A/N: I do not own any characters in this story.
Chapter Seven: Planegate
OUTSIDE THE MACHINE CITY, EARTH-9466 – AUGUST 6, 2537
The seven of us appeared on the other side of the TemPad portal. Oh, I knew where we were! We were on a plateau overlooking the fields where the planet's human populace was held in suspended animation outside the Machine City. And grabbing my attention – and probably everyone else's too – was something that I knew wasn't in any of the Matrix movies.
Coming from the center of the Machine City was a large blue beam that shot into the eternally cloudy, dreary heavens. But stranger still was what was at the end of the beam in the sky. A tear in the sky sprouted from the end of it, and on the far side was deep space…and what looked to be the Dalek flagship, the Crucible.
"What the #$&% is that?" Harley gasped.
"That's impossible," Sylvie said.
Oh no, here we go again; the most overused line in all of science-fiction. "That's impossible" and all its derivative phrases, like "That's not possible!" or "That can't be!" or "There's no monster over there, you liar –" *gets killed by monster*.
"What do you mean?" the Doctor said, though he and Rose both seemed fixated on the Crucible. No judgment; that would be like me seeing Ajax's Helicarrier-esque lair up there.
"It's a…a planegate," Sylvie said.
"No, a plain gate is what's surrounding the Avengers Compound," I said. "Seriously, no fancy wrought iron designs or anything, or even some garland on it during the holiday season."
"Shut up. Not that 'plain gate,' it's one word. P-L-A-N-E-G-A-T-E."
To all of you who say "beefalo" is the stupidest portmanteau ever, I present that word. At least "beefalo" has an obvious etymology; this word is just…ugh.
"I don't get it," Harley said. "What's the big deal? And for that matter, what does that word even mean?"
Ha; I'm not the only one.
"'Plane' as in dimension, and 'gate' as in something linking two areas," Sylvie explained (okay, it makes sense, but I can think of seven better names in less than two seconds). "It's a permanent link between two alternate universes. Like the TemPads, but, you know, permanent. In his journals, He Who Remains had theorized that one could be created, but his calculations always supported that creating one would be impossible."
"So I'm assuming that's Earth-328767 up there?" I pointed to the portal in the sky.
"Most likely."
"Wasn't this what you were implying when you were talking about the M-Rip Energy?" Magik asked. "That these two universes were linked somehow?"
""I knew this was the most likely explanation, but…at the same time, I couldn't believe that this is what we'd find."
"Why exactly would creating a planegate be impossible?" Rose asked. "I mean, the TemPads work fine, so why couldn't it be done on a larger scale too?"
"Because the TemPads are never open long. But the multiverse always repairs itself. If we were to leave a TemPad open for, say, several hours, the portal would slowly close itself. It's like a small wound you get; your skin automatically starts repairing itself. The portal is the wound, and the multiverse is your skin."
"Well, by that analogy, wouldn't a large tear in the multiverse stay open longer, since large wounds take longer to heal?" Loki asked.
"…Okay, maybe not the all-around best analogy. It takes more effort to tear a larger hole in the multiverse, and then counter the self-repairing force in order to keep the portal open. According to the calculations I found, a planegate the size of the one up there," she pointed to the sky, "would require about 50 terajoules of M-Rip Energy per second to be held open."
I guess the "powers that be" in the universe really are strong.
"What year are we in in this universe?" I asked.
"A.D. 2537," Sylvie said. "This is the year the Sentinels that attacked Wakanda came from."
So that's…more or less 338 years after the movies (save Resurrections, which I guess never happened in this timeline) took place. "Well, there's your explanation," I said. "This is centuries in the future. They've probably gotten more advanced technology or something and they've created that energy."
"This doesn't add up, though," Harley said. "I'm no expert, but I don't think even all the humans down there would be able to provide that much energy."
"Science has spoken; humans as batteries wouldn't work to begin with. This entire reality is predicated on willing suspension of disbelief, so why not push it a bit farther?"
"No, she's right," the Doctor said. "No matter how advanced their technology is, 50 terajoules a second just to the planegate would completely blow their power grid. This thing…can't exist."
"And yet it does," Rose said.
"I want to get a closer look," Magik said. She pointed at a tall structure in the Machine City. "I'm going to teleport up there. It looks like that's pretty close to where the planegate is being generated, so I should get a good look at it from there."
"Let's all go," Loki said. "You never know when one of us might recognize something we see that no one else recognizes."
"Especially since I'm the only one of us who knows any important #$&% about this reality," I said.
Magik summoned a portal to the top of the tower, and all of us dashed into it. We emerged on the rim of the structure, which was overlooking the Machine City. Now that we were actually atop it, I could see that the tower had a solid rim, where we were standing, but a hollow center. Hmm. Brings back memories. *cough*nuclearcoolingtowerwheretheinferiorversionofmefoughtWolvy*cough*
Below us was a gigantic plaza with a truncated cone-shaped structure in the center. It was covered in metal plating and tubes and wires, and sprouting from the top of it was the planegate beam, shooting into the sky. "Is there something living inside there?" I asked, pointing to the base of the device. "It looks like something fleshy is pulsating under all that metal."
Sylvie grabbed her sonic thermometer (she thought to bring that with us?) from her pocket and aimed it at the device. She pressed a few buttons and it started rhythmically beeping. Hmm. That was actually a pretty catchy beat. Beep, beep…BEEP! Beep, beep…BEEP!
I'm Dead…POOL!
I'm Dead…POOL!
I'm the…MERC!
With a…MOUTH!
Is that better than "Deadpool Rap"?
…Maybe.
"Sylvie, can that thing go any faster?" Rose asked. "I mean, there's a lot of Sentinels down there. If just one of them happens to look up here, they're gonna see us, and then all the Sentinels down there will be coming for us."
The sonic thermometer stopped beeping. "…Oh no," Sylvie said.
"What?" I asked. "Did you find out what's under there? Some mutant creature they're harnessing for energy?"
"Sort of. What's under there is…one of the hemispheres of Shuma-Gorath's brain."
…Okay. Suffice to say, I did not see that coming.
"How did they get their hands, tentacles, whatever, on half of his brain?" Harley asked. "We blew him up outside the multiverse."
"Yes, but all of his remains were left floating out there; I didn't think to go back and collect them. I knew some of his body parts would inevitably end up in some of the different timelines, but it didn't occur to me that…this would happen."
"And what exactly is this?" Magik asked. "What do they want with half of that monster's brain?"
"According to what I read about him, Shuma-Gorath was so large in his natural state that the two halves of his brain were not actually connected. Each half was situated at the sides of his head, and they communicated telepathically with each other. But it was theorized that, even if Shuma-Gorath was killed, as long as the halves of his brain weren't severely damaged, they might still be linked to each other at some…rudimentary level. And I'm detecting a similar energy reading coming from the other side of the planegate up there."
"So the two halves of his brain are here and in Earth-328767," I said. "Big deal. That doesn't really solve the mystery of how this planegate exists."
"But it does," the Doctor said. "The link between the two halves of Shuma-Gorath's brain might be strong enough that it links them, even between different universes. And if that's the case, the Sentinels wouldn't need to create enough energy to tear open the multiverse, they'd just need the energy to sustain a tear that was already there. A tiny tear, most likely, beyond microscopic, but a tear nonetheless."
"So the two undead brain halves are still talking to each other (sort of), and the Sentinels somehow discovered this, boosted the signal, found the Daleks, and then long story short decided to ally with them?" I clarified.
"Most likely."
"Okay, so we bring back some form of explosives, blow the half of Shuma-Gorath's brain down there to #$&%, and boom. Problem solved, multiversal alliance ended."
"But the planegate only leads between these two universes, right?" Magik asked.
"It should. Why?" Sylvie repled.
"Because the Daleks and Sentinels both made it to the Sacred Timeline, too. That means they have some way of hopping across the multiverse without the planegate. For all we know, they could've been studying this for decades or centuries, and figured out how to replicate the energy of the planegate on a smaller scale."
"Like our TemPads," Loki said.
Yay, here I was thinking we could just nuke the planegate out of existence and all our problems would be solved. But of course it wouldn't be that simple. If life were that simple, there'd have been no third act in Deadpool 2 because everything would've been resolved during the X-Force's attack on the mutant transport convoy. If life were that simple, Vanessa's death wouldn't have been deemed an Absolute Point, and I would've been able to go back and save her.
"So it's not just a matter of taking out the planegate; we have to take out the entire Machine City?" I asked.
"Yes, not to mention the whole Dalek fleet," Sylvie said. "That's not something we can just jump right into and hope we pull off. We need a plan to be able to do that. We would be horribly outnumbered in even one of these places, let alone both."
Suddenly, an alarm blared throughout the city. I looked down again to see a swarm of Sentinels headed our way. Oh #$&%.
And then all of them spun around, preparing to launch explosives at us.
"Get us out of here, Sylvie…or Illyana, whichever one of you can do it faster!" Loki urged.
"Wait, hold on a sec," I said, grabbing the TemPad from Sylvie.
"Wade, what are you doing?" she yelled.
"…Hopefully rectifying a certain situation elsewhere in the multiverse. Get down, all of you, I want it targeting me." I fiddled around with the TemPad's controls, making it lead far across the multiverse to, by a long shot, the most boring reality in existence. No superheroes or anything, and to top it all off, a mother#$%&ing pandemic. That reality deserves better, it really does.
One Sentinel launched an explosive right at me, and I opened the TemPad in its path at the last second. The explosive flew into it. I leaned my top half into the portal and yelled, "KISS MY ASS, PUTIN!" accompanied by a double Bird-Flipping, before backing out of the portal and shutting it behind me.
"Where the hell did that lead?" Harley asked.
"Earth-1218's Kremlin," I said. "Boom. Good deed for the week done and done. Now let's get out of here."
"What about destroying the structure down there?" Rose asked.
"There's no way we can take out all the Sentinels coming after us," Sylvie said. "We have to come up with a plan first."
"Awful shame there wasn't a two-mile-wide spaceship with incredible destructive capabilities that we could've brought with us," I said as I recalibrated the TemPad.
"Wade, not now!"
More Sentinels attacked us, but Magik opened a pair of portals that redirected the explosives right back at the Sentinels. The portion of the horde closest to us was obliterated, but more swarmed from below to fill in the gap.
I finished setting up the TemPad to lead us back to the Citadel, and opened a portal from it. "Everyone, in!" I shouted.
All seven of us rushed into the portal and reappeared in the main room of the Citadel. I shut the portal behind us…not a second too soon, as three Sentinels almost followed us through.
Well…that was certainly an interesting experience.
A/N: As you could probably tell, I used this chapter to...expel some of my current frustrations with the world. Too bad Deadpool doesn't actually exist in our universe…or does he?
As usual, please R&R! I hope you enjoyed the chapter and come back for the next one!