With a sigh, he closed the case and put it back in his pocket. The sun was a little higher in the morning sky now, its light blending the purple of night with shades of pink and lavender, gold and orange. A new day was starting, and with it the struggle between humanity and mutantkind would begin again, picking up where it had left off before the Cosmic Cube had turned the world upside down. A new day of misery and intolerance for his kind. A new day of pain and suffering and blinding hatred.
Would his efforts to change that situation—however misguided or villainous they might seem to the world at large—ever make a difference? he wondered.
He had to believe that they would—that they did. He had only to look into his mind’s eye for the proof: To see the world his alternate had built. To know of the peace that had finally been established between races. To know that a man could put hatred behind him and build a family, and in doing so regain his soul.
To put hatred behind him . . . Now, there was a challenge for Magneto, he reflected. A challenge like none he had ever faced before. One that relied more on strength of character than strength of will. One, perhaps, that would make him the man he always thought he had been.
The notion appealed to him.
It would be interesting, he thought, to go forward in time a hundred years or so, and see what became of his life’s work, of the paths he chose to walk down. Would he be idolized as a great peacemaker, or vilified as one of mankind’s greatest enemies? Would he, too, have found a way to bring man and mutant together, like his counterpart, or would he have returned to his old ways, and once more sought to make Homo superior the dominant species on the planet? So many questions to be answered; so many choices to make ...
“ ‘Had I but worlds enough, and time . . .’ ” he said, and shook his head with a knowing grin.
He would never find out, however, unless he started down the first path, made the first choice. After all, he considered, a journey of a thousand miles begins with but a single step . ..
And with that thought comforting him, he took that step.
The first step on the path to salvation.
ANEW DAY dawned.
The sun rose high and warm above the Yucatan Peninsula, that
_ South American landmass that separates the Gulf of Mexico from
the Caribbean Sea. It would be another hot and humid day, as it had been yesterday, and would be again tomorrow. But the breeze that blew in from the East was a welcome change from the soaring temperatures, and the water was cool and inviting.
Sixty-five million years ago, it’s believed, a comet or asteroid struck the Earth here, near what is now the village of Chicxulub. The effects of the impact—firestorms, tidal waves, skies choked with dust and dirt for years—were probably responsible for wiping out every dinosaur in existence, as well as quite a other animal and plant species, and bringing to a close the Cretaceous Period.
Mankind thought it impossible that a disaster of such magnitude would ever happen again; if it did, however, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the human race would never survive.
But the means of creating global destruction did not have to come from space, as anyone who lived in a world of superpowered men and women could tell you. Not when not a day went by, it seemed, without someone threatening to unleash nuclear Armageddon, or open a mystical portal that allowed murderous Elder Gods to stalk the land, or detonate the planet’s molten core. Why worry about comets and meteors and asteroids, when there were people more than capable of destroying the world, with just the push of a button, or the flick of a lever—
Or by making a simple wish.
No, the means of creating global destruction did not have to come
from space—not if one looked long and hard to find alternatives. Not if one knew where to look for them.
And yet, on this beach where the hand of fate had struck the fatal blow against the world’s great thunder lizards, there were no pieces of space debris to be found, nor a button or lever in sight. There were only golden sands and colorful rocks, glistening seaweed and faded driftwood—
And a tiny shard of a wish box that had tumbled from the sky the night before.
A shard that sparkled with the promise of dreams yet to be realized. .,.
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