“I have seen the face of God, and she terrifies me.”
~ Graffiti on a bathroom wall, New Hampshire.
Giselle could walk. She could walk.
The leader of the Legion, if there was such a thing anymore, shuffled in a dream‑like trance, wandering between piles of ash where her companions once stood and pillars of diamond worth more than some nations. Giselle did not talk – she could not engage anymore. She did not speak to the trucks of fresh police as they arrived, swarming and yelling, to the ambulance officers wheeling out their beds and kits and trying to salvage the wounded. What could she do? What could she possibly say? One man had opened his hand and rewritten reality. He had turned people she knew and cared about to nothing. He had disintegrated her legs – maybe, if she’d been slower, he would have disintegrated the rest of her. She had been crippled. And then Jane had fixed it. Stood above her, glanced down with the expression of someone unclogging a dirty sink and then simply… restored her. Giselle could walk again. She would run again. Her legs were bare, the protective suit disintegrated from her mid‑thigh – but they were whole, remade, as strong as ever.
But they were not hers.
She found Matt standing in a muddy field, staring off into the empty distance.
“Where’s Jane?” the speedster murmured. Only with him, it seemed, did she find her voice.
For a moment the human didn’t speak.
“Gone.”
“She flew away?”
“No.”
“She… she teleported?” Giselle asked, confused. She glanced around. “But Will’s still here, Enrique‑”
“No one teleported her,” Matt mumbled, “Unless she teleported herself.” He finally raised his head, and Giselle saw that his eyes were trembling. The boy’s expression swam with something which unsettled her to her core.
“I didn’t know she could do that,” Giselle said quietly, and they both knew exactly what she meant.
Matt nodded. “We need to talk,” he said, “Privately.”
“About what?” asked Wally. The pair turned as the psychic strode over towards them, making his way around a giant crystal shard. He stopped a few feet away and pointed. “Is it about that?” Matt and Giselle followed his finger, staring up into the sky where in the low blue of the horizon the moon’s pale figure rose.
“The moon?” Giselle asked, confused. But beside her, Matt blanched.
“Anyone got the time?” he murmured, not glancing at either of them.
“Yup,” said Wally, nodding as if pleased he and Matt were finally sharing the same very vivid hallucination, “It’s about eight-thirty.”
“AM or PM?”
“AM.”
“I don’t get it,” Giselle said, still feeling dazed and like she was missing something, “What does that mean, why does it…” Her voice trailed off and she peered up at the white orb looming high and distant. “Wait.”
The three of them fell silent, staring up at the sky, their feet stuck firmly in the mud. Around them streamed rescuers, survivors, camera crews, all eyes fixated on the surrounding carnage. Still focused on the chaos around them. Still yet to look up.
“Alright,” said Wally, laughing with forced, almost delirious lightness, “Who’s going to say it?”
“That’s no moon,” Matt mumbled.
*****
“The sphere appears to be growing steadily and we can confirm it is indeed within the Earth’s upper atmosphere… it is pale, and we do not yet know-”
“-solid white stone in appearance yet seemingly neither affecting nor affected by Earth’s gravity and-”
“-any attempts to approach the object resulting in failure and baffling displacement, with the International Teleportation Council describing the area surrounding the sphere as possibly quantum in nature-”
“-as Pope John Paul calls for calm, stating the object is likely a natural phenomenon similar to the Aurora Nirvanas, and that all practitioners of faith should take solace in-”
“Te dije que la luna era falsa. Te dije. Ni una sola persona me creyó, pero aquí estamos, hay una falla en la simulación por compotator y-“
Will clicked off the TV and threw away the remote. It landed, skittering somewhere off atop the black and white tiles in one corner of the bar, causing the back to pop off and the batteries to scatter out.
“I hate the news,” he muttered.
The four bedraggled friends – Matthew Callaghan, Wallace Cykes, William Herd and Giselle Pixus – sat at a square wooden table in the middle of an abandoned Kansas alehouse, their arms and occasionally heads slumped alternatively atop the smooth, droplet‑stained tabletop. Nobody had any idea where the owners or regular patrons had gone; probably off screaming down the street or running home to go pray like the rest of humanity. Will had switched off the Disruptance so he could teleport back and forth behind the bar, and was now freely pilfering the display wall of spirits whenever one of them needed another drink. If anyone came, if anyone even cared anymore, Giselle would charge it to Morningstar as a miscellaneous catering disbursement. Which was, at this stage, a big if.
Giselle lay with her head on her hands and her hands so the table, her tumbler freshly emptied of scotch. Matt was just sort of slumped back in his chair, arms hanging limp by his side, gazing listlessly into the broken bar mirror, which had splintered in a series of cracks where Wally had thrown an empty tequila bottle at it. The psychic, sitting opposite Giselle, was already onto the next one, his wobbly hands pouring all four of them plus the table out shot of Patrón.
“Well,” he said, sounding perhaps a tad deranged, “Let’s recap. Half the Legion’s dead. Only, you know, maybe, death doesn’t matter anymore.” He made as if to shrug and the thimble‑sized glass he’d between squeezing between two fingers sloshed tequila all over his shirt. “Aaaand Jane is God. The girl I used to eat sushi with while we talked about boys has ascended to become Shiva, all praise her sacred name. Fantastic. Just peachy.” He clapped his hands, glancing between his each of his companions in turn. “Are we a hundred percent sure Morningstar didn’t accidentally mix up the orange juice yesterday and swap it out with, oh I don’t know, two hundred gallons of LSD?”
Giselle said nothing. Will said nothing. Matt said nothing, though he did take another shot. The horrible yellow liquid burned his throat as it went down, joining the empty contents of his stomach and a whole lot of existential dread.
“I just…” Wally spluttered, seemingly content to carry on by himself if no one was willing to engage with or cease his rambling, “Okay, Jane can travel through time. That’s a new one, that’s one I would’ve liked a nice Sunday afternoon to process. But oh look, she also controls life and death. That was a big deal yesterday, now it’s old news. Now every man and his insane, Baptist dog is burrowing up out of the woodwork, coming out as a- what’d you call them?”
“Divine,” grunted Giselle.
“Divine. Fantastic. What a stupid, prophetic name. Bad enough that Captain Dawn can destroy cities, now we have Chinese twins who can resurrect you and the world’s worst landscaper moonlighting as a priest. Oh and sorry! All those powers are now in the hands of one person. And that person is God.”
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“More tequila,” Giselle mumbled, pressing her forehead against the table, “Please.”
“Sure,” said Wally, pouring another shot and only spilling about nine‑tenths, “Why not? Let’s all just drink and forget our responsibilities, because Miss ‘I can’t cook toast correctly’ is out there creating a new moon, for reasons beyond our… God knows why.”
“Jane knows why,” Will corrected.
“Thank you. Yes, thank you dear. Where would I be without your continued riveting insights?”
“I think it’s technically a new Earth,” Matt added, running his tequila‑tipped finger around the rim of the glass, “I think that’s what she’s making. Building utopia.”
“Of course,” said Wally, throwing his hands up, “Utopia, handmade by an emotionally unstable nineteen-year-old girl. Outstanding. Simply outstanding.” He rounded on Giselle, snapping his fingers at her downcast face. “Hey. You. Woman. Aren’t you the leader of the Legion of Heroes? Shouldn’t you be out there saving us from all this, figuring out what’s going on, doing stuff?”
“I quit,” Giselle muttered, turning her head away from Wally, resting her cheek in a tequila puddle, “Natash- Natalia can do it. She push- she put her hand up.”
“And she was roundly voted down because everyone agreed that that was a terrible idea and may God have mercy on our souls.”
“Jane have mercy on our souls.”
“Darling, I swear-”
“She couldn’t be worse than me,” Giselle groaned, ignoring the bickering.
“I think out of everything we can say,” Wally declared, tearing his narrowed eyes away from Will to fix the beautiful speedster with a withering glare, “We can pretty safely say that none of this is your fault.” Matt gurgled a sound approximating agreement, and without meeting anyone’s eyes swigged another drink. Giselle didn’t seem to hear him.
“It should’ve been Farrington,” she lamented, “Or you, or… anyone. Celeste even. No.” Giselle sat up slightly, lips pursed slightly and thin eyebrows narrowed as a single drop of tequila trickled down her cheek. “Not Celeste.”
“Farrington would never take it,” said Will, shaking his head and wading in, “He’s too... what would you call it, sad?”
“Mournful?”
“Yeah. Just the wrong fit.”
“He’s doing a pretty good job now,” Giselle mumbled, lowering her head back down into the puddle and not looking at them. Beside her, Will made a face.
“He’s stepping in because he has to. Him and Nat both. They’ll hold down the fort, doesn’t make them captain.”
“Why are we even talking about this?” exclaimed Wally, waving his shot glass around like a deranged choir conductor, rounding incredulously on the pair, “Does any of this even matter? Jane is a God. She is up there creating a new planet! Is the world even going to exist tomorrow? Screw the Legion of Heroes! Screw our little club!”
“Matt, dude,” Giselle mumbled, one side of her face still on the table, “You really should’ve told us about the time travel.”
Matt had now told them about the time travel. He’d told them everything. How Jane had really beaten the Black Death. The true source of her Dawn powers. The Time Child and his enigmatic bullcrap. Pastor Fredericks and his plan.
“Yeah,” he sighed. He pinched the bridge of his now. “Sorry.”
“Where did we land on the whole ‘blond kid trying to kill you’ thing?” Will asked, turning to him, “Is that still something we need to worry about?”
“I don’t think so,” replied Matt, squeezing his eyes closed and massaging his temples, “Maybe I overthought it. Maybe he never was trying to kill me. Maybe this was all part of his plan. Maybe he was trying to help Fredericks and he screwed up. Maybe Jane went God up into time-space and murdered him. Who the hell knows.”
“I know I need another drink.”
“I mean maybe if we knew,” the speedster murmured, “Maybe if we nipped it in the beginning, maybe we could’ve prevented this.”
“Prevented this?!” Wally threw his hands up again, sending drops of tequila flying all over them and the floor. “Do we even know what ‘this’ is? Do we know what Jane’s doing? Do we know what her godly plans are?!”
“She’s going to make a better world,” muttered Giselle, “She’s going to prevent bad things from ever happening. And she can do it. Time, matter, life, energy; she’s got everything she needs.”
Will turned to Matt. “You said this time travel stuff is dangerous though right? Like maybe she could hurt herself?”
“Perhaps,” shrugged Matt, his face blank, “But she’s been doing it more and more lately. Like it’s been getting easier.”
“Ok,” Will said, “Ok.” He lurched drunkenly in his chair beside Wally, leaning his arms across those of Matt and Giselle. “Let’s think this through. How do we stop her?”
“Stop her?” laughed Wally, “Honey, she can time travel. She controls life and death and the building blocks of reality, oh and also the power of the sun. What can you do, what can you really do, to stop her?”
“We just gotta get up there,” Will insisted, “I teleport, or we get flown up, and-” he snapped his fingers, “‑Giselle’s neutraliser, Giselle’s backup empath neutraliser, we get them, and I don’t know, we get near to her, or we trap her…”
“You can’t trap a time traveller,” sighed Matt, resting his forehead on the table’s surface, feeling the cold leech up into his weary brain, “Future sight. Causation.”
“You don’t know-”
“Dude, I swear to you, I have spent so long thinking about this.”
“Okay but…” Will said, struggling for words, “There’s got to be something. What if there are more Divines out there, huh? Ones we don’t know about. We put a team together, like a really good team, and we go up and stop her and-”
“Do we want to stop her?” Giselle asked suddenly. She sat up. The bar fell silent. Will and Wally turned and stared at her, their expressions stunned. Matt just kept looking down.
Giselle sighed and her shoulders slumped, almost as if she was ashamed of the words that were about to come out of her mouth. “I don’t… know if I want to stop her,” she said, averting her gaze, “Jane.”
“Gizz, are you serious?” said Wally, “Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and Jane-”
“We’ve all read Nineteen Eighty-Four,” Giselle responded, not quite rolling her eyes, “This isn’t a story. This isn’t some metaphor or like, an axiom. This is real. This is really… God.” She fell silent for a moment. “I mean I know this Fredericks guy was crazy, but are we sure he had it wrong? Is direction… is oversight… bad?”
The other three sat silent. Giselle glanced around the table, her face wracked with guilt. “Jane healed my legs,” she said, “Like it was nothing. If I’d been dying, if I’d had cancer, she could’ve cured that too. Would have. Think of all the horrible things…” her voice trailed off, but after a moment she gathered her strength and pushed on, “…all the horrible things happening in the world right now. Rape, violence, murder. Disasters, accidents, disease… is it so bad to imagine someone getting rid of them all?” She looked at them, her eyes pleading. “I mean… she could change everything. Anything. What if we didn’t have to get old? What if we didn’t have to die?”
“Those things are part of being human,” replied Wally, aghast.
“But what if they didn’t have to be?” argued Giselle, “Think about it for one second, put aside all those nice sayings and ‘all good things must come to pass’ and ‘it’s the journey not the destination’… aren’t those just things we say to ourselves because we don’t truly have another option? Because death is inevitable? What if it wasn’t? I, I don’t want to die,” she admitted with a shaky, semi-hysterical laugh, “I don’t want to die! Is that so wrong? I almost… a few times now, and I… I like living! Screw me for saying it, I like being alive!”
“Death gives life purpose,” Wally countered.
“Does it?” asked Giselle, “Or do we just say that to make ourselves feel better?” She paused, glancing between the teleporter and the psychic. “There is a god. A real god. A benevolent… ish… omniscient, all powerful god. She wants to help us. She’s trying to help us. She’s out there literally building a better world right now. Do we really want to try and stop her?”
“I don’t like the idea of god,” said Wally, “The idea of someone controlling me, judging me, watching my every move?”
“It’s that age old question,” said Will, shaking his head, “If God is all-good and all‑powerful, why does evil exist? Well, now there’s a God who is good-”
“Good intentioned,” Giselle corrected.
“Right, and what does she immediately do?” Will paused, looking at each of them. “Day one. Better world.”
“She’s not God,” Matt murmured. The conversation around the table suddenly ceased, and three sets of eyes turned to look at him. He didn’t glance up. “She’s just Jane.” Matt shook his head and straightened slightly. “It doesn’t matter how many powers she gets, or what she does with them. She’s just a person.”
The bar was silent for a few moments.
“Matt,” said Wally, “I hear what you’re saying, and I appreciate it, I really do. But I also see the literal second Earth forming in the sky above us and I have to say, appeals to ‘we’re all human after all’ just aren’t cutting it for me right now.”
The other three lapsed back into argument – talk of what Jane’s new world might be, whether to stop it, whether they could stop it, powers, combinations, ideas. Matt found himself increasingly unable to listen, or unable to bear listening – maybe both. After a few more minutes and a few more throat‑burning shots he excused himself, claiming a need to go outside and pee. The others let him go without a backwards glance, still enmeshed in their discussion.
Matt stepped out behind the bar, onto a small dirt courtyard adjoining a patch of grass and a broad, hanging birch tree. The wind whistled through his hair and he stared up at the moonlight skyline, the whispering heavens, the new white world and the watching stars.
“Jane,” he murmured. The moment before he’d uttered it, Matt had been afraid it’d feel stupid. But it didn’t. They were well past self-conscious shame. “Jane,” he said again, “I know you’re up there. I know you’re trying. I… I really need to talk to you.”
Wind whispered through the leaves.
“I… I don’t know whether you’re angry at me. If you think I’m trying to stop you. But I’m not. I’m not angry. I’m scared. And I don’t want to be scared, and I don’t want us not to talk to one another, I don’t… whatever you’re going through, whatever you’re planning, I don’t want you to have to go through it alone.”
“Because we’re partners, aren’t we?” he continued, his voice breaking, “Through all the stupid stuff? And I know you’ve never done anything to hurt me, and I’m never going to do anything to hurt you… so please. Let me in. I just want to talk.”
For a few moments Matt remained silent, staring up at the new moon shining pale in the night sky. The wind moved gently against the tree, swaying the birch’s branches, the bark glistening silken in the distant streetlights.
Nothing happened.
After a minute or so, Matt sighed and hung his head.
“I don’t know why I keep thinking this’ll work,” he sighed, and turned back towards the bar.