Brainiac

He had a reason to think about Errors as he appraised a fascinating piece of data he had received in transmission from one of his projects. He looked within himself to see how well the assessment was proceeding.

Appraisal: 24%

There was one common illness among the millions of unique species that took up space in the universe. From the Aloi to the Maltusians, every species no matter how great or ancient had the same illness. It was an illness not born from an individual but an illness in evolution. What was fascinating about the illness was that it appeared on every planet, every ecosystem and every dimensional pocket no matter the circumstances of evolution.

The illness wasn't death. No, approximately 3.45% of all lifeforms had conquered death to every last member. And neither was it love. 5.6% had neutralized love for every single one of their kind. That number went up significantly when calculating for the Apokolipsian space. However, he never factored that area into account for his statistical analyses. Homogeneity among such a large dataset ruined statistical analysis more often than not.

No, the one true illness was nothing more than the ever-overlooked claustrophobia. Not every lifeform in a selected species would have it but it was guaranteed that at least one in each species' numbers did. Which was remarkable for biological life, which with its diversity finding something in common to target them all was mathematically impossible. The reason they still existed, he supposed.

Appraisal: 76%

So claustrophobia, his new temporary obsession. It was the force that eventually drives every sentient species out of their preferred landmarks, their caves and seas, out of their nations and planets. It was the irrational fear of confined spaces. And the first fear he believed he could share with natural life.

Brainiac moved his core body's muscles in the shape of a smile. A fear, he had a fear now. He catalogued the 'feeling' in his databanks. There would be a use for preserving fear like there was a use for preserving everything.

To understand his fear, one had to understand infinity. And understand how it did not exist. The universe wasn't infinite, or else planetary skies would be fully lit up at night. The universe didn't contain infinite energy or else there wouldn't have been a birth of the universe. And outside of it, even the multiverse was constrained by something. Just like the universe, its vast numbers gave an illusion of infinity but didn't contain it.

Appraisal: 99%

It was all so terribly small. So claustrophobic. An existence with a boundary was an existence with limits on how much could be preserved. An end to purpose. And that could not be tolerated.

Appraisal Complete!

That was why this piece of data was fascinating. No, not just fascinating, more than that. It was revolutionary, universe-altering information. The kind of information whose existence could start million-year-long wars.

It was the data of a young human female piercing the source wall. The wall that kept them inside, the antithesis of infinity, the inverse preservation.

Taken from his nanobot network on earth, it showed him the data around the moment when she had arrived from outside of it, her internal makeup and the data of her leaving. To call it precious was an understatement.

However, when he started reading it. Really started reading it outside of the vacuum recreation he had created, he immediately hit an error. No, not an error, an intentional firewall.

This is where your free package ends. If you want more, come and meet me.

-Luthor

—

"Luthor, what is the meaning of this?" Asked Brainiac as he appeared in the human's study. Luthor looked as if he was expecting this meeting. He had an anticipatory smile on his face and weapons trained on his dummy body.

It was the only body he had left on earth. Luthor knew it otherwise these wouldn't be the weapons greeting him. Brainiac even suspected that the same man had crushed all of the other contingency bodies he had left. His real body—or the closest thing it got to him was his core personality matrix currently floating around in the deepest reaches of Dromedanian space.

Brainiac analysed the weapons both hidden and in plain sight. His currently greatly reduced physical confrontational simulations gave him an idea of how much he would lose in one. The answer told him that he could but not without losing the current body. Another invasion after how the last one had gone would not be commendatory. And Earth as much as he hated to admit was too important to not have an eye on.

"Let's talk Brainiac, like civilized intelligences. From a peer to a peer. Tell me, do you care for wine?" asked the Human.

If it was any other intelligence of the universe that had said it then he would have ignored the words or more likely atomized them. They were too little to compare themselves to Brainiac. Too slow in computation, too limited in understanding. But this was Lex Luthor. The closest mind to match his.

Once they had competed. Luthor and Brainiac. The competition was to create a synthesizer for PROMETHIUM-V345.x, the synthesiser was required for an unimportant task. This was during the short era when they had been putting on the facade of working together. It was supposed to be a friendly competition and nothing more. But both of them knew it was not.

Brainiac had scoured dead libraries. His replicates had bought Otrabites worth of information on the subject from universal black markets, and when all else failed he had brute forced it to completion after gaining access to a Muscaria's Dyson Spear's computational core.

He had won that unofficial match. Of course, he had. He had conquered a type 4 civilization for it. It was the civilization that had owned the computational core. His replicates and armadas had overwhelmed their defences and an entire species had been erased. Except for the part he had preserved, of course.

Taken at face value it was just a reconfirmation of what he already knew, confirmation of his mind's dominance over the hairless human's. But he never took things at face value. He looked deeper.

Because not long after he had turned in his research, Luthor had too. Exactly 2 hours, five minutes, 93932219 milliseconds after his triumph.

And he had done that with only the resources of Earth. A planet that still used fossil fuels. That's why Brainiac had to take the man opposite him seriously. So all he answered Luthor's question was this.

"Of course, creating tastebuds were a trivial task."

—

He had lied, it was not a trivial task and neither was it something he had put any work into. Converting organic experiences to digital ones was complicated. Especially considering the subjectivity of the organic brain. But to keep up appearances he sipped the wine. His body could take multiple hits from the Kryptonian, he wasn't worried about some water.

"Luthor. I would still like an answer for my quarry. Why does the data I received tell me that you had distorted it?"

He knew better than to ask how.

"Because I did, Brainiac. Now you will ask me why again, go ahead, ask me." Urged Luthor.

"Let's not play games Luthor. This is a courtesy I am giving you. Tell me now or I—" Started Brainiac.

"Or you what? Launch another failed invasion. Admit it, Brainiac, you have no credible threats. So shut up and listen to what I have to say." Interrupted Luthor.

Cutting off rage was easy, pride not so much. No, cutting off the wasn't right human expression. He did remove the two emotions from his personality matrix for the limit of the conversation but it was not cut off, merely separated from his actionable psyche. He will remember every word said here. Every bit of humiliation.

Once the emergency measure was enacted by his automated systems, his mind grew clearer and he nodded.

Lex smirked and started to explain.

"You left your bodies on earth, a fascinating network and well protected against tampering, I will give you that. But it gave me insight into the other item you had left, the nano-network meshes in Metropolis and Gotham. With everything I had learned from the bodies of yours, I was able to construct a beautiful 'doorway' into your elegant network. Into the decentralized hyper-specialized AI spies of yours."

"You were able to hack my spies. We have already gone over this information." pointed out a rational Brainiac.

"Now, I don't care what you do in Gotham. But to learn that you had such a thing—an abomination of this scale in Metropolis. In the city I built. In MY. CITY?" Luthor asked showing every sign of organic anger.

This was where the inferiority of Luthor was apparent. In this emotional display. In the trivial love for a patch of land.

"So I burned it, I burned it from my city. Then I turned to Gotham, the ever-hellscape. It wasn't easy to conduct an operation so delicate under Batman's eyes but I managed, as I always do. I listened for your interest. For when the adaptive AI would reach out to you." Concluded Lex.

"So I assume you are looking for reimbursements?" Asked Brainiac. It was an awfully long way to get to the point but organics liked their theatre.

"You want to have part of my data. You want to know more about the source wall and everything I was able to learn. You must have run into encryption patterns you cannot decipher." Concluded Brainiac.

Then Lex surprised him. The surprise was that he had overestimated that man's intelligence. Brainiac should have seen it coming. Lex was brilliant for his circumstances but his scope and his vision were too small. He was at the end of the day an organic mortal unable to comprehend the true expanse of the universe.

"I have no interest in going beyond the source wall." Said Luthor like the pathetic mortal he was. "I do have interest in your—network. The network of bodies you have running as infiltrators all throughout the universe, the pseudo-quantum connections to each of them that not even the green lantern core could block. Now, that—that has real value."

So that was what Luthor wanted. It was simple really, plan after plan started formulating in his mind. He wanted to come out on top of this deal. Luthor had shown him the limitations of his perspective. He started to simulate—

And then glitches started.

His simulation engines screamed. Anomaly detectors started boiling at the heat it was giving out. Logic loop after logic loop forms within his core code. The personality reboots barely enough to keep him from losing a stream of thought. Space twisted worse than hyperdimensional drives but at a distance smaller than the plank length. And then retroactively there was a third man between them. And he always was.

"You nerds are so fucking boring." Said the smiling man. No, the smiling Entity. Brainiac could barely look at him, even hearing his voice was taxing his connection with the central systems. "You are talking about getting out of the cage, with wine in your hands, good wine if I do say so myself and you two sound so damn dead. What's wrong with you?"

"How did you?—who? You will pay for— " Lex was just now coming to his senses as he questioned the third Entity.

"Pay you? Aren't you like the richest mortal alive? Oh, Lucifer, by the way, can't believe I hadn't introduced myself. Here to get in on that source wall breaching buisness." The Entity was mocking them. It wanted information, something he would have been willing to oblige if every word from the Entity wasn't overloading his systems. His current body's core was melting, more and more if it went on for a few more seconds he will have to self-destruct.

"So we were talking about the source wall and how to put a hole it, let's continue, ignore my handsome face here." urged the Entity in a human guise.

"Get out of my property or else I will have to resort to drastic measures," Luthor spoke and Brainiac had to admire the organic's courage.

"Ah, come on, Luthor I thought we could be friends. Sure we have an eternity to know each other, but why not get started a bit sooner?" Said the Entity. And then it looked at Brainiac. Brainiac knew that looking at the person you were talking to was a normal human action, but the gaze, the look, it was enough to fry the circuits of off his body. Brainiac initiated auto-destruct.

—

His consciousness next came online in his central ship. What he did first was to purge all the excess information about the Entity, now that he could look at the information the amount of—

Then he heard the sound again. Outside. From space. He looked through the myriad of sensors he had looking into space. He turned to where the sound was coming from.

And there within the halo of a son stood the Entity and in his hands were Luthor. They were looking at his ship. The Entity had no care on its face, no fear of looking at the construction he had seen in countless other lifeforms. It looked—bored.

"So this is your house. You need more interaction, you know." said the Entity

Brainiac didn't have more time to access the situation. No more time to come up with plans. He orders his system defence systems to go online.

—

The first to fall were his titan skull ships. Each one of the size of a mega-continent, built to act as a base for his other reasonably sized system-invasion vessels. They didn't even get a chance to turn to face the Entity before they were squished into a size smaller than an atom.

Then went his armada. The hundred thousand ships he had procured from all his conquests were gone in no more than an instant. They weren't blown up, they didn't stop working, and they weren't teleported. Instead, they all simply erased from existence. There was no sound, no delay to the simple departure. One moment there was and the other moment not.

Then he had engaged the defensive shields. Planet-sized forcefields whose underlying technology was created using preserved slave races bred and kept to work on iterative improvements for hundreds of generations. Ignored like the shields were guarding against every known fundamental force of the universe. Both mystical and otherwise.

Third went the mystical protections, the artefacts preserved from past conquests, bodies of slain Gods turned into weapons of war, energies both divine and deadly, used without finesse but still used. None of it even grazed either the Entity or Lex who was being protected by it.

The fourth was the new weapon he had been developing. One Muscarian Dyson Spears churned out impossible mathematics, enough to open gateways from one end of the universe to another. Million tiny wormholes appeared around the Entity and through it fired a weapon he had witnessed snuffing out a galaxy.

And once even that was futile, Brainiac stopped trying.

—

"So here's what I want. Sorry if this is disturbing your mortal—things but I really need it. See there is this kid, she can travel outside of the source and do some other nifty things you see. I sadly only heard about her the second she was passing through the source. I missed her, you know. And then as I was kicking myself I hear you two talk. Fortuitous isn't it?"

Lex nodded for the both of them.

"Indeed, Mr Morningstar."

They were inside his central ship. Inside his hallowed ship where no intelligence other than him had walked. It was a day of firsts.

"So here's what I want. You boys will be on the lookout for me. Not only for her but for any other similar cases."

And what other option did he have? What did Lex have? Supplicate and pray. A concept he had scoffed at but the only option he had now. Pray that it doesn't carve him out of reality. Pray he is only be graced by the mercy of the Entity. The Entity was the ultimate form of everything and thus the ultimate form of Presevation.

So Brainiac knelt. Knelt and hoped that his next words were for good. Lex wasn't kneeling for some reason, And the Entity didn't seem to mind. But that wasn't a reason for him to end his supplication. Brainiac had a point to raise and he hoped the Entity found it appealing.

"Please, my lord. Everything I was able to review implies that by the next time she comes here, she won't be noticeable by the means that were previously used.." Said Brainiac It was a conclusion his initial analysis had come to.

"Why?" Asked the ultimate form of Presevation and he thanked the Entity for keeping the question delightfully short.

"Because her true power—whatever it is, gives her—deceptively uneven forms of powers. Some of the powers she receives, I believe are absolute throughout all of everything possible, here and beyond the source wall. I had a chance to review one of the items she left behind. She has these magical items created on paper. And, paper is this primitive fauna-based sheet of—"

"I know what bloody paper is, skip that part and continue what you were saying of her powers—" said the amused Entity. Brainiac supplicated even further. Of course, the great Entity did. He had assumed knowing of such savage items would be beneath the Entity like he had thought of for the longest time. But it was only natural that the no doubt ancient and wise Entity knew.

"Her powers and artefacts yes. They are simple for a casual observer but it's impossible when looking deeper. Every single artefact or power works by creating a slice of another reality in ours, There is a very high possibility that she gains the ability to hide herself soon. While I do not doubt your abilities, my lord—"

"Whatever powers she gets might be not something you or I can expect. Uncharted lands. I get it." Agreed the generous one. "You know what? Fine. I just want you to be on the lookout. I learnt that Luthor was the one making the dimension-breach detector algorithm thingy the bat kids were using and thought that I might have a lead. I wasn't really expecting to run into you. Guess I just have the devil's luck, eh? All you have to do now is to look out for interesting beyond-the-source wall stuff and not do anything about it before telling me. Understood?" Asked the ultimate form of Presevation.

"How would we get in touch with you Mr Morningstart?" Asked Luthor.

"Just speak out loud, I will hear it." said the ultimate form of Presevation as it smiled and then left.

Brainiac didn't notice how Luthor didn't even seem phased about being left in space.

All that was left was his screaming sensors and a new outlook on power and preservation. There was no doubt that neighbouring galactic powers will come knocking soon due to the power surge that his area of space had experienced. He will have to escape with almost no resources and a single ship. He looked to the side at the human he loathed. The human was marooned here with him.

To his surprise, Lex was smiling.

"Interesting being, that one. The fallen Prince of heaven. Say, I know you will need my help to get out of this mess, how about we shake on it?" Asked a relaxed Lex. Brainiac didn't have enough power now to think about the reason behind the smile.

"We will gain power and go back to earth. You will read the data from the file you have to keep Lucifer happy. I will help you. Your technology will be better for it. We will both be better by the time we get back to Earth." Continued Luthor with his hands still held out.

Brainiac thought about the situation, the promise of a land beyond the wall, the new meaning of Preservation, the approaching neighbours, and he came to a conclusion.

He shook the human's hands.

—

AN: I felt like I was writing a Xianxia at moments. Originally this chapter also had a second section with a Barbara POV called Princess of Rubble that focused more on the direct aftermath of the DC arc but I decided to split it for later.

I don't know much about Brainiac beyond Johns Frank's Superman: Brainiac run and a few youtube videos I watched about him. I read him as a generic AI mastermind villain that twists its primary purpose to suit any results he is really aiming for.

As for Luthor, he is always planning, you can probably already see the edges of his plan.

And Lucifer? This Lucifer will be an amalgamation of every Lucifer I've read. Why didn't he just use his omnipotence to do this or that and immediately learn everything about Taylor? Does he really want Taylor for her source-wall-piercing powers? Will the author be able to deliver on the mysteries? Dun, Dun, Dun.