Post by redsycorax on Oct 21, 2021 23:09:48 GMT
What happens when one's dreams of the future turn out to be just dreams after all?
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ROMANUS CIRCULUS LAITUS IMPERIUM, AB URB CONDITAE 2714:
Empress Cornelia Agrippina Caesar XXIV lounged on her flagship's bed, grimly watching the spectacle before her. It was not the first time she had fought the Justice Guild of America with her alternate Earth Galactic Roman Empire troopers, but it would be the last, if her Naltorian precognates were correct about the impending future of their timeline. She deduced that the Guild themselves were unaware of their doom a year from now datum time, when the Soviet Union and United States initiated a nuclear exchange that would kill millions. Despite her hatred for the Guild, especially her mortal enemy Tom Turbine, she wondered about whether she could retrieve something from the situation, quite apart from eliminating the primitive timeline that Guild inhabited. Perhaps the Green Guardsman's power ring, which might be a potent weapon if it were upgraded and cleansed of its absurd vulnerability to aluminium? Or could there be a way to duplicate the Streak's superspeed velocity power?
She looked down at her remote altitude holographier images. From ten miles above the landscape of the world that the Guild and their primitive civilisation had usurped from its rightful owners, its future landscape seemed undisturbed. The real damage only became evident as one drew closer. The river that they called the Mississippi still pulsed and turned down to the seas as it had since time immemorial, with the sun overhead and the hills in shadowed relief. But lower altitude probes showed a plethora of shallow craters, some with recesses stained viridian green from the heat and light that had fused dirt and sand into vitreous glass. Then there was the churned and blasted land around the impact sites, leafless skeletal trees, splayed and tumbled skeletons and skulls, and in areas beyond the terminator, others that faintly shone a sickly fluorescent blue when night fell. Nothing lived there, or could live.
What a joke. The Guild and their arrogance, with their touching belief in human virtue and beneficence, unable to save their primitive, backward world. Because she could plainly see Seaboard City, the polis where they had been headquartered, and under a shifting hallucinatory landscape, it was as dead and blighted as the rest of their wretched world. Is that what it had all been for? They had cherished and wanted to protect this ultimate nightmare? What humiliation, what hubris, what a rebuttal of all of their pointless sophistry about a 'better world." Well, the Imperium was infinitely preferable to what wrack and ruin she saw beneath her now. At least areas of the Imperial capital of Rome were green and full of life from the Empire's thousands of worlds. At least children of the elite classes had fresh air to breathe, fresh water to drink or bathe in, and did not starve or succumb to the pandemics raging out of control down there without medical assistance to ease their lot.
Enough. It was time for the abomination, the desolation that her probes of this aborted alternate world to her own had disclosed to be erased permanently from existence. And she relished confrontation with her old enemies, even if it would be for the final time.
SEABOARD CITY, 1961 AD:
Abruptly, as Lyra Lewis was about to take up her pen again after an excellent cup of coffee, the Justice Guild alarm sounded:
"Tom?" Her lover and would-be fiancee turned as he ran toward the main monitor room:
"We may need you and the timesphere, Lyra."
Tom Turbine's one true love gasped: "You mean something's in the timestream?"
He nodded: "As you know, the klaxon has different pitch and frequency settings for different crises that the Guild encounters. But yes, this is transtemporal interference."
"Which can only mean one thing- that witch Cornelia and that skull-crushing totalitarian alternate Roman Empire of hers."
Tom grinned despite himself. Lyra Lewis may have been the woman he wanted to married, but despite his enmity with Cornelia, she was attracted physically to him. The two women knew about their rival's real feelings and despised each other- Cornelia thought that a 'warrior' like Lyra was 'wasted' with her pathetic concern for the weak and vulnerable, while Lyra reciprocally held Cornelia's ruthlessness, avarice and greed in similarly singular contempt.
"All right, where are the others?" Tom asked as Black Siren and Catman joined them both in the monitor room:
"We don't know. Their Justice Guild signal badges are inoperative, so it's anyone's guess."
"This isn't like Cass, Scott or Jake. Something's wrong..."
And then, abruptly, they heard Cassandra Astriide's voice from the monitor radio connection:
"What's wrong?"
"We were hoping you could tell us, Cassandra. We can't raise Scott or Jake. What about you?"
"They've been captured. Look, you handle the Roman incursion into the past, I'll retrieve the others. There's no time to waste. Now, if you'll excuse me..."
"I think I've found where Cornelia and her intervention force probably are. They seem to be in.. Syracuse, 211 BC. Oh, blazes. They're after Archimedes!" Lyra exclaimed.
Tom nodded: "That makes sense, Remember, the Roman General Marcus Claudius Marcellus wanted the inventor and scientist alive, but a careless Roman soldier killed him in our own timeline and as a consequence, the Roman Empire couldn't exploit his technological prowess. But in the Roman timeline..."
Lyra finished the sentence: "In the Roman alternate timeline, Marcellus' orders were followed, Archimedes must have been retrieved alive and Rome was able to convince him to use his technological innovations against Hannibal in the Second Punic War against Carthage, accelerating its downfall and giving them an edge, making sure that Rome was militarily stronger and underwent accelerated development relative to our own world."
Catman and Black Siren exchanged glances: "Lyra, you should really marry Tom and become a mystery woman in your own right. You already finish each other's sentences."
Tom managed a grin: "You know me, guys- never say never!"
Lyra had activated the timesphere: "Come on, lady and gentlemen. Your chariot awaits. Whatever Cassandra is doing, she'll be able to do it by herself, from what I've heard." And after they had crowded into her uncle's time travel device, the four of them vanished into the distant past.
In another corner of Seaboard City, the Streak and Green Guardsman lay, motionless, beneath two crystalline sheaths. From her vantage point in the cave, Cassandra looked down at the prone bodies of her friends and bit her lip. She couldn't foresee what was going to happen there, or what was going on inside their heads, but they seemed relaxed and smiling to themselves. Then she saw the reason why that was the case: Cogitator, the former Injustice Guild member who had grown tired of what he had termed the 'quotidian' nature of the criminal group's 'petty larcenies' and who had thus struck out on his own. But why weren't Scott or Jake fighting back? Then she noted the anaesthetic canisters and the oxygen masks over both men's faces and then she saw the simulated 'cityscape' on the screens that overlooked the Cogitator's sleeping captives.
"MEGALOPOLIS, 1983."
Jacob Allon work, next to his wife's smiling face: "Hey, honey. What's the agenda for today?"
"Oh, we're visiting Jay and Betty in Wildwood. Why, don't you remember?"
Jacob caught sight of himself in the mirror and was shocked. Since when was his hair grey? And where had those wrinkles come from around his eyes? He looked as if he were in his fifties.
"I have to contact the other Guild members first- Irene?"
His wife was frowning at him: "Jake? Don't you remember? You and the other Guild members retired ten years ago. Your former proteges run the Second Justice Guild these days."
"Wait, what?"
"I thought I was never going to get you out of that souped up motor racing outfit that you used to wear. Now come on, get dressed. We have to pick up Scott and Martin on the way."
Risking another expression of bewilderment from his wife, Jacob almost asked who Martin was, but wisely held his own counsel.
In his own bed, Scott Mason stirred. An exploratory tongue washed his ear. He blinked awake and encountered a redhaired man in the bed next to him:
"Ohmigod!" Scott squawked. Who was this man and what was he doing in bed with him, naked?
The other man rolled his eyes: "Come on, Scotty. Up and at 'im. You really tied one on last night, y'know?"
Scott was confused. He thought he'd firmly rejected this side of his life, with the shock therapy and the pills, back in the fifties. All right, he was occassionally tempted but he didn't actually act on it, that would be sinful and wrong. The other man kissed him. Scott was about to pull away, but then caught sight of himself in the mirror. He looked... twenty years older, but still seemed in good shape. And around the mirror, there were photographs- of this man and himself, in intimate body language that suggested that they'd been together for a long time. Scott was reluctant to do what he did next, but he had to do it. His power ring pulsed green and everything in his room froze.
"Ring. Tell me what the year is, and who this man is. And why am I openly h...ho..."
His instrument responded: "The date is March 15, 1983. You have been out as a gay man for the last ten years, ever since the US Supreme Court decided Warren versus Sithe shortly after Roe v Wade and decided that consenting adult gay men had the right to privacy and that male homosexuality could not therefore be a criminal offence. You met Martin Delany, a Seaboard City Police Department officer, at the victory march after Warren and you have been with him for over a decade."
"Who is the President of the United States at this time?"
"Former Senator Geraldine Ferraro."
Scott's mind reeled: There was a woman president?! It was 1983? He lived openly as a homosexual.. or 'gay", as the ring had indicated it was called now?
"What about the rest of the Justice Guild?"
"Please reiterate, Scott. Do you mean the original Justice Guild of America or the Second Justice Guild?"
"Second Justice Guild? Identify members."
" Catwoman, Mynah, Second Streak, Second Guardsman and Tina Turbine."
"Wait a minute. Denise, Dorrie, Warrick, Simon and Tina have taken over for us? What about the original Justice Guild?"
"Jake and Irene Allon are still happily married and living in Megalopolis and are now grandparents. Tom Turbine is now Commander of the US Tranquility Moonbase and he and Lyra Terrell have just celebrated their twentieth wedding anniversary. Ted Blake passed away from cancer five years ago. Donna Blake is now head of Blake-Herrington Enterprises."
Scott rapidly dressed. But he kept having moments of dizziness and hallucination, as if he were lying on a crystal pallet inside a cave somewhere. As he shut off the ring's time suspension effect, Martin grinned back at him: "Whoa. Come on, blondie. No tricks with the ring."
"Sorry, Martin. You know how I get when I wake up this early."
"Do I ever!"
SEABOARD CITY CAVES, 1961:
"Do they suspect anything?" Cornelia asked Cogitator, who shook his head:
"Nothing at all, Empress. They're 'living the dream', as I believe the current youth vernacular has it. Interesting. I never suspected that about Green Guardsman, but to each their own. And if it keeps him pacified, who am I to object?"
"Can you hold them captive, I meant?" Because, Cornelia mused to herself, Scott Mason's power ring did not survive the nuclear blast when he and the rest of his foolhardy Justice Guild companions thought they could thwart the Fates and save their collection of hovels from the wrath of the gods. But if he isn't there when the others throw their lives away, then I can cut off his life support and use that weapon of his for myself in the delay period before this phantom aberration of a world of theirs is abolished when Archimedes is allowed to bring his boon to the Empire as history decrees. Did that fool Cogitator actually suspect nothing?
SYRACUSE, 211 BC:
As the Roman triremes disgorged their legionnaires out on the beach before the Sicilian city, arrows shot overhead and Roman shields were deployed upward to prevent any airborne decimation of their attacking force. From his command balcony, General Marcus Claudius Marcellus bellowed: "And remember! I want the savant Archimedes alive!"
On the other side of the Syracuse city walls, the three uptime Justice Guild members and Lyra Lewis had arrived at their destination and were blending in as they concealed the sphere, dressed in fashionable clothing from the era in question:
"Who are we after?" Donna asked.
"At a guess, the soldier who ends up killing Archimedes. And remember, we have to make sure he gets there and kills him."
"Come on then, Ted. You and I."
Lyra unsheathed a broadsword: "And I get to cross swords with dear Cornelia. Tom? Is there any way to make sure that she and her cohorts get sent back to their own timeline and are unable to re-enter this one?"
"Brave and vainglorious words, Lewis. As usual. You are a warrior's daughter. Now come up onto the battlement and face me, woman to woman."
Lyra ran toward the wall overlooking the city, and the two women gave arms. As they fought, Lyra hissed:
"I should have finished you off last time, witch? How many planets have you sacked, how many species have you rendered extinct, how many timeless civilisations have you wantonly snuffed out, you butcher, you soulless tyrant?"
Cornelia sneered back at her: "Do you really want to know what happens to you and your pathetic allies, Lewis? Oh, the irony. You see, I was in your timeline's future before I came back here to shore up the sequence of events that lead to the glory of the Empire of a Thousand Suns. And what did I see? You and your pathetic Justice Guild are dead. All that remains of your pretentious "America" are dust-blown, deserted hovels, starving children and stunted crops amidst insect infestations and blights. Don't you get it, Lewis? I don't have to wipe you from existence, your own primitive leaders and military forces will do it for me. Your world-" But as Cornelia lunged toward her, Lyra saw her advantage and stabbed inward, skewering Cornelia through the heart. In her arrogance and surety, Empress Cornelia Agrippina had not reckoned on being overcome by an experienced opponent and had left her personal forcescreen in her timeship. Lyra shook her head in disgust:
"You should have saved your psychological tricks for someone who cared, Cornelia. And talked less."
As she looked up, there was a telltale yellow burst of illumination as the sounds of a struggle in the alleyway adjacent to Archimedes' house echoed. Then there was a female scream:
"Donna!"
"I'll live, Ted. Get after him! If that assassin gets to the Roman soldier and kills him, Cornelia will have her way despite dying here and her wicked empire will continue to threaten us."
Lyra knelt by the Black Siren and produced a medical kit: "Incidentally, Lyra? I meant what I said earlier. Look at what you just did up there. You and Tom would be magic together."
"And what about you and Teddy? Come on, Donna, I saw him look at you just now before he got after that transtemporal assassin. You both want to be more than just comrades in crime fighting, don't you?"
"But we are just...what?"
"Oh honey, I know what I just saw. That man is in love with you. After we get back to 1961, you need to admit it to yourselves and make the first move."
"All right, yes, I admit it. But I thought it was unrequited."
"Well, it isn't. Because that was more than a comradely expression of concern back there, that was a man who needs to be jumped on quick smart!"
And in the end, the combined abilities of Tom Turbine and Catman prevailed, and the would-be assassin of Archimedes' killer was prevented from saving the scientist's life. An instant later, a serious kick from Catman had shattered the hapless future Roman Imperial soldier's entropy restraint belt and he winked out of existence in the timeline that was not his own. Although the Roman Galactic Empire still existed, all of its vaunted high technology had not enabled the alteration of probability structures to cancel out the existence of the Justice Guild of America in its timeline where the Roman Empire had fallen and civilisation had progressed to spaceflight and nuclear weapons by the early 1960s.
SEABOARD CITY CAVES, 1961:
The visions engulfed Cassandra again. They were becoming more frequent now, even if she herself would be dead and buried by the time her companions met their fates. She saw the Streak weaving backward and forward, so fast that an illusory legion of flickering images played backward and forward. Scott was straining as he pushed the power ring to its utmost, seeking to contain the uncontainable and Donna's unearthly supersonic siren cry echoed throughout the night time vista as the blazing Soviet ICBM thundered toward Ryerson USAF base. Like Icarus, the prone and dead body of Tom Turbine fell from the missile, in a brave but futile mission to defuse it before it struck, but he had sustained fatal radiation poisoning and had died in a matter of minutes. She tried to block them out but they were there, as intense as ever. In just over a year from now, the Justice Guild of America would perish in something beyond its control, the Third World War.
But this was now and that was then, and she knew her duty. She somersaulted into the clearing and started to reverse the facade of the virtual reality device that was subduing her friends, piledriving her leg into Cogitator's groin and then poleaxing him as he lunged toward her, bringing her elbow hard down onto his back as her knee shot up to add to the pain in his groin. She beat him to the monkey wrench that he had intended to use and then hit him over the head with it. Across the cave, the sheaths rose from over her companions and they blinked and groaned as she tied Cogitator up with a length of electrical cord:
"Morning, guys."
"Uhhh... Cassie. Did we miss all the fun?"
"Looks like it. I think the technical term for it is 'virtual reality', or artificially induced hallucinatory lotus land. Looks like Coggy here was in cahoots with the evil Empress."
Green Guardsman recoiled and his power ring began to smash the machine up, in rage and bewilderment at the sudden withdrawal of the contentment he faced.
Cassandra placed her hand on his arm: "Scott? Whatever happened, you're the Green Guardsman, a colleague and a friend. What else you do is none of our business and there are some things in this society that need to be changed."
Scott Mason said nothing, but turned and walked away. Cassandra Astriides was left to wonder if she should tell the others about her long-term visions and if so, when. And then, the timesphere re-entered the present day and her musings were lost in the congratulations and celebrations of another mission accomplished well. As it turned out, though, the second and last use of the Justice Guild timesphere ended its unique status. Shortly afterward, Lyra's uncle Alexander Lewis, its physicist inventor, was killed in a car accident and the secrets of transtemporal travel died with him.
That evening, Cassandra Astriides took out her photograph of her brother, Demetrius, killed in the Korean War. With him, arms around his waist, was his lover and battlefield comrade Hugh Tennyson. A tear escaped her eye and she hoped that one day, Scott would be able to come to terms with himself and not hide, or throw his life away needlessly because he could not do so.
Scott Mason sat in a bar nursing a vodka martini when a red-haired man stepped alongside him, planting himself on the stool next to him:
"Hey there. Marty. Marty Delany."
Scott sat there, saying nothing, but yearning to do so. After a while, Martin Delany, SCPD, gave up talking to the cute but inaccessible blond guy with the martini and moved away toward another conversation. Shame, though. Damn, blondie was hot! And after a while, Scott Mason got up and left, still unable to come out and acknowledge who else he was, apart from the Green Guardsman. The two men never met again. Scott Mason was killed trying to stop a nuclear missile impacting Seaboard City a year later and all of his secrets died with him. Martin Delany did survive, but in the child's eye asexual world of Ray Thompson, he was unable to act on his desires and was kept in a state of frozen development for almost four decades until he and Seaboard City's other inhabitants were unexpectedly liberated. His subsequent whereabouts and ultimate fate are unknown.
THE END
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ROMANUS CIRCULUS LAITUS IMPERIUM, AB URB CONDITAE 2714:
Empress Cornelia Agrippina Caesar XXIV lounged on her flagship's bed, grimly watching the spectacle before her. It was not the first time she had fought the Justice Guild of America with her alternate Earth Galactic Roman Empire troopers, but it would be the last, if her Naltorian precognates were correct about the impending future of their timeline. She deduced that the Guild themselves were unaware of their doom a year from now datum time, when the Soviet Union and United States initiated a nuclear exchange that would kill millions. Despite her hatred for the Guild, especially her mortal enemy Tom Turbine, she wondered about whether she could retrieve something from the situation, quite apart from eliminating the primitive timeline that Guild inhabited. Perhaps the Green Guardsman's power ring, which might be a potent weapon if it were upgraded and cleansed of its absurd vulnerability to aluminium? Or could there be a way to duplicate the Streak's superspeed velocity power?
She looked down at her remote altitude holographier images. From ten miles above the landscape of the world that the Guild and their primitive civilisation had usurped from its rightful owners, its future landscape seemed undisturbed. The real damage only became evident as one drew closer. The river that they called the Mississippi still pulsed and turned down to the seas as it had since time immemorial, with the sun overhead and the hills in shadowed relief. But lower altitude probes showed a plethora of shallow craters, some with recesses stained viridian green from the heat and light that had fused dirt and sand into vitreous glass. Then there was the churned and blasted land around the impact sites, leafless skeletal trees, splayed and tumbled skeletons and skulls, and in areas beyond the terminator, others that faintly shone a sickly fluorescent blue when night fell. Nothing lived there, or could live.
What a joke. The Guild and their arrogance, with their touching belief in human virtue and beneficence, unable to save their primitive, backward world. Because she could plainly see Seaboard City, the polis where they had been headquartered, and under a shifting hallucinatory landscape, it was as dead and blighted as the rest of their wretched world. Is that what it had all been for? They had cherished and wanted to protect this ultimate nightmare? What humiliation, what hubris, what a rebuttal of all of their pointless sophistry about a 'better world." Well, the Imperium was infinitely preferable to what wrack and ruin she saw beneath her now. At least areas of the Imperial capital of Rome were green and full of life from the Empire's thousands of worlds. At least children of the elite classes had fresh air to breathe, fresh water to drink or bathe in, and did not starve or succumb to the pandemics raging out of control down there without medical assistance to ease their lot.
Enough. It was time for the abomination, the desolation that her probes of this aborted alternate world to her own had disclosed to be erased permanently from existence. And she relished confrontation with her old enemies, even if it would be for the final time.
SEABOARD CITY, 1961 AD:
Abruptly, as Lyra Lewis was about to take up her pen again after an excellent cup of coffee, the Justice Guild alarm sounded:
"Tom?" Her lover and would-be fiancee turned as he ran toward the main monitor room:
"We may need you and the timesphere, Lyra."
Tom Turbine's one true love gasped: "You mean something's in the timestream?"
He nodded: "As you know, the klaxon has different pitch and frequency settings for different crises that the Guild encounters. But yes, this is transtemporal interference."
"Which can only mean one thing- that witch Cornelia and that skull-crushing totalitarian alternate Roman Empire of hers."
Tom grinned despite himself. Lyra Lewis may have been the woman he wanted to married, but despite his enmity with Cornelia, she was attracted physically to him. The two women knew about their rival's real feelings and despised each other- Cornelia thought that a 'warrior' like Lyra was 'wasted' with her pathetic concern for the weak and vulnerable, while Lyra reciprocally held Cornelia's ruthlessness, avarice and greed in similarly singular contempt.
"All right, where are the others?" Tom asked as Black Siren and Catman joined them both in the monitor room:
"We don't know. Their Justice Guild signal badges are inoperative, so it's anyone's guess."
"This isn't like Cass, Scott or Jake. Something's wrong..."
And then, abruptly, they heard Cassandra Astriide's voice from the monitor radio connection:
"What's wrong?"
"We were hoping you could tell us, Cassandra. We can't raise Scott or Jake. What about you?"
"They've been captured. Look, you handle the Roman incursion into the past, I'll retrieve the others. There's no time to waste. Now, if you'll excuse me..."
"I think I've found where Cornelia and her intervention force probably are. They seem to be in.. Syracuse, 211 BC. Oh, blazes. They're after Archimedes!" Lyra exclaimed.
Tom nodded: "That makes sense, Remember, the Roman General Marcus Claudius Marcellus wanted the inventor and scientist alive, but a careless Roman soldier killed him in our own timeline and as a consequence, the Roman Empire couldn't exploit his technological prowess. But in the Roman timeline..."
Lyra finished the sentence: "In the Roman alternate timeline, Marcellus' orders were followed, Archimedes must have been retrieved alive and Rome was able to convince him to use his technological innovations against Hannibal in the Second Punic War against Carthage, accelerating its downfall and giving them an edge, making sure that Rome was militarily stronger and underwent accelerated development relative to our own world."
Catman and Black Siren exchanged glances: "Lyra, you should really marry Tom and become a mystery woman in your own right. You already finish each other's sentences."
Tom managed a grin: "You know me, guys- never say never!"
Lyra had activated the timesphere: "Come on, lady and gentlemen. Your chariot awaits. Whatever Cassandra is doing, she'll be able to do it by herself, from what I've heard." And after they had crowded into her uncle's time travel device, the four of them vanished into the distant past.
In another corner of Seaboard City, the Streak and Green Guardsman lay, motionless, beneath two crystalline sheaths. From her vantage point in the cave, Cassandra looked down at the prone bodies of her friends and bit her lip. She couldn't foresee what was going to happen there, or what was going on inside their heads, but they seemed relaxed and smiling to themselves. Then she saw the reason why that was the case: Cogitator, the former Injustice Guild member who had grown tired of what he had termed the 'quotidian' nature of the criminal group's 'petty larcenies' and who had thus struck out on his own. But why weren't Scott or Jake fighting back? Then she noted the anaesthetic canisters and the oxygen masks over both men's faces and then she saw the simulated 'cityscape' on the screens that overlooked the Cogitator's sleeping captives.
"MEGALOPOLIS, 1983."
Jacob Allon work, next to his wife's smiling face: "Hey, honey. What's the agenda for today?"
"Oh, we're visiting Jay and Betty in Wildwood. Why, don't you remember?"
Jacob caught sight of himself in the mirror and was shocked. Since when was his hair grey? And where had those wrinkles come from around his eyes? He looked as if he were in his fifties.
"I have to contact the other Guild members first- Irene?"
His wife was frowning at him: "Jake? Don't you remember? You and the other Guild members retired ten years ago. Your former proteges run the Second Justice Guild these days."
"Wait, what?"
"I thought I was never going to get you out of that souped up motor racing outfit that you used to wear. Now come on, get dressed. We have to pick up Scott and Martin on the way."
Risking another expression of bewilderment from his wife, Jacob almost asked who Martin was, but wisely held his own counsel.
In his own bed, Scott Mason stirred. An exploratory tongue washed his ear. He blinked awake and encountered a redhaired man in the bed next to him:
"Ohmigod!" Scott squawked. Who was this man and what was he doing in bed with him, naked?
The other man rolled his eyes: "Come on, Scotty. Up and at 'im. You really tied one on last night, y'know?"
Scott was confused. He thought he'd firmly rejected this side of his life, with the shock therapy and the pills, back in the fifties. All right, he was occassionally tempted but he didn't actually act on it, that would be sinful and wrong. The other man kissed him. Scott was about to pull away, but then caught sight of himself in the mirror. He looked... twenty years older, but still seemed in good shape. And around the mirror, there were photographs- of this man and himself, in intimate body language that suggested that they'd been together for a long time. Scott was reluctant to do what he did next, but he had to do it. His power ring pulsed green and everything in his room froze.
"Ring. Tell me what the year is, and who this man is. And why am I openly h...ho..."
His instrument responded: "The date is March 15, 1983. You have been out as a gay man for the last ten years, ever since the US Supreme Court decided Warren versus Sithe shortly after Roe v Wade and decided that consenting adult gay men had the right to privacy and that male homosexuality could not therefore be a criminal offence. You met Martin Delany, a Seaboard City Police Department officer, at the victory march after Warren and you have been with him for over a decade."
"Who is the President of the United States at this time?"
"Former Senator Geraldine Ferraro."
Scott's mind reeled: There was a woman president?! It was 1983? He lived openly as a homosexual.. or 'gay", as the ring had indicated it was called now?
"What about the rest of the Justice Guild?"
"Please reiterate, Scott. Do you mean the original Justice Guild of America or the Second Justice Guild?"
"Second Justice Guild? Identify members."
" Catwoman, Mynah, Second Streak, Second Guardsman and Tina Turbine."
"Wait a minute. Denise, Dorrie, Warrick, Simon and Tina have taken over for us? What about the original Justice Guild?"
"Jake and Irene Allon are still happily married and living in Megalopolis and are now grandparents. Tom Turbine is now Commander of the US Tranquility Moonbase and he and Lyra Terrell have just celebrated their twentieth wedding anniversary. Ted Blake passed away from cancer five years ago. Donna Blake is now head of Blake-Herrington Enterprises."
Scott rapidly dressed. But he kept having moments of dizziness and hallucination, as if he were lying on a crystal pallet inside a cave somewhere. As he shut off the ring's time suspension effect, Martin grinned back at him: "Whoa. Come on, blondie. No tricks with the ring."
"Sorry, Martin. You know how I get when I wake up this early."
"Do I ever!"
SEABOARD CITY CAVES, 1961:
"Do they suspect anything?" Cornelia asked Cogitator, who shook his head:
"Nothing at all, Empress. They're 'living the dream', as I believe the current youth vernacular has it. Interesting. I never suspected that about Green Guardsman, but to each their own. And if it keeps him pacified, who am I to object?"
"Can you hold them captive, I meant?" Because, Cornelia mused to herself, Scott Mason's power ring did not survive the nuclear blast when he and the rest of his foolhardy Justice Guild companions thought they could thwart the Fates and save their collection of hovels from the wrath of the gods. But if he isn't there when the others throw their lives away, then I can cut off his life support and use that weapon of his for myself in the delay period before this phantom aberration of a world of theirs is abolished when Archimedes is allowed to bring his boon to the Empire as history decrees. Did that fool Cogitator actually suspect nothing?
SYRACUSE, 211 BC:
As the Roman triremes disgorged their legionnaires out on the beach before the Sicilian city, arrows shot overhead and Roman shields were deployed upward to prevent any airborne decimation of their attacking force. From his command balcony, General Marcus Claudius Marcellus bellowed: "And remember! I want the savant Archimedes alive!"
On the other side of the Syracuse city walls, the three uptime Justice Guild members and Lyra Lewis had arrived at their destination and were blending in as they concealed the sphere, dressed in fashionable clothing from the era in question:
"Who are we after?" Donna asked.
"At a guess, the soldier who ends up killing Archimedes. And remember, we have to make sure he gets there and kills him."
"Come on then, Ted. You and I."
Lyra unsheathed a broadsword: "And I get to cross swords with dear Cornelia. Tom? Is there any way to make sure that she and her cohorts get sent back to their own timeline and are unable to re-enter this one?"
"Brave and vainglorious words, Lewis. As usual. You are a warrior's daughter. Now come up onto the battlement and face me, woman to woman."
Lyra ran toward the wall overlooking the city, and the two women gave arms. As they fought, Lyra hissed:
"I should have finished you off last time, witch? How many planets have you sacked, how many species have you rendered extinct, how many timeless civilisations have you wantonly snuffed out, you butcher, you soulless tyrant?"
Cornelia sneered back at her: "Do you really want to know what happens to you and your pathetic allies, Lewis? Oh, the irony. You see, I was in your timeline's future before I came back here to shore up the sequence of events that lead to the glory of the Empire of a Thousand Suns. And what did I see? You and your pathetic Justice Guild are dead. All that remains of your pretentious "America" are dust-blown, deserted hovels, starving children and stunted crops amidst insect infestations and blights. Don't you get it, Lewis? I don't have to wipe you from existence, your own primitive leaders and military forces will do it for me. Your world-" But as Cornelia lunged toward her, Lyra saw her advantage and stabbed inward, skewering Cornelia through the heart. In her arrogance and surety, Empress Cornelia Agrippina had not reckoned on being overcome by an experienced opponent and had left her personal forcescreen in her timeship. Lyra shook her head in disgust:
"You should have saved your psychological tricks for someone who cared, Cornelia. And talked less."
As she looked up, there was a telltale yellow burst of illumination as the sounds of a struggle in the alleyway adjacent to Archimedes' house echoed. Then there was a female scream:
"Donna!"
"I'll live, Ted. Get after him! If that assassin gets to the Roman soldier and kills him, Cornelia will have her way despite dying here and her wicked empire will continue to threaten us."
Lyra knelt by the Black Siren and produced a medical kit: "Incidentally, Lyra? I meant what I said earlier. Look at what you just did up there. You and Tom would be magic together."
"And what about you and Teddy? Come on, Donna, I saw him look at you just now before he got after that transtemporal assassin. You both want to be more than just comrades in crime fighting, don't you?"
"But we are just...what?"
"Oh honey, I know what I just saw. That man is in love with you. After we get back to 1961, you need to admit it to yourselves and make the first move."
"All right, yes, I admit it. But I thought it was unrequited."
"Well, it isn't. Because that was more than a comradely expression of concern back there, that was a man who needs to be jumped on quick smart!"
And in the end, the combined abilities of Tom Turbine and Catman prevailed, and the would-be assassin of Archimedes' killer was prevented from saving the scientist's life. An instant later, a serious kick from Catman had shattered the hapless future Roman Imperial soldier's entropy restraint belt and he winked out of existence in the timeline that was not his own. Although the Roman Galactic Empire still existed, all of its vaunted high technology had not enabled the alteration of probability structures to cancel out the existence of the Justice Guild of America in its timeline where the Roman Empire had fallen and civilisation had progressed to spaceflight and nuclear weapons by the early 1960s.
SEABOARD CITY CAVES, 1961:
The visions engulfed Cassandra again. They were becoming more frequent now, even if she herself would be dead and buried by the time her companions met their fates. She saw the Streak weaving backward and forward, so fast that an illusory legion of flickering images played backward and forward. Scott was straining as he pushed the power ring to its utmost, seeking to contain the uncontainable and Donna's unearthly supersonic siren cry echoed throughout the night time vista as the blazing Soviet ICBM thundered toward Ryerson USAF base. Like Icarus, the prone and dead body of Tom Turbine fell from the missile, in a brave but futile mission to defuse it before it struck, but he had sustained fatal radiation poisoning and had died in a matter of minutes. She tried to block them out but they were there, as intense as ever. In just over a year from now, the Justice Guild of America would perish in something beyond its control, the Third World War.
But this was now and that was then, and she knew her duty. She somersaulted into the clearing and started to reverse the facade of the virtual reality device that was subduing her friends, piledriving her leg into Cogitator's groin and then poleaxing him as he lunged toward her, bringing her elbow hard down onto his back as her knee shot up to add to the pain in his groin. She beat him to the monkey wrench that he had intended to use and then hit him over the head with it. Across the cave, the sheaths rose from over her companions and they blinked and groaned as she tied Cogitator up with a length of electrical cord:
"Morning, guys."
"Uhhh... Cassie. Did we miss all the fun?"
"Looks like it. I think the technical term for it is 'virtual reality', or artificially induced hallucinatory lotus land. Looks like Coggy here was in cahoots with the evil Empress."
Green Guardsman recoiled and his power ring began to smash the machine up, in rage and bewilderment at the sudden withdrawal of the contentment he faced.
Cassandra placed her hand on his arm: "Scott? Whatever happened, you're the Green Guardsman, a colleague and a friend. What else you do is none of our business and there are some things in this society that need to be changed."
Scott Mason said nothing, but turned and walked away. Cassandra Astriides was left to wonder if she should tell the others about her long-term visions and if so, when. And then, the timesphere re-entered the present day and her musings were lost in the congratulations and celebrations of another mission accomplished well. As it turned out, though, the second and last use of the Justice Guild timesphere ended its unique status. Shortly afterward, Lyra's uncle Alexander Lewis, its physicist inventor, was killed in a car accident and the secrets of transtemporal travel died with him.
That evening, Cassandra Astriides took out her photograph of her brother, Demetrius, killed in the Korean War. With him, arms around his waist, was his lover and battlefield comrade Hugh Tennyson. A tear escaped her eye and she hoped that one day, Scott would be able to come to terms with himself and not hide, or throw his life away needlessly because he could not do so.
Scott Mason sat in a bar nursing a vodka martini when a red-haired man stepped alongside him, planting himself on the stool next to him:
"Hey there. Marty. Marty Delany."
Scott sat there, saying nothing, but yearning to do so. After a while, Martin Delany, SCPD, gave up talking to the cute but inaccessible blond guy with the martini and moved away toward another conversation. Shame, though. Damn, blondie was hot! And after a while, Scott Mason got up and left, still unable to come out and acknowledge who else he was, apart from the Green Guardsman. The two men never met again. Scott Mason was killed trying to stop a nuclear missile impacting Seaboard City a year later and all of his secrets died with him. Martin Delany did survive, but in the child's eye asexual world of Ray Thompson, he was unable to act on his desires and was kept in a state of frozen development for almost four decades until he and Seaboard City's other inhabitants were unexpectedly liberated. His subsequent whereabouts and ultimate fate are unknown.
THE END