Post by redsycorax on Oct 16, 2018 3:59:43 GMT
Willie Fawcett's eyes flickered open. When he tried to utter the mnemonic trigger that caused his transformation into Captain Thunder, his throat was paralysed. Above him swayed a threatening, familiar figure.
Atticus Morbida: "Surprised, Thunder? Yes, I also escaped from Earth-964 before the nuclear holocaust obliterated all life on it, all those decades ago. I aimed my vessel for the Cygnus X-1 black hole and it entered a singularity through its event horizon. Several decades in the future and within this universe, I departed a corresponding white hole.
Willie struggled against his bonds in frustration as Morbida continued:
"While in transit, I studied what could be achieved to repell you and neutralise you for good, if, as I suspected, you had survived. I almost missed it. You really don't like surrealism, do you? All those non-linear narratives, free association artwork, acausality, bizarre and perverse juxtapositioning. Well, this is an infinite multiverse, is it not? And so this time, your wretched Justice Alliance associates will never find you."
Willie tried to scream as the kaliedoscopic halo descended on him, but to no avail. Abruptly, a blinding flash lit up Morbida's laboratory and the diminutive Batson Globe reporter was no more.
As Supergirl scooped up the last plesiosaur, her husband Kalel sighed in relief:
"How could anyone want to harm these beautiful, placid creatures? They're like Krypton's Rondors."
"At least we can fly them back to the Southwestern Pacific Saurian Sanctuary where Greenworld can protect them from saurers. What is it, Kara?"
"I'm glad Hector, Tanaka and Diana showed up to make up the numbers for this plesio rescue, but Willie isn't answering his JAA signal device." [J'onn?]
[Kara. I share your unease. Normally, Captain Thunder's signal device would enable us to fix his location and enable communication with him. He is normally most assiduous about his attention to his responsibilities, and most diligent]
[We know he won't go offworld, which means he may have come to some harm] Kalel said, joining the telepathic round robin.
[How is that possible, Kal? Like us, he has superspeed, invulnerability, superstrength and flight capabilities available to him.]
[Not if they caught him as Willie Fawcett, before he was able to transform into Captain Thunder. After we're finished relocating the plesiosaurs, I'm heading over to Batson City].
[Kara, Hector here. My power ring readings show no paranormal transformative energy influxes like those that accompany the emergence of Captain Thunder from potentiality within the Cave of Eternity during the last fortnight. And there is no sign of the energy residue left on Willie Fawcett after he transforms back from being Captain Thunder either. Diana]
[I have contacted Athena and requested my pantheon's liaison with the Native American tutelary deities. Willie has just invoked his Captain Thunder mnemonic trigger. However, that has occurred over several hundred million probabilities away from here, on Earth 586,218,340.]
Tanaka Rei (the Flash) interjected: [J'onn. What does the JAA Heisenberg Alternate Probability Index have to say about that alternate universe?]
[Otherwise known as Earth-Dada. A world where natural laws permit the existence of concrete and tangible surrealist events and objects].
As he flew over the surrealist landscape of Earth-Dada, Captain Thunder was already feeling nauseous and disoriented, flying above landscapes where familiar objects were enlarged, contracted, truncated or otherwise distorted. Three moons shone in the sky at the same time as sun(s) shone, statues moved, and fish swum in the air as if still underwater. He fought a rising sense of panic, unable to recognise his surroundings as the world pulsated and shifted constantly around him:
"Hello. My name is Delirium. Do you like my fish?"
"Where am I, Delirium? Have I gone mad?"
"No, Captain Thunder, you just don't belong here. I do like your clothes. Your thunder emblem is very pretty."
"Wait a minute. I think I know who you are. Thanks for the compliment. Can you send me home, Delirium?"
"Sure, but stay and talk with me a while. Nothing here will be allowed to hurt you, Captain. Everything here listens to me."
"Thank you. Are you some sort of goddess?"
"Oh no. I'm much stronger than that. Now, what did my older sister say we were? The Endless are...anthropo...morphic... personifications. We're embodiments of abstract principles. My family are Destiny, Death, Dream, Desire, Destruction and Despair. And me. I'm the youngest."
Back on Earth-500, the redhaired, bespectacled Dr Morbida looked up from his workbench to see several irate JAA members facing him.
Supergirl said: "Dr Atticus Morbida, we assume? On our Earth to settle old vendettas, are we?"
"Thunder should have died on our common Earth of origin, instead of which, you bleeding hearts rescued him from that charnel house and relocated him here."
"Bring him back. Now." Superman growled.
"I can't. It's a one-way trip. If you followed him there, you'd be stranded too. Earth-Dada has radically divergent laws of physics from our own universe and other more orthodox counterparts."
"Morbida, you do realise that there are countless medaevil anti-science worlds where we could strand you. Earth-1471? Henry VI of England was sane, the War of the Roses never happened and England stayed conservative and Catholic. Martin Luther was burnt at the stake for heresy in Germany, and the Inquisition controls that world's Europe with no meaningful technological progress since the sixteenth century." J'onn J'onnz said
"Excuse me," said a young woman with rainbow hair and dishevelled clothes,"your friend Willie was lost so I came back here with him."
Captain Thunder stepped forward as Supergirl and Wonder Woman embraced him.
"Thank Hera you're all right!"
J'onn J'onnz saw quite something else: "My lady F'lyr'zil of the Alternate States of Consciousness, I bid you welcome to this world."
"Thank you, Martian friend. I remember what your world was like while you lived there. All sorts of beautiful shades of red- scarlet and crimson and vermillion and blood and... Willie here didn't belong on that world. He was scared and I didn't like that, because he's a little boy inside that great big hero Captain Thunder. I'm glad you're here to care and look after him because of that. My sister Death is a eu thanatos. A good death. And when she thinks of having to take everyone on Earth-964... and Krypton-500, Supergirl and Superman, it breaks her heart. It takes her a long time to recover from those cases."
Morbida laughed, unaware of the power of the slight stranger who smelt of an ocean's day, old leather and cinnamon:
"I may face kidnapping charges, but I'll be out in five years. Nor did I kill, or even harm Big Red- what's...happening...?"
"This is my eldest brother, Destiny. You are a cruel man, Atticus Morbida and I despise torturers."
The tall stern sepulchural figure read out:
"Earth 92,771. This Earth never developed life. While residents of a former technologically advanced alternate universe spanning empire built dwellings there to relieve population stress and overcrowding, that Earth ascended to Singularity status and left them vacant. They are hermetically sealed and have atmosphere generators but you will be unable to venture outside without a spacesuit. The house has access to cultural records and numerous scientific databases. No alien civilisations exist within an eight thousand light year radius. You will live there in solitary confinement for the rest of your life." And with that, Atticus Morbida found himself more alone than any man had ever been, or would ever be again. But Willie Fawcett was with friends who would nurture and support him throughout his long and happy life and heroic career as Captain Thunder, Earth-500's Mightiest Mortal.
THE END
Atticus Morbida: "Surprised, Thunder? Yes, I also escaped from Earth-964 before the nuclear holocaust obliterated all life on it, all those decades ago. I aimed my vessel for the Cygnus X-1 black hole and it entered a singularity through its event horizon. Several decades in the future and within this universe, I departed a corresponding white hole.
Willie struggled against his bonds in frustration as Morbida continued:
"While in transit, I studied what could be achieved to repell you and neutralise you for good, if, as I suspected, you had survived. I almost missed it. You really don't like surrealism, do you? All those non-linear narratives, free association artwork, acausality, bizarre and perverse juxtapositioning. Well, this is an infinite multiverse, is it not? And so this time, your wretched Justice Alliance associates will never find you."
Willie tried to scream as the kaliedoscopic halo descended on him, but to no avail. Abruptly, a blinding flash lit up Morbida's laboratory and the diminutive Batson Globe reporter was no more.
As Supergirl scooped up the last plesiosaur, her husband Kalel sighed in relief:
"How could anyone want to harm these beautiful, placid creatures? They're like Krypton's Rondors."
"At least we can fly them back to the Southwestern Pacific Saurian Sanctuary where Greenworld can protect them from saurers. What is it, Kara?"
"I'm glad Hector, Tanaka and Diana showed up to make up the numbers for this plesio rescue, but Willie isn't answering his JAA signal device." [J'onn?]
[Kara. I share your unease. Normally, Captain Thunder's signal device would enable us to fix his location and enable communication with him. He is normally most assiduous about his attention to his responsibilities, and most diligent]
[We know he won't go offworld, which means he may have come to some harm] Kalel said, joining the telepathic round robin.
[How is that possible, Kal? Like us, he has superspeed, invulnerability, superstrength and flight capabilities available to him.]
[Not if they caught him as Willie Fawcett, before he was able to transform into Captain Thunder. After we're finished relocating the plesiosaurs, I'm heading over to Batson City].
[Kara, Hector here. My power ring readings show no paranormal transformative energy influxes like those that accompany the emergence of Captain Thunder from potentiality within the Cave of Eternity during the last fortnight. And there is no sign of the energy residue left on Willie Fawcett after he transforms back from being Captain Thunder either. Diana]
[I have contacted Athena and requested my pantheon's liaison with the Native American tutelary deities. Willie has just invoked his Captain Thunder mnemonic trigger. However, that has occurred over several hundred million probabilities away from here, on Earth 586,218,340.]
Tanaka Rei (the Flash) interjected: [J'onn. What does the JAA Heisenberg Alternate Probability Index have to say about that alternate universe?]
[Otherwise known as Earth-Dada. A world where natural laws permit the existence of concrete and tangible surrealist events and objects].
As he flew over the surrealist landscape of Earth-Dada, Captain Thunder was already feeling nauseous and disoriented, flying above landscapes where familiar objects were enlarged, contracted, truncated or otherwise distorted. Three moons shone in the sky at the same time as sun(s) shone, statues moved, and fish swum in the air as if still underwater. He fought a rising sense of panic, unable to recognise his surroundings as the world pulsated and shifted constantly around him:
"Hello. My name is Delirium. Do you like my fish?"
"Where am I, Delirium? Have I gone mad?"
"No, Captain Thunder, you just don't belong here. I do like your clothes. Your thunder emblem is very pretty."
"Wait a minute. I think I know who you are. Thanks for the compliment. Can you send me home, Delirium?"
"Sure, but stay and talk with me a while. Nothing here will be allowed to hurt you, Captain. Everything here listens to me."
"Thank you. Are you some sort of goddess?"
"Oh no. I'm much stronger than that. Now, what did my older sister say we were? The Endless are...anthropo...morphic... personifications. We're embodiments of abstract principles. My family are Destiny, Death, Dream, Desire, Destruction and Despair. And me. I'm the youngest."
Back on Earth-500, the redhaired, bespectacled Dr Morbida looked up from his workbench to see several irate JAA members facing him.
Supergirl said: "Dr Atticus Morbida, we assume? On our Earth to settle old vendettas, are we?"
"Thunder should have died on our common Earth of origin, instead of which, you bleeding hearts rescued him from that charnel house and relocated him here."
"Bring him back. Now." Superman growled.
"I can't. It's a one-way trip. If you followed him there, you'd be stranded too. Earth-Dada has radically divergent laws of physics from our own universe and other more orthodox counterparts."
"Morbida, you do realise that there are countless medaevil anti-science worlds where we could strand you. Earth-1471? Henry VI of England was sane, the War of the Roses never happened and England stayed conservative and Catholic. Martin Luther was burnt at the stake for heresy in Germany, and the Inquisition controls that world's Europe with no meaningful technological progress since the sixteenth century." J'onn J'onnz said
"Excuse me," said a young woman with rainbow hair and dishevelled clothes,"your friend Willie was lost so I came back here with him."
Captain Thunder stepped forward as Supergirl and Wonder Woman embraced him.
"Thank Hera you're all right!"
J'onn J'onnz saw quite something else: "My lady F'lyr'zil of the Alternate States of Consciousness, I bid you welcome to this world."
"Thank you, Martian friend. I remember what your world was like while you lived there. All sorts of beautiful shades of red- scarlet and crimson and vermillion and blood and... Willie here didn't belong on that world. He was scared and I didn't like that, because he's a little boy inside that great big hero Captain Thunder. I'm glad you're here to care and look after him because of that. My sister Death is a eu thanatos. A good death. And when she thinks of having to take everyone on Earth-964... and Krypton-500, Supergirl and Superman, it breaks her heart. It takes her a long time to recover from those cases."
Morbida laughed, unaware of the power of the slight stranger who smelt of an ocean's day, old leather and cinnamon:
"I may face kidnapping charges, but I'll be out in five years. Nor did I kill, or even harm Big Red- what's...happening...?"
"This is my eldest brother, Destiny. You are a cruel man, Atticus Morbida and I despise torturers."
The tall stern sepulchural figure read out:
"Earth 92,771. This Earth never developed life. While residents of a former technologically advanced alternate universe spanning empire built dwellings there to relieve population stress and overcrowding, that Earth ascended to Singularity status and left them vacant. They are hermetically sealed and have atmosphere generators but you will be unable to venture outside without a spacesuit. The house has access to cultural records and numerous scientific databases. No alien civilisations exist within an eight thousand light year radius. You will live there in solitary confinement for the rest of your life." And with that, Atticus Morbida found himself more alone than any man had ever been, or would ever be again. But Willie Fawcett was with friends who would nurture and support him throughout his long and happy life and heroic career as Captain Thunder, Earth-500's Mightiest Mortal.
THE END