33) Super Suit.

He called himself Nexus, and it was a good description of how his powers work.

He called me Lictor, because…

“I’m sorry, but I worked with your analog in one world often enough to recognize you, even without the mask.”

Apparently, in some nearby universe, one that split off from ours in the late eighties, I, or rather, a version of me, is a superhero.

Although his description of a man who used an ax on people sounded more like a serial killer.

He held his hands up at whatever look I was giving him. “From what I picked up you were one of the few artificial ones that didn’t go hopelessly insane, but you, sorry, he, was pretty intense.”

“Grim?”

“Sorry, you both just have this, serious but sad thing going on. Not as bad as him, but that’s still the word that jumped into my head when I met him. One of me is a poet and I assure you that the word fits.”

Nexus is a man in his mid twenties, although it is a little hard to tell with his bright blue mask that covers his entire head other than two eye shaped white spots.

Very comic book like, but real.

"I sent it over from the world with superpowers, it's some sort of hi-tech fabric. Surprisingly breathable while also bullet resistant.”

Something happened in his world that gave people superpowers starting around the time the planets all lined up back in the eighties. No one knows what it was that caused it, but one day people all over the world who had experienced traumatic, or even just deeply emotional events, would just get superpowers.

The man dressed up in a black pin striped suit over the neon blue full body super suit waved a hand at me from where he sat at the table on the terrace of my hotel's room that he had reached through a shimmer of blue light in the air for his interview.

"Even though people started getting powers the same day as the convergence, a lot of people still ended up being born with the same names, and the same faces for several years afterwards. The Butterfly effect takes a lot longer to kick in than people theorized, it was almost ten years before all newborns started being different from the other timelines.”

Nexus is the expert on that, since he lives in thirty four different versions of Earth, all at once.

That’s one of his powers, the ability to link the minds of all of his alternate selves from every alternate world they live in all together into a group mind.

And to share the superpower that only exists in one world with all of them.

I don't think that there are only thirty four different versions of Earth out there in which he was born, but that's all his powers link him to. Maybe the various worlds have to be different enough by some measure for his powers to work.

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In one world he’s a middling ranked superhero, in thirty three others, he’s the only one.

At least to start.

“We got a whole team going now. Treant, Illumina, Aesir, although the newspapers are calling him Norseman, which annoys him to no end. We also almost got a lizard person with an enchanted baseball bat her brought back with him signed up.”

"Our consultants want me to talk him into the name 'Batter Up' but he wants to go with 'Scales of Justice' which is cool, but I think he knows it will just get shortened to 'Scales' which is what he's been going by already."

Consultant? Yep. This is a professional organization, at least in terms of getting paid.

“I want the team to be independent of government money. I can bring things over here from the alternate worlds, like tech that hasn’t been made here, and films and TV shows that didn’t get canceled, or never got made.”

“But that can get complicated since the people and companies who made them there mostly also exist here.”

Nexus went still for a moment, then clasped his hands together.

“But I recently linked up with an alternative on a world where that voice didn’t get stopped, the one that spoke to the whole world. At least not at first.”

"I got a class called Traveler there and more money in hard coin than I know what to do with. It’s legitimately mine and I can move it where it will help, but not just here. So getting some toy contracts, public appearances deals, sponsorships, as long as it’s on our terms I want whatever I can get to help fund this.”

He leaned back and crossed his legs, fingers pressed in front of him. “Not just in New York either, we have a lot of people with powers out there. People are used to doing something when others need help. People who don't stand by while evil prospers, but are ready to get after evil, and most likely get hardcore about it.”

"It's what their lives on other worlds have trained them to do. Kill the monsters, defeat the demon king, and denounce the corrupt and the wicked in positions of power over others.”

He shook his head slowly. “I think it would be much better to get things organized, regulated, and authorized before too many more people go vigilante.”

"I like the idea of Batman, but the real world doesn't have writers that make sure his mistakes don't ruin lives. Just being the good guy doesn't mean you can't screw up."

I gave him a look. “Including you.”

He threw his hands out to either side. "Including me, but then, I have thirty three other mes looking over my shoulder. Judging my actions, giving advice, shipping over healing potions, I got options."

Besides being linked to his other selves, Nexus can send himself, others, and things to other places, which can be handy.

“Bank robbers with suicide vests on the hostages. Me and my other selves can target up to thirty three of them at once, moving them to safety, and leaving the bomb vest behind. Taking the robber's guns and the detonators is pretty easy too."

More than that, he's fast.

"I can travel from world to world, and in each world I can operate outside the normal rules, not just moving through space, but altering how fast time passes for me. In a lot of ways I'm like the Flash, but I don't have to run from place to place, just go where I want to go and have plenty of time to decide what I want to do there."

With most of what he wanted to say, I got to ask my questions.

"How do you justify stepping in? I mean, I get it. Someone has too. But other people are going to ask besides me, and I think you've been expecting the question at some point. So here it is, being asked without an agenda.”

He slowly nodded. "Yeah, for me, it's like you said, someone has to step up, and I have the training."

“And its training from a world where Superheroes have been around for over thirty years. But even more so, it’s because sooner or later someone is going to do this, and if I do it first, I set the standard.”

And that seems a good high point to end the official interview.

Addendum:

But I had another question. This one for myself.

“The world that the System was able to do its thing. What happened to me?"

Nexus hesitated as he began to stand up.

“It’s more like what you did to the system, Prophet.”

He looked down.

“I was there with you at the end, and I’m so sorry… that me there was still new to having my powers. I wasn’t fast enough.”

Later, he sent me the picture of the statue they put up over there. A block of stone, gray, my height and set up on the top of a more ornate pedestal as his mother insisted.

With his last known words, at least the ones that got reported, carved into the stone.

“I don’t know if we can win, or even survive.”

“None of us do. But all of us still choose to come here, and try.”

“This is who we decided to be.”

-Jim Brenner