by Marv Wolfman
"For some of us, it matters." Superman crashed through the creature, pulverizing its chest. As the stone chunks fell to the ground Superman used his super-breath to scatter them into space.
He turned to Wonder Woman and grinned. "Next?" When I was younger and new to the Justice League, I always assumed Superman and Wonder Woman would eventually become an item, the perfect couple. It seemed logical to most of us that they were the match made in super-hero heaven. But back then I was still a bit star struck and I never saw their glaring differences.
Amazons were raised to be warriors and hunters. Before they fled Greece and founded Themyscira, Diana's mother, Hippolyta, had been the fiercest warrior of them all. She was the Queen who proudly led the bloody invasion of Attica and Athens. She was the warrior who always claimed success. 228
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Wonder Woman told me many times that she rebelled against much of the Amazon philosophy, especially their hatred of men. But I always knew she was, in her heart, still an Amazon. When it came to battle she believed in winning at all cost.
Superman could never agree with that philosophy. The heart of Clark Kent may have been born on a distant planet, but it had been nurtured in Smallville. Killing was not only not an option, the thought would never be considered.
I often saw them sitting around the JLA conference table, Diana drinking tea, Superman sipping from a can of soda, joking and laughing as they described their latest adventures. But had they been attracted to each other, which I don't believe they ever were, there was always a very visible gulf between them.
I went back to find Firestorm and the Ray teamed to destroy their targets, two creatures, each at least twenty feet tall, much bigger than Superman and Wonder Woman's.
They flew between the beasts and simultaneously fired at the closest. Their blasts merged into a single beam and struck it where, were the thing alive and human, its heart would normally be. The creature shook for several seconds before it exploded.
Firestorm smiled at the Ray. "Seconds?"
"Lead on, McDuff." The Ray responded.
"That's 'Lay on,' not lead on." Firestorm said. "High school english. Last semester. I can't add two numbers together, but that I remember. Go figure."
I raced into another of the Monitor's rooms and saw Dr. Light on the ground, her uniform torn. She was bruised and clutching her stomach. I looked up just as one of the creatures pummeled its massive stone fist into Supergirl.
I could see she was stunned. Supergirl should have been invulnerable but she was bleeding from dozens of deep cuts that lacerated her face, chest, and legs.
She was in pain and she tried to creep away from the creature, but it kept battering her into submission.
I knew Kara, Supergirl's real name, just barely twenty-two, was Superman's cousin. Her city had miraculously survived Krypton's explosion only to meet it's own end many years later.
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As her small world was dying her parents sent her—now fifteen—to Earth just as Superman's parents had done many years before. Similar beginnings, but there was a world of difference.
Superman had been an infant with no memories of Krypton or his birth parents. He was still a baby when Jonathan and Martha Kent had found the infant passenger of the rocket ship that crash-landed in their field and raised him as their own. His only childhood recollections were of blissful days in Smallville.
But Kara had been a teen when she came to Earth. She saw her friends and family die before her eyes. The baby who would be Superman could never have understood the explosion that reverberated behind his speeding ship, but Kara watched in horror as Argo City succumbed to its final death, rejoining its own.
I can't imagine what it was like for her. Everything she knew and loved died in a single, blazing instant.
Still, when she arrived on Earth she wasn't filled with anger. I still remember Superman introducing us to her just weeks after her arrival. She had already learned most of our languages and the young woman we saw was happy with her new life. With Superman, she still had family. With Earth, she still had hope.
One day we were on the JLA satellite on monitor duty together. She was just visiting but volunteered to help out when the Atom, who was supposed to share the duty with me, had to return home for an emergency. I got us some cold waters and we sat and talked most of that afternoon. I curiously asked her about how, despite everything that happened to her, she remained so positive. Under similar conditions that certainly wasn't something I thought I could do.
She thought about it and smiled as she explained. "My father's brother, Superman's father, died on Krypton along with the rest of their family. My mother had two sisters who also died that day. Everyone on Argo City lost loved ones in the explosion."
She gazed out the satellite window at the vast expanse of space. "That's my galaxy. It's so far away Krypton's still alive in the light we're seeing." She pointed to a faint star cluster near the center of the Milky Way.
"You know, I never knew Krypton. But years later I was the first baby born on Argo City. They called me the miracle child." She laughed at the memory, then her smile faded and she looked at me for several minutes before continuing.
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"Barry, I know people die. From the moment I understood what they meant, I was very aware of all the memorials around me. But my mother. God bless her, Barry, she said and kept saying until I believed her, that although we have to remember the dead, we can't ever let ourselves act like we're one of them."
But now I was looking at her as she struggled to protect herself from the stone creature. She stared at it and a burst of heat vision blasted from her eyes, striking it.
It fell back as Dr. Light rocketed at it. Her light beams burned into the creature and knocked it to the ground.
The creature struggled to its feet then backhanded her, ramming her into a wall, burying her under the crumbling stones. The beast turned back to Supergirl to finish her off, but she was already gone. Dr. Light had distracted it long enough for her to escape.
Superman and Wonder Woman rushed past Supergirl and Dr. Light, and pointed ahead of them. "C'mon. Follow me," Superman shouted. "The others can handle the stones. We've got to find the Anti-Monitor." As I followed them I looked back to see that Green Lantern-2 had teamed with Captain Marvel and Captain Atom. Alone, their powers were formidable, but combined, I knew they would easily take down the beast. That meant I wasn't needed here.
Sixty-seven
We made our way through a maze of stones and found ourselves in an area of the castle where the walls joined the ceiling. There was no way for the heroes to fly over them.
Wonder Woman and Dr. Light were in the lead. Behind them, keeping rear guard, Supergirl flew next to her cousin.
"My X-Ray vision isn't picking up anything," she said. "You sure he's here?"
Superman shrugged. "I'm not, but Pariah is."
"Forget this stupid maze," said Wonder Woman. "We're wasting time." She clasped her hands together and rammed the stone walls. "We're going through."
As the others followed I looked back. The dislodged stones were moving.
"Guys," I called out. "Trouble." Needless to say they didn't hear me. The stones merged, forming into another creature. More stones fell. There were two beasts now.
Superman heard the heavy footfalls first.
Wonder Woman circled back toward the beasts, Supergirl flew just behind her.
"Superman, keep going. We can handle this."
"You sure?"
Supergirl grinned at her cousin. "Piece of cake. Just you be careful." I followed Superman and Dr. Light through a dozen more walls which ultimately led us to a small pitch-black chamber. Dr. Light's hand glowed and cast a soft light through the room.
We were in what appeared to be a silo. I looked up into its tunnel but couldn't see beyond a few feet. There was no easy way to know how high it went.
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There was a well to the back of the room and I heard a steady machine hum coming from it. Superman leaned into it and looked down. "Too dark.'" He looked directly at Dr. Light. "Umm, anyone got a light?" I think that was the first time Dr. Light smiled. She aimed her hand into the well, lighting it up.
The well went down about three hundred feet. "Ladies first?" Superman asked.
"Always."
We found ourselves in another small chamber. This one was also empty, but we saw a bright glow coming from another room beyond it. Sixty-eight
What didn't catch our attention was that this new room dwarfed all the previous rooms we'd passed through. But that was only because what immediately caught our eye was the immense... machine... that filled it.
"My God." Even Superman was impressed.
Dr. Light walked around part of its perimeter checking it out. "It's a solar collector of some sort."
Superman looked at her, surprised. "How do you know?" She pointed to herself. "Dr. Light, remember? Doctor as in my degree. Yeah, I actually have one. And Light as in my specialty. The machine's converting sunlight into energy and it's far beyond anything we've got on Earth."
It was at least a hundred stories tall, half of it was, as I later learned, like an iceberg, hidden below the stone floor.
The solar converter was built in sections. Liquid metal storage tubes connected one sector to the other. Other tubes jutted out from its central core, and connected to still other machines I assumed were partially hidden behind the stone walls.
The center transformer was conical and another huge tube, this one solid metal as far as I could tell, projected up from its center and disappeared into the ceiling, which in itself was nearly a quarter-mile above us. Around its transformer core, safely imbedded under transparent shields, glowing bands of energy rapidly circled the cone, either providing power to the transformer or acting as a coolant of some kind. I had to admit this was beyond my relatively meager knowledge. Dr. Light turned to Superman. "I need to get closer. Got flight?" 234
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Superman smiled as he took her in his arms and jumped from the stone base. Holding her, he hovered just above the transformer's center core. As they circled it, Light studied the pulsing rhythms within the glowing bands. I assumed she understood what they meant. She turned to Superman, obviously worried.
"I was right. The core's collecting sunlight and turning it into energy. But it's not designed to power the castle. He's using the energy as a time dampener."
When those fake apes in 2001: A Space Odyssey first saw the great black monolith, they stared at it with infinitely more comprehension than either Superman or I showed at what Dr. Light was saying. What we needed was one of those "Temporal Physics for Dummies" books, but I don't think even that would have helped.
"Again," Superman asked. "Maybe in English?" Dr. Light sighed. I understood—holding a conversation with chimpanzees was rarely fulfilling.
"All right," she began again. "Pariah said the five remaining universes are merging faster than he expected. This machine is why. The Anti-Monitor is slowing down the vibrational rates that keep the universes apart. That is why the merging process is speeding up."
Better. This time we both understood.
Dr. Light's heart was now thumping loudly with excitement. "The thing is," she said, "this science is so far ahead of us we'd be lucky if it only takes us a million years to recreate it. But if I can study it now I could use it to create a continuously renewable energy source on Earth." Superman-1 shook his head. "I'm sorry, but no. It's got to be destroyed."
"Please, listen to me." Dr. Light angrily grabbed Superman. Why can't he see the truth? "Try to understand. This science could have incalculable ramifications. With it we can solve the energy crisis forever."
"And it could destroy the rest of existence if we don't blow it up. Now. I'm sorry," Superman said.
He was right, and I was sure even Light knew it. This was not the time to take chances.
Dr. Light pleaded with him. "Just give me a minute. Thirty seconds. Anything. Superman, please... This could end hunger. It could save lives. You don't know what you're doing."
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But he did. His plan was simple and direct. He would smash through the Anti-Monitor's machine. He would rip it apart, crush its power source, use his heat vision to slag its steel frame, then use his super-strength to hurl it into Qward's sun. He intended to remove it from existence just as the antimatter wave had already done to an infinity of Earths. As he dove toward the core, Superman became a blur of motion. He moved so quickly I saw the flesh on his face ripple and his eyes narrow into thin slits. His lips were pulled back into a hideous grin, revealing teeth clenched tight but stained with blood.
As hard as it is for me to believe, this was killing him, but he wasn't going to stop. The device, whatever miracles it might, in honest hands create, had to be destroyed.
He plunged to the core.
But he never reached it.
The Anti-Monitor followed the Earth heroes as they made their way through his castle. How could these fleas, he thought, prove any problem to him? After all, hadn't he destroyed nearly all the positive matter universes? Nothing had ever come close to bothering him. Why should these handful of fools prove any different?
But they had escaped his creatures and they found his source of power. Now, they believed, they would destroy it.
The Anti-Monitor swore that was not going to happen. I saw the core was a hand's reach in front of Superman. He struggled for it, his fingers just about touched its metal casing. But then, too quickly for even me to follow, everything abruptly changed. I saw the explosion, but it came from above the machine, not from within it. A heart beat later I heard its sonic boom and then a scream of pain so frightening I actually panicked.
The stone walls behind me crumbled.
Superman was looking into the pit, staring at the undamaged core. He teetered and his knees buckled. I saw his hand reach out to steady himself but there was nothing to hold onto.
I ran to him. His eyes were open but empty. His face was covered with blood. I tried to grab him but he fell through my open hand and collapsed unconscious to the ground.
My God, what happened to him?
Supergirl Earth—1
"Kal?"
Supergirl froze as her super-hearing honed in on her cousin's scream. His breath was labored and gasping. He was in pain— but how? Only kryptonite can hurt us. We 're invulnerable! Her own cuts, stinging painfully just beneath the surface, reminded her that was no longer true, at least not here, not in this antimatter universe. They were strong. They could fly. They had most of their powers, but they were hardly invulnerable here.
She heard his breathing stop.
Her mind divided:
Where was Kal?
There was still a final stone monster to defeat. Can Wonder Woman handle it alone?
Why wasn't his heart beating?
The monster grabbed her.
Where did the scream come from?
Wonder Woman didn't see her break free. No time to tell her what was happening.
These walls looked familiar. Had she already come this way? Were the others safe? Where's Pariah?
A pulse, slow and weak, but beating faintly, just ahead. Thank Krypton.
Why hasn't anyone found the Anti-Monitor yet?
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She saw him sprawled on the ground, his eyes swollen, his face bruised and bleeding. "Kal," she called to him as she sped to his side and swept him into her arms.
Kara?" He couldn't see her but he knew she was there. His head fell back. She thought he was dead but she heard his heart beat again, much fainter and slowing down. She said, "Rest," then placed him gently on the ground.
For the first time she looked up at the enormous machine that filled the huge chamber. She saw dozens of thick tubes branching of
f from the central transformer, disappearing into the walls connecting to God knows what else.
She heard the bands of energy pulsing below its transparent shields. What is this thing?
She turned again to Superman, lying unconscious in the same position she had left him. He was still breathing.
"The Anti-Monitor did this. Nothing else could have. You get better, Kal. I'll deal with him."
Superman didn't move.
She felt wind brush past her hair, and she turned.
The enemy was behind her, much bigger than she expected. No problem, she convinced herself.
"Do your best," Kal-El always told her. And, as always, she whined to him. "Why bother? I can't ever be as good as you." He'd laugh. She liked it when she could make him laugh. "Kara, you're already better than me. I could live to be a hundred but my heart will never be as open or as honest. I envy you."
She knew he was wrong, of course. He was the ideal she could spend a lifetime pursuing but never achieve. Besides, she knew the truth: he believed in life but she had lived with death.
The enemy reached for her.
What difference, she thought now, could one more corpse make?
"This ends now," she screamed as she rammed into the Anti-Monitor. Her momentum carried them back, skidding them over sharp, jagged ground. They crashed through one of the pillars and the massive stones crushed down on them.
With a backhanded swipe, she slapped them aside and tackled him again. She heard herself shouting. "All those people. All those universes." 238
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Her fists pounded him, ripping through his armor. "How can you care so little for life?" She hit him again, savoring the crunch of each broken bone. She remembered how, just after Superman revealed her existence to the world, Lex Luthor had nearly killed her. It was a kryptonite trap with no escape and she had blundered into it without thinking. Superman saved her then, just as he saved her so many times over the years. She was going to return that favor now.
