by Barry Lyga
Oliver stiffened and went for his bow. “I don’t care what year we’re in,” he snapped. “No one points a weapon at me.”
Superman drifted between Green Arrow’s bow and the woman hovering above them all. “It’s not a weapon,” he said, and spread his hands out in a show of peace. “It’s a chronometric scanner.” Then, to the woman, “We mean no harm and are happy to allow you to finish your scan.”
Barry did a double take at the sound of flawless Interlac coming from Superman’s mouth.
“Superman speaks Future,” Oliver said as the Man of Steel conversed with the floating woman. And then, muttered under his breath: “Of course he speaks Future.”
Superman turned back to Oliver and Barry and smiled broadly. “Gentlemen, this is Science Police Officer Cusimano. She was scrambled here because our entry into the thirty-first century caused a spike in tachyon emissions, so she had to investigate.”
“Wait, thirty-first century?” Barry asked. “Not the thirtieth?”
“Yes. And we’re fortunate. I have . . . friends here.”
The three of them followed Science Police Officer Cusimano down a broad boulevard to a plaza created by its intersection with another wide road. Road might have been a misnomer, Barry thought. In the future, vehicles seemed mostly confined to the skies; the ground was for pedestrians and a surfeit of robots in all different shapes, colors, and configurations. Barry tried not to gawk at some of the citizens casually ambling along the pathway—in addition to average humans, there was a mind-boggling assortment of alien beings. He saw eyes on protracted stalks, wavering antennae, hands with too many fingers, arms with too many hands. Insectoid carapaces and sluglike tails dragged behind.
“Are you seeing this?” he whispered to Oliver.
Oliver rolled his eyes with a forbearing expression. “Don’t be a rube, Barry.”
“A problem with aliens, gentlemen?” Superman asked.
“Some of my best friends are aliens,” Barry retorted. “I’m just not accustomed to seeing so many, so open.”
“By the thirty-first century, Earth has become a hub of interstellar commerce and politics,” Superman told them. “The population is something like 22 percent extraterrestrial.”
Barry and Oliver exchanged a quizzical look. “You seem to know an awful lot about the future,” Oliver said.
Superman nodded. “I used to travel to the future often when I was a boy. I joined the . . . Ah! Here!”
The plaza opened up before them. Hovering twenty feet above them was a silvery structure. As with all the buildings, it had no square corners or windows of any sort. It was just a polished, gleaming construct, seemingly molded out of a single block of pliable alloy. It had the vague shape of a chair missing its seat, with a relatively narrow “back” topped with a saucerlike piece, then two long “arms” stretching out from either side.
“This is it,” Superman said. “The headquarters of the Legion of Super-Heroes.”
“Wait a second,” Barry said. This made no sense. Kara had told him about the Legion—a veritable army of teenage superheroes from the far-flung future. Her onetime boyfriend, Mon-El, had been a member of the group, and her friend Brainiac 5 was as well, “on loan” to the past.
But that was on Earth 38.
“We’re in the future of Earth 1,” Barry pointed out. “How can the Legion be here?”
Superman opened his mouth to answer, then closed it, musing for a few seconds before shrugging with one shoulder, his expression placid and unconcerned. “Good question. Let’s go figure that out.”
After thanking Officer Cusimano for the escort, they stepped into the massive shadow cast by the building, striding under its enormous bulk. Oliver and Barry gazed upward at the underside of the building. They were only a tiny bit concerned that it might come crashing down on them.
“Perfectly safe,” Superman assured them.
A moment later, a cylinder of yellow light descended from the bottom of the building, levitating the three of them up and into a door that irised open in the floor. Once inside, they hung in space for a moment as the door closed, then were gently deposited on the floor.
Barry was somewhat familiar with the architecture from his previous visit to the future, but the reality of it still stunned him. It could best be described as in-your-face minimalism, with blank walls in garish hues. The vestibule into which they’d been levitated was a bright blue color, with seams visible along the walls. Barry knew that those seemingly dull, blank walls could actually turn transparent to provide a sight line to the outside, as well as project holograms anywhere in the room.
“This is the future.” Oliver put his hands on his hips and turned a slow circle, scrutinizing the decor. “Cleaner than I imagined.”
“It’s been a thousand years of progress,” Superman reminded him. “A lot has changed. People are much more refined and—”
“Holy crap!” a voice called.
Along with Superman and Green Arrow, Barry spun at the sound of the voice and was shocked to see a familiar figure standing there. A short, dark-haired man in his twenties, wearing typical twenty-first-century garb—striped dress shirt, loose sweater-vest, jeans—regarded the three of them with a surprised expression on his face.
“Winn?” Barry exclaimed. “Winn Schott?”
Winn Schott was a twenty-first-century type like the three heroes, a denizen of Earth 38 and one of Supergirl’s very best friends. He was a genius-level hacker and engineer who’d helped the DEO face off against any number of threats.
“Superman!” Winn exclaimed. “Flash! Green Arrow! Wow!”
Tucking a very slender tablet under one arm, he ran to them, pumping Superman’s hand in excitement, embracing Barry . . .
“No hugs,” Oliver told him.
“I wasn’t even gonna try,” Winn assured him. “Do you fist-bump, sir?” He held up his fist questioningly.
Oliver sighed and dapped Winn’s offered knuckles, which made Winn cackle in glee. “I fist-bumped Green Arrow. This is definitely going on my blog.”
“Blogs are still a thing in the thirty-first century?” Barry asked.
“Not so much. But I’m trying to make them cool again. Along with Katy Perry music, the sartorial splendor that is the sweater-vest, and the films of David Lynch.” He leaned in and whispered conspiratorially from one side of his mouth. “It’s slow going, guys. The future is very resistant to change.”
“Winn, how are you even here?” Barry asked.
“I swapped places with Brainiac 5,” he explained. “There’s this killer virus that affects artificial intelligences here, so they asked me to—”
“No, I know that part,” Barry interrupted. “But you went into the future on Earth 38. And we’ve just traveled to the future of Earth 1.”
Winn seemed taken aback. “Really? I suspect time travel shenanigans. Let’s conference in an expert.” Before anyone could stop him, he whipped the tablet out from under his arm and spoke to it. “Get me Rond Vidar.”
An instant later, a hologram appeared in the center of the room—a lanky young man with black hair and skintight gray-and-white coveralls under a yellow jacket. The hologram was so perfect that it seemed less a hologram and more as though the man had simply spontaneously appeared there. Oliver actually reached out and brushed against it with the tips of his fingers to be sure—they passed right through the man’s shoulder.
“Rond!” Winn cried. “Buddy! Pal! I have a favor to ask of you!”
Rond Vidar pinched the bridge of his nose with the expression of a man who has been asked too many favors. “For the last time, Toy Boy, I will not adjust the Time Viewer so that you can watch the fourth season of Twin Peaks. Stop asking.”
“Toy Boy?” Barry laughed.
“That’s not my name!” Winn howled.
“It does make sense,” Superman said. “Your father was Toy Man, so . . .”
“Stop it!” Winn exclaimed. “I don’t want a code name. Especially Toy Boy. Any
way,” he said, turning back to Rond, “look—we have guests from the far-flung past!” He made a ta-da gesture at the threesome.
Vidar’s eyes tracked them quickly. “Good to see you again, Superboy. It’s been a while.”
Superman opened his mouth to speak, but Barry beat him to the punch. “See, this is the problem! Winn is here and you know Superman, but isn’t this Earth 1? How is it possible for two different Earths to share a future?”
“I don’t think they do,” Superman said. “I think when we traveled into the future, we somehow crossed over to Earth 38. You may have done the same when you traveled alone into the future, Flash.”
“But why?” Oliver asked. “Look, I don’t know much about quantum physics and time travel, but I know this: When you shoot an arrow, it follows a path. It doesn’t suddenly veer off for no reason. Something has to redirect it. If Barry ran straight into the future from Earth 1, why and how would he end up on Earth 38?”
“Pretty easy way to figure this out,” Winn said cheerfully. “Rond, are we on Earth 1 or Earth 38?”
Hesitating slightly, Vidar said, “This is actually considered Earth ∂. There’s a whole new nomenclature for describing the Multiverse that arose in the mid-twenty-first century.”
Which meant after Barry’s time.
“There was a crisis of some sort,” Vidar went on. “Historical records from so long ago are spotty and incomplete, but we know that the universes had been previously isolated and separate, for the most part. Then they experienced a . . . a . . .”
“Crossover effect,” Barry supplied.
“Yes. Timelines became entangled. There’s a whole theory of hyperstrings that indicates that it may be possible for two separate universes to share common timelines.”
Oliver shook his head. “Wait. Are you telling us that two completely different Earths could have the same future?”
Vidar shrugged as though this absolute impossibility bothered him not one whit. “All of the universes of the Multiverse are quantum-entangled to some degree. There are doppelgängers across the Multiverse. Similarities in history and in structure and in the very laws of physics. If matter and energy can cross over, why not time?”
Superman nodded slowly. “The greater the interaction between universes, the more they become entangled. To the point that they begin to share time itself. This all makes sense now.”
Oliver nudged Barry with his elbow. “I see they have a strange definition for makes sense in this century,” he whispered.
The time travel physics of it all were over Barry’s head, too, but he could grasp the basics of it. Would it really matter to him if, for example, it turned out that the tenth century was slightly different from what history books claimed? For Vidar to worry about which twenty-first century preceded his own was like Barry stressing over details of the Middle Ages.
“Maybe we can discuss the physics another time. Right now, we need your help,” Barry said. “We’re looking for—”
“Oh!” Winn shouted. “Oh! I know why you’re here! You came for the Legends!”
13
Joe Hustled back to the Bunker as quickly as possible, the bee rattling and buzzing in the plastic cup on the passenger seat next to him as he drove. Out of an abundance of caution, he’d borrowed some tape at the bodega and fastened the lid on, then covered the straw hole. He could think of murderers he’d taken less care with transporting.
“Joe, do you read me?” Dig’s voice came through loud and clear on Joe’s earbud. “Like you suggested, Lyla repurposed an A.R.G.U.S. satellite to scan for bees and, uh, we have a problem.”
Joe figured there was a pretty good joke about finding a bug in the system just waiting to be made, but Dig’s tone told him that now wasn’t the time for it.
“It seems there’s a massive swarm of bees gathering over Star City. And it’s growing.”
“What?” Joe pulled up to the curb and craned his neck to look out his window. As he did so, a man stumbled over to the car and bent over to speak.
“Excuse me, sir, I seem to be lost. Could you point the way to the Oliver Queen Memorial Library? My qPhone can’t find a broad-fi connection.”
Oliver Queen Memorial. . . As best Joe knew, Oliver wasn’t dead. Certainly not dead long enough to have a library built and named for him. He scanned the man again, this time noticing the odd plasticky sheen to his pants and shirt, as well as the strange clasps that served in place of buttons. And wait. . . had he said qPhone?
Sure enough, the man brandished a perfectly round gadget with a glowing screen.
“You’re from an alternate Earth, aren’t you?” Joe asked. “You fall through a big blue swirly thing?”
The man considered. “I did notice some sort of strange fog around me on my morning commute. What are you saying happened?”
Joe passed a hand over his face. “Sir, I’m gonna ask you to wait right here. I’m going to call the local police and get you to a shelter. We’re in the middle of two or three crises right now.”
As Dig had indicated, a fuzzy black cloud had gathered overhead. It wasn’t all that big, but it was certainly big enough to notice even from the ground. A few passersby on the sidewalks had taken note and stopped to gaze upward and snap a photo or two.
“We think Ambush Bug’s massing his swarm for his attack,” said Dig. “Remember how Bert said the bees could construct more of themselves?”
Staring up, Joe imagined the bees pollinating one another, so to speak, creating more and more bees, which would create even more bees . . . Until there were millions of them, enough to descend on Star City and sting everyone in the city within seconds.
Some of the victims would just be annoyed and given a jolt of pain. Probably most of them. But some of them, like Ambush Bug himself, would have an allergic reaction to the synthetic apitoxin. People would go mad, like the Bug.
And many would die.
Barry, he thought as he dialed SCPD on his cell for the accidental universe-hopped Flash, you and your pals better figure this out fast.
“I’m inbound with a bee sample,” Joe told Dig. “We’re gonna figure this out.”
Overhead, the swarm of bees massed and bunched, a buzzing black cloud threatening to rain pain and death.
Joe slammed a foot down on the gas pedal and wished he had a siren to blare.
14
Winn led them through a series of identical corridors, all of them shining like highly polished silver. A large globe the size of an overinflated basketball zipped down the corridor. It was made of shiny metal, with a section cut away to reveal a transparent screen on which yellow waveforms undulated against an orange background.
“Breep!” the globe announced. “Mr. Schott, may I assist you?”
“Hey, Computo,” Winn said. “I need to get into the infirmary.”
The waveforms danced for an instant. “I have been authorized to permit—breep!—access to the infirmary to you. Please enter. And have a nice day!”
The Legion’s medical bay was so pristine and empty that Barry thought he’d been led into the wrong area of the headquarters. Long and narrow, it had the same curved, metallic walls he’d seen elsewhere in the building. Against one wall, something that looked very much like a cloud bobbed gently in the air, a downy cocoon. Holograms drifted nearby, showing what appeared to be MRI results, vital statistics, and more. Barry made out a human figure within the cloud.
“Her name’s Zari Tomaz,” Winn said soberly. “We don’t know . . .” He trailed off.
Barry gazed down at her. Bruises along her jawline and temple seemed almost healed, but Zari lay far too still, her eyelids not even flicking in the way that betrayed REM sleep.
“I don’t understand. They don’t have her on an IV drip. Or a—”
“She’s fine,” Winn said quickly. “I mean, not fine fine, but, you know, fine. They don’t use things like IVs here in the future. They have some kind of microscopic robot—they call it an Imskian surgimech—that crawls thro
ugh her bloodstream. It keeps her cells fed and also breaks up blood clots and prevents bedsores. It’s kinda amazing and . . .” He realized Barry was glaring at his enthusiasm for the tech. “And I wish it wasn’t necessary.”
Before anyone else could speak, the door behind them hushed open. Turning, Barry blinked at a welcome, familiar sight.
“Sara!” Oliver exclaimed.
“And me!” proclaimed Ray Palmer, holding out his arms.
Sara Lance—the White Canary, leader of the Legends of Tomorrow—ran to them and threw her arms around Oliver. Ray stood, turning from side to side, arms still outthrust, eager for a clutch. “No hugs for Ray? Really?”
“Drop it, Haircut,” Mick Rory said as he elbowed his way into the room.
Ray targeted Superman and strode over, offering a handshake. “Hi! Ray Palmer, shrinking scientist extraordinaire. Love the costume. I’m a big fan of the whole red-and-blue color scheme.”
The Man of Steel accepted the handshake. “These are the time travelers you were telling me about?” he asked Barry. “The ones from the Time Bureau?”
“Some of them,” Barry said, stepping away from Zari. “Ray, what happened to the others?”
Ray and Mick shared a cloudy look. “We need to talk.”
Meanwhile, Oliver and Sara had finally broken their clinch. “Oliver! What are you doing here?”
“I was about to ask you the same thing,” Green Arrow replied. Stoic to the last, even Oliver Queen couldn’t maintain his grim facade in the face of discovering Sara was alive. He held her tightly again. “We were all so worried.”
“Especially Ava Sharpe,” Barry put in.
“How did you know to come to this time period?” she asked.
“We didn’t.”
Between the three of them—with some assistance from Winn—they explained the crisis in the twenty-first century, Barry’s acquiring the Time Courier from Ava, and their slamming into some sort of barrier in the time stream.
At the mention of Ava, Sara became pensive. “I . . . She must be so . . . I’ve been gone so long . . .”