A/N: This chapter consists of Joviana's notes.
Knowing what I know—that this reality is fiction somewhere else—I have to wonder about every story I ever read—every movie I ever saw, every TV show. Are they real somewhere else?
In Peter Pan, when Tinkerbelle is dying of poison that was meant for Peter, the writer appeals directly to all the children who are reading it, or having it read to them, to clap their hands, if they believe in fairies, and save her life.
How many generations of children have beaten their hands together until they stung, believing in their hearts it was true, afraid for poor Tink—even though they knew it was only a story? Five generations—six? Seven?
Is Tinkerbelle saved only once—or is she saved anew every time a child claps for her?
If she has to live it over and over again, does each time seem to her as if it were the first time, or is she aware that she will be saved at the very last moment?
And fairy tales—Sleeping Beauty, for example, used to be a much darker tale. When Prince Charming bestows a chaste kiss on her lips to wake her, is he aware that in the old, old versions of the tale, he took advantage of her in her sleep, raping her and leaving her pregnant with twins? Even that does not wake her. She gives birth to them in her sleep, and not until one of them, crawling over her in search of milk, sucks the needle out of her finger, does she wake.
Does he miss grunting out his lust between her thighs, as she keeps on dreaming?
Does Thor, who was a god, and is now just another superhero, miss his ribald, bloody, sweaty carousing, as cleaned up and antiseptic as he is now? Does he even remember it? Is he happy, or does he feel a vague sense of loss?
I don't understand how or why. All I can do is look at the results. The world I live in has artificial conditions imposed on it. There are superheroes here because somewhere else, a group of artists and writers made them up. Does that make Jack Kirby and Stan Lee God(s)? Where is God in this, anyway?
That's why Janet took that serum with those Pym particles in it, and became the Wasp.
And it gets weirder. Inside the costumed adventurer community, time distorts, because comic books are only published once a month—maybe every two weeks. Perhaps it's also because of the audience for whom these are intended—time has to distort to keep the superheroes from growing old. Nobody in our reality notices.
It isn't the wonderful thing people might imagine it would be—because horrible things happen to the people inside the community— rape, torture, death, insanity, mental agony—over and over again, and they have no way out, no choice but to speak the lines given them, not aware they have no free will, not knowing there is no such thing as chance.
Outside it, people are born, live and die normally—except for the ones who are in close contact with an adventurer on a regular basis—the girlfriend, the mother, the grouchy comic relief boss. They're caught in it, too.
Inside the costumed adventurer community, there are all sorts of technological advances—cars that fly, cold-fusion, cloning that turns out perfect adult specimens in weeks, artificial intelligence that rivals the human.
Outside, we still get by with gasoline powered clunkers, with fossil fuels that pollute, computers that crash on a daily, if not hourly, basis, and the one sheep that has been cloned started off as a lamb like any other, but died of old age while she was still abnormally young, because something in her cells knew what age the cell donor was supposed to be.
It's like an egg. Our world is all one world, like an egg is all one unit, but the yolk and white are separated by a transparent membrane. Here, the adventurer community is separated from the rest of reality, and the two just don't mix, unless something gets broken. Property damage in the millions, and nobody thinks it's an outrage.
From what I have gleaned in the letter pages and the editorials of these comics, this is deliberate. The world in which ordinary people live is meant to correspond with their reality—that's why we don't share in the advances of Tony Stark and Reed Richards. That's why the heroes weren't able to stop 9/11 from happening.
This is wrong. There shouldn't be one set of natural laws for one group of people, and a different one for another. Just because the Marvel creators' world is enduring global warming, depletion of fossil fuels, terrorism, and more—doesn't mean we should have to endure it, too—when the solutions are so close that they can be seen, if not touched.
But what am I going to do about it?
If I can make this world stop following the creator's world… If it doesn't resemble their reality or their stories, then we would be free.
I have to come with a way of getting technology over to my side of things, and—make them get real. Make them stop acting—and reacting—like superheroes and super villains.
How do I do that?
Go to Reed Richards and tell him he's really a fictional character, and if he wants to be real he has to give up being a superhero?
He'd just love that. Coming from me— the fat, plain, awkward, over-tall underachiever. That should be good for a laugh.
And, while I'm at it, tell him he needs to stop Saving The World, and focus instead on saving the planet, before it undergoes complete environmental destruction?
He'd just say he's already doing his bit for the planet, just read the latest issue of Popular Science.
Even if that didn't sound insane, he's a hero. The deck is stacked in his favor. He has to be getting some kind of positive reinforcement out of things as they are.
I suppose I could call Janet and apologize to her, and wheedle her into giving me a job—maybe as a personal assistant—. No, more likely I'd wind up helping to clean up the Avengers' mansion.
Besides, I remember Wonder Woman had a female sidekick—not a hero, but an ordinary girl, named Etta Candy. Even her name was a joke. She was plain, chubby, and clumsy, always getting into trouble and having to be rescued, always falling in love with the wrong men. That would cut just too close to home. I refuse to become Janet's Etta Candy. I won't degrade myself like that. It would make me sick.
No, convincing a hero won't work. If they had to leave off being costumed adventurers, then nobody would cheer them just for crossing the street. They would have to get real jobs, pay bills and wash dishes, deal with going to the dentist and doing their taxes. They would be just like everybody else.
I need to go over to the other camp—the super villains. They're the ones who would want things to be different, because the way the world works now, they always lose.
I could come up with a whole book of observations on how things always happen in certain ways—like how a rescue always comes in the nick of time, and that the hero always wins. Like the law of gravity…
I am going to compile enough inside information on the heroes—nothing harmful, but juicy stuff---and then I shall peddle it to all the super villains—only the major players, no two-bit wanna-bes— I can talk into seeing me.
My price will be—a job. Working for them.
Another question—where do I start?
I believe the key to changing the world lies in changing the Fantastic Four. It was their inception which made this world what it is—they are the foundations of the universe.
I cannot influence them directly, so I must do so through a proxy, and obliquely.
If I am right, any super villain would do--if handled correctly. But by far the best would be Doctor Doom—who is locked permanently into a losing battle with Reed Richards, and cannot see it. He is the most pathetic of them all—the most pathetic, because of all of them, he is the most human, with both good qualities and bad. He is vain, proud, stubborn, resentful, inclined to be vicious--.
Yet there is an innate nobility about him which shines through all of that. It has nothing to do with heredity, and everything to do with who he is as an individual—his history, the hardships he has endured, the struggle to climb out of poverty, powerlessness and obscurity, to become a honorable man, a capable administrator, and a good leader. He is a great man, and if he weren't trapped in this mess, like the lion of Aesop's fable was caught in the hunter's net, he would be greater still.
I admire him already—I would like very much to help—which would probably make him laugh. But it was a little mouse that freed Aesop's lion—by gnawing through the cords. Surely I can do at least as much for him.