The Power of Ten Book Four: Dynamo

More time passes...

The wobble in reality literally shook the whole universe, if you were powerful enough to sense it. It hit me right in the middle of a hot shower, something I rarely indulged in, but Barb had invented the most ingenious nozzle for the shower head, and just sitting under that thing was a sin...

Nevertheless, I sighed heavily, turning it off as I turned my head and Looked Out There.

I didn’t even see it first. -There’s another Terra in orbit!- called out thousands, then millions, of shocked /voices in the Marktell as I stepped out of the shower, dry in an instant, uniform on me in the next second, and taking a very direct and fast route outside the station in the second after that, manipulating the hull to open up and let me out directly, sealing it behind me.

A-yup, there it was, another Earth over there, and the sky had turned red from dimensional bleed.

Uncle Ben and Aunt May, Primus, Prima, Carol, Lantern, Flux, Richard Ryder, Jessica Ryder, and Kismet all joined me in under a minute or two, just looking at the thing and sensing what the heck was going on.

“Earth-383-44,” I judged, looking at the dimensional vibes as we all headed for the border area with it. “I do NOT like the looks of this interface area.”

“It’s on a collision course,” Uncle Ben said softly.

“Yes, the border area is resonating, drawing the dimensional spaces together. If that happens...” Paragon’s voice came over coms where he was at all the sensor feeds.

“Two things, same space, same time. Instant destruction of both continuums!” Carol immediately burst out, her fists tensing. “Damn! What is doing this? How do we stop it?”

“We have company,” Primus noted, and our eyes turned to where streaks of distant motion were closing in on us from the other universe, one of them leaving a long emerald trail behind.

I lifted an eyebrow as they became more visible, moving very fast indeed as they came in on the other side of the barrier.

Only a few of them were floating free in the vacuum, the rest bubbled up in a sphere of the green energy, which suddenly dispersed over them into a form of energy aura and vacuum suits, giving them at least some protection from space and ability to fly around in case there was trouble.

“A Justice League variant-Terra,” Primus nodded, looking over at his red and blue alien counterpart calmly, not missing the flash of suspicion there. “They dominate the 380’s and its derivatives, as I recall?”

“Correct. Variant Stater-dominated world, for those of you unfamiliar with it.” I looked down the timeline, and saw nothing totally out of place, and then up the timeline, where our future didn’t exist, and...

Blinked. “Eff me. Uncle Ben, Aunt May, take a look down their timeline,” I pointed at nothing. “You see that?”

He and May turned and squinted, gazing down the timeline for a moment before flinching. “My word!” May exclaimed. “What is going on there?” Her eyes began to track sideways. “This...”

“That Green Lantern is attempting to breach the dimensional membrane,” Zhuli spoke up quickly.

“I don’t sense any malicious intentions, but they are definitely wary and very suspicious,” Sersi added. “I gather they don’t have multiversal intelligence operations at the scope we do?” she asked dryly.

“No, but then, few timelines without Timelords overseeing them do. Zhuli, help me out and let’s do a handshake protocol here.”

“Of course.” Our Eyes beamed out together and began to build a bridging Formation of bright yellow opposite the emerald green of the other side, and I hummed up a few Chords to ease open a very tight opening in the membrane between us, which then rapidly expanded into a large dome structure with airlock-type openings at each side between the two realities.

While this could certainly be a fight-dome, the simple fact we were taking quarantine precautions and not just punching a hole to enter quickly at least had them conferring among themselves as to what was going on. Our whole group moved over to the airlock while they conferred about what to do, waiting patiently as they decided on their course, and then moved to do the same as us.

They outnumbered us, but that didn’t really bother any of us, as we were all High Guard and way up the power scale. The majority of the Justice League were Betas and Alphas, with some heavy-hitters who would be surprised how fast we could shut them down.

A telepathic wave swept gingerly over us, received several polite rebukes as it picked up nothing from anyone, and was withdrawn quickly. The Green Martian was impressed, intrigued, and careful as he regarded us, everyone having triple layers of protections against telepathic attack, even before any mental training.

Primus and Callie led the way, stepping forward with smiles. “Greetings. I am Piotr, callsign Primus, and this is my wife Callie. Behind me are my fellow members of the High Guard. Do I have the honor of speaking with the members of the Justice League?” he asked in a friendly voice.

The greeting seemed to relax them all. I had to be careful to hide my bemusement as the Superman of Earth-383-44 stepped forward. “You do. You’ve heard of us?” He carefully extended a hand, and Primus shook it warmly.

“Your reputation as defenders of your world and people precede you, Kal-el of Krypton,” Primus confirmed, his handshake strong but neutral, not testing the other. “Mimi, did we ever do a survey of their dimension?”

“There was a survey of 383-Prime about six years back, after some fallout from the 5th Dimension attracted some attention from us. Nothing from 383-44 precisely,” Callie’s Clone said over coms, broadcast so all could hear. “The 380’s tend to take care of their own business pretty well, all things considered.”

“If we’re 383-44, what are you?” the Amazonian Princess Diana asked astutely, curious.

“First, let’s get everyone introduced,” Primus replied firmly, and began introducing all the members of the High Guard calmly. Superman politely returned the favor with introductions to all the Justice Leaguers. We even Portaled in Paragon, Wrench, and the Atom to meet everyone, shaking hands all around. The Carol Corps members tended to stay with the Ultra Corps, so Starfire and her sisters weren’t on call.

---

“As they are an unexciting and pragmatic temporal hierarchy, the Time Variant Authority’s timeline scale tends to be the most widely known among most dimensional travelers,” Callie explained after everyone was introduced and seated in Disk-chairs I whipped up, flipping up a holo of the various dimensional variations, going from 0 to 999. “The Zero to Ten designations are largely for universes without magic, psionics of any sort, and the like. As they start becoming more energetic, they deviate increasingly from one another, with the 100’s having at least some magical traditions and lifeforms, superscience starts to form, and so forth and so on.

“The variant worlds with Justice Leagues and their alternities are Prime in the 380’s. We’re up at 1832-Prime, considered rather unique because our universe has no alternities.” Our unique place on the line lit up.

“Isn’t that impossible, Dynamo?” another fellow in red and blue, atoms all over the blue of his red and blue outfit, sat up on his Disk-Chair that I’d whipped up, leaning forward. “Quantum theory postulates...”

“And is overridden by Source and Null presences, Dr. Palmer,” I interrupted the JL’s Atom calmly, shutting him down. “There are no 1832 alternities,” I repeated firmly.

“What are Sources and Nulls?” was the immediate question from the harsh-voiced man in the bat-themed outfit. “And how does it relate to your world appearing over ours?”

“Sources make Fate, and Nulls solidify Fate. An alternity represents a change or deviation in Fate, an action taken or not taken, or a shift in history. As Nulls solidify Fate and Sources choose one course, there is no deviation in choices in past or present, and the future does not exist until it gets here,” I explained politely. “And it has no relation to what has befallen your world,” I finished grimly.

“OUR world?” the Green Lantern, Hal Jordan, immediately jumped on the term. “This isn’t affecting your world?”

Everyone was looking at me. “No, this is not affecting our world at all.” I held up a finger before they could protest. “I have Cosmic Awareness to a very enhanced degree. I am looking up your timeline now, and I can see something horrifying happening not only to your reality, but uncounted others.”

They all looked at one another in consternation, but it was the red-and-gold male Captain Marvel with the short white cape who leaned forward, ignoring the defensiveness of the others. He asked calmly, “What is the problem?”

I grabbed control of Callie’s hologram of alternity designations, spreading it out into parallel lines that came to and from common points. “Consider this a track of the timelines of various alternities. All of us start from a common point, the beginning of time, the Big Bang.” I pointed left, heads turned to watch the parallel lines start at a common point. “We all end at the end of time, the Big Crunch, such as it is.” Heads turned the other way to see the lines converge, but I frowned. “At least, that is what is supposed to happen.

“Someone did something.”

I reached out into the hologram, everyone watching, and plucked a random timeline.

It exploded with a pop, and simply vanished. The entire network hummed.

“That is what I felt just a short time ago!” the raven-haired sorceress Zatanna exclaimed, jumping to her feet.

“Yes. Someone destroyed an entire alternity, from beginning to end. In doing so, they naturally destroyed any alternities that branched off from it.” A vast tree of alternate timelines in infinitely long designations vanished along with the ruptured timeline. “Perhaps we could call this a cosmic accident, or even sabotage, but it is definitely something more, because something is taking advantage of it.”

I spread out exactly two timelines, the explosion of the lost timeline between them. “That explosion took place on an alternate of our shared world of Terra, in our present. In effect, that moment became the End of Time for that timeline.” The far end of the temporal cycle suddenly shifted towards the middle. “Normally, this would mean nothing. But something, or someone, has exacerbated the fact that the End of Time is the same for all parts of the same Multiverse and all things end there, using our worlds and current points in time as anchors.

“And they are pulling the End of Time forward.”

Like a Ziploc bag being sealed, the two timelines began to converge, and when they touched in the present day, the other Earths detonated, and both timelines perished.

Everyone, High Guard and Justice League alike, hissed in shock.

“This cannot happen to us, because we don’t have a locked future. The resonance effect is trying to dance down our timeline, but it can only move forward at the speed we ourselves are.

“However, it is reverberating through your future and rolling backwards even now. When it reaches your present and ours, it will converge our timelines, and detonate both of them.”

Genial Uncle Ben was the next to speak. “That will mean the absolute destruction of anything that can’t get outside both dimensions before then. The End of Time is being forcibly shifted forward across every alternity.

“This is a threat to the entire multiverse,” he stated emphatically.

“How long do we have? Is there a way to buy time?” the Batman barked out quickly, unwilling to simply give up, along with just about everyone else.

“You have to destroy one of the worlds before they join, destroying the resonance before the joint Incursion happens automatically,” I told him calmly.

Everybody’s faces turned absolutely awful. Superman rose to his feet. “I refuse to believe that!”

“TRUTH,” I declared firmly in reply!