When the white light clears away this time, the abductees find themselves standing in an environment that is, if possible, even blander than the soul-destroying corporate cube farm. The horizon and sky--or is it a ceiling?--overhead are smooth and white, though with a slight curve to it suggesting that they are looking up at the inside of an ( Read more... )

When the white light fades away, the abductees find themselves in a markedly artificial environment. Instead of a patchwork of different natural terrains, each individual is in an office cubicle. Within the brown fabric walls is a chair and a desk, and on each desk is a large screen, rather like the touch-sensitive monitors used in certain office ( Read more... )

It is a jumble of landscapes, all juxtaposed against one another - fragments of a thousand worlds, each with their own weather and climate, arranged like a living, three-dimensional collage. A frozen glacier abuts a sweltering jungle, which soon gives way to an acre - no more - of desert, that borders a half-dozen other terrains. One concession, at ( Read more... )

The artifact has made another sweep of the third planet of this system. The new data gathered take some time to be processed--a very brief time, as humans mark it--and once the results have been run ... well, there is only one path that can be taken.

Four chords sound as its colors and facets shift:

F Am Bb AmReally, it's ( Read more... )

The Dreaming is, by its very nature, not bound by the laws that govern the physical universe, and yet those laws may inform its form and function. Time and geography have different meanings here, and even those meanings may shift as the dreamers (or the Lord Shaper himself) wish, but at this time, there is a place that has been set aside by order ( Read more... )

What was the point of it, he still wonders. The dreams, being "invited", being shown and forced again to Listen and See? He wondered, of course, he always wonders. He always questions it, his purpose, his very being ( Read more... )

Shiva sits in her dojo.

She is calm.

She is peaceful.

Except that beneath it there are questions. There is a small level of uncertainty.

Dragon and Tiger.

It is always true that they balance her - though it isn't always obvious as to the ways.

It has been some time since Croutex first tried to take Destruction's power as its own. As humans count the days, it has been over 2 years since Nightstar, Starfire, and Nightwing challenged the Endless-manqué to a duel in the Dreaming, ending at last in Destruction's intervention, though not his re-ascendance of his throne. Over 2 years since Dr ( Read more... )

The Dreaming is, by its very nature, not bound by the laws that govern the physical universe, and yet those laws may inform its form and function. Time and geography have different meanings here, and even those meanings may shift as the dreamers (or the Lord Shaper himself) wish, but at this time, there is a place that has been set aside by order ( Read more... )

"Oracle to all JLA, JSA, Titans, Outsiders, and allied groups ... we have reports of the space cockroaches--" she can't believe she just said space cockroaches with a straight face "--heading through the atmosphere to Earth. Please report any sightings ASAP. Oracle out."