The King in Red and Blue: January 2021

To Ariel

Chapter 1: What if, in 1963, these things did occur.

It was a rather dull day when they found the body of Steve Rogers. The sky was blood red and there was nary a cloud to be found. He was found crucified to the Daily Planet’s globe, his heart firmly on New York City about three feet away from the rest of his body. He was still in his uniform, though the mask had been torn partially off, showing the claw marks on the right side of his face, and the star had been eviscerated for obvious reasons. Usually, this sort of displaywouldn’t occur in Metropolis. But Clark was with our son in the future and Kara was, I would later learn, fighting a sentient idea calling itself the “Metaverse” that had apparently spent the past 20 some odd years trying to turn Supergirl into, in its own words, “a supervillain with a BDSM kink” to make Clark a solitary figure. She lives a weird life, but then, don’t we all?

It’s sometimes nice to be in the city without Clark. I love him, but sometimes I don’t want to hear a lecture about how they’re going to kill me without a care for who they may be. Sometimes, I think he gets off on it. I smile at my private little joke as I gazed upon the grizzly display. Of course, I was interrupted by the sound of a man who is very red and blue gliding his way next to me.

“You know, those thing’ll kill you,” he said with what I was sure was a shit eating grin. I didn’t look.

“Hello Mr. Man.” I have my own jokes too.
“Come now,” he said, mockingly hurt, “It’s Dr. Man.”
“You’re not a real doctor.”
“Hey, just because I can play the drums, doesn’t mean I can’t be a Doctor.” “You’re 15!”
“So was Doogie Howser.”
“He’s fictional!”

“So am I!” It was at this point that he broke the bit by bursting into a fit of laughter. I’ll give him this, his laugh is infectious. We’ve known each other for a few years. Often, we would be on the same story, me for the Planet, him for the Bugle. Officially, he was the photographer, though his photos were, as Jimmy described them, “unprofessional hackery that would be laughed out of any respecting newspaper.” If Jimmy didn’t have the contempt he had for the photos, he might have noticed that Peter Parker hadn’t taken a photo for the Bugle since he actually was 15.

Unofficially, Parker was a researcher for the Bugle focusing on, shall we say, extraordinary activities. He was the one to break the Osborn controversy just in time to circumvent his presidency. The Luthor/Kang Crisis would have been left to the either were it not for our joint coverage. Luckily I was able to snag the Joker’s satanic reenactment of From Hell, but he got close. Most people wouldn’t suspect him of being in that role. The Bugle has a reputation with what can best be described as a vendetta towards superheroes in general, and Spider-Man specifically. Which, I suppose, is a great cover. There’s certainly an anxiety towards the superhero. One does not write 20,000 words talking exclusively about Tony Stark’s war crimes or an entire psychogeographic piece examining Batman’s negative effect on Gotham’s architecture without having some issues with the superhero. And, well, Spider-Man: Menace to Society. But if you actually read those articles, it’s a lot more complicated than that (and a bit tangential, if I’m being honest).

I soften a bit. “So, how’s the wife?”
“They’re both doing well. So’s the husband. How’s your family doing.” “Eh, you know. Out there in the universe. Thought you were with Banner.”

“Banner? Nah, accelerationism isn’t my jam. Plus you join one cult started by a tech person, you’ve joined most of them. The only difference is that he seems more politically motivated by leftist politics as opposed to the usual I want to fuck infinite anime waifus, you know?” Sometimes, I wonder how much the things that come out of his mouth are bullshit and how much are genuine. “You know, this ain’t the first Captain I’ve seen today.” I raise an eyebrow. “The Immortal Transphobe finally met his end, ironically at the hands of the Scottish playwright he was trying to ruin.” I roll my eyes. Really Parker, if you’re going to make reference humor at the very least pick something that didn’t come out in the 21st century. This bit could go on for at least an hour, and I don’t have time for that.

“So are you taking this story or not?” I start tapping my foot with a scowl that’s a degree too much. Parker’s taken aback by this.

“I-I don’t think I will.” I give him a look. In all the years I’ve known him, I never thought he’d give up the opportunity to bring in the man who killed Captain America. Maybe he’s been spending too much time with Banner and Morrison. “I think I’m going to take a different angel than the one that comes from a murder investigation. I’ve been meaning to do some psychogeographic work, and that statue of Superman gives me the creeps. Sometimes, I swear it’s winking at me.”The way he moves, standing like a completely normal person as opposed to whatever he usually thinks standing’s supposed to look like, raises a few questions. He knows something. He shifts an inch or two before handing me a card.

“What’s this?”
“It’s me asking for what you owe me.”

“I don’t owe you.”

“I’m pretty sure Cl-Kal owes me for a blood transfusion. Besides, everyone owes me something.” Bastard.

“You wouldn’t.” I can tell he’s smiling that bastard smile of his under the mask. Everyone thinks he’s improvisational, but there are times when he’s shockingly planned everything out. Right down to the tiniest detail, written on sticky notes hidden throughout the world. Wouldn’t be surprised if he already had the story and was just humoring me.

“It’s not too much, really. They need a big break and you could use the superhero back up. Seems it might be someone in the big time.” He turns around and shoots one of his webs. “Welp, gotta go. Away!” I flip over the card:

Green and Harris
Detective Agency
“We catch the perps, no matter what!” (555) 122-HELP pateron.com/GHDetect

Chapter 2: There was a fish in the percolator.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t really care for the noir genre. The stories are all about hard, miserable men who do hard, miserable things. There’s always a woman in red who fucks over the detective and then dies horribly while the detective talks about how much of a bitch she is. The mysteries are obvious and trite, rarely leading to anything other than “the world is utter shit.” No, duh. And, to top it all off, the shipping opportunities are, at best, lacking.

But Doreen likes detective stories and, well, I quite like Doreen. She has an infectious smile that I can’t help but join in on, her hazel eyes shine in even the darkest of spaces, she’s clever, she’s courageous, and she’s somehow the only bisexual in existence who isn’t a disaster. What isn’t there to love? Did I say love? Shoot, I meant like, I swear. Oh geez, Kamala, you’re making a mess out of everything. Ok, ok. I mean, it’s not like she likes me back, at least not in that way. Sure, she likes to ruffle my feathers and we have fantastic chemistry. But she’s a senior and I’m a freshman, so what’s even the point of romance, you know?

I don’t even know why she asked me to team up with her to form a detective agency. It’s not like there are many cases. Most of the time, it’s “The Case of the Missing Cat” or “The Mysterious Duck Pond That Doesn’t Have Any Ducks” or something equally mundane. Which made getting a call from Lois Lane a rather shocking turn of events. I mean, Lois Lane isn’t the kind of person to go to just about any detective agency, even if we’re both bad ass superhero types who have a 100% success rate. But that’s mostly because we have such mundane, uninteresting cases. “The cat was under the porch.” “The ducks were chased off by pollution or something.” “Ms. Scarlet, in the Ballroom, with the Pipe.” Just run of the mill cases.

Lois Lane, however, doesn’t offer run of the mill. And she doesn’t work with amateurs. Sure, she’s willing to take risks (one does not stay in the orbit of Jimmy Olsen without being willing to take risks), but there’s risks and then there’s working with hacks (of which, she’s notably willing to defenestrate). We’re probably not hacks, but she might think we are. So I was a bit nervous. Especially given she was giving us this icy glare. I mean, sure, she gave everyone that glare, but I felt like it was especially icy for me. How can Clark Kent stand to be married to a woman with such a glare?

“I just want it on the record that I didn’t ask for you.” I figured as much. Which is why I was doing the glasses routine while Doreen had her bushy tail just out there like she’s not trying to have a secret identity. “It was a referral.”

There weren’t a lot of people we knew who would give us a referral, let alone to Lois Lane. Knowing Mrs. Lane’s type, she’s not going to give us the information anytime soon. So I just smile and nod and let the glasses reabsorb into me. I’m no Eel O’Brian, but I have a small talent for shape shifting. Most of the time, I use it to enlarge parts of my body or shrink myself. But sometimes, I give myself glasses. Makes me look smarter and gives potential clients a sample of our skill set. Doreen’s very athletic, she can talk to squirrels, and she has the mutant ability of having a giant bushy tail. She’s also unstoppable.

“A referral, you say?” Doreen leans forward with such confidence and resolve. I’m just a mess of hormones being kept together by anxiety and superpowers. “And what, pray tell, were we referred to do.”

“Well,” there’s such a coldness to the way Mrs. Lane says “well.” I still don’t get what Clark sees in her. He’d be sooooo cute with Jimmy. I’ve written, like, 25 fics where they ride off into the sunset together. Maybe she’s a beard. I don’t say any of this since she could rip out my spine with her eyes. “I’ve been investigating a murder for a couple weeks now. Captain America.” Oh. That death really hit me. I mean, I had to kill the Stony fic I was working on because I couldn’t end it with “And then Captain America gets brutally murdered.” Which is clearly the worst part of his murder. (I’m actually only half kidding about that. A large portion of our patrons were supporting us for that fic, and now we’re down to about three low paying patrons and one $10 asshole who set it so he only has to pay once a month as opposed to per creation. We might have to sell the ramshackle broom closet we call an office. Mrs. Lane is barely able to squeeze in.)

“It’s been a difficult trail. Not much evidence to be found on the scene. Nor was there anything in his Metropolis, New York, or Los Angeles apartments. The answers I’m looking for are probably in the SHIELD and CHECKMATE files. And seeing as those are two, shall we say, heavily guarded... I need superheroes to help me get in.”

“I take it the boy toy isn’t available.” I suppress a chortle. Mrs. Lane blushes. Doreen doesn’t usually go for those lines. Not unless Batman is in the room. (And believe me, you don’t want to be in the same room as Doreen and Batman.)

“Superman’s in space.” “And Superboy?”
“Also in space.” “Supergirl?”

“...Space.”

“What about Batman?” I ask. I know what the answer is. Everyone knows what the answer to the question “What about Batman.” To ask it isn’t so much to ask why she didn’t ask. It’s to ask what she made of his rejection. Some people are still caught up in the mythology of the bastard. Still think he’s at all worth writing about. Sure, when Nightwing was Batman, Batman was interesting. But Nightwing is the strangest, second most delightful person I know. He’s like if Doreen were a guy, but also Spider-Man (but less of an asshole).

“Asshole.” Lois isn’t one to mince words.

“We’ll take the job,” I say rather emphatically. For about an hour, we discuss price, settling on a fair per hour deal. Contracts are signed, lawyers are called (you have no idea how grateful I am Doreen and I know Jen. We met in this weird multiversial event where all of existence was folded into itself, time became completely meaningless, and four cable channels came into existence), and we’re all left happy. Sadly, the joy was deflated as we left the apartment complex our office resides in as an elderly woman was being carted out. She died of a heart attack just outside the elevator. Nobody knew who she was.

Chapter 3: The naïve and the romantic believe that the statue exists as potential within the stone.

[Tape 1: To Kamala]

If you’re listening to this right now, it means I’m dead. But you’re not, because you’re never going to hear this. That’s the most important part of all: you’re never going to hear this. No matter what I do, no matter how hard I try, you will never hear this. And it breaks my heart. But I have to say it anyways. If I don’t, then I’d have to give up hope that you’ll find this message. Even as I know you’ll never hear it.

Do you remember when we first met? The dormitory was awash with an autumnal sunbeam as you gracefully fell in front of me. You’re devilish smile peeking through even the most embarrassed of smiles. You always knew what to say and when. It’s why you were such a fantastic writer. I could never get a sentence pulled together. I must have come off as such a jerk. I don’t even know why you’d even want to hang out with me. But I wanted to be with you. You were so radiant, so delightful. The way you laughed, the shine on your smile when the sun hit it just right. Everything about you made me want to be with you for the rest of my life. I should have told you. I was a coward.

Did you love me? I don’t think I’ll ever know the answer to that question. I’d like to think you didn’t. It made not being with you so much easier. But a part of me wished you did. That if I did some grand romantic gesture, held a boom box outside your room, solved a mystery with implications, saved the day, that the universe would let me say the words “I love you Khamala Khan!” Or maybe I’d let myself say those words. I always liked to blame the universe for my own hang ups. Made me seem somewhat stoppable.

You know, I set up the detective agency because of you. I mean, we did fight crime together. We’re both superheroes after all. But we were independent agents. I wanted us together. Maybe then, I’d be able to say the words. [Sigh] Stupid, stupid Doreen. I was so happy when Lois came into our office. She was full of sardonic bluster and dry wit. I can’t remember what she said exactly, but I knew it was a case for us. It would be the case that would end with a declaration of love. Because detective stories aren’t about solving mysteries. Sure, that’s a part of the genre, but that’s just the plot. The means to get some of the stories going. No, what detective stories are about is detectives. What kind of people go out solving these mysteries. Are they bastards, are they bright eyed, are they blunt objects, are they good men? In my little story, you were the detective and I was the assistant.

Looking back, we should have said no when Diana showed up at CHECKMATE. Or was it SHIELD? God, it was so long ago. How many years has it been since I’ve seen your face? Since we danced on that moonlit night to defeat the devil? Since we sang drunkenly at Kate’s bachelorette party. It was the next day, after the wedding, when I suggested the detective agency. I must’ve been thinking of Kate’s in LA and thought I could pull it off. You smiled that wry, knowing smile at mewhen I suggested it. Was that the moment you fell in love with me? God, I’m such a romantic. I

remember the music. Kate had arranged a rather obscure band who mostly did music about the apocalypse, but the way they sang... I cried.

I don’t want you to jump.
I want you to fly!
When the crowd’s closing in, Let them turn into wind That’ll lift you to sky!!!

I don’t want you to scream;
I want you to sing.
And when the sun will not burn,
Hear it whisper, “Your turn,”
And your voice will go ringing into light
Where heaven’s been waiting for you to ignite!

GO! Go and decorate your scars, Love! Let you tears become stars, Love; They’ll wash away the night!

In your diary, you pray,
“Let the voices go still.”
But when you give them heed, Maybe hear what they need, Silently, they’re fulfilled.

And to the mirror you say,
“I’m not home in my skin.”
But we’ll paint round your eyes,
On your neck and your thighs
Till the outside begins to feel alright:
A blanket to wrap round you warm and tight.

GO! Go and decorate your scars, Love! Let your tears become stars, Love; They’ll wash away the night!

And every time the story ends, the pages cycle through again for every step along the way, another footprint’s life begins’ and her and there, and now and then, the sound will echo a loud Amen, and every time the story ends, the pages cycle through again.

I don’t want you to push. I want you to move Earth.

When you’re put on the spot,
When you’re told all you’re not,
Then all that you’re worth comes into sight,
Where absence is presence and black begets white,

GO! Go and decorate your scars, Love! Let your tears become stars, Love. They’ll was away the night!

You must’ve been too busy dancing with me to notice. I loved you, Kamala Khan. I always loved you. And I wish... I wish I could’ve told you before it was too late.

Chapter 4: If you’re evil and on the rise, you can’t stop the four of us taking you down.

There are times, as a writer, when one is faced with a dilemma in writing. There are points where you realize that the idea you had wasn’t going to fully work and you should just scrap the whole thing. In this case, it’s trying to articulate what happened next. I don’t remember much about what happened. To be completely honest, the moment freaking Wonder Woman, patron saint of queer love, came into the room, my brain essentially became mush. And by mush, I mean I basically spent the whole time internally screaming and having several fantasies about what she could do with that lasso of hers. Not that I’m really into BDSM or even if I was being a sub, but being Diana’s sub... You see what I mean, right? And that’s kind of a problem since Diana was with me when she disappeared.

Worse, I tried asking Doreen and Lois about it, and they were extremely vague about what had happened. It was as if they knew something had happened (Diana came, she knew something about what was going on, we heard a noise, we split up to investigate, Diana disappeared), but all they could remember was the outline of what happened. But they acted as if this was the whole of what had occurred. As if they had told me a story rather than a first draft. Maybe it was because I was too busy being horny to actually be affected by... whatever happened to Lois and Doreen. Maybe I was just too stupid, I don’t know. What I do know is that something happened. Worse, when I tried to point out that they were just talking in outline, my voice wouldn’t let me. Some wicked puppeteer that wouldn’t let me express my concern.

That’s something I always found interesting about fiction: the voice of the characters. When writing, I always thought about what they wouldn’t say, not even in the privacy of their narration. What they kept from the readers, the writers even. Things only found when reading a story over and over again. Often, a character won’t spell out their motivations, obfuscate their feelings with nonsense that the reader will think is interesting, but is in reality superfluous to what’s going on, often spoken clearly and with intention.

I looked around at where we ended up after the outline. It was a park, near the center of Metropolis. I asked why we were here, and they told me that they had tracked a lead down to this park. They never said what the lead would lead us to, how they found the lead, or why they trusted it. Something was going on. I could tell from the redness of the sky. And then, I realized that the sky shouldn’t be red. At this hour, in this part of the world, it should black with white stars. Instead, it was an ocean of blood. It had always been like that. Always red at every hour of every day. Not even a remarkable aspect of the world. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of Metropolis before today.

Indeed, Metropolis is located in an area of Kansas that should be farmland. And then, I realized that I shouldn’t know that. Why would I know what should be where Metropolis is. Am I going mad? You trust me right? Trust that I’m not going mad. You have to trust me. I’m the narrator. You have to trust that I’m Kamala Khan. I’m Kamala Khan. I’m Kamala Khan! I’m Kamala Khan! I’m Kamala Khan! I’m Kamala Khan! I’m Kamala Khan! I’m Kamala Khan! I’m Kamala Khan! I’mKamala Khan! I’m Kamala Khan! I’m Kamala Khan! I’m Kamala Khan! I’m Kamala Khan! I’m

Kamala Khan! I’m Kamala Khan! I’m Kamala Khan! I’m Kamala Khan! I’m Kamala Khan! I’m Kamala Khan! I’m Kamala Khan! I’m Kamala Khan! I’m Kamala Khan! I’m Kamala Khan! I’m Kamala Khan! I’m Kamala Khan! I’m Kamala Khan! I’m Kamala Khan! I’m Kamala Khan! I’m Kamala Khan! I’m Kamala Khan! I’m Kamala Khan! I’m Kamala Khan! I’m Kamala Khan! I’m Kamala Khan! I’m Kamala Khan! I’m-

I am her. But... Someone else is here with me. There was a comic I read some time back. About superheroes fighting a multiverse level threat. It was a DC Comic, which I preferred to Marvel due to it being further away from what I knew. I was so embarrassed when I read the Ms. Marvel/Wonder Woman special. I mean, they gave it to Dan Jurgens! At least it wasn’t Lobdell or fucking Kanigher. I am so glad I didn’t become a superhero until he died. I shudder at what he would have done with me. Anyways, the comic was about a multiversial crisis that was being fought on multiple plains of existence. The point of the comic was that we need more stories by non cis-het white men, but what I’m thinking about is the nature of the threat. The monster at the end of the book, as it were. Repeatedly, the books would tell us not to look too deeply into them, lest we destroy them. But that penultimate issue... it tells us it’s just a comic book. And then it says “Turn the page. Slave.”

With the writer, it’s tempting to say this is a metafictional statement about how readers are trapped by the stories they read or whatever. But... what destroys these comics? Noticing that they espouse racist, sexist ideas? They tacitly support the military industrial complex? They support an evil status quo? They put ideas into the readers heads about how the world works and we consume them without thinking. They are ideas of what heroes look like: Blonde Hair, Blue Eyes, White, Male. Something like that is in my head. And it won’t let me

“Hey, Doreen?” “Yeah Kamala?”

“You ever notice that statue of Superman? The one where he’s holding an American flag while standing atop the body of a terrorist?”

“Yeah?”

“Doesn’t it just... exude hope?”

“Yeah,” Doreen smiles at me and for the first time it makes me shudder. “Yeah it does.” Lois turned to us. “What was that?” There was someone in the bushes.

Chapter 5: In my heart of hearts, I knew that I could never love again.

To Lois

It was Booster Gold. Booster Gold killed Captain America. He explained it to me shortly after I disappeared. He said it was because of his evil future self. But that’s not important. If you get this message (which you should if Booster knows what’s good for him), then you will know what’s actually going on.

I am saying it, aren’t I?

...Shit.

Are... Are you going to say it?

No. No you aren’t.

Chapter 6: Would you kindly?

I saw them take her. My body did nothing to stop them take her. They must have made me unable to stop them. If only I knew what they were. If only they let me imagine the words. Instead, what comes to mind as Lois holds Booster Gold with a gun is the old woman who died when this all began. Who was she? And why did she place a tape player with my name on it into my pocket? They let me listen. They want me to hear it. They want me to understand...

Gotcha.

Chapter 7: The clouds opened to reveal red nothingness because you’d cursed God and all of his angels when my eyes began to bleed.

To understand what happened next, I must tell you three things that are completely unrelated to each other.

1) In the deep recesses of space and time, there is a man who claims to do only good. He sees time as a single street to be walked down. Were the street to be damaged in one way or another, the man would rectify that problem. Eventually, the man realized that the problem with the street was that people walked down it. So he killed them all. And the street was forever perfect.

2) In the cruel higher dimensions, a woman is fighting her narrative. She is told that she is to be defined by her failure. Her failure to save her cousin from being alone. Her failure to be the hero her world deserves. Her failure to save her people. This failure, she has been told, should turn her away from such childish heroism as hers and towards a more adult villainy. She is told that she is to be her heroic cousin’s nemesis, a monster, a villain. She does not wish to bringharm to the world, the universe, to those she loves. She would rather be a hero anyways. But those who tell her story tell her they know better. She does not believe them. She refuses their narrative and fights for her own. Will she win, I do not know.

3) Booster Gold would have been murdered by Lois Lane were they not to take Squirrel Girl. This was by design. Justification for what they “needed” to do.

The meanings of these three things will become apparent shortly.

Chapter 8: And the voice said: This is the hand, the hand that takes.

I held Booster Gold by the neck. I did not fully realize why I was doing this until it was far too late. Is this the moment where the story shifts from under my feet? Where I lose the plot and become the tool of someone else’s scheme? Or did I lose it long ago, when this whole thing began?

Kamala isn’t paying attention. She’s too busy listening to her tape recorder. She’s laughing, as if she understands something that I do not. As if the whole universe has been built up to one practical joke that’s collapsing all around us. I was too busy throttling Booster Gold to hear specifics. I ask him about why he was skulking about. His words are incoherent as my fingers tighten. This wasn’t me, but it felt like it made sense at the time. If I knew what I know now, I would have pulled away. I also know that I couldn’t pull away. My body wouldn’t have let me. It was trapped.

He pointed upwards with his eyes. He pointed towards the statue of Superman. There was something odd about the statue in that moment. Its head was turned in the wrong direction, looking down as if it was watching us. It was at that moment that I remember something Peter said. Something about it winking.

I think I’m going to take a different angel than the one that comes from a murder investigation. I’ve been meaning to do some psychogeographic work, and that statue of Superman gives me the creeps. Sometimes, I swear it’s winking at me.

That’s what he said. But why did he say he was going to take a different “angel?” I haven’t stopped looking at the statue but, as if a frame from a movie had been cut out, the statue moved towards me. Looking at me. Looking. Directly. At. Me. His teeth were bear, a grin that could never be on Clark’s face. Booster is looking towards Kamala. Or rather the space she once held. Instead, Superman’s finger is pointing at it. I finally allow myself to listen to Kamala’s tape.

That’s the most important part of all: you’re never going to hear this.

The statue has moved again. I didn’t see it move, didn’t stop looking at it, but it moved. I think about those words that Kamala was listening to. She heard them, didn’t she? She heard the

voice on the radio. But Kamala was gone. I had been listening to the tape, but she was gone. A sweat of panic drips down my forehead. Booster looks at me with something akin to pity. But it’s not quite that. It’s the look a cat gives to another in wet bag with just the two of them and a brick. The statue is looking at us. It’s waiting. What is it waiting for?

I’m waiting for the paragraph to break.

In an instant, I’m in space. Falling. Falling. Falling. Booster is gone. Kamala’s gone. Doreen’s gone. But Diana’s here. I can see her frozen remains long gone. Long lost. We are orbiting Mars, the dead world where her arch enemy once ruled. I can feel the air coming out of my lungs. I’ll spare you the details of my gruesome death. I think of Clark. And then

Chapter 9: The image of an angel is itself an angel.

To understand what just happened, some things must be addressed. Firstly, there’s the nature of time. Time is not a river, nor is it an ocean or even a forest. Time is architecture. On wrong brick in the wrong place, and the whole thing collapses. That’s my job, you see. I make sure all the bricks are where they’re supposed to be. My younger self never understood this. He saw my cleansing of hypertimes as being akin to genocide. It is more akin to maintaining a house, something he never understood. The streets need to be kept clean.

The consequences of this can be seen in what transpired just now. The have many names in many cultures, but the culture of the planet Earth refers to them as The Weeping Angels. In appearance they look like mere statues, but turn your head for an instant, and they’ll send you to the past. They come from breaches within history created by inferior timelines. These poisonous hypertimes, these parasite periods, must be removed, cleansed from the normal lines of history. The Weeping Angels are but one of the methods by which history is infected and turned cancerous.

HAHAHAHAHAHA! We could let him go on and on and on and on and on, but to be honest, he just repeats the same logic while getting everything wrong just seconds after getting one basic thing right. Poor little fascist man looking for an excuse to exterminate, exterminate, exterminate. He was taught by his son that the history of the world bends towards order, who he taught the same, and so on and so on in an endless loop of circular thinking with little science to it. We know Hypertime. It is not something tangible like the fascist would like to believe. It is a philosophy of history. Not as a mere line of gibbets going off into infinity or the singular vision dreamed up by a banal scientist. It is the possibility that the world is truly rudderless. It did not create us. The sky was red long before we came along. We simply shifted into a narrative where we already existed. We were let in by someone who was already part of this universe. He was just younger than us. He knows of us. Why not ask him what we are?

Chapter 10: Free of Time, how then shall History be my cage?

And you believed him? I mean, sure he got some things right, but fascists have a tendency of getting part one right before bungling it all up in part two so they can justify their power and the need to exterminate. To start with, we must first understand the nature of the Weeping Angels. They are related to time, but that is not their... nature. They are, in fact, creatures of magic. Now, magic is a complex system that is widely misunderstood. It is not, as some people have argued, Science for those too dumb to notice. Rather, magic is a game of symbolism and strangeness. It has no ethics, just aesthetics. As my friend Gladstone once said of wishing, “It doesn’t matter how strong you are or how smart you are; it doesn’t even matter how brave you are. Don’t let anybody tell you different: don’t ever let them make you feel like it’s stupid, or childish, or isn’t allowed... and don’t ever let yourself believe that you don’t deserve to try. Because anyone can make a wish.”

Subsequently, time travel has worked under such principles. You’ll note that the rules are never the same one day from the next. Sometimes, the future will remain the same no matter what you do. Others, were the villains to win in the past, the future you come from would be destroyed. Indeed, sometimes time can be rewritten and others it can’t. There are places where time is fixed, defined not by some arbitrary science, but by the nature of the narrative being explored. Some stories allow for Hitler to be prevented while others are forced to simply shove him into a cupboard. (Me personally, just killing him does bupkis to actually stop the cruelty that follows, at most a band aid for the lurking cruelty festering within the human psyche. Preventing Walpole from ascending to power, on the other hand...)

As such, the Time War becomes even more interesting. The Time War was a war fought through all of time and space, but over what? Simply put, it is for the nature of the universe. What story will be told. The Enemy wanted a new shape of history, a means to look at the world outside of the banal rise and fall of kings where Gallifrey remained at the center. The Daleks wanted a fascistic world where all life bent to their will, one that (like all fascist utopias) would’ve ended in self implosion. They were in the midst of a civil war when they began. The Cybermen wanted a transhumanist future where all emotions are purged, left with nothing except the cold rationality of a world without magic. The Time Lords... they wanted the story to revolve around them. They wanted all things to return to them. The wanted a myth that cemented themselves at the heart of all things. They wanted the story of The Timeless Child, who made Gallifrey what it was, the Other being not talked about in the legends, a healer who makes things better, they wanted that story to be the center of their story. It did not matter if they were villainous in such a story. What mattered was that they had centrality within that story. No one really cares where such a child comes from. Perhaps it was their future, when the world burned and was never more. Such speculation should be saved for later.

What did I want? I don’t know. It hasn’t happened to me yet.

Regardless, the Weeping Angels. They were born in the aftermath of the Time War, from its ruins and implications. They too are creatures of magic. Note how one can see them move

when watching film. Some have pondered the implications of this, that it breaks the rules. However, what they had never considered was the old quote about film: it’s truth at 24 frames a second. This means that film blinks 23 times a second. You may look at the image of an angel for as long as you like, but the camera can’t stop blinking. At the same time though, magic is a game without concrete rules. If it works, it works. No explanation will help in either way.

So then, what it is that the angels do? They take people out of their stories and thrust them into other tales. Other contexts where new stories can emerge and multiply in an infinity of possibilities while those lost stories are consumed by the Angels. What then does that make the Angels if not creators of fictions, be they canonical or imaginary. They consume imaginary stories. But then, as a write I quite like once put it, aren’t they all?

Oh dear, I seem to have gone on a bit of a lecture without even introducing myself. Hello, I’m the Doctor and these are my companions Coraline and Peter.

[Coraline meowed, as cats are wont to do. Peter turned towards the three women before him. One was young, probably a year or two into college with long black hair, dark skin, and eyes that looked tired. The other was old, almost a grandmother. She had a bushy brown tail, an impeccable smile, and the eyes of someone who looked like they had never stopped being a kid. And the third had short black hair done up in a bun, an inquisitive look in her eyes, and a fury in her stance. She was looking directly at Peter. It took him a moment to recognize the woman.

“Excuse me,” he said with a small stutter, “but... are you Lois Lane?”

Lois gave an expression of mild shock. “Of course I’m Lois Lane, Peter. We’ve known each other for years.”

“But... you’re a comic book character.” Peter turned to the Doctor, a shot man with a sweater vest full of question marks. All he did in response was smile vaguely. Coraline licked her paw before running off into the bowels of the TARDIS.]

Chapter 11: : I’m not a real doctor, but I am a real worm!

When I met the Doctor, I was not in a good place. Someone I cared for had died and I was a mess. I was lashing out at everyone close to me. Hurting so many people in the process. It climaxed with me abandoning my best friend to a drug induced stupor, inadvertently killing his father, and slut shaming one the last remaining female friends I had left. I was a wreck. One day, I found myself just wandering aimlessly until I ended up inside something that was larger than I’d initially thought. Inside was this abrasive fellow with a coat that looked like someone had drunkenly tried to make a coat out of a rainbow. While colorblind.

Sometime had passed, and now he was a scheming asshole who claimed to know exactly what he was doing while secretly adlibbing the whole way through. We were on our way back to New York (after an adventure I’d rather not get into) when we were hit by some... well, I don’t think there’s a scientific term for it that doesn’t sound silly, so let’s just call it Time Magic. Time Magic hit the TARDIS, confounding the pair of us. (Coraline Sandifer, meanwhile, was more peeved than confounded.) Even moreso by the presence of a woman floating in the upper atmosphere. We were lucky to catch her when we did. And then, she gets a phone call from an elderly woman holding a girl about my age. Maybe a year or two younger saying that time is out of joint. Frankly, I lost the plot a while ago and my attempts to hold on are about as successful as a leaf in a tornado.

When she awoke, she explained to the Doctor that she received a psychic message from a time cleaner the Doctor knew. He then proceeded to go on a lecture about the nature of History. I’m not really listening. It’s the woman we saved that has me fixated. I knew her from somewhere, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on where. I had one preposterous theory that she might be a comic book character, but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. (We did just have an adventure with Sherlock Holmes, Godzilla, and Daddy Santa Klaus.) I asked her if she was, in fact, noted Superman fixture Lois Lane, to which she surprisingly said yes, and furthermore she was surprised that I didn’t know it was her since we’ve known each other my entire career.

It was then that the Doctor realized what had happened to the TARDIS. He gave some technobabble about the multiverse being like a song, and sometimes two songs are played at the exact same time in a disharmonious loop. The skies turn red. Or, as Doreen (the old woman) put it, the skies were always red. If left untethered, the whole of reality would be undone. And there was just one thing to do: fix it. Frankly, I’m a bit lost with all this wibbilty wobilty timeywimey stuff, can I just go home?

I’m sorry Peter, but I’ve got two more chapters to fill.

Chapter 12: Everybody wants to change the world, but no one... no one wants to die!

To be completely honest, I lost the thread of this story a while back. Or maybe I never had a thread to begin with. I was commissioned by Ariel to write a mystery where Lois Lane uncovers a multiversial rift along with Squirrel Girl and Ms. Marvel. However, as I went outlining it, I came up with an idea that I had long been gestating with the Weeping Angels being a metafictional force. A means by which characters are drawn together in interesting and absurd scenarios they wouldn’t normally be in. To use Blink as an example, a sex comedy deuteragonist being thrust into a period drama or a cop drama lead being... well, actually I’m pretty sure that might have been Steven making a nod to who the next Master was going to be.

But then, some internet friends of mine (which is to say people online who I interact with on a frequent basis, but have not actually met) were talking about the future version of Booster Gold and how he is kind of a genocidal maniac who destroys timelines at a whim. So naturally, I wanted to use him as the main antagonist. But I didn’t know how to put him into the narrative organically with what I had previously written. So, having been away from the story for frankly far too long, I said fuck it and threw him in anyways. I made his past self the killer (originally, it was the Angels) and created a sort of fascist version of my Thesis on Weeping Angels chapter.

And then there was the Wonder Woman chapter. That chapter went through a lot of changes throughout writing it. Originally, I was going to have Kamala narrate the chapter where she’s just going “OH MY GOD, IT’S WONDER WOMAN!” without any narration, the dialogue coming in sporadically without context. And when the whole thing was done, she’d notice Wonder Woman was gone. But then I tried to write that, and I realized that I couldn’t actually pull it off. It was just too on the nose and crap. So I scrapped it and made the loss of the chapter part of the point. Then I came up with an idea that some nebulous force was forcing our leads to act in

ways they wouldn’t typically. And the horror of being in your own body without any control. But I didn’t have any ideas for who or what that force was beyond the obvious answer: me.

I told myself that I would get it done by the end of March. April’s almost done. I spent too much time working on other things, other stories, that I lost the plot of this one. Or maybe that’s not true. Before I began working on this chapter, I realized something: there’s no through line for the ideas I was exploring. It was just a bunch of interesting ideas thrust together. And that could, in theory, work. But in this case, it wasn’t. In many ways, this story is a ruin of a story. I’ve got too many things going on to be able to fix it in a way that it wouldn’t be. In some ways, this is fitting. All the old DC crisis stories end up being, to some degree, a hot mess. Crisis on Infinite Earths had goals where a coherent plot was secondary to giving Uncle Sam a speech about freedom. Identity Crisis is just meanspirited and cruel in dull, uninteresting ways. Infinite Crisis’ entire first act was in five miniseries released before the comic came out over the course of a period of years. I could go on.

I apologize for the quality. I wish I could have done better.

Chapter 13: There are, after all, truths beyond mere canon.

Page 1: Completely blank white page.

Page 2: A nine panel grid is being drawn. The artist began with the top left corner, then went down, right, up, left, and finally down again. They are currently midway through top right panel, their hand, drawn realistically, seen holding a pencil.

Page 3: Nine Panel Grid Panel 1: Blank

Panel 2: Pencil sketch of someone looking to the right. It is close up on their face, the neck barely visible.

Panel 3: More detailed sketch, you can tell the person is a woman.

Panel 4: The woman has short hair with a slightly curt smile. There’s a tear in her eye. Backgrounds are starting to be sketched in. It’s a city.

Panel 5: The woman is being inked. The buildings are of an art deco design of a future that never was.

Panel 6: Color is added to the world. The woman has dark black hair, blue eyes, white skin.

Panel 7: A word balloon is added to the panel, though it lacks a tail. There are no words in the balloon.

Panel 8: Same as before, but there are words in the balloon.

Word Balloon: Lois?

Panel 9: Lois’ smile explodes into pure joy.

Page 4-5: Two page spread. Lois is standing on the roof of the Daily Planet building. The city of Metropolis before her. In front of her floats Superman. The sky is blue.

Superman: I’m home.

Page 6 Panel 1: Kamala and Doreen’s dorm room. Kamala is sitting of a chair while Doreen is lying on her bed reading Margaret Killjoy’s The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion.

Kamala: Doreen?

Panel 2

Doreen: Yeah, Kamala?

Panel 3

Kamala: I... I love you.

Panel 4: Doreen and Kamala are kissing.

Page 7 Panel 1: In New York City, the TARDIS sits beside a building fifteen stories high. The Doctor is lying next to the old girl while Coraline sleeps on his shoulders. Peter and Booster are holding one another, slightly beaten.

Doctor: There, the worlds should be in their proper alignment.

Peter: Are they? I mean, shouldn’t Booster be a fictional character?

Panel 2: Peter leaves Booster at the door to the building. Booster is able to stand.

Doctor: Not necessarily. The multiverse is full of stories with ideas and meanings lost even to its creators. The contradictions are part of the point.

Panel 3: Peter and the Doctor walk back into the TARDIS.

Peter: And what point is that?

Panel 4: The TARDIS disappears.

Page 8: The building Booster has been left in front of is Kord Industries. It dwarfs Booster. Nearby, atop some other rooftop, a statue of an angel crying can be seen.

SFX: Buzz. Buzz.

Booster: Ted, it’s Michael. I think we need to talk.

The End.

03/06/20-04/28/20

The King in Red and Blue

Thursday, January 7, 2021

Out of Time