true enemy was, which of Satan’s minions was charged with stopping him: The intangible demon with the ax forged in Hell. He would have to be crushed. Of that, the Voice Of God speaking through the hammer was quite clear.

 

            Scutter’s eyes opened and he stood up. He looked down at the man who had brought him his destiny. Scutter’s expression was beatific.

 

            “Come, my child,” Scutter said holding his open hand out to the vagrant. Scutter’s voice was again deep, resonate and honey sweet. “We have much work ahead of us.”

 

            The vagrant, eyes glazed with wonder and a vague terror, wandered numbly into the drafty apartment, and The Eschaton closed the door behind him.

 

**********

 

            “I’m not criticizing Joker,” Captain America said calmly, “I’m just curious where you got the spare super computer on such short notice.”   

           

            “They won’t miss it. Trust me,” The Joker said. He was attired in a loud green and purple Hawaiian suit, Bermuda shorts and sandals to silently protest the fact that he’d had to cut his vacation short. He continued to weld underneath the massive computer.

 

            “Could you hurry it up down there?” Blue Beetle asked, hovering in the air and holding the entire mechanism in place next to the Hall Of Justices central interface core. “This thing is getting heavy.”

 

            “Should have eaten your Wheaties this morning, now hush,” The Joker said as he finished welding the last shield plate into place, locking the unit into the center of the new Hall of Justice. He turned off his welding torch and whipped off his sunglasses to admire his handiwork. “You can let go now, blue boy.”

 

Beetle did and the computer core stayed in place. It was secure. Beetle flew up and began to hook the power cables into place at the top of the unit.

 

            “Is that a bat emblem next to the keyboard?” Captain American asked dryly.

 

            The Joker hopped up and sat on the console next to the keyboard, covering the emblem. “I don’t see anything.”

 

            “You brought that mad man’s Bat Computer into the Hall of Justice, didn’t you?” Captain America said, cocking one eyebrow.

 

            “Now don’t get hysterical,” Joker said, waving his hand. “After all, that’s my job. Besides I went through the entire thing myself. No problems, no hidden booby traps, no secret viruses. It’s clean. I’m sure of it. Well, I mean what in life is sure, exactly….”

 

            Captain America hit the intercom button. “Dr. Milhous, are you still here?”

 

            “Yes, Captain,” Milhous’ voice replied over the speaker. “Dr. Forest and I are finishing work on the new security system.”

 

            “When you’re done, could you come up here, please? I have something new for you to look over.”

 

            “Be there in a half hour or so.”

 

            “No rush. Out.”

 

            “We file off the serial number and no one will ever know any better,” Joker said.  “And we’ll get to feel smugly superior to old Bats whenever we run into him and he’ll never even know why.” The Joker began to laugh loudly. His laughter was cut short as he watched a freak energy surge erupt from one of the power cables Beetle was handling and hit Beetle right in the chest, slamming him into the wall. He slowly slid down the wall, his eyes wide, his hair standing on end, his body smoking

 

            Joker just shook his head. “His grounding strip must have fallen off. What are the odds?”

 

            “Is he okay?” Captain America asked, concerned.

 

            “Aw, he’s fine,” The Joker replied, waving his hand dismissively. “This sort of thing happens to him all the time. I’d swear the boy was cursed.” Joker reached over and hit the intercom button. “Harley, are you still in the medical bay, making a bust of Gummo Marx out of the tongue depressors?”

 

            “Of course, Puddin’” Harely’s perky voice responded.

 

            “Great. Do me a favor: Grab the wading pool from storage, fill it with Bactine and bring it up here, would you?”

 

            “Beetle?” she asked.

 

            “Right you are, my love.”

 

            “Gotcha’.”

 

            “I’m fine,” Beetle called feebly from a heap on the floor. “Just knocked the wind out of me.”

 

            Joker and Captain America helped Beetle to his feet and then to his personal chair situated around the giant oak table with the seal of the JLA in crystal at the center.

 

            The skylight opened and Zero Man descended into the hall. He landed next to Captain America, Joker and the seated Beetle. “A successful test, Captain. The new League communicators are no longer vulnerable to signal breakup due to sunspot activity and the range has been increased over the old model. I was still in contact with the test beacon until I passed Ganymede.”

 

            “That’s good to hear,” Captain America said.

 

            Zero Man looked at the still dazed Blue Beetle, puzzled. “Blue Beetle, why are your antennas smoking?”

 

            “Because if they don’t, they’ll gain weight?” The Joker offered.

 

            “Just don’t ask,” Blue Beetle replied wearily.

 

            “I have some good news for once” a deep voice boomed through the hall as The Amazing Ghost Fighter came in from the communication room.

 

            “I can tell. Your mask is scowling 10% less than usual,” The Joker called out, as he plopped down in his chair and put his sandaled feet up on the table. “What’s up, Spooky?”

 

            “I just caught a news report in the comm. room,” Ghost Fighter said. “Some of the Sunderland brass are going to be turning state’s evidence. That company will cease to be very soon.”

 

            “About frigging time,” Blue Beetle said.

 

“The Sunderland Corporation had considerable resources and personal, though,” Zero Man commented. “As much of both have conveniently disappeared, who knows how many members of the criminal government are now spread throughout your world.”

 

            “They can run, but they can’t hide,” Captain America said. “There is nowhere on Earth they can go to get away from me. Not after what they did to my country.”

 

            The doors to the Hall of Justice opened and a man rushed in. A little short, his boyish freckles did not jibe with his with his well-tailored black suit, professional bearing, clean-cut appearance and concerned expression. He held a large folder underneath his arm and stride purposefully into the hall.

 

            “Well, Agent Smith,” The Joker said, “what brings you to our humble abode? Please excuse the mess: We haven’t fully shielded the nuclear reactor yet.”

 

            “We have a problem,” NSA agent Buddy Smith said.

 

            “What is it?” Captain America asked.

 

“Military Intel’s currently a disaster area,” Smith explained. “They’re still just trying to pick up the pieces and figure what exactly happened while Legion was in charge. Whole operations went unreported, or were so cloaked in inscrutable and conflicting orders as to be indecipherable. More reports and files than you can imagine were classified, sealed, destroyed or simply lost in the chaos.” Smith held up the large brown folder. “Files like this one. They just found it and passed it on to me so I could pass it on to you. They knew you had to see it.”

 

He slid the file across the table to Captain America. Cap opened it as the rest of the heroes gathered around behind him.

 

The top of the first page, a memo on with the NSA’s letterhead, read, “RE: Reasons for failure to apprehend the vigilante Daredevil.”

 

**********

 

            Warden often walked the halls alone, but never lonely.

 

Anywhere in the mansion, he could feel Annette’s presence, even when he was just Warden. She was so strong now that her cheerful, generous spirit wrapped the mansion like a warm blanket.

 

            Her presence was a constant reminder of her promise that she would always be there when Warden needed her. It wasn’t necessary. Warden knew her as well as anyone could and he knew that she would never break her word. Not after everything they had been through together.

 

            After only a month or so together, the two of them had begun to think of themselves as family, helping each other through the rough patches and sharing the good times. It was the beginning of a good life. And this time, it was a life that even promised to be stable.

 

            Archie had left the mansion, and just about everything else—save a small trust fund for Warden—to Annette, and moving back into the mansion only heightened the feeling of stability. For Annette, it was like coming home. From her point of view, she had only been gone only a few weeks. Her memories of the mansion were fresh and Archie had done his level best to make sure that reality never deviated from them.

 

The first few hours after Annette arrived, she wandered the rooms, wordlessly, almost as if in a dream. Tears occasionally streamed down her face, more from wonder than anything else.

 

            My God, she had thought to Warden, I feel them everywhere here. I see them everywhere. It’s psychometry, I think.

 

            I didn’t use to be able to do that.... 

 

            There were quite a few things Annette could do now that she hadn’t been able to before.

 

            Warden entered the mansion’s library, filled with books he could now read. The red armor had been returned to the glass display case in the center of the room. Annette had lovingly restored it to its original appearance. It gleamed with a diamond-like shine now, the holes and burn marks that had once blighted its surface sealed and polished. Annette had used no tools, no forge, and worked with only her memory as a guide. But nevertheless, after only a few minutes of silent concentration, the armor had been restored to its former glory.

 

            Standing in the same spot Warden had often seen Archie stand, was now Annette. She was staring at the armor in much the same way Archie had once stared at the painting that hung above it. Annette turned to look at Warden and smiled thinly.

 

            “I’m sorry. I bothered you,” Warden said.

 

            No. Not at all. I’m just being maudlin, she thought at him.

 

            Warden walked over and stood beside her, looking at the armor. She put her arm over his shoulder.

 

            “He used to stand here, too,” Warden said softly.

 

            I know, she thought. I can feel him here. It’s funny. I stand here, I miss him, and I can feel him missing me right back. She paused and set her jaw. Together at last.

 

            “All he ever wanted was for you to get better,” Warden offered, detecting the dark note in her last thought.

 

            She looked down at him and smiled more genuinely. She bent forward and kissed Warden on the forehead.

 

            Don’t forget to wash up for dinner, Squirt.

 

            “I won’t,” he said sheepishly as he walked over to the desk and sat down. He opened the Bible to where he had left off.

 

            Annette started to walk out of the room, but stopped. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply through her nose. She smiled broadly. I’d didn’t know how much I missed Jonathon’s special blend of pipe tobacco until I came back, she explained with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes as she walked out of the room.

 

            Warden nodded. He couldn’t smell Winchester’s pipe, but Mentalon had. Many times.

 

Warden tried to read for a while, but he found his mind drifting. He kept thinking about things he talked about with his new friend, Dr. Forest, earlier in the day.

 

            They tried to meet every week to catch up. Archie had always said that Dr. Forest was a good listener and was right. In fact, Dr. Forest was almost as easy to talk to as Annette. Dr. Forest knew what it was like to have problems adjusting to superpowers and understood a lot of what Warden was afraid of.

 

            They talked about a lot of things; Warden’s parents, his long trip through America trying to find the JLA, how Warden still sometimes felt like a freak when he was around normal people, how Archie had tried to protect him and teach him, how Warden and Annette had helped each other through the hard weeks following Archie’s death, and how proud he was to have helped her. He talked to Dr. Forest about everything.

 

            Everything except what he had found inside Annette’s mind when he had gone into it to help her. He never spoke of that. Not ever.

 

He talked about all the other hard things, though. For example Warden told Dr. Forest how he often wondered if he felt now like Annette had when she’d first met him and realized that Warden was more powerful than she was. It was vague, Warden said, but Mentalon could sense that Annette was *far* more powerful than she used to be. Moreover, it felt like she’d only begun to scratch to surface of her potential. The transformation that had begun in the House Chamber was a continuing process and far from over.

 

            Sometimes, Warren admitted, it scared him a little.

 

It was good to have someone to talk his worries over with, no matter how silly they were. Warden didn’t like to burden Annette with his problems. Understandably, the loss of Archie’s was even harder on Annette than it had been on Warden, and the pain was still acute for her, as much as she tried to hide it. Sometimes, every once in a while, Annette would say she needed to be alone for a while and would fly off to be by herself, and wouldn’t return for hours.

 

            Dr. Forest asked Warden to tell Annette that if she ever needed someone to talk to, he was available. Warden passed this along and Annette replied that, while Dr. Forest was sweet to offer and she appreciated his concern, she really didn’t need any help and was just fine. She explained that while living in the house among the echoes of Archie was wonderful most of the time, occasionally, it was just a little… too much and she’d have to get away for a bit. Warden could understand that.

 

Still, maybe talking to him would do her some good. Dr. Forest really was a good listener. He never laughed at anything Warden said, no matter how ridiculous it was. Not even when Warden reluctantly told him about the strange, silly dreams he’d been having lately. Like the one where Warden saw himself back in Kentucky, laying on the roof of the house he and his parents had once lived in, staring up at the pristine night sky, like had done many times before. Only now, the sky was filled with a huge black raven that swallowed up the stars one by one.

 

            Or the other, urgent dreams Warden sometimes had of a far away land. Hectic visions of cold surgical steel, the smell of antiseptic, and faces covered with white masks. Cutting through these images were voices speaking a language Warden could not understand and visions of a young boy, younger than Warden or even Jimmy. Silent, like Annette, the boy never spoke, but his eyes were wise beyond any age. In these dreams, Warden knew this dark haired boy was incredibly important and somehow essential to both himself and Annette, as if all three of their lives--their destinies--were somehow inextricably tied together. In the dreams, Warden heard the boy’s first name, sometimes whispered, sometimes chanted, sometimes screamed; sometimes by thousands of voices, sometimes by just Warden’s own. It was a strange name.

 

“Akira.”

 

            Warden was understandably embarrassed to talk about these dreams. They were just silly night phantoms, after all. There was nothing to them--Warden’s mother had taught him that.

 

            Besides, if strange dreams were the worst of it, that was only testimony to how well life was working out. Indeed, things had been utterly wonderful since Legion’s destruction: Ike was healthy; the JLA were heroes again; Warden had found a place where he really belonged for the first time in his life; Annette was young and vibrant and happy again; even the Patchwork Man hadn’t been seen since that day in the House Chamber. It stood to reason, considering everything they’d all been through, that everyone deserved a little “happily ever after” for a change.

 

            Didn’t it?

 

**********

           

            Still two hundred million miles from Pluto, but closing fast.

 

            Too fast.

 

            It was an instinctual understanding. Nothing sentient. Not yet.

 

            Gossamer wings over a hundred miles long on a side, made of a reflective substance somewhat akin to chitin, somewhat akin to spun glass, detached from the object. Free of nourishment, free of direction, almost instantly the wings dimmed and withered. The pulsing solar wind quickly ripped them to pieces and the mirrored surfaces shattered and re-shattered, filling this portion of the Ort cloud with jagged jewels, still casting rainbows out of the faint light of far away stars.

 

            The object, twice as big as Alaska, slowed. But not enough.

 

            Deep fissures opened in the surface of the outer front tip of the object. Immense bladders, which had been filling with waste gases from innumerable biological processes for millennia, waiting for just this moment, contracted. Jets of noxious green and yellow gas erupted from the fissures, applying thrust in the vector opposite the object’s momentum. After a few moments, sparks were set off deep within the recesses of the object and the jets of gas ignited.

 

            Contained in the ejecta of the gas before it was ignited were the first scout spoors. Simple things grown in the bladders, only a meter or so long, just big enough for a few rudimentary sense organs and enough neural material to speak with their Mother over the gulf of space. Thousands of them now sped at the object’s original momentum of .74 of light speed towards the new star system, which contained a ripeness the Hive had detected long ago, light years away.

 

            The Daughter of The Hive, the Swarm Mother, slowed.

 

            Old fissures closed and new ones opened, and the Swarm Mother changed its direction ever so slightly, nudging itself into a course programmed long ago. The component parts of a novel new organ began to slowly throb within a vast recess in the Swarm Mother, near the very center of its bulk.

 

            The tasks for this stage were done. The Swarm Mother, unaware, uncaring, became dormant again, frozen in amber, silently awaiting the next step. The passage of time had no meaning.

 

            Images now. They came from the scouts and their reception triggered new changes deep inside the Swarm Mother. Previously closed chambers suddenly opened and strange fluids began to flow. Nutrients and lifeblood were redirected, pumping warmth into cold tissues, never before needed during the long journey through the void between stars.

 

            Miles of neural matter began to quiver and join together, forming connections as fresh neurons, never before used, fired and burned fresh courses within. Vast strands of RNA started to uncoil, feeding information into the nascent cortex.

 

            The images of the new star system played against this slowly arising consciousness, occasionally causing a flash of elementary cognition. The system was inhabited. The third planet from the sun, the only candidate in this system’s temperate zone suitable for a Hive, teemed with another variety of the soft things that seemed to infest the galaxy, and artificial structures were detected on several of the system’s other planets. The appearance of these isolated artificial outposts, their design and construction, bounced off a fleeting fragment of race memory being uploaded. Something familiar. This realization was instantly filed away for further analysis once the Swarm Mother’s mind had become more sophisticated.

 

            The Swarm Mother’s own sense organs bloomed all over its colossal surface, their sleek black faces tilting toward the sun. The electromagnetic spectrum screeched with noise as the Swarm Mother was bombarded with the constant, witless, aimless chatter that signified a technological society.

 

            The shrill droning of the soft things’ voices was detected only vaguely on the periphery of the Swarm Mother’s budding consciousness, but it still nettled. Such chaos! The Mother was glad that it had come here, and that this poor, benighted world would receive the gift that accompanied its glorious fecundity; the serenity of the Swarm.

 

            There was much to do, but the Swarm Mother was patient. Everything in its proper time.

 

            Awaiting the completion of its higher brain functions, the consciousness of the Swarm Mother slumbered. It slumbered and, as information continued to flood its half-aware mind, it dreamed.

 

            A dream of the new world.

 

Never The End