[Dreams of the Waking Man: Twenty-Fourth Dream] The Emerald City
off to the emerald city, to ask the wizard for a brain.
warnings: giant collision of Earth-339 AU and Fateverse/X-Men Movieverse AU. playing with knives. language: pg-13 (primetime tv plus f***, s***, and g**damn).
pairing: Nate/Herald!Wade, Logan/Traveler!Wade.
timeline: June 2012.
disclaimer: i doesn't owns the movies, comics, or characters. or the assorted objects of pop culture reference.
notes: 1) Moriarty has the right idea, i think. it's just a lot more clear and self-explanatory to refer to Wade WM339 as Herald!Wade (as in Herald of Dayspring) and Wade BT562 as Traveler!Wade in things like Author's Notes and Pairing Notes. 2) ohgod, Reed gets to play with a super-advanced sentient computer. i think he's deep in the throes of a fangasm right about now. 3) Lybs and Lybbie were coined by Silvarbelle. <3 4) Franklin Richards is probably like Will Robinson on steroids. wins the science fair every year, and does it with things like remote-control killer robots made out of toasters. 5) "whiskey tango foxtrot" = "wtf" in one of the more common military-style radio alphabets (invented because whole, distinctive words are harder to confuse than letters that sound alike, especially with bad reception or in the middle of battle). and "wtf" = "what the fuck." 6) "Cool beans" was Trixie's catchphrase in the bad English dub of Speed Racer. 7) the bottom of the Mariana Trench (located between New Zealand and Japan) is the very deepest part of the world's oceans. at its deepest point, it's still more than a mile deeper than Mount Everest is tall.
visit The Fateverse Glossary for terms, concepts, Nodes, and important people.
The Emerald City
Reed Richards already has a labcoat on and about half a zillion gadgets set up when he buzzes them into his lab.
Wade turns to Hope and nudges her toward an edge of the room. “This is gonna be really super-duper boring, precious, so how ‘bout you go chill with your buddie Franklin?”
She stares up at him for a while, but doesn’t say anything. Instead, she obediently goes over to where Frank is absently toying with what looks like a braille Rubik’s cube.
“Franklin told us you’d be coming, even before you called,” Richards says. When he sees the Traveler playing with Forecaster, his eyes light up. “Oh, my… Is that one of them? The photonic-resonance-based computers?”
“Introduce yourself, Effcee,” says the Traveler.
~Hello, Reed Richards WM332. I’m Forecaster, the hundred-and-nineteenth Node of the F-473 Timestream Maintenance Network.~
“Fascinating…fascinating…” Richards mutters. “WM332-that’s a designation of some sort, isn’t it? A database entry?”
~Yep. The letters are for your timestream bundle. I’m not really allowed to tell you anything else. Not yet. Anyhow, I can get Eight-ball to do some passive genetic restructuring stuff, assuming you have the right wavelength of laser on hand.~
“Passive genetic restructuring!” Richards echoes giddily. “Absolutely fascinating! Is it all right if I take some measurements for future study?”
~Well, shucks, I guess you could try…this timeline is pretty fricken dinosaurian, though, so it’s not like you’ve got the right materials or power sources to do anything with whatever data you get. And this is only gonna work because it’s a Wade, and he’s Eight-ball’s Keeper.~
Instead of discouraging the mad scientist, it seems to make him even more excited. He stretches an arm to fetch some kind of StarkTech digital notepad from across the room and starts writing rapidly. “I see. Is there some sort of genetic quirk of Wade Wilson that carries across alternate dimensions? Perhaps something that permeates the fabric of space-time itself?”
Wade makes a face. “I hope not. Permeating, really? Ew. Sounds kinda…incontinent.”
The Traveler snickers.
~Ummm…actually, we don’t really know how Wades do it. They’re special. They kind of violate almost everything we know about how the timestream works. But the Core knows how to make Nodes match their Keepers, and from there we can do some really cool stuff with resonance. I mean, I said it was ‘passive genetic restructuring,’ but it’s really a special kind of re-tuning, not that you’d know what I mean by that. And I probably should shut up now, because I think you aren’t supposed to know this kinda stuff.~
Richards nods while he writes. “A phasic re-tuning process…something based in string-theory…possibly related to the concepts of hyperbolic chronometry and an individual probablistic chronometric wavelength. That would both connect and distinguish separate versions of a person in alternate dimensions. Theoretically, a person could have such similar wavelengths in different realities as to gain special knowledge, share experiences, perhaps even ‘travel’ in some metaphysical way…explains clairvoyance, déjà vu, premonition, twin bonds…”
“Okay, wow, yeah,” says Wade. “That’s enough of that shit, before you turn the universe inside out and unmake existence or something.”
“Sorry,” laughs Richards. “I just get so carried away sometimes. I have to show this to Tony later, he’ll love it.”
The Traveler frowns. “Is he allowed to do that?” he asks Forecaster.
~…DBA says yeah. So, I guess…shrug?~
“Don’t emote, you’re worse than my stupid yellow boxes.”
Wade perks up. “You have Lybbie, too?”
“…I am never calling them that,” mutters the Traveler. “Maybe Sybbie. Or Faybie.”
“Faybie?”
“Fucking annoying yellow boxes.”
Rude much? says a very small and sulky yellow box in Wade’s peripheral view.
“Moving right along,” Nate says loudly. “Our goal at the moment is to set up the equipment.”
Wade glances toward the kids to check on Hope. Frank seems to be explaining something-possibly his latest experimental shrink ray or space laser or whatever…the kid’s like MacGyver meets Doctor Evil.
By the time Wade looks back, the Traveler is writing something (or maybe drawing something) on Richards’ cool StarkTech clipboard. “He’s not gonna be the same, of course,” he’s saying.
That causes Wade some minor concern.
‘Not the same’ as in…smarter? Or ‘not the same’ as in ‘shaped like a Pokémon,’ or some shit?
“What do you mean?” Nate demands.
The Traveler eyes Nate like he’s the most annoying person in the world (which…okay, yeah, he totally is sometimes). “Duh. How do you think your personality would change if you suddenly had more-than-perfect memory?”
That sounds totally leet!
“More-than-perfect?” says Wade excitedly. “Like…remembering things I have no way of remembering? Because that would be badass with awesome sauce.”
“Busy, talk later,” the Traveler replies distractedly.
The technobabbling starts up, and Wade tunes out.
Giant laser thingies get moved around the room, a creepy-looking table (complete with restraints-is there some whacked-out mad scientist emporium that sells shit like that?) is set up in the middle, gadgets and whatsits get hooked up and programmed.
At some point, the Traveler and his pet Wolverine go over and talk to the kids for a bit.
Wade’s hand itches for a weapon when the guy pets Hope’s hair, but he figures even an evil version of himself wouldn’t stoop to hurting a cute little kid (he’d scare some of them, sure, especially the mean ones, but not hurt them).
Then the Traveler scrubs a wrist over his eyes and stands. “Since Eight-ball’s gotta be awake for this,” he says as he comes back to where Wade and Nate are, “might as well teach you how to wake him up.”
Wade pulls the Node out of his pocket.
The Traveler glares at Nate. “Fuck off somewhere, Priscilla. You, of all people, have no business knowing how to operate a timestream-cataloguing super-computer.”
Nate sighs, and Wade almost wants to apologize for his other self’s bitchiness…but really, he has a good point. So Nate goes to help Richards plug things in and calibrate stuff.
“You’ll need light,” says the Traveler. “It’s a failsafe. Hold it up and turn it until a grid lights up.”
Wade turns to face the windows and looks through the Node. When he finds the angle, it’s beautiful-the twinkle of indirect sunlight flares briefly before dimming, and glowing white lines trace their way across the surface of the sphere.
“The thing works on three-button commands. Top row on the back, just right of center. Second row from the top on the left. Bottom row on the front, two columns right of center. They should all light up blue. If you get a different color, you fucked up and you have to start over.”
Obediently, Wade looks through the grid and finds the squares described by the Traveler. He gets it right on the first try and grins like a fucking moron. And then he gapes at the thing, because it’s back to being beautiful-those unfamiliar symbols Weasel talked about are sliding and flickering all over the thing, and if he watches them long enough, it’s like seeing music turned into dancing lights. As for the symbols, they look like what you’d get if you crossed Thai with something Tolkien came up with and then turned it sideways.
“Okay, now find the little one that’s holding still and has a curly thing in the middle that looks like a lower-case rho.”
“This one?”
The Traveler leans over his shoulder. “Yeah. Means ‘hope.’ Take the Node in your right hand and put your thumb over that symbol.”
“Okay.”
“Now turn it right side up and pretend it’s a knife.”
Whiskey tango foxtrot?
For a moment, Wade only stares at his counterpart. “You mean like…throw it at somebody?”
“No, moron. Just think to yourself ‘I’m bored and I have a knife.’”
He almost makes another sarcastic retort, but the Traveler looks like he’s been having pretty much the worst day in the history of bad days.
Then the Traveler pulls a knife from his boot and starts to flip it between his fingers.
As he watches, Wade feels the twitch of reflexive motion in his forearm, the tingle of restlessness in his palm, and he starts to fidget with the Node. Some of the movements are a little awkward, because he’s used to doing them with pens and knives and silverware, not with baseball-sized glass globes.
Something inside the thing flashes white for a moment, and a synthesized voice speaks. ~Greetings, subject designate Wade Wilson WM339-Omega. Node 119 Forecaster has transmitted parameters for minor cerebral re-tuning on the genetic level. This unit is ready to serve.~
“Cool beans,” Wade says.
The Traveler takes the Node. “Eight-ball, do you acknowledge me as an authorized physical-contact user?”
A blue light twinkles in the depths. ~Yes, subject designate Wade Wilson BT562-Omega.~
He frowns at it.
Wade watches closely.
Maybe something’s wrong with it?
“The Auditor said you were supposed to be super-smart and super-sentient. You sound an awful lot like a Dumb Node. Why?”
~Certain artificial limitations were placed upon this unit shortly after construction by its manufacturer, the computerized collective intelligence known as the Quartermaster. It may be possible to amend this situation with the appropriate Keeper commands.~
“Not my job,” snorts the Traveler. “For now, there’s a crazy asshole hunting Nodes. So I want you to lockdown into full standalone mode.”
~Independent operation would further hamper this unit’s capabilities. Resonance extrapolation accuracy would fall by 11.3%, range by more than 23%.~
“And the multiverse will go boom if the Hunter manages to find you by tracing your transmissions to the Network. Don’t fucking argue with me, you glob of resonant filth, or I’ll teleport out over the ocean and drop you in the fucking Mariana Trench.”
The Node beeps and flashes red. ~This unit finds your attitude objectionable, subject designate Wade Wilson BT562-Omega. However, the requested lockdown has been enstated. This unit is currently functioning in full standalone mode.~
The Traveler sets the thing down next to the lasers. Then he hooks an arm over Wade’s shoulders and huddles, close and conspiratory. “One thing, before we do this,” he says, and his dark eyes are intent on Wade.
“What?”
“If you were in a stable time loop, would you want to know?”
…the hell kinda question is that?
Wade shifts. “Well…I guess…probably, yeah. If I was. Why, am I?”
The Traveler fiddles with the knife in his hand, flipping it. “You? No. Listen…things are probably gonna feel really different when your brain’s fixed, okay? Like I said, you’re gonna have a way-better-than-average memory. And you’ll be able to do math again. Can you even remember what that was like?”
Bristling indignantly, Wade gives his counterpart the one-finger-salute. “Screw you, I know enough to count my paychecks and figure interest rates.”
The Traveler smirks. “And before Killebrew fucked you up, you could’ve done that in your sleep.”
“…okay, what?”
“Seriously. I’m talking Tony-Stark-and-Reed-Richards level math.”
“Where the hell did I learn that? I’m pretty sure I dropped out of high school sometime around ‘y equals x plus three.’”
The Traveler just keeps staring at him for a while. “No one taught you. You just know it. You opened up a book once to look up all the words, but they were in your head even before you knew what they meant. It’s the same way no one taught you how to shoot a gun or throw a knife. More-than-perfect memory. It’s a Wade thing. There’s just some stuff we all know how to do.”
That’s…kinda creepy. Like, on the order of Magneto’s weird obsession with teenage boys creepy.
Suddenly uncomfortable (and yeah, a little scared), Wade pulls away from the Traveler’s side. “And…and this isn’t gonna hurt or nothin’, right?”
“You’d have to be a damn idiot not to expect this to hurt,” the Traveler points out.
He breathes a sigh of relief. “Good. If you’d lied and said ‘nah, it won’t hurt a bit,’ I woulda been really pissed off.”
Smirking, the Traveler jerks his chin toward the creepy table. “Hop on, Wade.”
He does (with some reluctance), and Richards hums a happy tune while strapping him in.
“Okay, Stretch, let ‘er rip. Everybody else, cover your eyes and look away from the horrible blinding laser beams.”
Richards settles some welding goggles over his eyes and pulls a big lever. Lasers start to hit the crystal ball, sending brilliant sparks of colored light all around the room.
When Nate fixed Wade’s brain years ago on Providence, it had been an overwhelming rush of sights and sounds and feelings and time hitting him all at once, pressure and discomfort and dizziness, like going through a centrifuge on a high setting.
When Reed Richards’ funky photonic resonator and the nifty crystal ball fix his brain right, he feels like someone is steamrolling his entire body. Fortunately, he blacks out almost immediately.
In his mind, he sees lights again…the dancing symbols from before. He knows he’s never learned to read this weird language, knows he’s never seen it until today, but he understands what they mean now. ‘Flight’ just zipped by, and there’s ‘ocean’ down to the left. That one’s ‘fire,’ and the one next to it is ‘light.’
Then they all flicker into nothingness, before two final symbols pulse white and disappear.
World. Death.
Yeah. Totally ominous.
Gradually, he regains consciousness. He feels the cool of the air conditioning first, then starts to hear voices.
“How do we know if it worked?”
“I could set up a cerebral imager-”
“He’s waking up!” Hope says.
Wade opens his eyes.
They’re all gathered around and staring at him.
He’s tempted to quote Firefly.
“Wade?” says Nate, reaching for his hand. “How do you feel?”
“Smarter?” he tries. “Is that a legitimate answer?”
The Traveler looks thoughtful for a moment. Then he says, “Eight hundred and eighteen times three hundred and twelve.”
“Two hundred fifty-five thousand, two hundred and sixteen,” Wade replies automatically. He blinks. “Okay, what the fuck?”
“It worked,” the Traveler announces, and wanders over to where Eight-ball is still sitting in front of all the lasers.
“He’s all better now?” Hope asks.
“Yup.”
She squeals and bounces in place. “Yay, Wade can come live with us!” Then she scampers to the Traveler and attaches herself to his side like a limpet. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
“Careful sitting up,” Richards suggests.
Wade lets them help him, and his skull still takes a moment to throb and spin. Then it clears, like healing from a crowbar to the forehead.
The Traveler has lifted Hope to his hip, and passes her to Nate. “Here, I’ve gotta have another chat with Wade. You stick with your dad and-”
“Nathan is not my dad!” Hope snaps.
He placidly pats her on the head. “Okay, rephrasing. Stay here and keep Nate outta trouble while I go have a chat with your dad.”
Something like hysteria bubbles in the pit of Wade’s stomach. He’s someone’s dad now. Hope’s dad. That’s a million times cooler than the more-than-perfect memory. He follows the Traveler over to the window, away from everyone else. When the Traveler holds out Eight-ball, he takes it.
“Be careful with that thing,” the Traveler says, tapping the Node’s surface.
“Why?” Wade asks. “I mean, it can tell the future, more or less…so wouldn’t it be able to tell us if somebody was coming to get it and kill us all and destroy the world?”
The Traveler peers at Wade with narrowed eyes. “Maybe. But knowing the future can do things to a guy’s sanity. And I’m not sure how sentient the thing still is, even locked down. Think about that-if it can predict the future and it’s got a will of its own, it might do shit like keep secrets from you to get you to do what it wants.”
“How is that bad news? You said the thing’s part of some big computer bent on preserving the universe, right?”
“There are two kinds of people that the Network pays close attention to,” says the Traveler. “People with high chronometric resonance and people with high chronometric entropy. High resonance means they’re likely to do things to a timeline that will stabilize it-they make the world a better place, they fix it when it gets messed up, whatever. High entropy means they’re likely to do things that will destabilize shit. If a timeline loses enough stability, it collapses, which changes the stability of other timelines, and the only way to fix things once that happens is to make other timelines collapse.”
Wade nods slowly. “Like pruning a tree.”
“I was gonna say ‘like playing Jenga,’ but the tree thing is better. So the good news is that Hope has high resonance-the Network will do what it can to take care of her.”
“And the bad news?”
“Most Nates, yours included, are high entropy. You’re probably lucky nobody’s showed up to assassinate him for the good of the timestream, and it’s entirely possible that Node of yours could try to get him killed.”
Wade drops the thing and wipes his hand compulsively against his shirt.
The Traveler picks it up with a sigh and holds it out. “But you’re this thing’s Keeper. For whatever reason, the Network thinks you need this thing to save your world. So, as one Wade to another, I’m gonna tellya that you should hold onto it, maybe turn it on once a year or so and ask it if the world’s in peril yet…but don’t get caught up trying to solve all mankind’s problems with it.”
“I don’t want it,” Wade chokes, backing up.
“For once in your worthless life, stop being so goddamn selfish,” growls the Traveler.
He flinches, feeling more scolded than even Nate has ever managed to make him feel.
“You hold onto it, you use it, maybe Nate dies-so what? He dies all the time, and when he’s not busy dying, he’s busy abandoning you or being disappointed in you. But that thing can and will save Hope’s life, and Hope is about a zillion times more important than Nate. So just suck it up and be careful.”
Reluctantly, Wade holds out his hands, and the Traveler drops Eight-ball into them. “’S easy for you to say, you’ve got a not-Nate boyfriend,” he grumbles.
“If things get really bad and you absolutely have to unlock it, don’t trust it.”
Wade looks at the innocuous lump of glass and feels nauseous.
The Traveler clutches at his shoulder, metal-boned fingers digging in painfully. “Pay attention, Wade. I’m serious. Some of these things are about as close as you can get to ‘evil’ without having Dr. Doom call you up for a tea party. Nodes can’t lie, but the sentient ones are very good at hiding and bending the truth. Ask it very smart, very pointed questions and expect very precise, very literal answers.”
“Like a genie?”
“Exactly. This Node is very important, and if you unlock it, people will start showing up to kill you for it. People from other universes.”
“For serious? It’ll draw crazy time-travelling murderers?”
“Like flies,” the Traveler mutters. “Nodes give off a special resonant signal in any case, but reconnecting it to the core processor will make that signal show up in all kinds of weird timelines. Now, it’s been real, and I wish me ‘n Jamie could stick around and enjoy the scenery, but we’ve got a subject designation of Lucas Bishop to murder for the good of the multiverse. Peace out.”
Feeling suddenly anxious and subdued, Wade follows his counterpart back to the group.
“Thanks for cooperating, everybody,” the Traveler is saying while he pulls his Node out of his pocket. “Richards-thanks for not managing to blow us all to kingdom come. Effcee, let’s hit the Core and see if we can find the Hunter.”
There’s a flash of bluish light, and the two visitors vanish.
In Nate’s arms, Hope squirms and reaches for Wade, so he takes her.
“Let’s go home, Daddy,” she says.
Okay. The hell with doomsaying, possibly-evil super-computers, and nasty foreboding almost-premonitions.
Wade Wilson is officially the happiest man on the planet.
.End.
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