It wasn’t every day a Kryptonian, a Green Lantern, and an army officer encased in metal then transformed into energy got knocked clear to the horizon and almost out of the atmosphere, but that day was today.



“FOOLS!” shouted Wotan, “With the Amulet of Aten all power of the very sun in the sky is mine to command!”



“Get me an opening and I can end this,” Zatara said to his remaining allies.



Wotan laughed maniacally as her magical wards prevented the missiles launched from the Bat-Jet from affecting her inside the ritual circle.



So an Nth metal mace to the face justifiably took her by surprise. Hawkwoman flew off, the mystic barriers crumbled around Wotan as she yelled, “I shall blot out the sun from the sky itself!”



“Then we will fight you in the shade.” said Wonder Woman, as she punched the black haired, blue skinned magic user.



As the supervillain tumbled head over heels through the sky, Zatara knew he’d only get one shot at this.



____



“You done in there yet?” my manager asked for the fifth time in as many minutes.



If I had known when I told him that I could get rid of this one problem which constrained four other jobs from completion, but it would have him almost literally climbing up my ass about it, I probably wouldn’t have mentioned it before his morning meeting. After he told his boss about it and so on up the line, it all rolled back down again as upper management demanded updates. Never mind that parts shortages, partner delays, people out sick and a leadership ethos of ‘continuous improvement, no matter what’ brought us to this point in the first place.



Which led to my fat ass wedged underneath the flight deck (sensitivity training, can’t call it a cockpit anymore) alone with my thoughts amid hundreds of millions of dollars of electronic equipment because almost everyone else certified to do the work had the flu. The fact that I actually read the weekly updates to the engineering specifications rather than just checked off the box and claimed I’d read them meant I was the only one certified to fix this problem. However, the proprietary systems could only be accessed manually from a distance of three feet from the inputs which were installed four feet in front of the pilot’s console.



Genius engineering, but a pain the ass squared to access. Hence my wriggling on my back between wire bundles hooked up to powered-on systems and the forward landing gear wheel well to implement a fix the manufacturer had just OK’d last week. I inserted my badge to log on to the proprietary system and started the scan.



In just a few moments the scan completed and in the screen was an image of me, the part in my hair was on the other side as if there were another me on the other side of the glass instead of just in a mirror.



I noticed the whine of electricity fluctuated in pitch around me even through my corded earplugs. Sounded like something from the back-masking trial against AC/DC back in the ancient 80’s. Thanks, Tipper Gore, for making high school suck just that much more. I thought about how I was back then, and how I might do things differently with the perspective of almost three decades of life experience.



I tightened my belt absentmindedly. ‘Remembering regrets for things I’d done and left undone…’



Meanwhile, the millions of dollars of electronics all around me sparked and would have shocked me if I hadn’t been grounded through a wrist strap. Still, the possibility existed which proved why the policy of no personal electronics while working on a powered-on airplane was a good rule to follow. It was also why my wedding ring, wallet, and car keys were in my locker. Even the tools in the tool bag clipped to my belt were inside an electro-sensitive discharge prevention bag.



I looked again at my scanned image. After the spark some details were wrong, like my beard was absent when the image stroked its face when I scratched my beard, and the image looked far younger.



Weird.



I turned the screen with my image off and began the involved process to extricate myself. Once I finished the paperwork it would be break time.



“You done in there yet?” my manager asked for the sixth time in as many minutes.



“Yeah, coming out now.” I replied.



______



An aura flared around Wotan as she halted her trajectory from the Amazonian’s assault. She sneered at the heroes her red irises burned bright in eyes otherwise inky black and raised the Amulet of Aten above her head, “Nothing in the universe can stop me, your efforts are worse than pathetic.”



Light from the setting sun streamed into the Amulet of Aten which caused a rapidly growing area of darkness beneath them to spread towards the horizon in all directions.



Martian Manhunter was repulsed when he tried to phase through the globe of magic around the blue-skinned magic user.



Zatara flew in behind Wotan and incanted, “ekirts nwod notaW morf edistou eht esrevinu!”



______



I tightened my belt, absentmindedly. It pulled a lot farther than usual.



>OW, fuck!<



Something had gone wrong, and I didn’t mean those weird noises the systems made before I got shocked.



I had been grounded, I shouldn’t have felt anything from that power surge. But the alligator clip on the end of the coiled cord on my wrist strap wasn’t attached to anything.



I wasn’t attached to anything.



I saw myself through the glass, the part in my hair was on the other side as if there were another me on the other side of the screen instead of just in a mirror. We each lifted a hand to our faces, my doppleganger scratched his beard while my hand encountered smooth skin.



We reached out at the same moment, me in a barely-held-in panic, him to turn off the screen.



I was left in an empty void. Not even floating, because there was nothing to float in.



Then something grabbed onto me and pulled me away, or something pushed me away… I’m not really sure. I accelerated into… what? There was a flash of a massive stonelike wall full of faces which receded out of sight in less than a second.



I think.



I wasn’t quite sure since I could only look at what I had already passed, mostly streaks of light that faded into a blue haze. I could see a red haze where I was going when I turned my head just in the corner of my eye.



There was a chunk of some kind of rock in my left hand and I put it in the pocket of my hooded sweatshirt absentmindedly.



I couldn’t see anything apart from the red haze behind me as I was dragged backward… wherever.



I could see something like receding lights, kind of like the special effects of traveling at warp speed in Star Trek, but similar to the time vortex in the opening credits of Doctor Who, or the wormhole transit in Stargate:SG-1.



Flickering brightness, then extreme brightness again… did I just pass through a star?



No, that was a galaxy which shrank into the blue haze.



Then another one… and another one.



Receding slower than the first couple.



Light, then dark, then light again.



Ok, that was definitely a star.



Oh, hey… binary.



Huh, I think that last one was a red giant.



Wow, really bright… a pulsar, perhaps?



I think I’m slowing down since more of the streaks are points rather than smudges… those are distant galaxies.



No, I think that one was a comet.



Oh, that’s it. I’m lucid dreaming. Might as well enjoy the ride.



Dark… one Mississippi, two Mississippi, thr… huh, dim. Brown dwarf, maybe? Close enough.



“It’s cold outside, there’s no kind auvvvvvvv….”’ Silence. So no more singing now that my lungs are empty.



Kind of pointless to keep my wrist strap on, so I undo the snap, wrap it up, and put it in my pocket where my wallet would have been.



Hmm, blue ringed gas giant, probably. I’m definitely slowing down if I can see planets now.



I twist to look over my shoulder, barely any redshift left now.



Big crescent. Getting bigger. Going in… dark.



Smashed into something… and out.



Great red spot. Yeah, pretty sure that was Jupiter.



Chunk of something in my right hand, not enough ambient light to see it, so I put it in my other pocket.



Damn, this is a strange dream. Wonder If I’ll remember it?



And slingshotting around the sun…, so I know gravity can affect me. Ooh, loopy solar prominence…ez... ees? Whatever.



I think I can turn… yep, facing forward now.



‘I don’t know what life will show me, but I know what I’ve seen, I don’t know where I’m going, but I know where I’ve been..’ Nope, still silence.



Vacuum sucks.



Aw, man, a great pun like that, and no one to inflict it on.



Oh, hey… Planetary binary, one white one blue… arcing over the moon and yep, there’s the cool green hills of Earth. And the west coast of America.



I think I entered atmosphere somewhere over Denver. Going with the rotation of the earth, so that’s about a thousand miles per hour less I’m travelling, comparatively.



Wish I could remember more of the lyrics to Falling Down on New Jersey other than ‘But we though it wise, to apologize, that we lack the delta-vee, to push a few miles north, and then crash land, on New York City…’



Dropping into dusk, I think I see fireworks…they look different from above.



Hey my safety glasses are getting darker. Oh right, friction due to re-entry aerobrea… >WHACK<



I think I just had a birdstrike. I can’t see shit.



I wipe the remains away from my face with my hands. Never thought I’d get more crossover in a Venn Diagram with Fabio other than ‘carbon-based life form’.



Through black smudges from re-entry and red streaks of ex-bird I can make out fields, rivers… a city! No buildings I recognize, though.



Good thing I grabbed some eyeglass wipes and shoved them in my pocket this morning.



Are those skydivers coming up?



Oh sh….



_____



Something hit Wotan and sent her plummeting to the ground. Zatara reacted quickly and seized the Amulet of Aten before it fell too far. He then noted Wotan also still had a hand on the magical artifact, but that was all.



He shook the blue dismembered remnant of a limb off of the enchanted artifact with power to control the sun and said “I’ll reverse the ritual, Go get Wotan, she’s still extremely dangerous.”



Superman, Wonder Woman and Lantern Stewart flew after the newcomer who brawled and grappled with Wotan as they fell, who also ignored sorcerous blasts from the ancient magician which previously swatted Justice League members from the sky as if they were nothing.



“Good timing,” said Batman as he piloted the Bat-Jet around to get in another strafing run, if necessary.



_____



panicpanicpanicpanicpanicPanicPanicPanicPanicPanicPANICPANICPANICPANICPANICPANIC



I hit a skydiver. Red outfit, blue helmet, black parachute snapped in the wind around us as we tumbled through the air in a mass of tangled limbs.



I usually wake up in falling dreams before now, don’t I?



Why do they keep shoving glow-sticks or something in my face, what the fuck?



I hurriedly try to get us untangled. Grab, twist, pull, glow-stick in my face, shove, another glow-stick, grasp, boob, kicked, and yet another glow-stick, wait… boob?



The skydiver’s a she, and she’s yelling incoherently… another glow-stick… in some language I’ve never heard.



That’s not a blue helmet… glow-stick… her skin is blue, did she O.D. on colloidal silver or what? Glow-stick… she’s got a weird-Wolverine-esque triangular haircut… glow-stick… red irises in black eyeballs… glow-stick.



It’s not a parachute, it’s a… glow stick… cape. Those aren’t glow-sticks, those are blasts…



That’s the groun >DHOONF!<



>GAAAAASSSP<



Oh, right. Breathing. I guess my lungs were filled with vacuum. Empty with vacuum. Whatever.



We’re in a crater. Aaaand ‘La Blue Girl’ is… all over me. And the crater. And the lawn. And splattered generally everywhere.



Eeeeyew.



Wait, the blood, viscera and clothes are congealing… gross… blobbing together and reforming.



Into ‘La Blue Guy’. Same triangular haircut, but with sideburns and a chin beard, snarling with glowing red eyes and



Bright.



Wait… is he doing the Kamehameha pose? Bits of the ground around me are flying away and disintegrating.



I don’t feel a thing.



Hmm... I’ve sunk into the dirt to my shins. I can’t move.



Blue Guy seems really pissed. He’s a Gamalon with pink eye, he can’t be that mad I copped a feel absolutely and totally one thousand percent accidentally while we were falling, could he?



“WHY WON’T YOU DIE!?!” He yelled at me.



“I didn’t agree to the terms and conditions.” I said, and saw recognizable costumes in the sky approaching behind him.



“What are you?”



I clear my throat and say, “A distraction,” as the Justice League opened up an industrial grade 50-gallon drum of whoop-ass on him.



God Damn, this is a great dream. The spotlight on me snaps off and Blue Guy gets a beatdown from Superman and Wonder Woman… her bottom is even better than Pippa Middleton’s was at that royal wedding, and I almost founded a religion based on that exquisite derrire. Fundamentalist about her fundament, but now I must preach apostate heresy and worship at the altar of Dat Ass.



Oh, and also a Green Lantern, The Flash, Martian Manhunter, Red Tornado… old school, Cap’n Atom… new school, and… How does Hawkgirl have perkier tits than Wonder Woman? Ah, cross-my-heart bra, got it.



Tuxedo Guy floats down from the sky, looks exactly like that comedian, what’s his name… voices Mr. Peanutbutter, um, H.G. Wells podcast… Paul F. Tompkins, that’s it.



He mumbles something, “notaW, og otni a amoC.”



Blue Guy flops to the ground. Totally buff black dude who looks like the cube-squared law version of Idris Elba offers me a hand up out of the crater. Damn, that power ring looks big.



“Thank you,” I say, finally taking a look at my surroundings. Of course the Bat-Jet can land vertically like a Harrier.



We’re in a city park, grass, trails… That’s the Hall of Justice. From Superfriends. It even says ‘Hall of Justice’ on the…



Hall of Justice. Full moon in the sky. Fireworks. Captain Atom and Zatanna in the Justice League.



Holy shit, I’m in Young Justice. Cool.



Crap, Lantern Stewart just said something, and now he’s pointing at his ears.



My earplugs. I’m still wearing my earplugs from… work. I remove my earplugs, let them dangle from the lanyard around my neck and look at the sign for the Hall of Justice again. It still says the same thing.



Uh oh. I’m not having a lucid dream. One of the ‘tells’ you’re in a dream is you can’t read the same thing twice.



“Good job with Wotan back there, kid.” Lantern Stewart says almost, but not quite in the same deep tones as that voice actor from Samurai Jack. Wotan? Wasn’t his costume green tights and a purple tunic with a stupid hat, or am I thinking of one of the Big Bads from Legion of Superheroes in the 30th Century?



“Thank you,” I say again, “This is my first time doing something like this. Would you mind scanning me, check if I broke anything?”



Zatanna… no wait, that’s his daughter. Zatara and Hawkgirl are taking Blue Guy away, I think those are Nth metal cuffs. Hawkman’s there too, so no Thanagarian tail in the future for Green Lantern Stewart, sad to say, unless Shayeira and Katar Hol are extraterrestrial swingers.



A green beam scans me from head to foot and back again a couple of times while I pull a wipe out of my pocket, rip it open and clean my glasses. Even though he’s a little blurry, Lantern Stewart is frowning. A grumpy Green Lantern is something I kind of want to avoid if at all possible. But in Justice League Unlimited he always had resting bitch-face, so par for the course, really.



I ball up the wipe, stuff it back in the packet and fold the foil over to throw away later.



“Give me that.”



“Um, OK.” I answer and hand the wipe packet over.



Lantern Stewart shoots me Cosmic Side-Eye, points his power ring at the foil packet in his hand which envelops it in a green sphere. He moves his hand away and the foil packet drops to the ground. Lantern Stewart squares his shoulders to me and escalates to a Full-On Glare.



“Problem?”



Jesus shit!



My legs straighten so fast my knee joints audibly click. Batman snuck up behind me and… Yeah, that chin looks like it could survive an impact with a helicopter.



“I can’t scan him, all I could pick up was the stuff he cleaned off his glasses until he shoved the wipe back inside. My power ring can’t even hold up that foil packet he handed me.”



Batman picks it up and holds it out to Superman who lands to my left. He glances down at it and says, ”My X-ray vision doesn’t work either.”



Now Martian Manhunter lands to my right, along with Captain Atom and Wonder Woman. Shazam… no, wait, he goes by Captain Marvel, floats in the air above in exactly the way bricks don’t.



Batman stares down at me.



“Explain.”



“I don’t suppose you have an immigration policy around alternate reality incursions, by chance?”



Next Chapter: Batman takes the piss, steals my shit, and also impounds my personal belongings for investigation.