MAYBE THEN I’LL FADE AWAY AND NOT HAVE TO FACE THE FACTS

By Dale Glaser

“… and the Fomalhauti says, ‘That’s not an endoplasmic molt, that’s my wife!’” Bobby O’Doyle shouted, slamming his palm down on the mesh surface of the patio table for emphasis. Joshua Speer and Yaphet Nyokong laughed appreciatively; Stefan grinded his lapis lazuli pedipalps in a rapid stridulation expressing amusement; Ibrahim al-Bazzaz chuckled into his pint glass. Jack Getty shook his head, slowly but determinedly, while inhaling a long drag from his cigarette and slowly exhaling a pale gray plume straight up from the corner of his puckered mouth.

“No,” Getty said finally, as if the negation needed to be verbalized. “That did not happen.”

“Swear it did,” O’Doyle countered. “I mean, they don’t even really have jokes on Fomalhaut, as I understand it. Not ‘two guys walk into a bar’ jokes anyway. That’s what made it so great, the Fomalhauti said something that sounded exactly like a punchline and he didn’t even realize he was doing it.”

“Uh-huh,” Getty replied skeptically. He crushed out his cigarette in an ashtray which glowed briefly, causing the discarded butt to completely vanish. Ibrahim recognized antineutrinos in the receptacle’s aura, even as Getty was drawing a half-empty pack out of his pocket and readying another smoke. “So, Ibrahim,” Getty said, evidently matching up a change in conversational focus with the change of cigarettes, “You’re working in the Director’s office, that right? Taking over for Prithita?”

“Prithita’s not going anywhere, G,” Speer interjected reprovingly.

“Right, I’m not a …” – Ibrahim nearly said ‘secretary’ – “… an … administrative assistant. I think my position is technically aide-de-camp.”

“Uh-huh,” Getty answered noncommittally.

Ibrahim took a sip of beer as he waited for the next question. It was bitter but savory, no doubt originating on some far-off world. Chandilar, perhaps. “Oh! Oh, where do you … what do you all do, here?” Ibrahim asked hurriedly. “I know Agent Nyokong is in security, and I think Joshua is in … I.T.?”

“Yep,” Speer nodded. “Internal systems only. We got a whole ‘nother section of folks who analyze the tech goodies get brought in from other universes. I just keep the Hollow up and running.”

“So …?” Instinctively, Ibrahim turned toward O’Doyle, who seemed affable and friendly enough.

“I work in the kitchen,” O’Doyle acknowledged.

“Oh,” Ibrahim tried to reconcile the idea.

“I know, I know, we get that a lot,” O’Doyle conceded. “Sometimes it’s a grind, not that much different from working in a hotel. But sometimes you have to make a radioactive omelet out of egg whites and Europium-152 for somebody up in quarantine and it gets interesting.”

“Cool …?” Ibrahim felt at a loss to say more, and he turned to the humanoid scorpion sitting beside him.

“Infirmary,” Stefan supplied. “So my job’s like Bobby’s except, you know, a few orders of magnitude more important.”

“People can’t live without food,” O’Doyle pointed out.

“They can live longer without food than they can without functioning organs,” Stefan shot back.

“Touche,” O’Doyle grinned. “And Jack is in the legal department, I’ll just go ahead and put that out there since he wouldn’t say it himself.”

“Why not?” Ibrahim asked.

“Because it’s hard to explain,” Getty sighed.

“What do you work on?”

“Treaties, mostly,” Getty answered. “Multiversal covenant law is a rapidly changing field, though, so trying to get any further into the nuts and bolts of it, from the layman’s perspective? Really not worth any of our time.”

Ibrahim shrugged his acceptance. Getty continued to watch him. Finally Getty said, “You’re not very good at this, are you?”

“At what?”

“This,” Getty drew a circle in the air with the two fingers holding his cigarette, a circle that encompassed everyone at the table. “The give and take of the conversation, back and forth. You don’t have many friends, do you?”

“I …” Ibrahim shrugged. “No I guess I don’t, not really.”

“Why not?” Nyokong asked. “You seem like a nice enough kid to me.”

Ibrahim noticed with some distress that his glass was now empty.

Under the dust-drowned skies of Earth Z-1.1.5.8, A.R.M.O.R.’s Away Team Raido faced the Demogorge, the nightmarish giant that had just consumed the interdimensional aperture which was their doorway home. Traces of purplish-white portal energies flickered along the furious orange-red skin of the winged goliath, traversing bulging muscles as well as the captive facial features of demons and deities. Most of the godheads trapped within the Demogorge were scarcely recognizable, gradually dissolving into the god-eater’s constituent flesh until they were nothing more than gaping eye sockets and permanent howls of torment, but the Ahau pantheon which had conquered the Earth were the Demogorge’s most recent victims, and seemed only barely contained. The Demogorge narrowed its white-hot eyes at the A.R.M.O.R. operatives and brandished two black-taloned hands toward them.

Richard Carson, the inches-high pilot within the command-pod heart of the seven foot tall samurai robot Raydeen, immediately shifted the control yoke of the exoskeleton into combat-ready position, and the blue steel gauntlets dropped one end of the temple-buster bomb. Carson kicked hard on the cyclic and sent Raydeen lunging forward; the robot interposed itself between the other away team members and the Demogorge just as the monstrosity unleashed a barrage of searing elemental force from its claws.

Raydeen held up its right forearm, where a crimson buckler had automatically extended from the gauntlet. The small shield absorbed the brunt of Demogorge’s attack, while the thermal soak plating covering the entire robotic body dissipated much of the accompanying energies. Nevertheless, the flesh-and-blood A.R.M.O.R. operatives behind Raydeen were forced to fall back to escape the blistering rise in temperature around the mechanized samurai, and avert their eyes from the dazzling incandescence. Raydeen fell to its knees.

As soon as the deluge of concentrated plasma abated, Raydeen swiveled and brought its left arm up to point at the Demogorge. The curved limbs of a golden bow snapped outward from recessed casings in the gauntlet, strung together by carbonadium filament. A silver arrow clicked into place and fired from the bow a moment later, striking the Demogorge in the stomach and detonating its explosive point in a thunderous conflagration. The Demogorge flapped the broad, leathery scarlet and black wings extending from each shoulder, putting additional distance between itself and Raydeen, but was otherwise unscathed by the assault.

Don Remming kept one eye on a digital countdown on his helmet’s HUD, currently displaying a little over 39 seconds, the tenths and hundredths digits cycling too fast to read. Standard A.R.M.O.R. operational protocol dictated that an away team’s failure to extract from a pre-arranged dimensional portal would prompt a second attempt one minute after the first, and a third attempt five minutes after the second. Remming’s main goals were keeping his Raido teammates alive and getting them through the next portal due in 32 seconds.

“DM, get on top of that hostile!” Remming barked. “Firat, Jillian, flank and fire at will!”

“And the rest of us?” Abigigail Dunton asked at his side.

“Just get ready to run,” Remming answered.

Dragon-Man’s alchemically-enhanced programming had been locked down with safeguards which ensured that the tyrian beast was all but incapable of independent thought or movement, yet when a direct order was given the monstrous creature instantly regained its innate ferocity. Dragon Man hurtled toward the Demogorge like a clawed missile, grappling with the eater of gods before opening a sharp purple beak to unleash its fiery breath point blank into the snarling visage.

Firat of Polemachus sprinted along a wide arc, drawing small copper blades shaped as lightning bolts from his belt as he ran. He stopped abruptly as soon as he could see the back of Demogorge’s wings and snapped his arm outward, sending a glittering reddish-gold bolt at the god-eater’s spine. The bolt exploded against the base of the entity’s cranial dome.

At the same time, Jillian Marie Woods flew in a stream of darkness, the curvature of her path mirroring Firat’s so that she too could attack the Demogorge’s back but from the opposite side. She raised both fists and fired a torrent of darkforce that pounded the junction between the Demogorge’s wings, where the withered face of an emaciated, ibis-headed deity thrust upward and pulled the orange skin taut.

The Demogorge ignored Firat and Jillian’s combined assault completely, and only seemed infuriated by Dragon Man’s depredations. The hulk aligned its arms against Dragon Man’s chest, within the monstrous android’s clench, and then threw its arms open wide, freeing itself and sending Dragon Man sprawling backwards a dozen yards. The Demogorge looked from side to side, taking in all the members of Away Team Raido, and bellowed, “My mother Gaea and father Demiurge rest in peace here, vile little godlings, and undisturbed they shall remain!”

“Then let us leave!” Remming yelled back at the god-eater. “We don’t want your world!” He glanced at the HUD countdown: 22 seconds to the extraction attempt.

“You will not return to whatever hell-realm spawned you,” the Demogorge insisted, “lest you marshall your theonic forces and return some day hence. You will be PURGED!” A riotous blast of unadulterated light and heat leapt from the Demogorge’s claws and scattered Remming, Abigail Dunton, Stanislav the siamang and Micah Synn.

Synn was the first to regain his footing, and called out, “Raydeen! Hawk and Swordsman!”

Raydeen ran to Synn, leaning forward almost parallel to the bedded groundcover of swirling dust, and flipped in mid-air. In a single fluid movement, the exoskeleton’s legs collapsed as its arms retracted, while the scarlet sode-jirushi mounted on its shoulders extended outward as wings. Simultaneously, Raydeen ejected the buckler shield as well as a blade from its forearm housings, the two pieces of equipment arcing through the air just ahead of the exoskeleton’s flying Firehawk configuration.

Micah Synn squatted low, then kicked his powerful legs to launch himself into the air, where he caught the buckler and blade. Synn brought the two items together to form a single massive weapon just as the Raydeen Firehawk skimmed the ground beneath him. Synn landed atop the Firehawk’s armored back and brandished the assembled Breaking Blade while the flying exoskeleton circled around to aim its beak, formerly the sharp apex of its samurai kabuto helm, directly at the Demogorge.

The Demogorge sneered malevolently at the approaching airborne duo and readied another blast of solar fury. The searing column tore through the air and was met by the shielded portion of the Breaking Blade as Micah Synn expertly parried the shot. By the time the explosive brilliance faded, Raydeen was roaring over the Demogorge’s head and snaring the god-eater’s scapulae in its cobalt-steel Firehawk talons. The Demogorge was yanked backwards dangling by its wings; its hands flailed upwards in an attempt to dislodge itself, while Micah Synn delivered punishing overhand blows with the Breaking Blade to fend off the Demogorge’s claws.

Remming saw his HUD countdown roll over to milliseconds, dropping rapidly from 9000. “Huddle up, everyone!” he ordered. Dragon Man silently obeyed; Firat and Shadowoman warily backed toward the Raido team leader while keeping their eyes on the spectacle of the Demogorge struggling to escape from the Firehawk’s clutches. 6000 milliseconds. Abigail and Stanislav joined Remming at one end of the temple-buster bomb to help push it, as Dragon Man hefted the opposite end. 2000 milliseconds.

The Demogorge sank its claws into the Firehawk’s belly, out of the reach of the Breaking Blade, and pulled mightily. The exoskeleton’s talons raked the membranous surface of the Demogorge’s wings, opening ragged tears in their leathery spans, but the Demogorge persisted. In a heartbeat Raydeen had been flipped upside down and cast unceremoniously aside, with Micah Synn clinging to the exoskeleton one-handed and bracing against forcible impact with the lifeless, unforgiving ground.

Lights flared along the Demogorge’s wings, healing its wounds as the god-eater flew towards the irising purple-white surface of an interdimensional disc with claws outstretched. The curved black spurs at the tips of the Demogorge’s fingers plunged into the pulsating gateway and siphoned its energies, leaving behind nothing but a faint shimmer in the air.

“An insanely powerful entity that absorbs energy and internalizes gods, and now we have five minutes to figure out how to keep it from eating our last portal home while also managing not to get killed by it,” Remming observed.

“To whom are you speaking?” Firat inquired.

“Anybody who’ll listen,” Remming admitted.

“Problem is,” Jillian noted, “the reason we’re in this situation is because there’s absolutely nobody else here.”

Ibrahim took a deep breath and let it out. He contemplated blowing off the question about his lack of friends, and suspected that the others at the table would let him. But some part of him realized that he was already thinking of the Hollow as something like a home, of A.R.M.O.R. as something like family, and if he wanted anything like real closeness with his colleagues to validate that feeling, he would have to be honest and try new approaches.

“Well when I was little,” he began, “I was kind of like a teacher’s pet. Really obsessed with always getting the right answer. Other kids avoided me or just got in my face to mock me. Then my powers started developing and it just about drove me crazy, all these things I could perceive that no one else was seeing, and nobody could tell me what it meant. I was still pretty young, just 11 or 12, and my parents sent me to Xavier’s. And I learned that I was seeing invisible energies and had to get a handle on sorting through all that extra sensory input. The training regimen … it was intense and it didn’t leave me a lot of time to make friends.”

“But that was just at first, right?” Nyokong asked.

“Yeah. After a couple years I was mainstreamed at the school, but … my powers made my classmates uncomfortable.”

“Your mutant powers,” O’Doyle paraphrased, “made your fellow mutant students uncomfortable? Why?”

“I know it sounds kinda crazy, but it’s the same reason a lot of people, mutants or not, get uncomfortable around telepaths,” Ibrahim explained. “People feel like their privacy is under constant threat of invasion. Xavier’s curriculum includes some basic mental shielding, but … that doesn’t help someone deal with me, because I’m not a telepath. But I can see body temperatures and emotional auras and power fluxes, and you don’t have to be a genius or a mind-reader to interpret that stuff, but it still makes people feel like I’ve been snooping around in their secrets if I let on what I’ve figured out. But it’s impossible not to sometimes. So nobody wanted to hang out with me.”

“Nobody? In the entire school, no one understood what you were going through?” Speer asked.

“The actual telepaths and empaths were really clique-y,” Ibrahim recalled. “They didn’t consider me their equal, and hey, fair enough, I’m not. And everyone else, yeah I guess none of them were high on the idea.”

“Or,” Getty posited, “you had a bad experience with a few vocal douchebags early on, and then you withdrew into a protective little cocoon of woe and didn’t let anyone else get close enough to have a chance.”

“For the love of crap, Jack, lighten up,” Speer grumbled.

“It’s all right,” Ibrahim insisted.

“Well, I gotta get back to the infirmary,” Stefan said to break the ensuing silence, pushing his massive bulk away from the table and rising to his feet. “But it was good to meet you, Ibrahim.”

The scorpionoid’s departure heralded the beginning of the gathering’s breaking up. Nyokong headed across the Park toward the Dragon Corridor and the security operations center. O’Doyle, Speer and Getty lingered a bit longer, discussing who would cover the cost of the multiple pitchers the group had consumed at the café, and Ibrahim offered to contribute.

“Nah, don’t worry about it,” Speer waved him off. “You hang out with us long enough and you’ll pick up a tab sooner or later, but this time I invited you, you’re my guest.”

“Sounds like somebody just volunteered to get the check,” Getty argued.

“You’re lucky we’re all headed off for R&R and I’m in a good mood,” Speer countered. He crossed the patio to a small touchscreen embedded in the café’s outer wall and initiated an electronic transaction from his Hollow account.

“R&R?” Ibrahim asked.

“After you’ve been here a while, and assuming Director Little Sky ever allows you enough leave time,” O’Doyle answered, “you’ll get to enjoy one of A.R.M.O.R.’s little perks. Unlimited interdimensional transportation.”

“Really,” Ibrahim nodded appreciatively.

“Not really unlimited,” Getty insisted.

“OK, true,” O’Doyle conceded. “Free though. Round-trip, too!”

“Usually,” Getty added ominously, in a tone that made it difficult to ascertain fully whether or not he was joking.

When Speer rejoined them and the trio departed for teleportation, Ibrahim considered what to do with the remainder of his personal liberty time. Eventually he made his way back toward the living quarters in the Tortoise Corridor, thoughts of professional camaraderie, transgalactic imported beer and other perks floating through his head.

Four minutes and seventeen seconds had elapsed on Don Remming’s heads-up digital countdown anticipating the final extraction attempt the Hollow’s teleportation crew would be bound by A.R.M.O.R. protocol to attempt. The Demogorge, relentless and implacable, had engaged in an unremitting siege on the Raido team, strafing them from overhead with smiting rays of white-hot calenture, and only a tandem combination of Raydeen’s thermal shields and Jillian’s darkforce barriers had allowed the A.R.M.O.R. operatives to survive. Now, however, Jillian gasped for air out of sheer exhaustion, and Raydeen’s exoskeleton smoked from its joints, redolent with ozone.

“Now or never,” Remming concluded. “Go to it, Stanislav.”

The albino siamang scrambled away from the group and squatted on his haunches, raising his eyes to the god-eater overhead. The gular sac of Stanislav’s furred throat inflated dramatically as the siamang opened his mouth, and a rumbling wave of frenzied noise poured forth, striking the Demogorge with channeled physical force.

The Demogorge was briefly stunned by the sonic assault, but quickly turned its attention to the white-furred primate and dove toward him. Stanislav gave no ground, but screamed again, the discordant hyper-vibrations even more voluminous this time. The Demogorge flapped its nightmarish wings and shifted to a hovering position, utterly disoriented. At the same time, the visible outlines of the head of the Ahau deity Camazotz stood out in sharp relief just beneath the orange flesh of the god-eater’s chest, the fanged mouth, upturned nose and large flared ears forming the mien of a giant bat; another aspect of the Ahau pantheon, the god of mischief Wayep, forced itself against the flesh at the very crest of the Demogorge’s head, revealing the goliath skull of a demon-bat with jagged, bony ears. Stanislav sang to the captive Ahau gods, a caterwauling hymn of confusion and pain.

“I think it’s working,” Richard Carson said, his words layered with electrical interference from the failing speakers of the Raydeen exoskeleton.

“It was a lucky guess,” Abigail Dunton confessed. “Partly assuming that bat-totem gods have enhanced hearing that makes them extra-sensitive to powers like Stanislav’s, and partly hoping the Ahau would be vengeful enough to assist in passing the pain along to their captor.”

“We need your luck to hold out for twenty-seven more seconds,” Remming noted.

“Then it shall have help,” Firat asserted. He drew two lightning-shaped blades from his belt, cast in an iridescent green alloy. With a trained economy of motion he hurtled the small metal bolts at the Demogorge. As they neared the god-eater, the blades veered away from each other, began orbiting around the Demogorge, and multiplied into a cloud of razor-sharp sparkling green blurs like a swarm of wrathful locusts.

The Demogorge attempted to spread its wings in flight, but withdrew them from the swirling nimbus of green metal immediately as the tiny lightning bolts ravaged the leathery sails. Stanislav brayed wildly, causing further paroxysms in the embedded visages of Camazotz and Wayep which echoed through the Demogorge’s body. In a primal rage, the god-eater unleashed yet another cannonade of plasma which slashed toward the main cluster of the Raido team.

Raydeen lurched painfully into the path of the burning bolt, soaking most of it but allowing a small portion of lethal incandescence to splash onto Abigail, who shrieked in agony as she fell to the dust. Remming shifted his position to reach Abigail’s side as her eyes rolled back to their whites and she lapsed into unconsciousness.

Joshua Speer, Bobby O’Doyle and Jack Getty walked into the Hollow’s teleportation room, where several of the technicians were gathered around a single console engaged in animated discussion. The console was connected to the enhanced dimension-bridging technologies primarily reserved for official A.R.M.O.R. missions into hostile universes or unexplored planes. Speer, O’Doyle and Getty crossed to the opposite side of the teleportation room, where gateway generators for less arduous expeditions and unofficial business were operated.

A technician with alabaster skin and shaggy maroon hair bent over a small console, a simplified version of the higher-powered counterpart across the room. The tech’s standard bronze-and-whites, despite being issued in the smallest humanoid size available, hung loosely on his spindly limbs. O’Doyle hailed, “Hey, M’Bll,” and the technician glanced up, revealing huge limpid eyes and a vanishingly small jawbone.

“Greetings, gentlemen,” M’Bll said. “Time again for your furloughs already?”

“Big time,” Getty nodded, his fingers twitching as if searching for a cigarette, although smoking was prohibited in the teleportation control center.

“What’s with the meeting of the minds over there?” Speer asked, indicating the cluster of technicians on the other side of the room.

“Tertiary extraction,” M’Bll answered. “And some matter of debate over super-tertiary protocol.”

“Whoa,” O’Doyle responded.

“So can you send us on our way now?” Getty asked. “Or do we have to wait for the brain trust to figure out how to snag back whichever team missed its first two portals?”

M’Bll assessed Getty unblinkingly. “Usual destination, usual duration?” the pale technician asked. Getty nodded, and M’Bll’s delicate fingers began to rove across the controls of the console. “I suppose I can fit you in briefly.”

“See you guys,” Getty tossed back over his shoulder as he proceeded to a clear area of the metallic-tiled floor, where an interdimensional gateway was spiraling open. As Getty stepped into the pulsating circle of purple-white light, all other dimension-bridging systems in the teleportation nexus were locked down.

The final extraction countdown zeroed out, and Don Remming looked expectantly to the point where the portal would appear. The air remained undisturbed.

“Are you kidding me?” Remming wailed.

The Demogorge, its limbs and wings folded against its body like a hellish embryonic bird, exploded with the fury of a newborn star. A spherical corona of roiling, radiant flames engulfed the god-eater as well as the slashing bolts weaving a flying net around the hulking entity. The weapons were instantly vaporized, but as the flash of the blinding aura subsided, the Demogorge was revealed intact at its epicenter. The godheads imprinting themselves on the interior surfaces of the Demogorge’s orange flesh were fewer and feebler, but the entity unfurled its wings and flexed its hypertrophied arms and legs as if exultant with newfound vigor.

“And Earth 3K6.8.9 for you, Mr. O’Doyle?” M’Bll asked, as the interdimesional portal to Tamal 1C1.2.4 irised closed behind Joshua Speer.

O’Doyle smiled self-consciously. “Not this time, no, thanks,” he said. “I was hoping for 1F0.7.7?”

M’Bll complied, entering the universe designation into the console controls, but commented, “I don’t believe I know that world.”

“It’s off the beaten path,” O’Doyle agreed. “But it’s cleared for personal travel.”

“Indeed,” M’Bll assented.

“For the celestial wolf’s sake, M’Bll!” cried an elfin technician from across the room. “We’re trying to complete an extraction here, stop locking the grid!”

“Apologies, Inirri,” M’Bll replied, waving his hands helplessly over the console. “As soon as this departure is complete, the grid is yours.”

“Thanks, M,” O’Doyle offered, hustling through his interdimensional gateway. The purple-white disc shrank to a point behind him and vanished. M’Bll gestured towards Inirri and the knot of technicians surrounding her, and their coordinated efforts commenced. A moment later a portal appeared on the central platform of the control chamber, a pulsating white aperture in space ringed in sharper, brighter violet than the usual gateways generated in the teleporter room.

A purple pinhole in reality expanded to form a swirling circlet of opaque light, and all eyes were drawn to it immediately, those of the A.R.M.O.R. operatives pinned down on Earth Z-1.1.5.8 as well as the voracious black orbs of the Demogorge. The god-eater beat its demonic wings to propel itself toward the dimensional gateway at a speed that would close the distance in seconds.

“Raydeen, get the temple-buster through the portal,” Remming directed.

“But …”

“Do it!” Remming barked. “You gassed almost all your systems keeping us alive this long. Finish the mission! We’re right behind you!”

Raydeen grabbed the bomb by one end and dragged it through the dust, pulling it into the portal. At the same instant, Stanislav leapt at the Demogorge. The god-eater’s expulsion of raw cosmic energies had consumed Camazotz and Wayep, leaving the albino siamang no alternative but to attack the monster tooth and nail. Stanislav’s long furry arms wrapped around the Demogorge’s calf as he bit the entity’s kneecap; the Demogorge swatted the siamang away with the barest of effort.

“Fool of an ape!” Micah Synn bellowed, charging across the dust and ash to reach Stanislav’s battered form.

“Micah!” Remming protested, to no avail.

“No, Don! Go!” Jillian exhorted. She threw her hands toward the Demogorge and unleashed a cone of concentrated darkforce which could have ruptured the hide of a Latverian tank, yet only slowed the Demogorge slightly. “Get Abby back to the Hollow or she’ll die!”

Remming looked down at Abigail, resting across his lap, and based on the sickeningly broiled flesh knew his teammate was right. He lifted Abigail gently and backed toward the dimensional portal, vanishing through it.

Firat of Polemachus produced the last of his lightning blades, jagged black daggers which exploded as they struck the Demogorge, still flying against the darkforce deluge. With every explosion, the surface area of the god-eater’s flesh touched by the bolt dropped to absolute zero and air sublimated to ice, which in turn crackled and gasified immediately. Firat and Jillian together backed towards the portal.

Despite the opposing thrust of the darkforce torrent and the barrage of cold-recoil bolts, the Demogorge approached within a few feet of the interdimensional portal and extended one massive arm until its ebon claws brushed the coruscating edges of the free-floating disc. Even reinforced with augmented traversion charge carriers, the gateway immediately began to flicker and lost a foot of its diameter.

Dragon Man strode thunderously across the wasteland, leading with one enormous tyrian fist which crashed into the side of the Demogorge’s head. The god-eater rolled over in mid-air from the impact, giving Dragon Man a split-second in which to sweep Firat, Jillian and itself into the portal.

The outraged Demogorge thrust both hands into the enhanced purple corona of the interdimensional aperture and its rate of diminution increased rapidly. “Begone, then, demon-makers!” the god-eater raged wildly. “This sphere shall never be part of your providence of chaos and corruption!”

“From your tongue to Mow’s ears,” Micah Synn growled as he leapt past the Demogorge, with Stanislav cradled to his chest, diving through the ever-shrinking portal as it constricted to barely wider than the Kinjorge warrior’s shoulders. The portal collapsed entirely as Synn’s feet vanished into its face, leaving the Demogorge hovering over the dusty swath that had once been Central Park, alone beneath the disintegrating city’s ash-scudded sky.

Earth 1E9.3.3, much like the vast majority of alternate Earths following divergent timelines across the multiverse, did not boast an A.R.M.O.R. of its own. Yet it was sophisticated enough to have reached an accord with various A.R.M.O.R.s and parallel functionaries, such that when Jack Getty stepped through the interdimensional portal which originated in the Hollow, he emerged in a special annex of JFK Airport designated as a permanent insertion/extraction coordination point.

Five hours later, Getty had changed out of his A.R.M.O.R. uniform and into a jacket, silk shirt and trousers, caught a flight to McCarran, and hailed a taxi. The driver had offered Getty a complimentary hit from an inhaler the approximate size and shape of kitchen sink plumbing, but Getty declined, lighting the last cigarette in his pack instead.

Soon the architectural excesses of Las Vegas Boulevard were visible through the taxi’s windows. As they proceeded down the Strip, Getty took in the flashing lights and thronging crowds which elicited the closest thing to a satisfied smile his face had worn in months. Passing the Tropicana, Getty noted that David Alan Angar was performing there nightly; he thought the revue stood a chance to be the second-best show in town.

The taxi pulled off the Strip at the New Frontier and pulled up to the hotel and casino’s front entrance. Getty stepped out and began counting bills for the fare and a generous tip. A trio of college-aged boys stumbled drunkenly toward the glass doors, laughing uproariously. Getty imagined they were on their way to the nightly bikini bull-riding competitions at the casino’s country and western theme bar, not a bad way to make several rounds of domestic beer more entertaining, if one were into that sort of thing.

Getty entered the casino, simultaneously assaulted by the air-conditioned atmosphere and the jolly electronic bells and whistles of slot machines, and skirted the edges of the gaming area on his way to the New Frontier’s main theater. He peered into the heart of the casino as he walked until he made eye contact with a cigarette girl and summoned her over; she wove expertly between the green-felt tables and stands of video poker consoles with her tray of stimulants and novelties balanced against her stomach.

“Galvanix?” Getty asked, and the cigarette girl nodded. Getty held up two fingers and she offered him two packs of cigarettes; in return he gave her a fifty dollar bill, gesturing for her to keep the change even as he tore open one of the packs and shook out a cigarette. Her bright red lips mouthed “thank you” as Getty lit up, feeling the zootoxic acid psychogalvanide flooding his system from the first lungful of the Madripoorian cigarette smoke.

With an extremely pleasant buzz, Getty reached the theater and presented his ticket, allowing the octogenarian usher to escort him to his seat, which was worth a twenty-dollar tip. As he settled into the upholstered chair, he took a long drag on his Zap-laced cigarette and gave a moment’s thanks to Dr. Abraham Erskine, who on Earth 1E9.3.3 had managed to both survive the assassination attempt made after the first successful application of the Super Soldier Serum and live long enough to see it mass-produced and continuously refined.

Seventy-odd years later, legalized trade in narcotics and opiates and performance-enhancers was the inevitable legacy of the Super Soldier Serum’s ubiquity in both military and law enforcement agencies; a War on Drugs was unlikely to be fought by the primary beneficiaries of constantly-reinvented pharmacology. Addicts were less common as well, and overdoses all but unheard of, since drug use was neither stigmatized nor marginalized but simply a part of the fabric of mainstream life – life which was extended well into triple-digit ages with significant quality, as well.

The house lights went down and the band blared the opening notes of their first number. Jack Getty’s smile became positively transcendant as he clamped his cigarette in the corner of his mouth in order to clap his hands, as he and the rest of the audience rose as one to greet the silver-haired but still golden-voiced Elvis Presley as he took the stage, resplendent in a rhinestone-studded jumpsuit, still every inch the King.

Joshua Speer stepped through the interdimensional portal, heard its energy-hum diminish as it collapsed behind him, and was left alone in the heart of a silent forest. The tree trunks surrounding him were glossy black and imprinted with gold veins that ran in straight lines forming myriad patterns entirely composed of 90 and 45 degree angles interspersed with small, perfect circles. The sky above the forest’s canopy was dominated by a purple-blue nebula but, in the shadows beneath the branches, the electrified channels etched on the obsidian boles glowed with living light.

Tamal 1C1.2.4, akin to Tamal 1A in Speer’s home universe, was a wilderness planet devoid of common signs of civilization. No cities, not even a single building or monument, rose from its surface, and none were buried beneath its crust or submerged under ocean waves. Nor had any of the land or sea been cultivated into agricultural fields or grazing lands. The entirety of its uninterrupted biosphere was the domain of plantlife, mainly trees. In some places the overall mix of flora resembled an Earth rainforest or jungle, in others a boreal forest or swamp, and in others altogether alien ecosystems. All across the face of Tamal, however, the tallest trees were sentient members of the Cotati race, botanical aliens who had long ago colonized the then-arid planetoid and remade it in their own image.

On Tamal 1A the terraforming had stopped there, but Tamal 1C1.2.4 had been visited by a second alien race: the Technarchy, cybernetic shapeshifters capable of infecting other lifeforms with the Transmode Virus in order to convert organic matter into techno-organic sustenance. The Technarchs who reached Tamal believed they had discovered a feast of helpless prey, little realizing the Cotati were more than capable of fighting the invaders. The Technarchs were killed, but not before transmitting their virus to the Cotati and initiating a planet-wide techno-organic ontogeny.

The newly reborn Phalanx Cotati carried the Transmode reprogramming which would ordinarily establish a hivemind and broadcast a summons to other Technarchs indicating a species had not been fully consumed and required extermination. But the Cotati were an individualistic, highly evolved and telepathic race, as pacifistic as the Technarchs were antagonistic, and thus were able to suppress the messaging instinct of their infection. Instead the Cotati continued to live on Tamal in peaceful isolation as a megaforest of towering super-intelligent cybernetic trees, unique in the known multiverse.

Joshua Speer unreservedly loved Tamal 1C1.2.4. In general, Transmode colonization made sentient creatures uncomfortable, as if they feared being subsumed by it themselves through simple proximity. Most sentient creatures were also inherently distrustful on some level of all inhuman computer technology, but Speer enjoyed programming and troubleshooting enough to make it the focus of his professional development, and the Cotati of Tamal 1C1.2.4 represented to him an apotheosis of his attachment, their sessile race forming a kind of living cathedral to the harmony among substrates and conductors and independent thought. If virtually no one else could appreciate the Phalanx Cotati in the same way, Speer would simply enjoy the solitude.

Sometimes Speer would take long hikes through the techno-organic jungle, sometimes he preferred to sit beneath one of the venerable circuit-effaced trees and meditate on the self-realization of techno-organic existence. On this visit, he traversed the sleek roots caressing a riverbank, stripped off his clothes and lowered himself into the current. Floating downriver on his back, staring up at the piezoelectric glow of techno-organic wiring assembled across an infinity of black leaves overhead, Joshua Speer relaxed and rejoiced.

The jarring transition from loose ash to metal floorplates clanged upwards from Don Remming’s heels as he cleared the portal, a yell of “Medic!” already tearing from his grimace. A nearby technician quickly took Abigail from his arms and conveyed her to an infirmary team standing by. Remming allowed his arms to drop to his sides for a moment, then reached up and unfastened his polarized helmet.

Slowly he began to take in the scene in the teleportation control center. Not far away was the articulated cylinder of the temple-buster bomb, looking none the worse for wear given the rough conclusion of its retrieval. The same could not be said for the Raydeen exoskeleton, its red, blue and yellow armor marred with black scorching and sparking erratically from its left shoulder joint and both hips. Richard Carson had already exited the robotic vehicle and was seated, barely holding his own head up, on a full-sized swivel chair which emphasized his permanently shrunken six-inch height.

The portal from Earth Z-1.1.5.8 was closed. And yet the rest of Away Team Raido was nowhere to be seen.