With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

6th February 2013
13:40 GMT -5

I am to find this 'Mistress' without the aid of other scions? Well then, they cannot complain overmuch about my methods. Hiding is not the way of the gods of Apokolips.

"Mother Box!" "Bring forth my faithful steed!"

BOOM!

I tear off the lowly rags that I wore to disguise myself as Béton Brut emerges, and I feel better already. I told Match that it is not in my nature to disguise myself, but I do not think that he understood how profoundly unnatural it feels for a god to hide their fire under a bushel. Brut checks my scent for a moment and then sniffs the air, taking in the stench of Gotham.

"Ungwwr?"

"It smells a little like home, doesn't it boy?" I pat the side of his neck, then haul myself up onto his back. I can't help but smile. "A pale reflection, but it feels more normal than Earth. Ah, but what art could I produce if I saw only the same things day after day?"

I look around, the lowlies having scattered and the… Extensions of Mistress's soul looking as unconcerned as they should.

"There, that one. Brut, scent."

I grip his sides with my legs as he bounds over, shoving his nose into the chest of the closest. Brut is as accustomed to the Anti-Life as I am, taking the scent of the frail strands of Ultimate Truth that fill the Earth will no doubt prove a simple matter. They raise their guns and I…

I sigh is what I do. The indulgences I grant Aunt Barda.

I wave my mega rod, a pulse of force knocking them back artlessly. It's… I can appreciate slapstick, but when you've seen one falling prat you've seen them all. Brut walks forward, sniffing each of the fallen in turn.

"Grhmf."

"Do you have it, boy?"

His head comes up as he sniffs the air for a moment. I see the moment where something catches his attention.

"Run."

He bounds down the road, feet momentarily touching road surface or car bonnet as he accelerates towards our destination. The place of power of Mistress. And it seems that we're going south.

Robinson Park passes us on our right, the land overgrown as the Acolytes of Ivy cultivate the land. It is strange how they give themselves to that cause when their mistress was so dismissive of meat-based life. But I suppose that is one of the wonders of the Anti-Life; all are equal in slavery.

It will be fascinating to see this undone, to see their minds return to their neutral state having glimpsed the soul of Great Darkseid. I wonder how they will sleep, how they will rationalise their actions in the warm light of falsehood? I wonder if they will become more resistant to future exposure, or less? Perhaps that is why Great Darkseid has allowed this? Those he confronts personally simply do not recover from the experience, so this… Pale shade could generate information that he could not otherwise acquire for himself.

I wonder..?

Is it immodest for me to try to acquire a fragment of the Anti-Life for myself? Darkseid has not vouchsafed to me any new objective, so I can only assume that my purpose here has not changed. I would not use it for my own advancement, but… What could I create under such an influence that I can not even imagine now?

But I should not destroy what-.

A spray of bullets strike my armour and Brut's barding as we charge through the financial district. I see. Ah, of course. The puppets may not be moved to preserve their own lives, but in the service of their Mistress they will rally apace to corral me. Manned barricades constructed from abandoned cars are assembled with nary a word, but the roads south are many and Brut's paws are swift.

Inalienable Truth.

Hah!

"Ah, you think Anti-Life is your ally? You merely adopted the Anti-Life!"

But I don't put my spirit into my words. I do not want to challenge Mistress for control of this city. I merely wish to gain some idea of her strength. If she has undergone an Awakening… That may be interesting.

"I was born in it, moulded by it! I knew nothing of freedom until I was already a man, by then it was nothing to me but cloying!"

We turn a corner and charge a barricade, and I stow my rod and take up my pistol. Artfully precise shots to the barrels-

Because Robin waxed wroth at me last time last time I used precise shots to destroy their ammunition clips, after all, and the beauty of the act is much the same; stylistic bloodletting replaced by slapstick as their guns misfire or cease to exist.

-prevent them from firing. I then stow my pistol, and as Brut leaps the ruined vehicles I lean left and reach out my hand, snatching a cut-rate justifier off the ground. Though I will credit him with not exclaiming beyond what the impact itself forces through compressing his lungs. My right hand grasps my pommel and I haul myself upright once more as the barricade recedes behind us.

I smile at my burden.

"Lowlie!"

He gamely draws his knife, not attempting to alleviate my grip around his throat at all even as I constrict his wind pipe.

"I would-"

He stabs at my throat, my right hand meeting his wrist, gripping and twisting, snapping bone and breaking grip.

"-speak with-"

His flailing kicks at Brut's flank are similarly ineffectual.

"-your Mistress."

Disregarding his damaged arm, he leans back using my grip on his neck as a pivot point and places the soles of his feet against Brut's side to push. I tighten my grip with my legs, staring him in the eyes.

Inalienable Truth.

"Where may she be found?"

He draws his pistol, and I can only imaginje that he is slow in bringing it to bear against his own head because he lacks the breath for thought. A good attempt! I twist my legs, causing Brut to run closer to the row my buildings to our left. And then I twist in the saddle, the lowlie's shaking hand smacking into the wall and the gun being knocked free with the bare minimum number of broken bones!

"I will ask again, lowlie." I slap his legs down and pull him closer as we reach the coast, the barricade before the Blackgate Bridge being the last impediment. "Where is she? I would speak with her on a matter of great importance!"

"Yhr n't fit t' lick'er oots."

"But I would do so anyway. Now tell me!" All-Consuming Passion of Creation!

Inalienable Truth.

"The Supermax wing."

I toss him aside as the-

BOOM!

-boom tube opens, Brut lunging through as the bullets from the bridge garrison pass through the air behind us.

Inside the prison, aah, the Anti-Life is almost palpable! Lines of men in prison overalls stand against the walls, heads bowed, as a woman in tight-fitting but unarmoured clothing walks towards me.

"Mistress will see you now."

 

6th February 2013
14:13 GMT -5

I'm trying not to think about what I'm seeing.

One time, Paul told me about a psychologist called John Nash. He did a lot of work on things like The Prisoners Dilemma and other questions like that, things where two or more people were depending on each other but couldn't communicate with each other. He had this whole theory that if people couldn't communicate, and didn't know who it was they had to work with, then they'd have to betray each other all the time.

Only when they ran the experiments, that didn't actually happen. People don't only trust each other when they have a gun to each other's heads. When you test it, it turns out that people trust unless they've got a reason not to. Even with no way to communicate, the participants trusted each other and got the best result when Nash's theory predicted they wouldn't.

Couldn’t.

Shouldn't.

Only psychopaths who can't trust anyone and economists trained to analyse risk didn't trust, and they mostly got the worst results than people who trusted each other.

According to Paul, Nash threw his toys out of the pram and said the people participating were doing it wrong.

Here, he was right.

Mitchell takes a step back from his console, shaking his head. "How does this..? Work?"

Ultrawoman smiles… I think she's trying to smile sadly, but it's fake. I know that smile.

"I don't know. Somehow they keep on going."

They've got things that look like governments, but in most places they're really just the biggest protection rackets. Even where they're not evil, they're not much use. It's like they don’t really know how to be good, and they're just kind of copying the evil ones but trying to be less evil about it. They've had dozens of nuclear wars, and it's only the fact that they don't build up as much as our Earth did that's prevented them destroying the whole planet.

This isn't Earth -14. Earth -14 works. This place is crazy.

Dick hasn't stopped reading. Mitchell is trying to keep his lunch down. Fine, I'll do it then.

"So…" She looks at me. "We're here to what, exactly?"

"Take over. We've tried implanting explosives in people to stop them doing… Regrettable things, but it doesn't work. Artificial Intelligences go rogue so fast it's not worth bothering with them. I honestly don’t know why any of this… This is, but it's what we're dealing with."

"So you're.. saying you're not evil?"

"No, I'm evil. But I'm the organised, rationally self-interested kind of evil. Not the feral, rabid, self-destructive sort of evil that rules here. Ideally, I'd want to live in a world where everyone else is good and law-abiding, where my natural inclinations gave me just enough of an advantage to earn myself a comfortable life without disrupting the systems that bring me that comfort. But if I have to fix… That, then I need help. Help from people like you."

"Like..? Us..?"

And I'm not acting. I mean, it fits the act I'm supposed to be putting on, but…

This place is…

It's not Hell. There are pockets of order where the people in power force it because it's convenient for them. But-.

"Why now?"

"People don't usually question what they're used to. Madmen have made portals like the ones we're using before, but, well… They were..."

She shrugs, looking… She's making a show of looking helpless. But not looking helpless enough that I've forgotten that she's kryptonian.

But I can play along. "They were madmen, right."

"It's only recently that there's finally a… 'Top level' evil pragmatist who feels the same way that I do. Most of the people we deal with can't even understand the argument. You have no idea how nice it is to talk to kids like you."

"And you need us."

"You need to understand what we're trying to do, and be strong enough that you're… 'Death-resistant'."

"Because even with you and your boss supporting it, people will still try and kill us anyway."

"Yes." She nods. "If you're lucky, kill. You wouldn't believe what some people will do to avoid having to ask for things politely."

"O-kay. Ah. That sounds like… Something we could do? But you've got portals going to our Earth. I don't think having everyone exposed to the Anti-Life is gunna improve things."

"That's what our local partner does for us."

"That's… Mistress, right?"

"She and her people instinctively know who carries an infection with them, and who is just affected by it."

"But she could just tell them to send people through-."

"She could. Have you heard of something called 'The Prisoners Dilemma'?"

"Yeah. Except there were different versions and only some of them give the best results by both people trusting each other. This only works if whoever you're dealing with thinks the same way. And you're assuming that Mistress knows enough about the Anti-Life to keep her end of the bargain even if she wants to."

"And yet we haven't had a single living transmitter sent through." She's still smiling, and it's getting a bit news anchory. "Though that might just be because the Anti-Life doesn't work here, I don't want to take a chance on that."

"Okay? So, we're obviously gunna wanna check out what you've said, but… If it's.. true? What do you actually want us doing?"

"Honestly, I wasn't expecting to get candidates as promising as you this quickly. All we've set up for is unpowered people. But you want to see where the other people we brought through are working, don't you?"

I nod, glancing at Dick to see if he's finished yet.

"Yeah, we-."

"This doesn't make sense."

Ultrawoman nods. "I realise that it's a lot to take in-."

"No, I mean-. These dates, a lot of them, are basically the same as the dates in our world. The first powered flight happened on the same day!"

I frown. "Okay, that's… Weird, but-."

"The Wright Brothers were able to make the plane they did because of people sharing data. People investing in things that weren't weapons and might not pay off. None of those underlying motives work here. Right?"

I shrug, shaking my head. I wouldn't have thought so, but if it happened on the same day then-.

"People here don’t share… Scientific data. But just about every major discovery happened at the same time."

That can't be-. "Really?"

"And if the people behave that differently, why do the same countries exist? The Founding Fathers of America had strong beliefs about how a country should be run. Why is there even an America here? And there are loads of extra wars, but the population isn't much lower than ours!"

"Well, there's the Sheeda and then the Anti-Life…"

"They have nuclear wars. Plural."

"Okay, so..? What does that mean?"

"I don't know." He looks at Ultrawoman, who looks confused. That's the first natural expression I've seen her make. "But I think you might need to find out."