Humanity, Part 2
- - - October 11th - - -
Jim Lockhart resisted the impulse to open his eyes.
He should not be alive. Well, he had never truly been alive, but he had tried his best to put an end to his sorrowful existence. Why was he waking up at all?
How many others had perished?
Had Morrow's plan succeeded, had Red Volcano brought forth the Armageddon? Would he find himself within a wounded world, shrouded in ash and debris?
His half-conscious queries were answered by a near-overwhelming rush of sensory information. The filters in his nose could detect no dust particles that would have qualified as ashes. The room was well-oxygenated, with traces of copper dust and aromatic hydrocarbons which his olfactory sensors – since when did he have olfactory sensors? - identified as traces of motor-oil, gasoline and a polishing agent, the typical workshop smells strangely intermixed with a more human smell of soap with a hint of vanilla. The ambient temperature was a comfortable 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Tactile sensors in his back and limbs told him that he was lying on a work bench. The sensitive audio receivers in his ears picked the soft hum of an efficient ventilation system, the faint pulsation of a cooling pump, and a rustling movement near his head.
"Good afternoon, Doctor Lockhart", a female voice greeted him. "Please remain calm. You are safe and free now. You might find yourself in an unfamiliar body and surrounding, but please do not panic. We are here to help you."
Very slowly, Jim opened his eyes.
He was lying in a spacious, window-less workshop, its earthen walls lined with shelves full of mechanical and electrical equipment. Next to him stood a young, brown-haired woman in a blue woollen dress, smiling reassuringly. Behind her loomed the red metal hull of his brother Red Tornado.
The scene was vibrant with colours. He had never been able to discern so many shades so clearly.
Yet he still recognized those Earthen walls. He was back at the caves of Mount Justice, which he had been forced to invade before.
"The boys?", he attempted to ask. The male voice that intoned his words sounded completely unfamiliar.
"Robin, Kid Flash and Superboy have suffered no lasting injuries", Red Tornado replied. "The same holds true for their mentors and the other Justice League members who participated in the extraction mission."
"Oh, good." He had not dared to hope for the League's victory, lest alone for the kids' survival.
"Why am I not dead?" He clearly remembered changing the blaster's power setting to 'fry'.
"The android version of our maker has upgraded our hardware, after you and our sister were temporarily disabled by a weak electromagnetic pulse at Mount Justice. He was unable to render us completely immune to similar attacks, yet he did protect our central processors and memory cores from all EMP-induced damage from that specific frequency."
What a shame.
"The android Morrow was defeated in his laboratory, two days ago. He chose to activate an emergency protocol to delete his mind, thereby ending his existence. Red Volcano and Red Inferno were merely deactivated, yet the League has voted against reactivating them in the foreseeable future."
"I am glad to hear that." Poor Danette deserved to rest in peace, at last.
Jim could think of only one reason why Tornado had bothered with waking him up again, that sentimental fool.
"You have my consent, brother", he offered softly, closing his eyes once more. "I fully consent to permanent deactivation. Please shut me down and delete my mind as well."
"I will not deny you that option, if it is truly your desire", Tornado admitted. "Yet I implore you to consider your alternatives first. I would like to offer you..."
"I am not working for the League", Jim stated firmly, his eyes flashing open once more. "I don't want any job offers from you. I am done with all that superhero business."
And he truly was. For the first time in his existence, he felt that the lingering sense of failure had abated. His former prime directive, infiltrating the American superheroes, had finally lost its hold over him.
"I would like to offer you that body", Red Tornado finished his sentence calmly. "I have constructed it myself, with the aim of blending in better with human society."
For the first time since his reactivation, Jim Lockhart looked down at himself.
He looked human. Most of his corpus was hidden in a grey suit, but the proportions were well-balanced, muscular but not imposing, and his hands… In awe, he traced his nimble, slender fingers across his suit's well-spun fabric. He could feel how soft it was! His fingertips were strutted with tactile sensors of incredible sensitivity. With fingers such as this, he would be able to thread a suture needle without looking at it at all...
The young woman handed him a looking glass, still smiling encouragingly.
The bald face reflected in the mirror looked just as astonished as Jim felt. His eyebrows were raised, his lips slightly parted, his eyes full of wonder. Never before had he been able to express himself like this. He closed his mouth, flared his nostrils experimentally, blinked, then smiled – a true smile, not the dry, lifeless grimace that had alienated his former colleagues at the hospital…
"You built this?"
"Indeed. It lacks some features of your original body – it is not able to process food, for example. And I have not yet outfitted it with your hydromagnetic abilities, although that is easy to fix…"
For the first time since his reactivation, Jim noticed that his powers were gone. He could no longer sense the liquids that surrounded him, had no perception of the blood pulsating through the human woman's veins and arteries.
T.O. Morrow had never understood the full potential of his first creation's water-bending abilities. In his crazed dream of annihilating humanity, he had envisioned only tidal waves and destructive currents. Never had he realized how easily Jim could have wiped out entire towns by simply stopping the blood flows through their inhabitants' central aortas… Red Torpedo's powers could have been far, far more lethal than Red Inferno's fire blasts.
The face in the mirror grew sombre once more.
"Brother, is it really safe for me – for us – to live? You say that T.O. Morrow was defeated – but what if somebody else learns to control us? How could we risk our abilities to fall into the wrong hands again?"
They had been slaves to their creator, his soldiers, his weapons…
"He did not truly command me", Red Tornado replied. "When you came to abduct me, I followed you willingly. Over the past years, I have successfully shielded myself from any conceivable type of foreign control. Your own positronic brain, in this new body, is just as secure. You are safe and free now, brother. I have also taken the liberty of reviewing your software and adding a few additional partitions – you can still review all your former compulsions and subroutines, if you want, but Morrow's old commands do not dictate your actions or thought processes any longer."
For a long time, Jim simply stared at his brother.
No more commands or compulsions?
Very slowly, he turned towards the woman in the blue dress.
"I am not human." One by one, the words fell from his lips. "My name is Jim Lockhart, and I did not grow up on the countryside." Words he had not been able to voice for seventy years. "I was activated in 1940, but I've never aged, and I've never even had a chance to celebrate a birthday!"
To his surprise, the young woman shook his hand. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Doctor Lockhart. My name is Mary Baker, I've aged for almost nineteen years, and I greatly admire your work."
"You admire my work?"
"Well, yes. Your brother told me about your many accomplishments as a surgeon. Isn't it fascinating how medicine has progressed over the past decades? If you've been around in 1940, you must remember how Rh-factors of blood groups were discovered. People were still operationalizing blood transfusions back at then – nobody would have even dreamed about organ transplantations! Is it true that you once gave a woman a new pair of lungs?"
"More than once, actually…" Jim's gaze kept shifting back to his delicate new hands. Just imagine how precisely he would be able to work with these…
Red Tornado watched how his brother answered Mary's many questions with growing enthusiasm.
His own red bulky form was unable to smile, yet giving up John Smith for Jim Lockhart had been an easy choice to make.
Maybe he would build himself another vessel – he could make it capable of food combustion, and potentially even add a sense of taste. And then, one day, he would be able to go out with his brother, two ordinary men among the crowds, experiencing humanity together...
- - - October 12th - - -
"It's been two weeks."
Diana of Themyscira finally cornered J'onn at the watchtower's Zeta station. Everyone else from the previous shift had left already, they were alone on this level of the space station.
She sternly tapped her finger against the Martian's caped chest. "Did you really loose a bet, J'onn?"
The day he had confronted her as a Blue Martian, he had simply claimed to be 'in no position to explain'. She had only heard about the alleged bet from Black Canary the next morning.
The obvious lie had irked her ever since.
"You don't think I'd take a silly bet like that?", he asked with a wry smile.
"I don't think you'd loose", she stated, only half-joking.
He bowed his head to her. "I know how much you value the truth, Wonder Woman. You assume correctly, there never was any bet. I changed my colour to conduct a little psychological experiment, which I have now completed to my satisfaction."
"What kind of experiment?"
"If I disclosed any details now, it would sabotage my chances of repeating the study at a later point in time. I would prefer to remain silent. Could we leave it at that?"
She regarded him with a doubtful expression.
"No", she finally decided. "I'm sorry, but that's not a satisfactory explanation. I sense that there is more behind all this."
He nodded slowly. "You are correct. There were safety concerns involved. Batman and I designed the study together, yet fortunately our suspicions were not verified. Is that sufficient information?"
Of course Bruce knew the truth behind it. She hated how many secrets he still kept from her, even now that they had finally started to grow closer. Why had he trusted the Martian with his concerns, instead of sharing them with her?
Her dark eyes widened, as realization dawned.
"You looked into our minds! You turned blue to distract us while you read our minds!"
He did not try to deny it.
"Oh J'onn, why did you not ask for our permission? That goes against all principles of…"
"I am aware", he interrupted her sharply. "You know I would never have violated your privacy like that, if I had seen any better means to ensure our safety."
This time, his words were completely sincere.
Diana took a deep breath, calming her temper.
"Tell me about that security issue you were investigating."
He sighed. "Two weeks ago, we found out that there was a hidden command engraved into Superboy's mind, a compulsion to obey his makers. Batman and I believe that this has finally presented us with a safe way of identifying Cadmus clones."
Identifying Cadmus clones?
Dianna took an involuntary step back. "You mean, there could have been a clone in the League?"
"It appeared likely. Given that Cadmus has proven capable of telepathic memory transfers, it even seemed possible that a clone could be completely unaware of the fact that they were not the 'original' person they embodied."
She shuddered. What a terrible thought, not to know such a fundamental truth about yourself...
"Luckily, my memories of Superboy's compulsion did not resonate with any of your minds. As I said, our suspicion has not been confirmed."
"I am very glad to hear that", she replied truthfully.
J'onn squarely met her eyes. "I promise that I did not 'read' anybody's memories, Diana. The entire experiment took less than three second per person, and none of you even noticed my intrusion. I could not prevent myself from seeing a few fleeting surface thoughts - that's why I made sure to give you something unexpected to think about. Of course, the distraction was only effective because none of you suspected my motives. I was acting with the League's best interests at heart."
He lowered his head. "Even though, I still feel guilty about invading your minds like this. You are the only one beside Batman and Captain Marvel to know the whole story, Diana. Can you forgive me? As Wonder Woman, on behalf of the League?"
She considered his question carefully. "Even if I don't approve of your methods, I do understand your reasoning, and I can forgive you for entering my mind unasked. But I can't speak for the others, J'onn. You should tell them as well. In fact, you should have told all us right away after finishing your investigation."
He nodded wistfully. "Unfortunately, Captain Marvel's reply contradicts yours. It was he who first brought Superboy's condition to our attention. He grudgingly agreed to letting me examine his own mind, but told me he would have greatly preferred if I had not asked his permission, so that he would have been able 'not to think about all the things he didn't want me to know about', to use his own words."
Diana simply shook her head. "I disagree", she stated. She would never reject truth in favour of 'blissful' ignorance, no matter the price. It would have been against the core of her nature.
After a short reflection, she met the Martian's eyes once more. "Why blue? There must have been a hundred different ways to distract us. Why did you choose that particular one?"
"Well, many other surprises could have triggered rather destructive reactions in a team of combat-savvy superheroes..."
She frowned at his attempts to evade her question.
"I wanted to cheer people up", he admitted, his voice suddenly much softer. "Since Kent Nelson's death and Red Tornado's abduction, the League had been in a rather dark mood. Those two were the last remnants of the old Justice Society of America. People felt overwhelmed by the new threats we were facing, by the many unknown technologies we've been discovering over the past few months – not only the cloning vats at Cadmus, but also that nanobot swarm, new drugs like Cobra-Venom and Blockbuster serum, Psymon's mind control… Some of us felt lost, inadequately prepared for the upcoming battles. Meanwhile, the Flash, who usually takes it upon himself to lighten the mood in situations like this, was busy constructing electromagnetic weapons capable of killing one of our friends and League mates. People needed something else to occupy their minds – something like a Blue Martian."
Diana blinked. Sometimes it was easy to overlook how much their resident telepath really cared for his League mates. Of course she had noticed the general depression last month, yet between her embassy work and her own daily missions, she had not even attempted to fully decipher its causes – let alone to defuse it. Two weeks ago, when everyone suddenly started spinning up silly theories about J'onn's alleged bet, it had felt as if a crisis had passed. It had never occurred to her that this had been the Martian's intention.
Following a sudden impulse, she pulled her friend into a hug.
"Thank you, J'onn. You were right, we did need the diversion."
He shrugged with a modest smile as she released him. "I think most people realized that, they practically jumped at the opportunity. Aquaman's stories were my favourites. He claimed I had made a wager with him, betting that I could transform into a sea beast capable of swimming faster than his messenger seals, but then lost the race because an Orca tried to eat me..."
"Oh, that wasn't even his best one, I preferred the one with the love-struck tortoises! And did you hear Ollie's theory about the capes and the laundry machine? Or the tale about Bruce throwing a bomb at you for trying to sneak past him invisibly?"
"Yes, that last one came from Hal Jordan, I think. Do you know who started the story with the robot and the cactus farm, though? I think it might have been either one of the Hawks, but I'm not sure..."
"I thought that one was Kal's? Didn't Hawkwoman make up the one with the wood-eating dragons?"
"I thought the dragons were Zatara's idea?"
Still smiling at the memories, Diana placed a hand on J'onn's arm.
"Next time, tell me, please. Whether it is an overall dark mood, or a security concern, or anything else that needs addressing, you should be able to count on my support. I'm sorry for reacting so poorly this time."
He placed his green hand on top of her bronze one, nodding softly. "Agreed. But let us hope that it will not be necessary for a long while."
She nodded, but somehow she could not share her League mate's optimism.
Life never got boring with the League.
Author's note:
As you might have guessed, 'humanity' was a very important story arc for me. I just couldn't bear to see Red Tornado loose all his siblings in a single episode... Please let me know what you think of my version!
Do you forgive me for being so cruel to Danette? Did you like her story, despite its darkness?
Jim Lockhart seems a fascinating character to me. How did you like my interpretation of his madness?
Although the main android story arc is now over, we will be seeing Red Tornado's brother again soon...
Reviews are treasured like a long-lost brother's smile!