Crisis on Infinite Earths

by Marv Wolfman

  154

  Marv Wolfman

  All I knew was I wanted to see him and he wasn't where I hoped he would be. Pretty selfish, Allen. I don't have a life so he couldn't have one either.

  As I took off I thought of him and Carol and me and Iris. Those times together were the best in my life, and though I recognized it even then I never seriously acknowledged it, not even to myself. I wasn't brought up to be overly emotional, my damned Midwestern heritage and all that. So I never told him how much he meant to me. Of course, if I did, he'd probably look at me funny, accuse me of being a girlieman or something like that, then try to get me to smoke a cigar to prove I wasn't, knowing, of course, that I didn't smoke. "Aha! Proof of major girlitude, Allen!"

  I didn't have a lot of friends who I felt close to, but Hal, as different as we were, was numero uno on that all-too-short list. I ran to the security gate then turned back for one last look. Ferris Aircraft had disappeared.

  It was happening again.

  I watched an Egyptian pyramid shimmer into view, stone by stone as it had been originally built. The desert started to form around it, spreading quickly to where I stood.

  The Sphinx suddenly rose out of the sand and in seconds it towered over me. But the nose of this Sphinx was still intact, not fallen victim to weather and man, and its face was not of Khafre, the 4th King of Egypt's 4th Dynasty, but of the 19th Dynasty Pharaoh, Ramesses 1, born more than a thousand years later.

  This was not the Sphinx of Earth-1. My Earth.

  Not only time, but the universes were beginning to merge!

  Ferris Aircraft had completely disappeared, including the air fields far to its north. I knew that didn't mean it had been destroyed; Carol, Tom and the others might have found themselves in any place or in any time on either Earth-1 or 2.

  I realized there was nothing else I could do here and staying would only depress me.

  I came because thinking of Hal made me think of Carol and especially of Iris and me. We were four friends, more than friends actually. Family. Dammit. The more I thought of the four of us the faster I had to get away from there.

  I ran. God, did I run. Faster and faster. Get away from Ferris Air. Get away from California. Get away from it all.

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  But as I ran I realized I couldn't run away from those memories. I had to run toward them.

  I had to break through to the speed force. More than before, I had to know where Iris was and I had to make the force take me to her. In less than one second I passed the speed of sound. It took nearly eight more ticks of the clock to approach the speed of light. So far so good. Of course, I'd done this a million times before and never came close to falling into that... place. I picked up speed.

  I could begin to make out colors. This was it. I ran faster now, straining as hard as I could.

  But then, the colors faded. No, they simply shut off abruptly as if a switch had been pulled somewhere. A voice spoke and I suddenly fell back, away from the colors and the speed force, as if I had hit something hard. I had heard only one word, but it spoke volumes to me. The voice said, "No."

  Forty-two

  I was back on the Monitor's satellite.

  The speed force or whoever was keeping me around was still playing its games with me.

  "Go to hell," I cried out. "Find someone else to do your damned errands."

  There was no answer. Obviously, it knew it could do whatever it wanted with me.

  In a moment of self-determined brilliance, I thought of something else I wanted to say and shouted to the voice again, positive this time I'd be heard.

  When I was alive I often saw people on street corners standing on wooden boxes also shouting to God or someone. So, was I as crazy as I always thought they were or were they trapped in some other-dimensional limbo existence, too?

  "Hey, voices," I called out. "Guess what? I've got another idea. If the Anti-Monitor destroyed my world in the future, then let me go back into the past.

  I realized Iris was still alive in the past.

  "I don't care if I see her at age 25 or 30 or 35. I just want to see her. So how about it?"

  Still no answer. The speed force guys were really starting to tick me off.

  Jimmy Olsen Earth—1

  Jimmy Olsen snapped another series of photographs, then removed and marked the film cannister and dropped it in his camera case. He had already taken more than 400 shots and he hadn't yet photographed a fraction of what was going on.

  He switched over to his video camera to record the chaos in sound and movement. These are gonna be great, he kept thinking. Pulitzer prize, Oscar-winning great.

  Jimmy made his way to Burnley Boulevard. He had been there just the night before when the Vanguard Theater played a three-picture Hitchcock retrospective. Jimmy staggered out of the show at about one AM and headed home to sleep.

  But where Martin Landau, about to kill a wounded Cary Grant, was shot by a policeman and fell to his death, there now stood a mist-covered fetid marshland.

  Four cavemen crouched on its far shore, no more than ten feet away from him. They were either Cro-Magnon or Neanderthal, he could never remember which was which.

  Three of them, more primitive than the fourth, were hunched over some freshly killed game, but they were also staring in horror at modern Metropolis.

  A car screamed past, honking its annoying horn, and splattered them with mud. One of the cavemen tried to attack the car with his club, but all he connected with was its back fender before it tore around the corner, disappearing from sight.

  The fourth caveman was younger and somehow less primitive. The look on his face told the entire story, as though he believed himself to be 158

  Marv Wolfman

  dreaming. A moment ago, he might have been out on the plains, hunting, but now a mysterious village rose up around him like the dark forest at river's edge. Where was he, he must have wondered. How had he gotten here? Jimmy stood his distance, video taping the boy. "Can you understand me?" The boy, frightened, backed himself to the side of the Daily Planet building. He may not have known where he was, but the strange mountain behind him was solid and would protect his back even as his spear would defiantly protect his front.

  "Go!" He waved the stranger away while grunting in a language Jimmy couldn't hope to understand. But he certainly understood the gesture. No problem. There were many other stories to pursue. "Be careful," he cautioned as he headed west toward Swan Park.

  Carter Braxton, selected in 1775 to represent Virginia at the Continental Congress, was in the thick of the Maryland woods, riding north past his favorite trout stream to sign Jefferson's Declaration. This wasn't the best day for travel, Braxton thought. The sky, normally bright and blue, was now a deep, dark red.

  Suddenly, the sky glowed like in an early morning lightning storm, and the woods grew hazy and indistinct. Calm yourself, he repeated. Keep riding. You come this way every month; you know these woods by heart. But when Braxton broke through into a clearing he found himself in a city unlike any that he had ever seen in the Americas or Europe. The street beneath him wasn't cobblestone or earth, but a flat tar-like substance, hard and black.

  There was noise all around him, too, horns like in an orchestra, screaming at him. What is this madness, he thought.

  Frightened people ran past him, many dressed not unlike the carved statues in those Egyptian dioramas he'd seen the previous year in the newly opened British Museum. But how could there be so many people here? Not even England's busiest square was so crowded.

  Jimmy Olsen snaked his way through the crowd and saw Braxton staring at the strange buildings, wider and taller than England's proudest, their windows shining with a light brighter than any oil lamp.

  "Excuse me, do you speak English?" Jimmy asked. Braxton turned and saw the red-haired youth holding a strange device that seemed to be pointed at him.

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  "D
on't aim that weapon at me, boy." Braxton pushed the device aside. Jimmy shook his head. "No, no. It's a camera, not a gun. Can I speak to you?"

  "You can tell me where I am."

  Jimmy smiled. "America." The man looked at him strangely.

  "Metropolis." Braxton didn't recognize the name. Jimmy noticed Braxton's wool riding coat complete with pewter buttons. Under the coat his shirt was white with raffled cuffs and he wore a lace cravat and brocade vest.

  Jimmy knew this man, whoever he was, was definitely not from the present. "My name is Jimmy Olsen. What year are you from?"

  "Unless the world has gone insane, and I fear it has, this is 1776. Jefferson summoned me to Philadelphia. Tell me the truth, boy. Where am I?" This man knows Thomas Jefferson? Jimmy grinned. Now this is a story Perry will eat up. "Okay, it may be hard to understand, but this is your future. Look around you and you'll see how much America has changed. Please, tell me what you think." Jimmy shoved the video camera in Braxton's face and hit record.

  Braxton stared at the city. There were no trees here or streams like home to soothe the eye and remind one of nature. He watched the people ran around him without direction. They were so afraid they never considered asking for help. These were not neighbors who came to each other's aid. Indeed, they were worse than strangers.

  He sniffed the air which stank like the smell of a dying candle. "You want to know what I think, boy? I think you are lying. This is not America. This is hell!"

  Braxton pulled himself away from Jimmy and fell into an alleyway away from the people and the awful cacophonous noise. He looked up to the red sky and prayed to God. "If I have not sinned against Thee, then I beg Thee, relieve me of this madness and return me home." Jimmy wanted to follow him but was distracted by a loud, growling roar that came from Swan Park two blocks away. A dozen police cars sirened past, rushing to the scene. Something, even crazier than everything else that was going on, required their presence.

  Jimmy ran there quickly, pausing only a few seconds here and there to record:

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  Marv Wolfman

  An African tribal village replaced Ninth Street and Shuster Way. Families huddled together in straw and mud huts.

  A 29th century Brazilian digital-pyramid now spanned Metropolis River. Its façade glowed with alternating colors forming patterns on its side. They were advertising products Jimmy had never heard of. Crowded into Hamilton Square, Russian peasants raised their rifles, intent on deposing the tsar. But, as they saw the revolving globe of the Daily Planet building across from the Square, they realized they were nowhere near St. Petersberg.

  Jimmy followed the police cars as they made their way through the park to Lake Binder, normally calm and tranquil, the welcome home for the dozen or so ducks who regularly lived there and the occasional tern who paused for a drink on its way south.

  As Jimmy approached, his camera recording everything he saw, he was certain there were no ducks or any other birds sipping at the lake today: rising from it was a fifteen foot high, forty foot long, six ton Tyrannosaurus Rex.

  And, unlike the mechanical version he used to sit and watch all day as a kid at the history museum, this one was alive and very hungry. Jimmy scrambled back. He fell to the ground while still tightly holding his camera. No way he was going to lose these shots. He scrambled behind some boulders and prayed he was out of the dinosaur's line of sight. Jimmy carefully tilted the camera against the rock to continue recording, while he reached for his special wrist watch.

  Superman had given him the watch four years earlier, when he was all of seventeen. By then they had already been friends for several years.

  "There's a signal built inside that will let me know when you 're in danger."" Superman told him. "But use it only under the direst of emergencies." Of course Jimmy immediately agreed.

  Over the years he hesitated to call Superman, but this he thought was the dictionary definition of "dire."

  He pressed the stem in the special way Superman showed him, and though he couldn't hear its ultrasonic signal, he knew Superman could. The police pulled back as the tyrannosaurus stomped toward them. They were not afraid to shoot but they were trying not to. Jimmy heard the sonic boom before he saw the flash of red and blue streak through the sky.

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  Superman flew over Hamilton Square. He first saw the dinosaur and then the policemen. A second later he found Jimmy crouching behind the boulders. "You all right?"

  Jimmy nodded. "Alive. Been better. But alive." Superman suddenly looked back over his shoulder, and focused his attention beyond the city. Jimmy knew that look: Superman's superhearing had picked up a distress call and he was using his telescopic vision to locate the source.

  Superman turned back to his friend. "You've only got one dinosaur here. Mexico City has dozens."

  "But what about..."

  "No need to worry."

  Superman disappeared in a blur of color. He whipped past the telephone poles planted throughout the park, uprooting them as he flashed by. Jimmy understood what he was doing: Superman replanted the poles and restrung its wires. He was building an instant run for the T-Rex, penning it safely in place.

  The dinosaur roared as it tried to break through the restraining wire, but Superman had wrapped it carefully and it held.

  "Watch yourself, Jim. Later."

  Jimmy heard Superman's goodbye, but all he could see was that familiar red and blue blur streaking over the city, heading west and south toward Mexico.

  He turned to see the T-Rex wear itself out. The huge lizard was not used to expending so much of its energy and it fell to the ground for a much needed rest.

  Jimmy changed cameras and took a few more still shots. He then heard an explosion to the south, about a block from the Planet building, he guessed. He ran to see what happened. This could be another story.

  "Hell of a day," he said. "Hell of a day." Forty-three

  As I made my way through the satellite I heard a woman's voice. Was it Lyla? I ran, looking for her. But when I found her, just outside the tenth level airlock, I wasn't looking at Lyla. She was Harbinger.

  Had she been taken over again?

  Standing next to her was Alexander and Pariah. She smiled at them warmly. She might have been dressed as Harbinger, possessed all Harbinger's power, but she was still Lyla.

  She was reading from a thick leather-bound book. "My father made me swear, saying, 'Behold, I am dying; in my grave which I dug for myself in the land of Canaan, there you shall bury me.'" I recognized the words from Sunday morning church services as a child; they came from Genesis, though I didn't remember which verse. Harbinger wiped away her tears and put the Bible down, unable to continue. She took a deep bracing breath, summoning what strength she had, then looked into the airlock only to quickly pull away. I moved past them to see what was inside.

  I saw a golden metal tube inside and realized it was the Monitor's coffin. They were burying him in the infinite limbo he had created from his own energies.

  Alexander held onto her, as much for her comfort as his. "His essence is all around us and gives us life," he said. "Only his body remains. Let it now rest in eternal peace."

  Pariah said nothing as he pressed the small black button that launched the tiny capsule into the whiteness. He had seen so much death that he thought he was no longer capable of feeling sorrow. Crisis on Infinite Earths

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  Harbinger watched the golden tube streak past the satellite on its long, endless journey. "From the moment he was born he knew the moment he would die. He rescued me even though he knew I would be the one to take his life."

  Her eyes followed the coffin until it finally faded from view. When she turned back to the others she was smiling.

  "Funny what you remember now," she said. "When I was a child, I think no more than eight, he brought me back to Earth. It was cold and I didn't have the right clothes for the weather and I'm sure I shivered terribly. But all I reme
mber is that it's the only time we ever left this ship. The only time I ever saw a real sky above my head or breathed air I hadn't breathed before."

  As she remembered the story I saw her smile brighten. "It was winter and we were standing on a beach. He was pointing beyond the horizon to where he rescued me years before. His other arm was around me to keep me warm. I loved the feeling that he would always protect me.

  "Even then I knew something was different. He had always been so formal but under the bright full sun, he seemed almost loving. I think it was the only time he spoke to me the way I always imagined a father talked to his daughter.

  "He told me about the first time he had seen the Earth, still young and primitive. I didn't realize then how many millions of years ago that must have been. But he told me stories about impossible animals and savage beasts and I gleefully took in every word.

  "But then his manner changed. He removed his arm and turned away from the ocean. 'Harbinger,' he called me. Not Lyla. 'We are here for one paramount reason. We are here to do what must be done.'

  "I didn't understand what he was talking about then. But now I realize he was preparing me for this day. Everything he ever did was to prepare me for this day."

  She paused, remembering, and then she continued. "It's funny. I don't know why I don't feel that he was using me. But I don't. Maybe it's because I know that even as he suffered he tried so hard to make sure I wouldn't.

  "The Monitor was born knowing his reason for being was to save all existence. Everything he ever did was so he could fulfill that destiny." Harbinger turned to Pariah. He was still staring into the void. "We can show our love to him by making certain that destiny is achieved.

  "It's our job now to save the universe."

  Forty-four

  Harbinger settled into the Monitor's chair and checked the different view screens ringing the telecommunications room. Each one was focused on a different time and place.

  The pictures shifted quickly, from hero to hero, villain to villain, world to world, from one era to the next. I was watching scenes from places I couldn't identify, people I'd never seen before and unbelievable moments of history from my planet and others.