Velveteen vs. The Multiverse

by Seanan McGuire

  Polychrome flew easily alongside, propelled by a stream of navy blue glitter. She swerved close enough for Vel to hear her above the wind as she called, “It’s not that we’re bad. We’re just not considered good guys anymore.”

  “I know how that goes,” Velveteen called back. “What about that metamorph Action Dude told me about?”

  “The kid?” Polychrome looked briefly regretful. “We almost got him not to sign…they prey on kids, Vel. No one should go through what we went through. We didn’t get a childhood because of them.”

  Velveteen paused. Then she shrugged and said, “We got each other. I think that might be better than what we would have had without them.”

  “Yeah. Nothing’s easy, is it?” Polychrome straightened. “We’re here.” She zipped ahead before Vel could say anything, landing lightly on an unlit rooftop. Then she lit up like a beacon, guiding Victory Anna in.

  “Not bad for a maiden flight,” said Victory Anna smugly, climbing off the motorcycle.

  “I’m pretending I didn’t hear that,” muttered Velveteen. She looked around the rooftop as she got out of the side car. “This is Dr. Darwin’s hideout?”

  “No,” said Polychrome. “This is where we go when we want to get his attention. No one’s ever seen his hideout.”

  “You’re sweet and all, maybe a bit daft, maybe a filthy liar, but there’s no way we’d take you to his hideout, even if we knew where it was,” said Victory Anna.

  “Fair,” Vel admitted. “Now how do we get his attention?”

  “I sent him a text,” said Polychrome.

  “A…text.” The idea of texting villains to arrange for meetings had never occurred to her. Maybe because “come over and let me beat you up” was a little tacky.

  Polychrome smiled. “Welcome to the future.”

  “Our future, maybe, but you, evil-doer, are about to be the PAST!” boomed a dramatic voice, dripping with justice.

  Polychrome and Velveteen exchanged a look, before Vel groaned and dropped her head into her hands. “Oh, swell,” she muttered. “It’s the cavalry.”

  Victory Anna grinned, pulling a ray gun out of thin air. “I love the smell of carnage in the evening.”

  Velveteen felt a hand on her arm and looked up, meeting Polychrome’s anxious blue eyes. “You have to pick a side, Vel. I’m sorry. I can’t let you stand here and not fight.”

  “You’re my best friend,” said Vel, feeling only a slight pang at the thought of facing Aaron across a battlefield. “Let’s kick their asses and send me home.”

  Together, three women who might or might not be supervillains turned, and waited for The Super Patriots, West Coast Division, to descend.

  Action Dude was the first one to hit the roof, followed closely by Firefly, who was carrying Jack O’Lope by the back of his vest. Firefly and Jack fell into offensive postures. Action Dude held up his hands, showing that they were empty (as if that mattered; as if he couldn’t bench-press a tank when the urge took him). “This doesn’t have to be like this,” he said, in the same sonorous voice that had been booming catch phrases only a minute before. “Vel, honey, you’re just confused, that’s all. Come on home, and we’ll make sure everything gets sorted out. You haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “This isn’t my home,” she shouted back. “I’m not your Vel. Polychrome and Victory Anna are just helping me get back to my own timeline.” She paused, a thought striking her. “How did you find me here? I didn’t tell anyone where I was going!”

  Action Dude didn’t say anything. The quick, guilty glance he took at her ears told her everything that she didn’t want to know.

  “Oh, Aaron,” Velveteen whispered, too softly for anyone but the wind to hear, and who was the wind going to tell? “I thought you loved me more than you loved them.” If he’d loved her that much, he wouldn’t have activated the tracking device in her headband when he woke to find her gone. He would have let her take care of things. But he didn’t, and he hadn’t. He’d just followed the party line, the same way he always had. The same way that he always would.

  The whine of Victory Anna’s ray gun powering up was loud enough to catch everyone’s attention, including the just-landing Mechamation. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said brightly. “I invite you all to attend a demonstration of the raw power of steam, science, and torqued-off mad genius whose girlfriend’s well-being is being threatened by assholes without the sense Epona gave the French.”

  “Does she always talk like that?” asked Velveteen, too bemused to wallow in betrayal.

  “All the time,” said Polychrome fondly. Her hands moved as she spoke, gathering a large ball of glowing green light. She paused, frowning as she looked at Velveteen’s belt. “Vel, are you armed?”

  “I wasn’t planning to get into a superhero fight against this timeline’s Super Patriots when I left the house!” said Vel. Casting about with the part of her mind that housed her powers found…absolutely nothing. There were no toys close enough to call. “I think I’m dead weight on this one.”

  “You always are,” shouted Firefly, and stopped when the rest of The Super Patriots turned to glare at her. “What?” she asked. “I was taunting the villain. I’m supposed to taunt the villains.”

  “Not when the villain is Vel,” snapped Action Dude. “She’s not bad, she’s just confused because of stupid Dr. Darwin. We’re here on a rescue mission. You don’t taunt the victims.”

  “I can hear you, you know,” said Velveteen.

  “So can I!” declared Dr. Darwin, stepping out of a large rectangular doorway that had suddenly opened in the middle of the roof. It closed behind him, leaving the short, pudgy mad scientist standing between the two super teams. “Now you will feel the wrath of DR. DARWIN!”

  There was a long pause as every other superhuman on the roof, including the newly-arrived Imagineer and Uncertainty, stared at Dr. Darwin. Dr. Darwin pulled a ray gun from inside his lab coat. Victory Anna scoffed.

  “Mine’s bigger,” she said.

  That was, in some strange way, the straw that broke the metaphorical camel’s back. Everyone started moving at once, and the fight was on.

  Watching the fight was sort of fascinating, in an academic, I’mgoing- to-die way. Firefly and Polychrome went head-to-head almost immediately, their photon blasts illuminating the night sky, while Jack O’Lope and Victory Anna shot bolts of gleaming energy at one another. Mechamation and Action Dude went after Dr. Darwin, who shot his own bolts of energy at the pair. Both dodged easily, as Mechamation’s army of tiny robots began swarming out of her pockets and toward the evil genius. That left Velveteen and Uncertainty. They exchanged a look.

  “This is awkward,” said Vel.

  “There is an eighty-seven percent chance that you will seize control of Mechamation’s toys and use them to defeat me if I initiate hostilities,” replied Uncertainty. “There is also a ninety-nine percent chance that you’re telling the truth, and aren’t actually this reality’s version of Velveteen. I’m just glad you’re a version of Velveteen, since the alternatives are far less pleasant.”

  Velveteen blinked. A bolt of light went zipping by overhead. “Sometimes talking to you is extremely weird,” she said finally.

  “I know,” said Uncertainty. “It is my purpose.”

  “Right.” Velveteen turned to peer around the increasingly chaotic roof. None of the various rays, beams, or bullets were entering the small area around herself and Uncertainty; that would be Uncertainty’s quantum field making sure that they didn’t get hurt. “Where’s Imagineer?”

  “Maintaining the coms back at headquarters, and making sure Marketing doesn’t realize that the rest of us are gone.” Uncertainty grimaced as another collision of photon blasts turned it momentarily as bright as day. “There is a sixty-four percent chance that they’ll notice within the next fifteen minutes.”

  “Fucked-up times fifty-seven thousand,” muttered Velveteen.

  To her surprise, Uncertainty smiled. “I thought th
at might be you,” he said. “Earth A.”

  Velveteen blinked at him. “You can identify my source reality from the way I swear?”

  “You’d be surprised at what profanity can tell you about a person.”

  “I guess.” Velveteen ducked to avoid having her ears grazed by one of Dr. Darwin’s rays. “Any ideas on how to get me home? This is a nice world and everything, but I don’t belong here.” More than nice, in some ways; the idea of finally being with Aaron, really and truly, was so tempting that it hurt. But Aaron loved The Super Patriots more than he loved her, and there was her Yelena to think about. If she was going to make things right, she had to go back to her own timeline.

  For the first time, Uncertainty looked abashed. “I am unfortunately unable to predict the mechanisms via which an individual might move between timelines,” he said. “It is outside my available data set.”

  Velveteen paused as she puzzled that through. Then she asked, “Is this your home timeline?”

  Uncertainty looked at her calmly. “All timelines are my home timeline.”

  Velveteen stared at him, briefly forgetting that they were standing in the middle of a superheroic battle that might get one or both of them shot at any moment. “That makes…so much sense,” she said slowly. “Why did I never think of that before?”

  “Because every time the probability of someone realizing my nature rises toward certainty, I adjust it downward,” said Uncertainty.

  “…oh. So you’re telling me now because…?”

  “There is a ninety-four percent probability that any solution which you find for returning to your original reality will result in your forgetting some part of this timeline,” said Uncertainty. “Six percent is worth the risk.”

  Velveteen stared at him. If she was going to forget what she’d learned, what was the point in going back? Why not stay here, where she had the life she’d always thought she was going to have? Sure, things weren’t perfect, but they were closer than they were when she’d come from…

  And Jackie and the Princess and Tag would always wonder where she’d gone, no matter how much they might come to like her replacement, and she’d never have the chance to fix things with her version of Yelena, no matter how much she wanted to. “I guess you’re right,” she said, slowly. “Six percent is worth the risk.” Then she whirled and bolted away from him, running full-speed toward Dr. Darwin.

  Uncertainty sighed. “There was a ninety-nine percent chance that you were going to do that,” he said mournfully, to the air where Velveteen had been a moment before. “Good luck.”

  Velveteen seized control of half of Mechamation’s robots as she ran, using them to distract the combatants long enough for her to reach the startled-looking Dr. Darwin, who was too confused by having a non-physical hero charging at him to bring his gun to bear. She grabbed his shoulders, giving him a solid shake before he pulled away.

  “Send me back!” she shouted. “You’re the one with the stupid zappy ray gun of fucking up my entire life, so use it right now, and send me back!”

  “I—” stammered Dr. Darwin. This was an experience utterly unheralded in his villainous career, and he had absolutely no idea how to respond. He’d never had a superheroine ask him to shoot her before. Finally, he settled on the evil option: “No. If that’s what you want, then no.” He moved his ray gun away from her, aiming it at the sky. “I’ll never send you back. Never never nev—”

  The blast from Victory Anna’s ray gun caught him square in the back, and he collapsed like a broken doll. Velveteen stood there staring at him as Victory Anna strolled over and bent to retrieve his ray gun. “You were the first one she ever loved, you know,” said Torrey conversationally, as she adjusted the settings on Dr. Darwin’s gun. “You broke her heart. Took me years to fix it. So I’m probably going to enjoy this a bit more than I ought to. But I also know that wasn’t you. Your Lena have a girl?”

  “No,” said Vel.

  “Tell her from me, she’ll be happier if she gets one. I recommend a scientifically-inclined young lady from London, but what do I know?” Victory Anna took careful aim at Velveteen.

  Somewhere across the battlefield, Action Dude shouted her name. Velveteen closed her eyes, doing her best to ignore him. I am going home, she thought. Aaron, I love you, but not this you, and I am going home…

  “Say ‘trans-dimensional transit’,” said Victory Anna cheerfully, and pulled the trigger.

  The blast from Dr. Darwin’s gun caught Velveteen square in the chest, flinging her backward. She didn’t hit the roof; instead, she fell, and kept falling, down, down, down the rabbit hole between worlds, until she landed, hard, in what felt like a snow bank—except that snow banks were supposed to be cold, and this one was as warm as sheets fresh from the dryer. Velveteen opened her eyes, and blinked slowly at the man standing in front of her.

  “Oh,” she said, unsurprised. “It’s you.”

  “Yes,” Santa Claus agreed. “It’s me. Hello, Vel. Welcome back to the North Pole.”

  VELVETEEN

  vs.

  The Retroactive Continuity

  VELVETEEN LEVERED HERSELF OUT OF the impossibly warm snow bank, eyeing the red-clad figure in front of her with wary suspicion. “What kind of game are you playing here?” she asked. “Was any of that even real?”

  “It could have been,” replied Santa Claus, an understanding smile on his jolly round face. He always looked jolly, except when he looked furious. It was deceptive, holiday cheer used as a mask for true emotion. “You could have decided to stay there, and then it would absolutely have been real. It’s a wonderful life, Vel. You, of all people, should know that.”

  “You created that timeline to teach me a lesson? Did it work?” Velveteen looked down at herself. She was back to her usual weight, which was something of a relief, since she understood her body’s limitations in a world where she allowed it to eat potato chips. Her costume had changed, going from the alternate universe “sexy bunny” design to a bows-and-bells trimmed holiday style, complete with short skirt. It was the grown-up version of the costume she’d worn for the old Super Patriots holiday specials. Somehow, that made it even worse.

  “I think you’re the only one who can know that, Vel,” said Santa. “We’ve missed you. I kept hoping you would come to visit.”

  “I decided that it was best if I stayed out of the seasonal lands, since they all kept trying to keep me,” Vel countered, and eyed him suspiciously. “Did Jackie put you up to this? Was this whole ‘kidnap Velveteen to an alternate timeline and see what she does’ routine her idea? Because I will kick her ass.”

  “I would very much like to see that,” said Santa gravely. “But no, this wasn’t Jackie’s idea. It was mine.”

  “Don’t hog the credit,” said a familiar female voice. Velveteen turned to see a teenage girl with pale blonde hair streaked in orange and green, wearing a patchwork witch’s costume and holding a pumpkin- shaped trick-or-treat bucket in one hand. “I helped.”

  “Hailey,” said Velveteen. The word fell between them like a curse.

  Hailey Ween, current Halloween Princess and guardian of the Autumn Land, smiled. “It’s good to see you, too, Vel. I’m with Santa. We’ve missed you in autumn.”

  “Are all the seasons in on this?” demanded Vel, turning back toward Santa. “Is the Easter Bunny going to spring out at me next?” She paused. “No pun intended.”

  “Summer wasn’t involved, since that’s the only season that has no claim on you, but yes, Spring was a part of this. I provided the wonderful life narrative thread. Hailey provided the trick and the treat of getting you into another timeline.”

  “And Easy was the one who made sure everything was hidden where it needed to be,” said Hailey. “He bends time better than any of us. Has to, to hide all those eggs without help.”

  “God. Why am I the subject of a seasonal conspiracy? Did I not buy enough greeting cards last year or something?”

  “Vel,” said Santa chidingly. V
elveteen stopped, feeling obscurely like she was eight years old and at risk of the Naughty List. That was Santa’s power. He rewarded the good little boys and girls of the world, and he made even the worst of the bad little boys and girls crave his approval and fear disappointing him. It would take a hardened supervillain to stand up to Santa’s disapproval, and that was something she’d never been, despite Marketing’s best efforts at branding her. “The seasons are involved in your life because you need us to be, and because we need you. You’re special. You know that.”

  “I don’t want to go live in a season, okay? I’m just starting to get my life back together. If I was going to chicken out on the real world and go running to Halloween or Christmas, I would have done it years ago, when The Super Patriots, Inc. was making sure I couldn’t hold a job or keep an apartment.”

  “But we gave you the real world, the way that you could have had it, if things had just gone a little bit differently,” said Hailey. Velveteen glared at her. She shrugged. “You had it all there, Vel. You were coleader of The Super Patriots, West Coast Division. You were married to your childhood sweetheart. All it cost you was the best friend you’d already given up, and you threw it all away. So why do you think a season would be any worse?”

  “I’m a superhero. I’m not a holiday.”

  Santa smiled, and his smile was kind—his smiles were always kind—before asking her, quietly, “What do you think the rest of us started out as?”

  Velveteen didn’t have an answer for that.

  The question of what creates alternate or parallel timelines is one which can drive even the most fervent devotees of alternate reality science to drink heavily, because even after years of study, experimentation, and tragic lab accidents (some of which resulted in new timelines to observe), no one really knows. Why does one missed bus connection create eight possible worlds, while a political assassination sinks into the multiverse without so much as a ripple? Why do some people live and die without once causing reality to shift, while others throw off new continuities like they were nothing to be concerned about? Theory after theory has been put forth and, thus far, none of them have managed to hold water.