.|. COHERENT COMICS UNINCORPORATED ---X----------------------------------------------------------------------- '|` PRESENTS DVANDOM | -. -. -. | ________| ____ \ ,___ \ ____ \ ________| | .' \ | | / ` | | | | | | | / ___| | | | | ` / | | __| | | < | __| | | | ,--- \ \ | | | \ | | \ ` | | | / | \ / | ___| _______-' ___| ____\ -______-' ____________| #64 - "Born To Be Run Part 3 - Echoes Of The Past" copyright 1996 by Dave Van Domelen =========================================================================== [cover continues to follow the fat chevron pattern, yellow on top and bottom, greenish tint to background of scene in the middle. Kid Macro is racing across the cover, dogged by shadowy echoes of himself. And evil, smiling face looks down on him from above.] =========================================================================== "Oh, hi Rota...Lynk," I catch myself using her old codename as she enters the room. "Hi yourself, Kid. I got your email, you wanted to talk about your powers?" She seemed somehow more...hardened...now. Where she'd been brash and overconfident before, an edge of cynicism and world-weariness had crept into her every move, every word. It was as if she'd aged a lifetime in the months she'd been gone. I couldn't see this Anna Tanner playfully nailing me in the face with a custard pie like she did shortly after we'd met. "Yeah, sorta. Kat said you might know some mental exercises I could try to help my brain catch up with my body. But...you sure you have time for this? What about Kid Pocky's problem?" She shrugged. "Pock's asleep right now...he must've run across half the state to get here. He collapsed right after we brought him in. Kat thinks he should rest before trying to tell us anything, especially since we can't get to it for another couple of issues anyway." I nodded in agreement. Like it or not, the spotlight was on me. I had to carry the storyline right now, had to remember my past...for good and ill. "Anyway, I do know a few meditation routines I used to help in my escape artist act, like slowing down my heartbeat and so forth. I could also try to check you out in your dreams, but I haven't had much practice with that and could mess you up." Lynk sat down and stared at me with closed eyes. It was kinda creepy. "Don't mind me, just pinging your aura. There might be forces at work that a few yoga tricks can't deal with, after all." There was a pause, and she frowned and furrowed her brow. She opened her eyes. "This isn't working. It's like I can't get a grip on your aura to tell what it is...which in itself suggests there's more to this than just not thinking fast enough." She stood and waved her hand, a doorway suddenly appearing in the middle of the room. "C'mon, we're going into Harnegu, my powers are stronger there." "Wait...Harnegu?" Anna'd been through a lot while she was gone, and she hadn't shared all the details with us yet. I still wasn't used to her generating effects without using that funky Rot-13 cypher. "It's one of the dreamlands, where my old spells used to draw their power from. Now I've got a little more pure a link to it, but if I want to safely draw more than a little power from it, I have to go there. So step through. Don't worry, it should be safe unless there's a Bisz stampede." I did as she said, and it was like stepping into a dream. Everything was at once vague and undefined, yet more vividly *alive* and *real* than I could hope to describe. "Um, I thought you said you didn't want to mess with my dreams, though," I said as Anna stepped through the door and closed it behind her. "This is different. If I was here and trying to manipulate your dreams out there, things would be more complicated. But we're both here in body, so it's far simpler. Now hush." She closed her eyes again and stared at me. I could feel a faint tingle running up my spine. When I looked down at my hands, I could see them glowing! Her eyes snapped open like shutters and she tackled me through a door she'd created behind me, without uttering a word. "What the...?" I sputtered as we slammed into the floor of my room. "Sorry, but it was too dangerous to leave you in there. I didn't realize you were so heavily tied to the Timeindex...you could have skipped ahead a century in the blink of an eye." "Huh?" was my oh-so-intelligent response. I knew my powers bent time to let me go fast, but she made it sound mystical. Anna got up off the floor and sat in one of the chairs. "Look, you know about the four classical net.elements, right?" "Western or Eastern? I don't know the Eastern set...." "Western." "Okay...um, Net, Thread, Pixel and of course, Flame. I still remember when Lord Ebon sent his Net.elementals to attack the LNHQ [an alternate history version of Constellation #11 - Ed]." Anna nodded. "In addition to these four is a fifth 'element' we've added in modern times. Timeindex. It controls the rate of posting and the flow of threads. You seem to have a very strong tie to elemental Timeindex." "What, you mean there's some sort of Processing Force out there that gave me and Macroman our powers?" I asked incredulously. "No, nothing that cliched. You simply have very strong ties to time. This is probably why the time travel energies of DeFacto's jewel triggered your memories...and why Lord Ebon wasn't able to totally remove you from existence but instead bumped you sideways into another reality." I nodded, and my mind drifted back to memories of a late summer day when I was last concerned with how my powers interacted with time.... * * * * From the day I got my powers, he had become the father I never really felt I'd had. We were Macroman and Kid Macro, the best (and fastest) net.hero team in the Midwest. Well, that year, anyway. He tried to teach me everything he knew, and while I was a quick study, some stuff eluded me. Like, for instance, "time-blipping". "Explain again," I asked as Macroman finished blipping through a half- demolished wall out in the country. "Again. Okay. Our powers do more than make us just go fast, they let us do weird things with time. Moving fast is the simplest application of that, but not the only one. By concentrating really hard, we can briefly 'blip' out of reality, skipping ahead a second or two without moving anywhere. And if we are moving when we do this, we can sort of skip past a chunk of space...maybe a few feet at top speed. The faster we're going, though, the less time we're blipped for." "Why do it in the first place?" I asked. "I mean, we can go around something as fast as through it, and there's easier ways to dodge, right?" "What if you need to get inside a sealed container without destroying it? And how do you dodge an explosion you can't outrun?" He took my silence as answer enough. "You see, there's always some use for a power like this, and it's best to know how to do it in case you need to." He paused and concentrated for a moment, vanishing for a heartbeat and then reappearing where he was. "Now you try," he said, placing his hands on my shoulders. "I'll help you start to rev up your field, then you run at that wall and try to blip through it." I could feel the warmth growing as the energy field around my body started to intensify. Everything got sort of hazy...not in the bad way that an uncontrolled seizure made it, but in a sort of muzzy warm glow. I ran for the wall, and then everything went black for a moment. I'd stepped outside of time! "I did it! I ran right through the...." Then I opened my eyes and realized I was on my butt on the same side of the wall I'd started on. "Oh." I'd bounced off the wall, and the blackness was the usual side effect of slamming your head into a brick wall. "I'll never get the hang of this!" I sighed as Macroman picked me up off the ground. "Don't be too discouraged," Macroman replied. "Running fast, at least, is something everyone kind of understands. But it's hard to get your brain to accept the idea of jumping around in the fourth dimension, it's not something we were built to do. And, for the record, you did blip out for .013 seconds, according to my wristcomp...it just wasn't long enough to get through the wall. You just have to keep an open mind and believe that you can do it." "This is the faith speech again, isn't it," I half-sighed as we dashed across the fields and helped some farmers pick their vegetable crop...too fast for them to see, of course. "Of course it is, Doug. Remember, this is a world of amazing things and true wonder we live in, as boring as it might seem to you sometimes. You're not a nameless background character anymore, you're in the limelight and anything can happen. If you can't believe that, though, nothing will happen...nothing good, anyway. If you believe it, you can be it," he said as we zoomed away from the farm along the telephone wires, carefully stepping over the birds resting on them. "I guess, it's just that everything's happening so fast, it's hard to remember that things really have changed sometimes." "Fast is what we are, fast is what we live," Macroman grinned as we ducked between the cars of a speeding train. "So, when do you go back to Clue Valley?" "This weekend. School starts Monday...sigh." As much as Macroman claimed it was a world of wonder, Clue Valley was NOT anywhere near that description, I thought. I changed the subject. "Hey, Aunt Glory and I are meeting for lunch. Can you come too? You'd like her a lot, she's really...." "We have met, you know, you don't have to sell me on her," he grinned. Even with the helmet on, I could tell he was grinning from the way he cocked his head to one side as he said it. "And yes, she's great. But she's also Alan Berry's girl." "Yeah. I guess." "Hey, was that a slam on Alan? He's a nice guy!" "Yeah, nice. Nice and boring. He'd fit in real well back home." "Give him time...he's probably not nearly as boring as you think. I'd say you've just gotten your standards raised a little too much by all that's happened to you this summer, eh?" I nodded, he was probably right. "Besides, he fills a role Glory really needs right now, I don't want to complicate it. I appreciate the thought...but skip the matchmaking, okay?" Yeah, right. Maybe Alan wasn't so bad as possible uncles went, but why settle for the smallmouthed Bass when you can hook a Muskie? Besides, if he married Glory, he'd have to tell her his secret...which meant *I* could tell her mine. The one thing that kept that summer from being perfect had been that nagging little ball of guilt I got from lying to Glory so much about where I'd been and what I'd been doing. And if I could get rid of that in the process of getting THE coolest relative a kid could ask for, so much the better. "Now go," Macroman said. "Meet your aunt, I'll catch you tomorrow and we'll get to work solving these 'Mirage' crimes." That said, Macroman zoomed off and I found a quiet place to trigger the costume change macro. The "Mirage" crimes had started my first day in Keystroke. A bunch of hoods would commit some crime, usually theft, and then if they were caught they'd just fade away. It seemed like the same guys every time, but no one could be sure. And they got away with it enough times that whoever was behind them was raking in some serious cash. Macroman was sure there had to be a net.villain behind these goons, they didn't seem smart enough to have rigged the vanishing act themselves, but he said he couldn't figure out who. Probably a new one, he'd decided. With that thought on my mind, I headed into the building to meet Glory. * * * * "Hi, Glory! Ready for lunch?" Glory looked up from her typewriter, a little scattered at having had her train of thought broken. "Hm? Oh! Is it time already? Looks like I'm going to be a while, kiddo...have a seat and keep me company, 'k?" No problem there. Not only was Glory my aunt, she was my best friend. Aside from Macroman, of course. And, I was convinced, she was faster on the uptake than even Macroman. "Glory, I was wondering...." "...Why you have to go back to Clue Valley? We've gone over this before, honey. It's been a GREAT summer, but you need to be with your folks." "Like I need to run into a brick wall," I muttered under my breath. "Hm?" "I don't love them as much as I love you," I said aloud. "Yes, you do. You just don't realize it," she said, resuming her typing. The soft clickety-clack of the new electric typewriter made it feel like we were in some old movie, with the voice track clicking on and off. "Trust me in this, Doug. There's no place like home. [Obligatory Wizard of Oz reference. - Ed]" "Sure there is. /dev/null, a killfile...." Glory realized she was fighting a losing battle. "Let's talk about something else." "Okay. You working on the Mirage crimes story?" I asked. Might as well get any background she might have. I realized that it might be a good idea to have a reporter as a girlfriend, you could get all sorts of information without having to spend all that time following the boring stories. "I wish. Doing a story on Sheldon Barrett. Recognize the name?" "Yeah, Karl Jones did a report on him last year in school," I replied, frowning as I remembered the reason I had to leave in a few days. "He's an anti...antiquarry...." "Antiquarian. An expert in antiques. He's in town to study some old Shakespeare First Files the library got in this week." "Sounds about as exciting as watching netlag," I sighed. "Well, that's the job for ya. Not every story's going to lead into excitement and adventure. Some just pay the bills." "I guess. Does this mean boring assignments follow you around even after you graduate school? ARGH. Hey, is this supposed to be his picture?" Glory looked to the 3 by 5 proof tacked to the corkboard over her desk as reference. "Yep, that's him." "Picture's all goofed up, like a double image." "Weird. Maybe the photog got his focus wrong or did too long a time exposure and got the doubling." "Time exposure?" My experience with cameras had been limited to the yearly family portrait and cheap 110 film box-cameras. Point, click, find out three months from now your thumb was in the way. "Yeah, if the shutter is left open too long there can be a blurry image. Or if the photog snaps the picture twice without advancing the film you can get a sharp double image, a sort of echo." Ping! You could almost hear the lightbulb going off over my head. Glory continued, "Weird, though, if it were a double exposure the rest of the image would be doubled too, they don't usually use tripods for this sort of candid shot...." Pingpingpingping! I got it. Whoever was behind this all wasn't creating mirages, he was creating ECHOES. "Looks like I'm going to be a little longer than I thought, kiddo. You can run around outside for a little while if you're bored..." Glory said as she pulled out the sheet she'd been typing on and tossed it into the rubbish. "Good idea." I went outside, barely able to keep myself at a slow enough pace that my watch could compensate for it, and looked for a pay phone. Echoes of other people had to be a new trick for one of Macroman's sparring partners, Echo Emperor. I wanted to tell Macroman right away, but since he hadn't told me his secret ID I couldn't contact him directly. It had to be through Alan. I put a coin in the slot and dialed up the number on the card Macroman had given me. After five agonizing rings, the phone was picked up. "Hello, Macroman? Oh, Alan...yeah, I suppose Macroman would have picked up faster. Anyway, do you know where Macroman is? How come? Well, I can't really say...." ARGH. Alan must have thought I was just being a fanboy or something, wanting to meet Macroman again. If I could just tell him that I was the person Macroman had made those extra wristcomps for, it'd probably get his attention. But Macroman had made me swear to never tell anyone else my secret. Have I mentioned I really hated having to lie about this? Eventually I convinced Alan to get word to Macroman to meet me in front of the library. Then I triggered the costume macro and went into action. If I was right, it might already be too late. It turned out I was on time, but Macroman wasn't. And I was right, Sheldon Barrett had been doubled like that because he had an echo trying to ride in on his security clearance. Just as I arrived, what must have been the echo version was running out of the library, his arms full of rare old files and menuscripts. In seconds I'd have this guy bagged. But then what? He'd just disappear like all the other echoes. Then I got an idea. This guy had to get the goods to his boss, right? So all I had to do was follow the car he was getting in and I'd find Echo Emperor's base! But...if I left the library, how would Macroman find me, or even know what was going on? The communication function of the wristcomps was pretty short range, and most of the commands for it were controlled from Macroman's units anyway. I had no way to contact him and no way to mark my trail. Except.... * * * * The theft had been so unexpected and well-planned that the police had no chance to mobilize, and by the time "Barrett" had gotten out to the sticks he'd evaded all pursuit. All POLICE pursuit. I'd followed him and his driver out here to the rolling fields of summer wheat that characterized Net.braska's farmland. Then the car disappeared. Not the shimmering fadeout of a vanishing echo, I'd seen a few of those on the TV news and knew what they looked like. No, this was a sharp cutoff. Maybe I was supposed to be surprised by this, but I knew a little about the Echo Emperor from all those fan magazines I'd read. Looking around carefully, I spotted two stands of wheat which were waving in perfect unison. One was an echo of the other, concealing a secret hideout of some sort. And once I'd spotted some stalks vanishing as they waved to one side, I knew I'd found the edge of the illusion. A pretty clever setup, and you'd almost never notice it if you weren't looking for it, or something like it. I decided to go inside. In retrospect, I guess I should have waited for Macroman to join me, but I figured my trail of broken hairdos would have him along soon enough. Just to make sure, I'd swiped a toupee and dropped it on the road where we left the main highway. In an anteroom, I saw the echo server he must have used to create his duplicates. Further in, I saw the main man himself, all decked out in colors that would later be adopted (unknowingly) by Easily-Discovered Man. He was poring over his new booty as he let his echo servant fade away. For the first time since the day I got my powers, I was scared. Not as scared as I had been that day, of course, but pretty frightened none the less. This was no punk with a gun, this was a net.villain. He was seriously dangerous, not to mention psychotic. He could do things with echo servers that drove sysadmins mad trying to figure out. Still, if he couldn't catch me he couldn't hurt me...I should have been safe until Macroman's arrival. BZZZT! WRONG! Suddenly a silvery block formed around me. I tried to break it, but my fist just went in one side and came out on the other side opposite. I ran at it but kept reappearing inside the confines. "Ah, you've found my new toy!" cried an excited voice from behind me. I whirled around to face another Echo Emperor...this one or the other must have been an echo. Maybe both! "New toys for little boys...when I read about this in L'Engle's books, I simply HAD to have one of my own. It's called a tesseract, Kid Macro, and you can't escape it. "Of course, this does mean I can't trap Macroman in it...then again, I'm not sure it'd hold him. YOU," he pointed at me, "though, it should hold quite well. I'd hoped he'd arrive first, but he can't be far behind, can he? And I guess I should thank you, you've saved me the effort of luring him here myself." I tore off at top speed. There had to be a way to escape this trap, but I couldn't find it. Oddly, I could still see out, which only made it more maddening...light could get in and out, but I couldn't. The cube drifted up to the ceiling, the bottom at least staying solid in the process. I tried breaking it, but couldn't even dent the thing...it must have been a forcefield of some sort. All I could do was watch helplessly as Echo Emperor laid a deathtrap for Macroman. "Listen carefully, since I'll be too busy killing you after Macroman's dead to explain it again," Echo Emperor mocked. "Over there you see an echo of me," he pointed to the form shimmering into existence, "with a minor flaw in it. And there's another echo, this time perfect. Your mentor will come racing in here expecting a trap, avoid the obvious fake and head for the other one. And when he hits it, he'll be echoed back onto himself...SPLAT! He'll go all to pieces." Then it happened, just as he'd predicted. Macroman ran in and headed for one echo. He spotted it for what it was and turned aside to attack what seemed to be the real thing. And then he blew apart into a shower of green and red as he was reflected back onto himself. "And thanks to my little echo server, the death of Macroman has just been witnessed by the good people of Keystroke City in full dying color!" Echo Emperor cackled. "NOOOOOO!" I shouted, my voice cracking and turning an anguished cry into an embarrassing squeak. It was my fault. I'd killed Macroman as sure as if I'd put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. If I'd waited outside, I wouldn't have been used as bait to lure Macroman into this trap. I killed Macroman. He was gone. And there was only one thing left to me, if I could pull it off...revenge. And I had to believe I could do it. Believe I could escape this tesseract and kill Echo Emperor like he'd killed Macroman. Looking back, I don't think I even made a conscious connection, that it'd take a "wrinkle in time" to escape the tesseract. I just focused all my anger into a building fury that shoved me into the timestream, blipping out of the cube. There were several of him, but there might as well have been an infinite number of me. I was everywhere, smashing instruments and jaws alike, a blazing blur of verdant vengeance. Finally there was only one of him left, and I was determined to reduce that number to zero. He never knew what hit him. He also never knew how close he came to never waking up. Then I felt a hand on my arm. "I think he's out." I turned around. "Macroman! You...you're alive! But...how?" I sputtered. Suddenly everything snapped into focus, and it was all I could do to fight back the sick feeling I had over what I almost did. "I'd say I hoist him on his own petard, but I don't think you've had to read Ham.net yet," he said, picking up the First File of that very play from the table where Echo Emperor had laid it. "I found his echo image creator when I got in, then heard him expositing to you in the other room. By linking my wristcomp into the controls of the echo server, I was able to send in an echo of myself to fight the echoes of him, and it was the echo that got splattered. See?" he pointed to the floor where the remains of his shredded corpse were already fading away. "I didn't figure out how to free you from the tesseract, but I guess you found out on your own. Nice work." "Thanks. So, you were able to follow my trail okay?" "Oh yeah. But next time, don't steal the mayor's toupee?" * * * * So, that was pretty much it. We'd captured the Echo Emperor, I went back to Clue Valley and my parents. Things weren't so bad for the next couple of months, since I could always run back to Keystroke City myself if I got bored. And heck, Clue Valley even got its own small group of net.villains for a while. I guess what they say about net.heroes causing net.villains to be born was right, since I can't see any other reason for dinks like the High .Plans Drifter or the Net Profit to come to Clue Valley. Then it all went to Hell(TM). I'll never know exactly what happened, I wasn't there. I really wish I had been there, although I'm not sure how that would have helped...at least I could have known, though. The news said Macroman had been trying to stop some master net.villain from taking over the world, and had given his life in the process. All they found was his empty costume and his wristcomps. Alan Berry disappeared around then, too, and Aunt Glory found proof that they were the same guy. Man, did he have us all fooled with that "slow Alan" bit. Still, Macroman really was gone now. And things were going to get a whole lot worse before they got better.... =========================================================================== Author's Notes: Parts of this issue were taken verbatim from Flash #64 for purposes of homage/parody, and no infringements of Mark Waid's or DC's copyrights are intended. Of course, from here the story diverges pretty strongly. After all, at the end of Flash #64 Wally found out his powers were killing him and that he'd have to stop being Kid Flash. Doug has his own problems, which you'll see whenever I get the time to write #65. And they're doozies. NEXT ISSUE: ROBOT INVASION TIE-IN! HUH? Well, you'll find out in Born To Be Run Part 4: Up To Speed!