The Tower (3 page)

“Please don't go,” I said again.

“I won't, but you have to sleep now and let the medicine do its job.” She dried my tears. “There will be more changes; they're part of the side effects,” she added.

“Like what?”

“You'll see; it'll be okay,” she assured me.

I was still very scared. “Is it going to hurt?” I asked her, my mind very foggy now.

“Yes; you'll live.” She smiled at me, a real smile, not just a professional one.

That was the last thing I remembered. The next time I saw her everything was a lot different.

And that's when my views on what reality was did a U-turn into the impossible.

Three: Whole Again

“Welcome back,” said Deanna. She was gazing at me intently. Dr. Fustus and Avenger were on the other side of the bed, looking at my chart.

“How long was I out?” I asked. I'd woken up in a different room this time. It was full of boxes and unused equipment; probably a storage room. Instead of my old clothes, I was clothed in a white hospital gown.

“Just two weeks; our medicine works very quickly,” she added. “You were in there,” she said, pointing to some kind of healing chamber in the corner. “We call it a WOMB: It stands for ‘Wellness Optimizing Matrix Biosphere.'”

The WOMB was like a big cigar tube, roughly ten feet high and five feet in circumference. Fustus explained that I'd been kept in stasis while the medicine administered to me had stimulated growth of bone, muscle and organ renewal, plus blood cleansing and other bodily functions which weren't worth thinking about. Looking more closely inside the sphere, there was some kind of faintly cloudy liquid there. Was that what I'd been floating in?

“It's a type of amniotic fluid,” the doctor said, “similar to what babies are suspended in when they're inside their mothers' stomachs.”

“I hope the treatment didn't cause you much pain,” Deanna/Miracle Mistress said.

“Yeah, it did.”

Avenger looked a bit surprised. “You were supposed to be asleep.”

“I wasn't.” Not all the time, no. The pain was agonizing. I felt as if my bones were cracking, reforming themselves, and then cracking again. When the pain jolted me semi-awake I'd seen vague, unfocused visions of people coming and going. Avenger and Deanna; those names flitted in and out of my consciousness and in-between bouts of my own world of hurt I recognized them.

Avenger, Deanna, Avenger, Deanna…get the names straight. I tried calling out but couldn't as the tube down my throat prevented me from speaking. They must have seen me. I remembered them coming over to look at me from time to time. Deanna often gave me a “thumbs-up” gesture; I tried doing the same, but had zero strength. The world unfolded little by little and all I could do was look out at everything through half-closed eyes.

“Did other people come in while I was in there?” I asked. The question was posed as I'd seen people fly in and out. Flying? It must have been the drugs. People didn't fly. Airplanes flew, rockets flew, birds and insects flew, but people didn't. Yet, I saw some of them fly in. Semi-conscious or not, it freaked me out big time.

“Yes,” Deanna replied, “some of the other members of the Association came in to see you. Do you remember anything else?”

“All I remember is coming out of the tank.” The liquid had suddenly drained off and some kind of invisible door on the sphere opened. Then the tubes in my arms were pulled out abruptly and I screamed once the tubes running up my nose and the one down my throat had been yanked out. The tube which had been downstairs hurt the most of all and I
knew
I'd be having a lot of trouble going to the bathroom for the next few days.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

“Uh, okay, I guess.” Wow, my voice sounded funny: Hoarse and rusty, like it hadn't been used in a while but it also sounded more adult, deeper and stronger. What had happened to me? Deanna helped me sit up a bit more and handed me a small mirror. I took it and stared at my reflection, then touched my face all over just to make sure it was all real.
What had they done to me
?

Apparently, a lot: My jaw was squarer, eyes were blue instead of brown, my hair was black instead of dark brown, my unhealthy pallor was gone and even though my bones jutted out from the lack of fat, I could see that my new face, when filled out, would have a square look to it. I was
older
, older and better looking. Were these the side effects that Deanna had spoken of?

“Big change,” I said, handing the mirror back, still in awe of the new me.

“Our medicine works a bit differently than the medicine your world uses,” Avenger answered. “Whenever this treatment is given, some aging is inevitable. In some species, the aging is quite rapid; it depends. In your case, since you're human, there wasn't much of a difference.”

Not much of a difference? Hell, yes, there was!
I was way better looking than when I went in, and….

“How old am I now?” That was the most immediate question that came to mind.

“You're now about nineteen or twenty years old. Are you unhappy with the way you look?” Avenger asked.

“No.” I was still trying to process this.

“Good enough,” he said flatly, then walked out.

Deanna pushed me gently but firmly back into bed. “You need to rest,” she said softly. On a signal from her, Fustus gave me a needle. I started to feel sleepy almost at once. “We'll talk later.”

Sleep. Good idea. As I felt myself nodding off, I thought,
Not bad; not bad at all
. And I'd remembered their names.

* * *

Waking up again a few hours later, the room was empty and I took a look at myself in the full-length bathroom mirror. Not only was I older, I was taller, maybe a little over six feet but still very skinny-looking, though, a bony 140 pounds, if that. While I looked and felt a lot better than I had, it was still a task trying to process what had happened so far.

Fact one: This was definitely not Portland anymore. I wasn't even in my own
universe
anymore. There really
were
parallel dimensions and that was awesome.

Fact two: Super heroes also existed. It wasn't some giant costume party, I was wide awake and at the Tower. No DVDs, no computer graphics and voice dubbing like on TV, this was reality, 24/7. It was way cool to think that I'd be able to see all these characters in action. In my universe, I'd only read about the major ones, and had no real idea of these guys and what they could do.

The next time Deanna came in, I asked her for a laptop. “What do you need to know?”

“I want to find out who I'm living with. I've got a lot of new people to meet.” With that, she just smiled and brought in a small computer, about the size of a paperback. Logging onto their “Factapaedia” section on the Internet I found out all the names and their abilities. The names were different from the comics but their powers were still major cool. Just a few of the standouts I read about:

PowerGuy was a political refugee from another planet. He'd crash-landed on Earth and the accident fused a kind of “power-enhancement” suit to his body which drew ambient energy from this Earth's atmosphere giving him great strength and enabling him to fly.

Black Guardsman used his suit to form shields: Metal, plastic, or something else. That was all he could do. He could make them with the energy from his suit by just saying “metal shield” or “plastic shield.” I would have loved to have that kind of power.

Miracle Mistress had been gifted by an unknown alien presence with the power of flight and strength; her sword was unbreakable, and she also had a first-class mind. It seemed she also doubled as the Tower's nurse. “One of my hidden talents,” she told me.

One of the mutants on board was called “DragonFlitta.” She was a cross between a dragonfly and a woman and had three pairs of wings. From her description she was supposedly quite exotic-looking; I was interested to see what she looked like as there were no pictures of her available on the Net.

Avenger came from a poor family. He was self-taught and had made his money in the construction industry. But he wanted more out of life. He trained in the martial arts, learned and grew, and became the hero he was today. A genius at inventing, the strength and speed of five men, and he was richer than Midas. Awesome!

After reading about all these names and more, I passed out from the sheer excitement of it all and when I awoke, Deanna came in to take me upstairs. “What's this all about?”

“Your orientation,” she said. “It's time you met everyone.” Up to the second level we went in the lift, and when we got out of the elevator, Deanna guided me along. We stopped in front of a wooden door. This had to be a special place, as all the other doors were metal.

“Welcome to our Justice Room,” she said, pointing at the door. “Not many regular staff members have ever been invited in.”

“How many have been here?” I asked.

“You're the first,” she answered, and we walked in.

Inside, Avenger, PowerGuy, and Black Guardsman were all waiting for me, sitting around a small, round metal table. Water pitchers had been placed on the table and all the members had a cup placed in front of them.

None of them wore capes. They were dressed in what looked like Spandex bodysuits, practically painted on their bodies. All muscle and no fat. Deanna took off her robe and wore her golden bodysuit; she looked to be in great shape. She indicated that I sit down and I did, although I couldn't keep a goofy smile off my face.

“How are you feeling?” PowerGuy asked in a mild, friendly voice which belied his size. He was massive: Around six-five and maybe 250 pounds of what looked like pure muscle. And he looked like a comic book hero should look, square-jawed, black-haired with a streak of gray in it, and handsome. His uniform, though, was an odd mix of gray, yellow and green; gray background, green vertical stripes on the torso, green-and-yellow boots and a yellow band around his chest. They weren't the classic hero colors or pattern I expected, but he was still impressive, they all were.

“Okay, I guess.” I sat down but couldn't keep the smile off my face. “I can't believe you're all real.”

“Real?” That came from the Black Guardsman. Black and with an Afro, his face had what seemed to be a permanent scowl on it, and while he wasn't as tall as the others, he was just about as powerfully built with ridiculously wide shoulders and arms that looked like they were twenty inches around. The name “Black Guardsman” was derived from the suit's color, not the wearer. There had been other Guardsmen; some of them white, some of them Asian, and some of them alien. In the comics, that is.

“Yeah, real. On my world, you're, um, comic book characters. And your names are different.”

“Comic books?” asked Deanna.

“Yeah, books with cartoon pictures.” There were blank looks all around. Maybe there weren't any cartoons or comic books in this dimension. Sort of weird to think of such a thing but anyway, after about a minute, Deanna broke the silence.

“We're real here,” she said. “Accept it.”

“Do you know any of these other superheroes?” I asked, naming a few of the more familiar ones. Nope. What about the guy with the blue tights and red cape? Nope. How about the woman in the American flag bikini?

Deanna shook her head. “Seems sort of campy, don't you think?” I had no answer to that. I guess that in this dimension, what I saw was what was and all that.

More silence, and then PowerGuy asked me about my world. What could I say? “Well, pretty much the same as it is over here, I guess, 'cept,” I corrected my speech, “except there aren't any super heroes. No super villains, either. What happened to them, anyway? Are they still around?”

“They were…ah…taken care of,” PowerGuy said carefully.

“Are they all in jail? Killed?”

“No.” Fine. I let it pass.

Avenger swiveled around in this chair to face me. His face, from what I could see of it, was impassive, his voice flat and businesslike. It seemed he always spoke this way. He sounded tough and looked it and I pitied the fools who challenged him.

“We originally built that inter-dimensional portal to look in on other Earths, see what they were like as compared to this one,” he started. “We collected plant and air samples as well as other pertinent information, such as money, newspapers, and examples of your technological status. And we had thoughts that one day we could establish some kind of link between this world and yours.

“Unfortunately, at the moment we opened the portal, you walked in. The Guardsman spotted you while on patrol, and we brought you here. Outside of us in this room, as well as most of the other ‘Ultra Humans' (I learned from the computer files that was what they were called. That, or ‘Ultras') “no one else knows where you're from and we're going to keep it that way.”

“Why?”

“Simply because there's too much potential for upsetting the balance,” he answered. “If the people found out they could hop from universe to universe, we'd have every crook, fool, and armchair adventurer go out and there's no telling what might come in. So we're asking that you keep what you know a secret.”

Fair enough; I could understand that. “How do you get around? Do you use Vortex tubes?” I'd read that in the comics. That got me more blank looks. I tried to explain. “Like, um, that portal, except portable. It's sort of like a big box, and when you press a couple of buttons, it opens up a doorway…” My voice trailed off; I was getting nothing but empty stares. “Okay, do you use teleportation systems?” The blankness continued.

“Don't believe everything you read in story books,” Avenger stated. “We use space shuttles. What you read about was fiction. This is reality.” I was still trying to figure out which reality this was.

He continued. “You said we were like comic-book characters?” I nodded. “Let me guess: On your world, someone wrote about people like us or very similar to us?” “How did you…?”

He held up a hand to silence me. “Have you ever heard of the ‘million-monkey method'?” I shook my head and he continued his explanation. “If a million monkeys were set on word processors and started typing, the theory is that eventually they'd produce the works of a great writer or philosopher. In the same way, think of the monkeys as being different dimensions with different universes and the typing as being different forms of life. While that may sound far-fetched to you, in all that space, all those dimensions, is it not possible that there are people just like us?”