Crisis on Infinite Earths

by Marv Wolfman

  Sam looked at the gun in his hand. "Don't do it," I shouted again. I tried to touch him when I heard a different voice, this one calling to me.

  "Run through them."

  It was Harbinger's voice. I saw her in the sky. She was staring at me.

  "Run through them? What do you mean?"

  I stared at her, still not understanding, but I ran to each member of the Freedom Force and then, because I was still intangible, I ran through them. But I stopped after I ran through Sam. If there was a chance, any chance, I could stop him, I had to try.

  I concentrated on getting angry. I let my rage build. I felt something happening inside me. My body tingled. I felt ground beneath my feet. I was becoming solid again.

  I reached to grab Sam's gun, to pull it away from him and destroy it before he could kill Starfire.

  Before I could, I disappeared.

  Inside the Anti-Monitor's castle, the Psycho Pirate stared at the view screen. "Screw me. Uncle Sam's wavering." He shouted into the microphone. "Anger, Sammy. You're feeling dirt deep anger. And revenge. And hate. Tons of raging hate." He paused, watching Sam raise the gun again. "That's it, flag-boy. C'mon. You can do it. You want to feel happy again, don't you? When you kill her you'll be so happy you could die."

  The back of Starfire's head filled the gun sight.

  "I don't want to be angry," Sam said. "I want to be happy." Fifty-one

  Iscreamed at God for taking me away from Earth-X. Why was he being so unfair?

  I was becoming physical again. I could have stopped Sam. But now I was drawn away from that universe without knowing what had happened. The blackness suddenly divided into two tunnels, and as if through a telescope's lens, I could see into two different universes. Focused in front of me were two Earths.

  I saw them slowly coming together; my Earth-1 was merging with Jay Garrick's Earth-2.

  I found myself first on one Earth then on the other. For some reason I was slipping back and forth between Earth-4 and Earth-S. Both worlds had dark red skies and I saw the walls of white antimatter starting to form. It rose up out of the oceans and burned through the waters as it slowly moved toward land.

  It was, as they say, the beginning of the end.

  Earth-S was the home of the Marvel Family. I had read the JLA files about this planet but had never been here.

  This was a world where Captain Marvel, Mary Marvel, Captain Marvel Jr. and several others who fought villains such as the mad Dr. Savana and a sentient, evil worm—yes, an evil worm—named Mr. Mind. The Marvels' best friend was a talking tiger named Tawny and Captain Marvel himself was actually a young boy named Billy Batson. He had to say a magic word in order to become that world's mightiest mortal. Superman told me he met Captain Marvel once. Science had evolved on Earth-S as an adjunct of magic and the physics and logics of our universe Crisis on Infinite Earths

  189

  operated differently here. But Superman believed that Cap and his family were just like any of us in the JLA. If necessary, they were willing to sacrifice their own lives in order to save their world.

  Though they were very different, Superman said Cap's abilities were equal to his own. Mary Marvel and Marvel Jr. were only incrementally less powerful. If, Superman said, instead of being on this separate world they were members of the JLA, there would be no power on any of the Earths that could defeat us.

  I heard the fighting before I saw them.

  Captain Marvel grabbed Supergirl by the cape and hoisted her to eye level. "Good fight, girl. But not good enough." He shook her, making sure she was unconscious.

  "I hear you wanted to destroy my world, you and your friends. That doesn't make me happy."

  Mary Marvel nodded. "It makes me angry, Captain," she said. "Very angry."

  "Oh, I'm way past anger." said Captain Marvel Jr. "I'm—what's the word? Livid? Furious? No. What I am is happy." The Psycho Pirate was controlling the Marvel family as he had the Freedom Fighter on Earth-X.

  Junior leaned in closer to Supergirl, still unconscious in Captain Marvel's tight grip. He smiled even though he knew she couldn't see him. "You know why I'm happy? It's because I know you're going to die." Mary Marvel held Changeling and Black Canary by their ankles and dragged them to the Captain. "More coals for the fire," she said laughing. I happened to glance up and, as on Earth-X, Harbinger's image towered over us. Her head was bowed and her lips were silently moving.

  "Run through them," repeated Harbinger.

  Mary Marvel tightened her grip on the Black Canary. "Such a beautiful face. I wonder what it will look like after your skull has been crushed to dust?"

  Captain Marvel Junior rubbed his hands together as he glared at Changeling. "I'm going to pluck out your heart, green boy," he snorted.

  "Nothing would make me happier."

  The Harbinger's voice echoed again through my mind. I had done what she wanted on Earth-X. I assumed there was a plan, even if I couldn't see it. I couldn't think about what was happening to Supergirl, 190

  Marv Wolfman

  the Canary or Changeling. I couldn't think about what might have happened to Starfire.

  I ran, pushing through Cap's body. He shook for a moment, barely acknowledging me, but I ignored him and kept running. I circled around and did the same to Mary Marvel and Junior.

  "Now what?" I shouted to Harbinger? "What am I supposed to do now?"

  I suddenly disappeared.

  I appeared in the theater district in the middle of a large city. The street signs were in English and the license plates on the cars said Illinois. I ran to a corner newsstand and saw a copy of the Hub City Chronicle. Bingo!

  I was on Earth-4.

  I remembered just after the Monitor assembled his first army I overheard Blue Beetle tell Firestorm that unlike Earth-1 and Earth-2, each with a preponderance of heroes and villains, there were only very few of them on his home world. I tried to remember their names.

  One of them was, I think, Captain Atom. His powers were nuclear in nature, exactly how I couldn't remember. He mentioned someone named Peacemaker and a woman called Nightshade.

  There was someone else, too. The Question. Beetle said the Question spooked him somehow.

  I couldn't wait to meet him.

  By now I knew the routine. Harbinger's image, as before, filled the sky. Her head was bowed and once again she was muttering something I couldn't hear.

  She had appeared over the Freedom Fighters on Earth-X and Captain Marvel on Earth-S, so I used her as a beacon. I raced through Hub City, as modern as Metropolis but darker and definitely more threatening. I saw Captain Atom—it could have only been him—fly past me, an energy trail burning the air behind him.

  In his right hand he held a small sphere, no larger than the beat-up old Spauldings I used to waste my after school hours throwing against my house's stoop when I was eight.

  The only difference being that the ball he was holding was glowing and expanding. Considering what I had just gone through on the other Earths, I took that to be not a good thing.

  Crisis on Infinite Earths

  191

  When the ball grew to baseball size he threw it at a figure running ahead of him. The ball exploded as it hit the ground, just missing its target. I ran closer and realized he was throwing the explosive at Jay, the Flash of Earth-2. Near Jay were the Martian Manhunter and Katana, a member of the Outsiders. I didn't know who the others were. Jay called the man with wings, Azreal. I assumed he came from Earth-2. There was a quietness about him that made him look almost angelic. I wanted to know more but there was no time.

  The last man, I took it for granted he was a man, appeared to be made out of gray stone. His name, according to the Manhunter, was Broot. It couldn't have been more spot on.

  The Earth-4 heroes fought the Monitor's soldiers. Obviously, the Psycho Pirate controlled them as he had the heroes of Earth-X and Earth-S. I didn't wait for Harbinger's telepathic orders. I knew what I had to do. I ran through the heroes as I had before, though I st
ill didn't understand why. I was intangible. By all accounts I didn't exist. I could run through people or walls or anything solid without mussing their hair. What good was I doing?

  I pushed my way through the Beetle and Peacemaker then turned back and did the same with Nightshade and someone called Thunderbolt. I turned to see a man who, literally, had no face. This was—and I'm not intending to be funny here—without question The Question! It didn't take a second to streak through him, the final hero on the last of the remaining Earths. I looked up to Harbinger's image waiting for some kind of explanation or at least a nice thank you. By now I should have known better.

  I waited. Nothing happened. Why was I suddenly thinking Chicken Little? I waited some more.

  And then the sky fell.

  Fifty-two

  It all happened at once: Starfire unleashed her starbolts. Supergirl's heat vision burned into Captain Marvel. Jay Garrick drove a wind-tossed tornado into Captain Atom.

  I was in the antimatter universe again. The Psycho Pirate was on his knees, crying to my living self, still held in stasis in the Monitor's machines.

  "I'll take all the heroes, your Justice League friends, and turn them against each other in jealous rage."

  He stopped and looked to the door. No, the Anti-Monitor hadn't come back. Filling himself with bravado, he turned back to my other self again.

  "Whatever he wants, I'll do it. I'll do it happily. And I'll do it any way he wants."

  My living self opened his eyes and I remembered we weren't alone. Because of the merging universes, time was flowing in a loop. I was here but so were my other dead selves, the mes who had been here before this visit.

  I couldn't see them as they couldn't see me. But I knew where I stood. I reached out and grabbed their hands, and I began to run in place, increasing my internal vibrations as I yelled to him, "Don't forget. Don": dare forget."

  I was back in the Monitor's limboverse. Harbinger opened three tunnels and instead of merging with each other, Earth-X, Earth-4 and Earth-S slid into them.

  The final three universes were joining Earths 1 and 2. But the tunnels first led through me.

  And I finally understood.

  Fifty-three

  Ihad stumbled into the Multiverse by accident.

  It was years ago and I was at a Central City charity event for children, performing simple speed tricks. The kids enjoyed it. Actually, they were less impressed than I would have been at their age. These blase kids today with their Sesame Street and their Pong video games... How to engage them? Panicking, I remembered the Tales of the Arabian Nights stories I read when I was their age. They'd love that. Yeah. Right! The same way I loved The Book of Og the 2nd carved into a cave wall or whatever favorite story it was that my parents wanted me to read.

  But I was the Flash. I had stopped the Mirror Master from frying Central City under a giant magnifying lens. I had defeated the Weather Wizard when he tried to flood us for forty days and forty nights. I was the Fastest Damned Man Alive and I was undaunted. These eight year olds were going to like my performance or... or they wouldn't, I guess. What could I do to them?

  They watched me shimmy up a rope like an Indian snake charmer. I began to vibrate to become invisible, one of my favorite tricks. I vibrated faster and faster. Faster than I ever had before.

  I saw lights. And then, suddenly, I disappeared.

  Not only from their view, which was expected, but from the entire universe, which wasn't. I often wondered what trauma I caused those kids when I didn't return.

  I slipped through the vibrations that separated the universes of the Multiverse and discovered Earth-2 and Jay Garrick, my inspiration. Later, he duplicated my actions and visited me on Earth-1. 194

  Marv Wolfman

  But now Jay was older, still fast, but not fast enough to traverse the Multiverse. Wally was a speedster, too, but young and not yet at his peak. I was the only man who could move through the multiverse. That was understanding one.

  Understanding two:

  When the Monitor's machines were activated before they were ready, he let himself die so his own body could become its new source of power. Now, when Harbinger needed to move the final three Earths into the Monitor's universe, she knew she needed far more power than even she had been given.

  The Monitor analyzed me as he did all the heroes he had brought to him. He understood who I was, understood how I became what I am, but more importantly, he understood how I could be used.

  The moment those lightning-charged chemicals worked their way through my pores and turned me into the Flash, everything in my body had irrevocably changed.

  The Anti-Monitor was the only one who understood what that change meant.

  I had become a source of power and energy that unleashed itself through the speed force. To gain the power she needed, Harbinger had to tap into what I had become.

  But I was actually even more than that.

  Those last three universes were already being eaten alive by the same antimatter that destroyed millions of universes before them. To enter the Monitor's limbo, the infection had to be removed.

  I was not only the battery that would save the Multiverse, I was the filter through which they had to flow.

  Yay me.

  Universes hurtled through Harbinger's tunnels at beyond light speed. Even my eyes could catch only glimpses of the planets if, by chance, they happened to be angled to reflect the glow of a passing sun. I swear to God I wished I was blind: All of existence charged directly at me and that I wasn't its final target provided little comfort. To get past me and into the Monitor's limboverse this... starstuff had to go through me. Who in their right mind would want to be the butt end of a cosmic enema?

  Crisis on Infinite Earths

  195

  Even in soundless space it hit with a deafening roar. I was assaulted by every sound on every world from every moment of time. It seemed an eternity that I was forced to endure the screaming cacophony of this insane tunnel of Babel.

  I absorbed the histories of more than a hundred billion cultures. I saw endless lives being born, torn apart and die.

  Was this how Pariah lived his every day? How did he find the strength to go on? I wanted to scream, to run or to finally surrender to death, but I wasn't being allowed to.

  The last of the planets clawed its way out of me and the five universes were, at least for the moment, safe.

  I wish I could say the same for me.

  As the final ember of a last dying sun cleansed itself of its anti-matter poisoning by passing through my body, I, once again, disappeared. Was God, at last, granting me my long-delayed rest? But I didn't see an end. What was waiting for me was the beginning. The beginning of all creation.

  PART THREE

  BEYOND THE SILENT NIGHT

  In ancient Greece, mortals had come to believe the Gods were immortal. But myth does not make fact. What casually appeared to them to be eternity was still, in reality, finite. The Gods knew the truth, but sometimes even they forgot.

  —The Monitor Tapes Vol. 2 Pg. 91

  Lyla—Earth—1

  Whiteness still dominated the Monitor's universe, but it was punctuated now by a planetary quintet.

  Alexander Luthor and Lyla—having expended all her

  power bringing the universes here, she was Lyla again and not Harbinger—

  found themselves on a small, floating asteroid overlooking a circle of five Earths.

  "We saved them, Lyla." Luthor couldn't contain his excitement as he stared at the Earths, almost identical in their features, but so different in what made up their souls.

  He pointed into the distance. "Sixty-four million miles away from us are five Mars and three hundred million miles beyond them are five Jupiters. If we could pull out far enough we would see five solar systems, five galaxies, and ultimately five universes."

  Lyla wasn't listening, her mind was thinking of the Monitor and his final wishes. This was the moment for which he had died but what Lyla saw
was not his final hope.

  She cursed herself again for killing him, despite knowing she could do nothing else, despite understanding his death was not only anticipated but necessary. She felt lost because she knew only he could tell her what needed to be done now.

  "We've bought time, Alex. Not solutions. The Anti-Monitor moved too quickly. And again we weren't ready."

  "But the Earths are safe." Lyla turned back to the planets, shaking her head, angry at the failure he couldn't understand.

  "We slowed down the vibrations separating the universes but they haven't stopped. They're still moving together, and when they finally merge, 200

  Marv Wolfman

  everything will still be destroyed. I don't know why... but I was expecting more."

  "But we now have time. And we need to use it to our advantage." Pariah appeared suddenly beside them. "Alex is right, Lyla. For the first time I see hope."

  He pointed to the Earths, a circle of worlds beginning their final revolutions. "There was a reason the Monitor selected these heroes. We need to bring them to us again. And this time they need to learn the truth."

  "We've always told them the truth," Lyla said angrily. "The universes are dying and the Anti-Monitor is responsible." Alex nodded, saying, "We just saved five universes. We've done everything we can. There is no other truth."

  Pariah kept watching the planets. "Alex, there's always another truth. The truth about the Anti-Monitor for one. They don't know that. They also don't know the truth about me. No one ever has."

  "Please. Just bring them here. There should be at least one from each Earth. They can tell the others. I want them to know what I did. And I need them to know it's because of me that all their universes are being destroyed."

  "You?" Alex reached to grab him, but Pariah disappeared and Alex's hands were left clutching empty space. He turned back to Lyla, angry and confused. "Is it possible?"

  Lyla shrugged helplessly. "Let's do what he's asked." Fifty-four

  Can anything exist before existence?