Epilogue
I always have and likely always will connote passage of time on MT with 'real world' time (call it a side effect of hosting seasonal events or previous experience on websites where time meant literally nothing, hence my usage of actual time markers in the post below.
With Ronny gone, Karl Jak stumbled ahead into the dark. Somewhere further down this new passage, Deadpool could be heard loudly traversing a path for his companion. “What’s up there, Mr. Wilson?” The producer spoke in hushed tones as he pressed a hand against his hip and hustled to catch up to the eccentric mercenary.
“Whole lot of nothing?” Deadpool quipped as he could be heard smacking his palms against a few spots.
“One of these has to be a pressure plate, right? I mean… the two of us should have enough plot armor that we should be able to find a— ah-ha!”
Karl winced as some light flooded into the corridor from a split in the wall. By the time he had caught up to Deadpool, the split had become a gap wide enough for both of the svelte men to slip through.
“By all means,” Deadpool waved Karl through the opening first. With his wounds, it wasn’t an altogether pleasant experience, but the man in the ravaged purple attire managed to slip onto the other side of the wall.
“You’re next,” he replied as both heard the sudden crash of tumbling stone and the shriek of the monstrous entity who had been pursuing them. Without a second thought, Deadpool had taken hold of his side of the wall and was pulling it closed. “What are you doing? There’s time!”
The mercenary paused to wink at the producer.
“We both know that no one wants to keep reading (or typing) – this red text, mon amour. But don’t you fret … being runner-up to you is the best a boy could ask for.”
With an echoing thud, the wall slid shut in front of Karl Jak, and as it did, the hallway away him light up as recessed light fixtures flickered to life. Holding a forearm over his face to partially shield his eyes, Karl took small steps forward while he waited for his vision to fully adjust. By the time his sight was functioning as it should, the man had made his way up to a slightly ajar ‘door’ in the sandstone structure.
“I don’t see a fire escape sign,” Karl muttered before glancing over his shoulder. The man frowned softly when he realized that he was the only one left. Most audiences would have probably looked at the situation and appreciate the irony that the host of the ‘murder events’ found himself alone at the end of a real life equivalent. To Karl, however, he had walked this pathway before, in the aftermath of Central City’s near razing at the hands of the Red Stallions. Even a few lifetimes removed from that experience, he'd never forgot the feeling he felt wandering the refugee camps and gradually learning that most of the people he’d worked with were dead.
Stumbling through door, Karl immediately lost his balance and collapsed to the floor just as the automatic lights in the chamber flickered to life. With his hands and knees freshly scraped open, the producer spent a moment trying to catch his breath as he watched the grime- and blood-stained sweat drip from his hunched over head.
“Seen better days,” Karl reassured himself as he lifted his head and found himself nearly face to face with an embalmed corpse resting on a weathered throne. “Lovely,” the producer muttered as he shakily shambled up to a fully vertical position and started to hobble his way toward the body.
As Karl neared the figure, his attention was drawn to the myriad symbols that decorated this chamber. Even more so than in previous passages and corridors in the temple complex, the iconography seemed barely decipherable. In another time, Karl would have likely been able to think up a means to translate, but that was a lifetime ago.
With his mind drifting a little, the producer was nearly jolted out of his skin when the corpse’s eyes opened, and the seated figure leaned forward in his throne. “Hello, Karl Jak. I had wondered if you would make it down here.”
In his careers, Karl had seen a lot, so once that initial startle subsided, it wasn’t too much of an unnerving situation to find himself talking to a mummified corpse. “Hello,” the producer muttered as he corrected his posture and stared into the blue eyes of the animated body. “I don’t know if anyone has told you this before, but you look terrible.”
The seated figure shook his head. “I have spent so much of my remaining strength influencing the will of that masked madman in your retinue.” As the mummy shifted, Karl noted that his form was shackled into the throne he sat upon. “There are things I wish to tell you before this shell is expired.”
“Where are we?” Karl asked.
“You are in a region of the cosmos called the Crossroads,” the mummy replied. “A colloquial name, but one whose meaning aligns well with the reality of this place. This … region is home to diverse Worlds and countless cultures and peoples. Eight Worlds exist, and at their heart are Eight Arbiters.”
“Glad to hear it,” the producer replied as he spied a handful of hieroglyphs that looked more akin to traditional cave drawings.
“What you are attempting to subtly glance at is a depiction the Ninth Arbiter.”
Karl noted that the etchings seemed to depict nine small individuals assembled against a larger shape that seemed to be … on fire? Twinkling? It was hard to tell for a man who made his money in television and business. “There are ten figures.”
“There are ten Arbiters,” the desiccated figure had a short coughing fit. “Eons ago, at the birth of the Crossroads, the Ninth Arbiter looked with scorn upon the others, who used their gifts to shape Worlds and breath life into what was an otherwise empty stretch of infinity. In crafting these places, the Arbiters in turn developed a symbiotic relationship with their creations. The will of the Arbiters breaths life, but it is the will of their creations that sustains this life force. Here, beyond the veil of the Crossroads, life flourished.
“The Ninth Arbiter was, by its very nature, a hostile entity. It looked derisively upon the others and attempted to manipulate and subvert their creations, but in doing so, its strength eventually waned. In the end, it fell into the Unmaking.”
The producer frowned. “The what?”
“The opposite of life,” the mummy wheezed. “If the creation of life and the realms of the Crossroads is breathing life from nothing, the Unmaking is the natural opposite of that. Darkness. Desolation. Unlife.”
“It’s always cosmic space gods,” Karl whispered softly. Whether they be kais or something else, there was also something that pulled the puppet strings. “I appreciate the story,” he muttered to the figure. “But I’m not sure where you’re trying to go with this story.”
The mummy’s toothless mouth curled into what seemed to be a faint smile. “I said there were ten Arbiters.”
A man who, by his very nature, was the architect of manufactured drama and televised storylines, Karl Jak had gotten fairly adept at telegraphing twists and turns, and even after who knows how many days of survival mode, that part of his soul remained wholly intact. “And you are the tenth.”
The mummy nodded. “The others failed to see the danger after the Ninth had been Unmade. They failed to realize that, rather than dissipating into that great nothing, the Ninth became reborn within it… The Ninth Arbiter fell into that great darkness of unlife and became the very personification of it. Over the eons, the others started to grow complacent… and the spark of life started to fade across the Worlds of the Crossroads, and as that spark fizzled, the balances started to tilt. The Fallen Arbiter started to grow stronger in the dark, death of space.”
Karl simply nodded his head.
“I saw what was happening eons ago,” the mummy lamented. “I saw the first glimpses of the unmaking made flesh … you recall the horrors that chased you to this place?”
“The ones that murdered everyone?” Karl stated. “Yes, I couldn’t have missed those if I tried.”
“They are but a taste of the Fallen Arbiter’s corrupting and destructive influence. I have tried… in vain, to prevent what is to come,” the figure continued. “The others have gone silent, or perhaps worse, they exist in denial of what has festered in the shadows around them. Some even dream as the nightmare closes in around us. The others have, for their own reasons, refused to see what has grown angry, bitter, and strong among the graveyard of their progenies, and I fear we are long beyond the point of no return…
“Once, I was a regal king, and my people and I strode proudly among the stars. The others called me restless, because I chose to roam the Crossroads, but it was because of this that I saw the signs. I saw the horrors first-hand, and I have spent untold eons and sacrificed everything to prevent the Fallen Arbiter from resurfacing. I have tried so hard to prevent the veil, which has been probed and poked, from being torn asunder. The last of my people died…” the mummy paused, and his gaze seemed to wander for a moment. While his body was mostly ravaged, the eyes of this pitiful entity conveyed an ocean of sorrow. “They perished so long ago, but I carry them and their ancestors with me,” the Arbiter touched his chest.
“I understand,” Karl replied in a hushed whisper as he saw young Kevin die before his eyes twice. Even thought he had lost the quasi-divinity he’d experience within the old verse, Karl didn’t need to be anything more than an ordinary man to feel that pain and humiliation.”
“Everyone has their reasons for their sacrifices,” the mummy spoke as Karl’s focus was pulled back to him. “My people, much like yours, had their reasons. I took their sacrifices and endured, but there are limits. My World, as you may have experienced, is eroded and crumbled, and the darkness has rooted here. I have entombed myself… embedded myself, into this last shard of Osgiliath and goaded… taunted the unmaking to take me.”
“Why?”
The mummy frowned. “It was the … only remaining option, Karl Jak. Without the support of the other Arbiters, and with my people and World drained of life, there was little else for me to do but pull the focus of the great shadow. If it spent eons digesting me than that is time it might otherwise not have to ensnare the others.”
Karl looked around. “I think you’re out of time,” he remarked as his mind drifted to the screaming, skittering monstrosity that had slain the others.
“I know,” the mummy whispered. “I have had his whispers in my thoughts for lifetimes already. He has sought to break my will… to make me willing join him in the black.”
“The Fallen Arbiter?”
“He is close and soon he will be made manifest,” the Arbiter muttered. “And the others are so very susceptible… I fear they will be quickly overcome. Many of them may still slumber or laze about, even as their Worlds have stagnated.”
“They sound like they deserve what’s to come.”
The mummy shook his head. “They don’t know any better. You cannot fault the stars for shining, and you cannot fault them for believing that the Cycle cannot change. I should have been more forceful… I myself am guilty of not innovating… of not thinking outside the box. Our collective hubris has let the darkness breach the veil.”
“So why the charade?” Karl asked. “You said you’ve been in Wade’s head to try and guide us here.”
“Guide
you here,” the Arbiter wheezed as leaned his withered, shackled husk of a body and drew a broken sword from a compartment behind his throne. “My strength is nearly gone, but the Fallen Arbiter is not immune to same hubris that his peers suffer. He believes he had me trapped in here, but he will not have me.”
“I don’t understand,” the man remarked.
The mummy extended the weapon, which consisted of a handle and about eight inches of broken blade. “Strike me down.”
Karl took the sword without breaking his gaze from the desiccated form. “You’re asking me to euthanize you?”
“This vessel is nearly gone,” the Arbiter spoke in a tone that felt somehow shifted from the way he had spoken previously. “When the last of our strength ebbs, the Unmaking will have us both. We cannot allow that. The spark must endure. I cannot allow myself or the Arbiter to fall to corruption. Time has come to start anew. You were the only one who could have served as a vessel… you are the only one who could carry this burden.”
“That makes no sense,” Karl wheezed as he felt fresh pain in his chest. “I have no interest in being the joy ride for a cosmic space god.”
“Without our spark, you will die down here, Karl Jak,” the mummy coughed. “And you denigrate what it means to be connected? You, who yearns so desperately to be accepted, to be appreciated? You who crafted the death from memories and rainbows? You are the only one who could understand the burden we have born over the countless eons. Only you, who were so desperate to not be alone that you once took your own life.”
“How do you—”
“Would you rather die once more of your own accord?”
“I’m just a glorified showman!” Karl shouted.
“If you think that, you’re much dumber than I thought,” the mummy rasped. “The dark is coming, Karl Jak. Will you confront the dark side or will you exit stage left? Will you relegate your people, like mine, to the nothing? Because you were too afraid of what could be?”
“No.”
“Then strike me down, you coward!”
Karl stepped forward and jammed the broken blade into the chest of the mummified man.[/COLOR][/COLOR]
***
Wade Wilson, his eyes still glued to the unmoving ‘corpse’ of the corruption, wheezed as he pressed a hand to the gouging stab wounds in his abdomen. Despite his ability to heal, he nevertheless experienced pain and discomfort like most people, but this was an agony that had no comparison. The fact that his body was no longer healing itself only added to the mercenary’s unease as he watched the shadow monster start to move.
“We had a good run, Baron…” the madman coughed as he tried to shimmy himself backwards toward the wall as the formerly dazed beast slowly regained its bearings.
“No, no… don’t cry for me. You can still win that grand championship. It just… won’t be with this daft old face … No, no, it’s too late for schemes.” The monster screeched and shrieked as it started to bore down on the injured mercenary, who sagged down to the floor against the wall.
“Before I go… I just want to tell you that you were fantastic.” Deadpool smiled softly.
“And you know what? So was I.”
As the darkness crushed down around him, there was a fleeting moment where Deadpool felt the cold, smothering embrace of infinity.
And then – just like that – there was a rumble and a thunderclap.
With a screech, the darkness was ripped to shreds in a brilliant deluge of light.
Eyes still pressed shut, it took Wade Wilson until a count of ten for him to slowly open his eyes. Once he had, he found that the hallway was not only wholly illuminated, but he saw a fully be-suited Karl Jak standing, hand outstretched toward him.
“What are you waiting for, Mr. Wilson?” Karl asked as the unnatural glimmer in the producer’s eyes faded. “Or would you prefer to die down here?”
Deadpool smiled, but for once in his trans-dimensional existence, words didn’t come easy to the mercenary, who accepted the help to his feet.
“You really pulled out
that speech?” Karl asked.
The mercenary pointed to the roof.
“You gotta play to your foster author every now and again, right?”
Karl rolled his eyes. “We’re leaving.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice.”
***
The camp was a slaughterhouse.
“They’re all dead,” Deadpool astutely observed as he nudged the corpse of Tommy Oliver with his boot.
The man in the immaculate purple suit shook his head. “No, not today,” he remarked as he crouched down over the dead teenager. “Not. Today.”
Deadpool tilted his head as he observed the look in Karl’s face as the man glared down at the dead body. Even though he had about a half dozen comments brewing in his erratic brain space, the mercenary got none of them out into the world before Tommy let out a gasp and sat up off the ground.
Gasping for breath, Tommy eventually managed to calm himself down. “What happened?” He whispered as he looked down and saw that he was holding a large, star-shaped stone in his hand.
“Keep that,” Karl replied. “You never know when you might need it.”
Before Tommy could respond, a shadow fell over the trio, and Deadpool let out a yelp as he slipped into a crouch behind Karl Jak.
“It’s our rescue,” the producer calmly muttered as the frigate started its descent. “I’ll need your help loading up the bodies, Wade. I need to salvage what I can from the Ark.”
“Why me?” Deadpool groaned.
“Why can’t the teenager with attitude do it?”
“Because he’s already gone.”
Deapdool frowned, but then he looked over and saw that Tommy Oliver had vanished.
“Did he run off? Was he a legit ninja kung fu master?”
“He’s safe,” Karl chuckled. “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.” As the frigate descended onto the surface of the cursed planetoid, the producer smiled faintly.
***
As Karl Jak, Wade Wilson, and the corpses of a few dozen Syntech employees were being loaded aboard the shipping frigate, something dark and vile seethed in the furthest reaches of the Crossroads. Far from the shipping lanes. Far from the travel limits of even the bravest of space captains. Far from the life and vigor of the Crossroads, a great seething miasma coated the cosmos. Skittering beasts darted too and fro across what might seem—to the naïve astronomer—like a nearly black nebula. Asteroids and chunks of vessels who had gone beyond safe travel lanes seemed to drift, their surfaces seething with oily corruption.
At the heart of this dark nebula, something seismic seemed to shudder. Deep in those bleak, desolate crevices of space-time, a great darkness festered. A grey-skinned fist manifested among that hellish ether as something twisted and terrifying started to laugh in the cold void of space.
***
December 2019
Karl Jak sat in the silence of a small, unimposing den. The small structure around him had been one of the first constructions on the site, which would eventually house Syntech upper management and guests. For the moment, the only completed building was a temporary one that gave people a space to escape to nap, shower, or eat.
A knock came at the door.
“It’s open,” Karl replied as one of the younger employees from Operations poked his head through the door. “Hello, Kevin.”
“Good afternoon, Mr. Jak,” Kevin replied as he stood up a little straighter and tried to fix his slightly unkempt head of red hair.
“You can relax, Kevin,” Karl retorted. “You’ve been my employee for years.” The CEO left out the part where Kevin had been torn to pieces and devoured by a screaming, unmade monster a few months ago.
“I know, Sir,” Kevin replied. “It’s just been a weird couple of months, that’s all. Things are still blurry.”
Karl nodded. “An unfortunate side effect of arriving here,” he remarked, conveniently leaving out the fact that he’d tried to make sure none of the previously dead had to live with the memories of their final moments on ‘the planetoid’. “What brings you here today?”
“My manager wanted me to send these reports over to you,” Kevin remarked as he produced a messenger bag and retrieved a three-ringer binder. “A lot of it is just ‘routine operations business’, but there are also some reports from other divisions near the end there.”
After accepting the binder, Karl leafed through some of the contents en route to the information that was likely at the back. Before he reached that section, he glanced up and smiled at the young man. “You put this together like this, didn’t you?” Kevin remained wordless, but there was a small tinge of red across his cheeks. “I know your manager, and he’s not this organized and details-oriented.”
“Thank you, Sir.”
“Care to summarize the field reports for me, Kevin?” Karl asked out of the blue.
“Uh, I…”
“You read them, didn’t you?”
“Well only for the purpose of indexing them for your later ease of access, Sir.”
“I’m just your boss, Kevin, not your commanding officer.”
“Sorry, Boss,” the young man replied as the point of Karl’s statement seemingly went high over his red head of hair. “I didn’t realize we had such an extensive network of off-home employees, especially so many that don’t seem to appear on public payroll.”
Karl laughed. “Some people have a job to not be found, Kevin.”
“May I ask a question?”
“Of course,” the CEO remarked. “I like to imagine that I’m approachable.”
“What are Arbiters and why do we have so much manpower looking for them?”
At that, Karl frowned a little. It wasn’t, like Kevin likely inferred, that he was upset by the question, but it was just the reality that their efforts had met little results. Karl knew they were running out of time, and while he had rough feelings where the Arbiters were and what they looked like, his crews had had little luck tracking them down, with one or two exceptions.
“They’re very important individuals on their Worlds,” Karl remarked.
“But so many of them barely seem to exist. It reads like you’re having those field crews chasing legends and historical figures.”
“It might feel that way.” Karl flipped through the pages of the dossier. His crews had found Cid Highwind with relative ease, and they had even spotted the Arbiter of Mesa Roja on a few occasions. Markov was a tougher nut to crack, because there was so much noise and suspicion within the city. Over the last weeks, Karl had also heard that his ‘pirate operatives’ had gotten leads on the location of the Dutchman, the legendary ship said to be helmed by Davy Jones. Erde, Kraw, and Inverxe had all been extremely difficult for different reasons, but progress was being made. Nostalgia was its own can of worms, because the World hadn’t existed in its current state before the tenth Arbiter had gotten locked into his downward death spiral with the Unmaking. “But they exist. We just have to keep looking. I know they’re out there.”
“How?”
“Intuition,” Karl replied, even though the correct answer would have literally been ‘because I feel them’.
“Well, I hope we find them, Boss, it seems important to you.”
Karl smiled. “Yes, yes, it is, Kevin.” More than that, they were running out of time. If Karl could
feel the Fallen Arbiter in his gut… why couldn’t the others?”
The words of the mummified Arbiter rang all the more true.
But Karl was running out of time to break into the tombs of the Arbiters and stir them from their ‘slumber’.
A ringing from his pocket. After waving Kevin out of the room, Karl pressed the button and held the mobile up to his ear. “Go for Karl.”
“Hello, Mr. Jak.” The speaker was one of the foreman at the construction site. “I know you’re a busy man and all, but you might want to come see this Salvage crews found some stuff they think you’ll get a kick out of.”
With a faint smile, Karl nodded his head. “I’ll be over in twenty.”
***
Mid-August 2020
Karl sighed as he clicked off the projector.
A gentle knock followed at the door of his study a few moments later.
“Who is it?” The CEO asked as he quickly dabbed away the wetness from the corners of his eyes.
“It’s Kevin.” A lingering silence followed. “UHh, your PA, Boss? May I come in?”
“Yes, of course,” Karl replied as he slid the projecting hardware into the corner of his study and slipped into his reading chair as the door creaked open. “What can I do for you, Kevin?”
“I just wanted to see if you had found what you were looking for in those reconstructed files, Mr. Jak? You’ve been locked up here in your personal suite for what feels like a week, so some members of upper management were getting concerned.”
Ignoring the question, Karl asked one of his own. “Did they report back from Opealon yet?”
Kevin nodded his head. “The pirate? Yes, we’ve verified that he’s … intact, Sir. As intact as one can be when you’re a squid sailor.”
“Mesa?”
“That’s the trucker lady, right?” Kevin waited to get a nod from his boss. “We verified her status about thirty-six hours ago.”
“So just Cid?”
“Reports are still pending, but it would seem that the, uh… the darkness.”
“Darkseid,” Karl muttered.
“It would seem that the Darkseid targeted Govermorne himself and personally undid—
“Unmade.”
“Yea, uhh, personally unmade the place. We’ve got field ops trying to get in touch with refugees, and our tech people are busy combining the Medium for any traces of recordings or audio from Govermorne in the moments leading up to its fall. We’ve also got reports of entities with similar profiles to what you encountered on the planetoid popping up on all Worlds, and—”
Someone came stumbling into the office. “It’s bad, Sir!”
Karl scowled. “Don’t keep us waiting.”
“We have reports coming in that Markov is under siege.”
“That doesn’t sound out of the ordinary,” Kevin remarked as he reached into his messenger bag and pulled out a file folder. “Markov has an extensive history of getting.”
“Let him finish, Kevin,” Karl muttered as he held up a hand to silent his overeager assistant. “What’s going on, Stevens?”
Having had some time to collect himself after his long dash up to the CEO’s suite, Stevens was able to breathe a little smoother as he explained the situation. “It’s an army of the unmade, Sir. They’re being supported by something that matches those energy signatures you programmed into the systems.”
“Ember,” Karl scowled. “That’s two… two in the span of a few days,” he turned back to Kevin. “Are you sure you’ve had verified reports of the others since the fall of Govermorne?”
Kevin nodded. “Yes, our field representatives were able to track and verify everything. We had Ember triangulated to a region in the mountains just forty-eight hours ago… there was nothing wrong at that time. If Darkseid was there, it was recently.”
“He must have done something,” Karl whispered, more to himself than the two workers. “He must have already found out a way to mask himself.”
“He probably didn’t appreciate you launching a tactical warhead into Govermorne space, Boss.”
Karl laughed. “That was just a greeting,” he remarked. “It will take more than munitions to uproot this corruption.”
“What should we do about Markov, Boss?”
The man in the suit frowned as he walked over the window of his study and stared out across the majority of Syntech’s executive campus. “What do we have to spare?”
“Little,” the answer came from Stevens. “R&D hasn’t had time to ramp up production. We’re just a few days removed from the event concluding, Sir.”
Karl squeezed his hand into a fist and scowled toward the stars. He turned to face the pair after taking some time with his thoughts. “Get in touch with our operatives across the Markov. Tell them we’re going to send them all the surplus MREs and survival supplies from the last event.”
“That’s pretty forward thinking of you, Boss,” Kevin commented as he started to compose emails on his tablet.
“We need to bet on Markov to hold the line, because if they don’t …” Karl trailed off without finishing that thought. Neither Kevin or Stevens needed the grim reality spelled out for them, so they simply stood and waited for their boss to speak once more. “They have good people down there, even if the whole place is a bit… bleak and miserable for my tastes.”
“That’s it, Boss?”
“Have someone keep an eye on Major Mustang.”
“The guy from the event?”
“Did I stutter?”
“Not at all.”
“Dismissed.”
As Kevin and Stevens left, Karl let his knuckles slowly unclench as he let a long breath out and made it back to his desk. Sitting down, his eyes caught the glimmer of something high up on his bookshelf, and with a faint smile, he glanced up to see the broken sword glinting in the light of the setting sun.
***
October 2020
“It’s been such a pleasure to have ye here in Arcadia over the last few days, Mister Jak,” the duck spoke in his distinct accent as he escorted his visitor from the royal court. “The young king will soon come of age, and I can only hope he will continue to listen to the wise counsel of his advisors.”
Karl nodded his head. “I am inclined to agree, and please, Scrooge, I’ve told you countless times to just call me ‘Karl’.”
The duck chuckled—a smirk-inducing fit of quacks that had never failed to entertain Karl over the duration of his trip. “I’m an old timer, so you’ll have to beg mah pardon once again.”
“Of course.” The pair rounded a corridor, and after a succession of quick turns, the Syntech CEO realized that they were charting a course away from the quarters where they royal family housed its visitors. “Where are we going, Scrooge? I trust you’re not tricking me into another one of those seedy brothels again, are you?”
Scrooge paused and laughed, his cane working overtime to keep the duck from tilting over. “It innit mah fault you can’t keep up with me!”
“I let you win,” Karl chuckled.
“I know yer a busy man.” Scrooge immediately started to continue his waddle toward parts unknown, leaving Karl to simply trust that the second-richest individual in the Crossroads wasn’t leading him to his doom. “But I have someone I’d like for you to meet.”
“Again, I hope this isn’t someone with shady ethics,” Karl ribbed. “Kai knows I’ve had my fair share of that from you.”
The duck stifled another laugh as he paused next to a seemingly nondescript steel door and gave it a rhythmic rap with the top of his cane. When the door thumped back a few moments later, Scrooge smiled as the entryway unlocked.
Karl Jak followed Scrooge McDuck into what seemed to be an unused bar. Sitting at the far end of the counter, an older woman in full military regalia sipped on whiskey.
“Karl,” Scrooge spoke as he waddled down to the bar and hopped into a stool on the far side of the woman. “This is General Leia Organa. Leia, this is Karl Jak, from Syntech Corporation.”
The woman had little subtly, so the producer was keen to notice the slight crinkle of her features when she heard the name of his company. “The blood sport guy. What a pleasure.”
Scrooge let out an audible groan as he finished pouring himself a scotch and proceeded to top off Leia’s drink. “Ye would be the first tah tell me that there’s more to someone than what meets the eye, Lassie.”
Dropping down onto the stool next to Leia, Karl first scooped up a bottle of cabernet from the back of the bar, and then he flashed the woman his brightest smile. “Yes, General Leia, the space woman. I heard all about your operation. You and your people did such a great job responding to the situation on Cevanti earlier this year.”
Leia bristled. “We had barely been in operation for a week.”
Scrooge took a long sip. “She doesn’t want to say it, but her equipment is outdated.”
The woman twisted to face the duck, who didn’t flinch in the face of an otherwise withering stare.
“Her pilots are still green. Her ships are in disrepair. Even if she wanted to confront Darkseid, it would be a suicide mission.”
“Would you like to air all my faults, Scrooge?” Leia retorted as the Duck smiled from the top of his scotch glass.
“Mr. Jak, you have mentioned in our previous conversations that you wish you had more eyes in the skies, right?” Karl simply nodded as he sipped the cabernet. “And General, let us be frank, you require more money than you will ever make from charity. I brought the three of us together, because I believe we can come to an understanding that will help us to all meet our goals in the coming years.”
Karl shook his head even as a laugh spread across his face. “Always one for the theatrics and the backroom deal-making, Duck.”
A chortle and a fit of bubbles from the tall glass of scotch.
Leia turned back to Karl and gave him the once-over before taking a sip from her whiskey. “What skin do you have in this game, Mr. TV?”
The producer winked. “More than you can imagine.”
***
May 2021
“Are you sure you really want to go ahead with your plans for this event, Boss?” Kevin asked as he once again found himself in Karl Jak’s private study. “You’re certain that the containment will work on the planetoid? It hasn’t necessarily been kind to our work crews over the last year.”
The producer nodded his head. “You worry too much, Kevin. The entire place has been terraformed, anyway, so you needn’t be concerned. It’s a nominal unmade presence. Or, at the very least, it’s one that we can control.”
“Nothing in our labs seems to imply that these things can be controlled,” Kevin muttered. “The only evidence we have for your theory is a trans-dimensional organism that has been, by its very nature, impossible to control, let along study or understand. More than that, the individuals we’ve collected have been nigh impossible to properly manage.”
“We’ll dispose of everything after wards,” Karl spoke. “The risks are worth it. People need to see the dangers of the Unmaking. Govermorne has been a memory for nearly a year. Even though the walls of Markov are still being repaired, you have people far and wide who don’t understand the present danger.”
“And you’re sure this is the best way to get this message across to the wider Crossroads?”
“It’s probably the only way,” Karl laughed. “Most people don’t watch local news, but they tune into reruns of Dante’s Abyss every time we run the marathons, even for the old events.”
“Yea, that saiyan with the dumb hair and the goofy name remains very popular in many key demographics.”
Karl snickered. “The eternal nature of ‘being xtreme’ aside, Kevin, we need to make sure this is our biggest production yet. I want at least to double the audience from last year.”
“And you still want to run the R&D project trials simultaneously?”
“Yes.”
“Even though it will create a danger for the contestants?”
“They know the risks when they sign on the dotted line.”
“I’ll make sure Ronny triple-checks all the clauses on the contracts this year.”
“Thank you, Kevin,” Karl spoke as he waved away his PA and turned to a diorama laid out atop his coffee table. Kevin, who had spotted the crude construct on a few occasions over the last few weeks, believed it was supposed to be Opealon if you drained away all the water. The one time he had asked the question, his boss had simply told him that ‘this makes it easier to visual things.’
With Kevin gone, Karl frowned as he tried to see something in the model he had made. Something wasn’t right on Opealon. The Arbiter there had once again grown silent, and no one from Syntech’s field office in the City of Hope or the detachment stationed at Kirden Wharf had managed to corroborate any of Karl’s feelings in the matter.
The Fallen Arbiter would not remain idle. Karl Jak knew this, but aside from monitoring the unmaking across the Worlds and funneling money to ventures like the ARK, there were limits to what he could achieve. The corruption was erratic. One month, it would surge somewhere, and another month, it would seem to be concentrating elsewhere. Without an algorithm or some piece of technology to make accurate predictions, he was relying on his gut more than anything else.
In the corner of the study, a phone rang.
“Go for Karl,” the man responded after picking up the receiver.
“Hello, Mr. Jak, this is Kyle Gables.”
“You’re the … accountant for our field office in Markov, yes?” It was a rhetorical question. After all, Karl knew the name, position, face, and life story of every solitary Syntech employee. “What can I help you with today, Mr. Gables?”
“I’m sorry it’s me calling and not someone else, Sir, but we’ll be sending over some information. There are some rumors that the Kingdom may have managed to track the locations of the Fade’s lieutenants. The theory is that these two might carry the means or know the location of the Fade. Our ‘information’ on this topic is very reliable.”
Karl nodded his head. Ever since the siege, it had been impossible for anyone to locate Cevanti’s corrupted Arbiter. “Pass the information along when it’s convenient.”
“Understood, Sir. Take care.”
After putting the phone back on its hook, Karl paused for a few moments before making his way back to his desk. On a sticky note, he scrambled a simple memo to himself that read:
‘Ask R&D about JX progress – Cevanti??’
The Unmaking and its monstrous leader/embodiment would not rest until life was extinguished across the Crossroads. Karl glanced over to another one of his bookshelves and noted the number of other projects from the last year. Even if Darkseid couldn’t be stopped, the producer wouldn’t rest until he’d thrown everything
and his great cache of kitchen sinks at the bastard.
Karl glanced up at the relic on the shelf. While it was part of him by proxy, it sat high up there as a terrible memento to lost time and failure to innovate.
Karl Jak was many things, but he was no simpleton. You don’t become the number one rated television serial across three dimensions without having some spark of ingenuity.