The Power of Ten Book Four: Dynamo

“Reed Richards of Terra-161-0,” I said calmly to this deranged Schmot Guy, raising Function’s red-gray-and-unwhite burning Blade effortlessly, the Baneskull of a former Immortal blazing away on it. “We are aware of who and what you are, your past and origins, your willingness to dive right down that rabbit hole of weak morals, and the genocidal events that have resulted because of it.

“We aren’t going to put up with you.” I began to Hum behind my voice, love that kiai-jitsu, and the Sublime Chord began to rise and coalesce all about me, pulsing and crackling with eldritch energies. “You know yourself that by any sane standard of behavior, you deserve to die, you should have been killed long ago, and allowing you to live is literally putting an entire universe at risk to your whims.

“Perhaps you should consider being an asset to those universes you endure in after this. But don’t bother coming back here, because you’ll die the instant one of your alternate bodies pops up in any realm you’ve died in... and Death is going to be directly helpful about collecting ALL of you.” His eyes bulged comically in disbelief, trying to figure the words to blurt out, the angle to use to change my mind, and then he realized that I’d already taken all those into account.

After all, I wasn’t actually killing him, or even hurting him that much, was I?

“Goodbye, Maker Richards,” I finished, as the spell crystallized all around me, and thrummed in the fabric of this universe and beyond.

Function swept down, and his scream of disbelief ended almost instantly. A cool gust of breath washed past me as that part of his mind, body, and soul here was extinguished, the energy fed to the Land, and a whispery voice laughed, echoing out a long, long way...

There were technically infinite realities, and the Maker had been allowed to incarnate in all of them, a deed of exceptional stupidity. Resonating through the Underweb and following his own threads of pan-dimensional existence, his death swept out. Maker after Maker died, and died, and died, and Death Aspects across the Multiverse chortled to see it, even if his true soul escaped them.

The sudden ending of my spell was the result I expected, as he realized that Death was going to follow his connections to his entire existence across the multiverse, and the only way to stop the spell from wiping out all of him was to sever all his existences from one another, reducing him to just another person with alternate selves in those dimensions. Without that connection, he’d even lose knowledge of his multiversal existence, except on his Prime.

Pointedly, all those universes cooperating in the Reality Guard were cleansed of him before he managed to cut his existences apart from one another with a terrible mental effort and back into their individual Selves, and their timelines adjusted to fit the new independent existences back together.

If his current Prime wanted to get clever, we were watching him, and he couldn’t even remember who had just wiped out so many of his Selves after his trauma had left bits and pieces of his mind scattered across uncounted dimensions, only recalling a whisper of advice to be a better man in the future...

My view of his pan-dimensional connections faded away, the greater chunk of the multiverse completely free of him now. Not all of it, of course, but most...

Reece could really be so dumb at times, but at least this mistake had been mostly corrected. There would be Reed Richards alternates in most of those timelines, not Makers; the Makers would only exist where there were no previous Reed Richards alternates. The sudden crashing from an infinite mind with infinite bodies was no doubt going to be harsh to the bastards, but, hey, I had very little sympathy.

I had been very tempted to drive a psimagic Moondragon Mystery Madness March of the Earworm into his enhanced intellect and drive him batshit insane across the multiverse with its impossibly distracting and soul-devouring music, which was only more effective the smarter you were, but I was being nice...

I’d do it if we ever met him in the future and he had stayed a twat.

------

“This is addressed to the Good People of Russia.

“I am Briggs, called the Great Bear of the Terra opposite this Earth and Russia, on the far side of our lovely sun.

“I am greatly disappointed by the deeds of your government, and the mistakes upon mistakes taken by themselves who call themselves your leaders.

“If you are tired of them and their greed and grasping for power, I extend to you an offer.

“Call upon Tchernoborg and Perrun, the ancient gods of your people, and ask that you and yours be taken away. They will hear you, and judge you, and if your love of Russia and its people is true, I will remove you from that mockery that has been made of the Motherland.

-Be well, my fellow Russians.-

That had been three months ago. Russia was still losing a hundred thousand people a day, just a sweeping hand sliding by, and whisking up them and their families and taking them away. Russia had no way to stop it; the people were just gone.

Of course, that did leave those holding onto power ever more firmly gripping it, but thirty million people just evaporating was causing a considerable upheaval in the corridors of power, as the best and brightest of Russia gave up on their seniors and left them behind in droves, naturally leaving the worst behind to muddle on without them.

Moving to a place where their dreams could come true and they could leave behind the specter of their past was truly a great attraction, and hey, there were worlds to populate, and Russia had plenty of room and incredible ability to accommodate them.

Earth-Russia’s demand to send their people back was completely ignored. One attempt to launch a missile attack on Terra to show they were serious went off-course and detonated directly above the Kremlin, wiping out the heart of the government that had remained behind and really messing Earth-Russia up further. Oligarchs and the impotent President were soon struggling wildly to control their country, and all the while their best continued to leave.

The news that the vast majority of their nuclear arsenal had evaporated was something they tried to keep really hard on the down-low, too.

Then large numbers of the indigenous tribes of the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Central and South America of Earth also began vanishing overnight...

I just shook my head as the Totems made their presence and power known, and if the tribes wanted to move somewhere they weren’t second and third-grade citizens, the option was now open.

Of course, many countries were irate that certain polities could now emigrate at will and had totally removed their low-end labor supply... which often amounted to a significant portion of their farm economy, too. Others were ecstatic at the loss of labor competition taking away ‘their’ jobs... until they realized that whole low-level support industries had just vanished, and suddenly the cost to hire people to do those jobs had just sky-rocketed, as nobody wanted to work them.

The people now on Venus didn’t complain. They were immediately brought into a high-tech environment, vetted for Talents and training, were hypno-trained, and immediately set to doing jobs suitable for them on all that vast, unsettled land.

All speaking the same language, too. And if there were aliens and stuff around, well, they also had universal translators, so that just made it all new and exciting for them.

Ignoring the protests of the countries scrambling to replace their poor and deal with the shrunken labor pool, the Great Plan of bringing humanity to the stars continued...

------

More time passes, more interdimensional team-ups and shenanigans while Terra expands into space...

“Updated!” we said together, the appropriate memories shuffled into a parallel stream and settled into place.

Neither of us were in uniform, but this was a social gathering, not a punch-them-up. Given how many different dimensions were involved in the Reality Guard, I couldn’t update with the Clones-now-Primes spread out through all of them too frequently, which was fine. I tried to keep a minimum of three years between all that so they could get their own identities and lives in place as Primes of their own.

“Billy Batson?” I had to ask, a little scandalized.

Nami just rolled her eyes as she flipped the burgers. “He’s not a kid. Just look at that soul of his!”

“Yeah, yeah.” She flicked off a score of burgers, and I zipped them off to those waiting via TK, already having listed out their preferences as I put on the condiments and delivered them afterwards.

Piotr and Kal-el were sitting over there, talking about horses and farms and stuff, getting into a real discussion on good tractors, it looked like. Diana was giving Carol a tour of her invisible plane and its workings, much to Carol’s envy at its coolness, and then discussing power supplies and alternate engines and possible upgrades.

Callie and J’onn got along well, Doc Savage and his grandson were in talks with Bruce and Dick, Harvey (Wrench) and John Henry Irons were talking shop and steel, the Atoms were deep in some quantum rarefied theory stuff, Dr. Fate was discussing some divine matters with King Thor over there, Zatanna and Nimue were dueling with French fry swords and potato chip shields between them, and Champions, Avengers, and High Guards were kibitzing with the other Justice Leaguers and Society and some Titans who’d dropped in.

Kismet and Koriand’r seemed to be getting along pretty good, and Zhuli and his apprentice Lanterns were comparing notes and techniques with all Earth’s Green Lantern trainees.

“I didn’t expect the Guardians would crack so fast on the limits to the Corps,” I murmured to Nami.

“Yes, well, Zhuli was quite eloquent, and when your powerful, universe-spanning Corps is next to ineffectual because of their numbers, there’s a point. The only problem is their power source really wasn’t geared to supply so many of them.”

“Makes sense. They aren’t using the Emotional Spectrum in this multiverse, after all. It’s all foundational power from the Oans, right?” I asked.

“The Oans regulate it, yes, but there’s a limit to it. If something happens to the Oans, the tap really starts having problems, it’s not independent of them.” The hundred-patty grill was sizzling as she swapped more patties out and in, and I slapped them on buns and sent them nice and hot to those waiting for them. “They consider that a feature, not a bug, but they already lost one to Krona coming back from death...” she hinted with an eye-roll.

“In other words, they are idiots. They don’t know their Seven Colors are just their universe’s version of the Infinity Gems?” Krona was now dead again, with prejudice. The Death of this universe was much nicer than my own...

“Their out-universal knowledge is lacking, obsessed as they are with their own and being the pre-eminent watchers over it,” she sniffed. Looking ineffectual next to the Universal Order of the Guardian Eye was also not an ego thing, nopers...

“Sinestro uncorked the Yellow with help from Qward. How long you figure on the rest?”

“Five years or so? There’s already interested parties looking for them after realizing that if there’s two colors, there could be more. The Guardians are trying valiantly to discourage it... but given the Zamorans are already actively using the Violet...”

“Leaning against the wind,” I shook my head.

Neither of us mentioned the fact that half of the Batman’s rogue gallery had expired within the last four years, all due to dumb accidents, random coincidence, or in two cases, the guns of cops who didn’t miss. The Joker had fallen a thousand feet from a helicopter when his rope was cut by a rotor as the copter spun over, hit water which was like concrete at terminal velocity, and had then been torn apart by several opportunistic sharks who happened to be in the area. Shocking coincidence, yes.

The Riddler had been one of those to belatedly realize the answer to the yes/no question on wearing bullet-resistant clothing when you mess around with the trigger-happy Gotham police while threatening yet another disaster for the city. His genius at trivia was not missed.

Also, when vivic energy was done with a body, the Lazarus Pits of Ra’as Al Ghul didn’t have anything to work with. Nami had made sure there was nothing left of the dead to resurrect... and yes, certain forces had indeed gone looking to try and do so.

Luthor and Brainiac were already dead after the whole Incursion mess, so that had lifted a great deal of weight from Kal-El’s shoulders. However, it had also cost humanity its greatest genius, and he needed to be replaced somehow.

That’s what Nami was doing. Instead of running around in tights, she’d started up Dynamic Industries, bought out Lexcorp (which was a lurching, dying thing after Luthor died), and was taking over the job of the foremost inventor and producer of technological goods on the planet, basically doing what the Baxter Building and Stark Industries were doing combined.

Got along well with Waynecorp and Star Labs, too.

There’d been a Maker here, who could have done the job. Alas, he’d suffered a catastrophic cerebral hemorrhage and died abruptly some time ago, too bad, so sad. His uncorking a mutagenic that had reduced a hundred thousand non-supers to raving plague zombies in delight meant he was not missed, either.