- 8 -

"As a crippled scientist you chose to operate only in the realm of the intellect. Then you had your brain transplanted into the body of Dolores Winters and discovered the pleasures of the flesh. As her you soon became a very sexual, very sensual woman, giving full expression to long-suppressed desires. A lot of beautiful women resent being praised for their looks alone without a thought for their minds, but you'd had years of being admired solely for your intellect so you revelled in being considered desirable and knowing you were lusted after by moviegoers the world over. And while you may have hated being the gorilla, you've admitted that you loved his strength. You'd never had such physical power before and you found it intoxicating."

"Interesting," I said. "So you think that somehow integrating all three - my intellect, the body of Dolores Winters, the physical strength of the gorilla - would be the way forward for me?"

"That's for you to decide.

"The only way of achieving the gorilla's strength without also needing all that unsightly muscle would be by acquiring the appropriate super-powers. Hmmm," I mused, "perhaps if I grafted some Kryptonian DNA onto that of Dolores Winters..."

"The JSA investigates its foes, learns as much about them as it can, but since we don't know your original name we've learned next to nothing about yours."

"And I intend to keep it that way."

"Understandable, but it doesn't take much of a leap to assume that your desire to control everything as an adult might be rooted in a childhood where you controlled nothing."

"Very good, Doctor, but that's something I eventually figured out for myself."

"There is something I'm curious about, something that might help in these sessions, so can I ask one question?"

"You can ask, but I don't promise you an answer."

"Your original body was crippled, paralysed from the waist down. How did that happen?"

I considered this for a moment, wondering what if anything to tell him, because he was right. An answer probably would help with my analysis.

"My father was a violent man angry at the world, my mother an alcoholic, and I was a genius," I replied. "Not exactly the best environment in which to grow and develop. One night, while I was still a small child, my father threw me out of a second floor window."

"I'm sorry. Was there a reason for this? Beyond his violent nature, I mean?"

"Yes, but that's all you get for now. Goodbye, Doctor."

I snapped my fingers and Doctor Charles McNider aka JSA member Dr Midnite was instantly returned to stasis with all the others. These therapy sessions were helping me understand myself better, what had made me the person I am today and how I might be able to change those parts of myself I didn't like. I knew I was a damaged individual - I could hardly be as bright as I am and not realize this - and that much of that damage was rooted in childhood trauma, but I wasn't sure how much of my past I should share with McNider. Then again, if I told him everything I could always have the Thunderbolt wipe that knowledge from his mind afterwards.

My first attempt to take control of the world, by assembling mystical artefacts of great power in 1942, had failed. My second attempt didn't.

I walked over to a window and gazed out over the perfect world I had created. It was a clean, high tech world of enormous, futuristic buildings, flying cars, and one where crime, disease, and unemployment were all no more. So was free will, of course, the enemy of perfection such as this, perfection that could only be achieved by the singular vision of a superior intellect. Most of the world's metahumans had been captured and were being held in stasis tubes in a fortified complex, elements in my mind bank. The only exceptions were my mindsweepers, telepaths constantly probing the world for signs of resistance, a small band of rebels who had so far evaded capture, and the Thunderfront. That last were a mind-controlled group of the most powerful supers, their costumes greyed out, who served as my enforcers. My perfect world, and achieving it had been so easy...

"Yeah, I can do it," said Thorne, "but are you sure that's what you want?"

This was Matthew Thorne, the so-called 'Crime Doctor', a criminal surgeon who had studied under Marten and mastered his techniques.

"Of course, I am," I snarled. "I am not in the habit of acting without reason, doctor."

"OK, then I guess we're doing this."

I was sitting in a chair large enough to support my gorilla form, my back to him, while on the other side of him was an operating table on which lay the sedated form of Johnny Thunder, a long-retired member of the JSA. I had kidnapped him from the nursing home where he's been living since his Alzheimer's reached the point where he could no longer take care of himself, and I needed this done quickly. The nurse in charge of his care had been paid off, but others would eventually realise he was missing and sound the alarm, and I couldn't have that happen prematurely. Thorne injected me with enough sedative to knock out my gorilla form, and I soon slipped under.

When I awoke I felt weak, weaker than I ever recalled feeling at any time as an adult. I raised my arm, bringing my aged, liver-spot mottled hand into view, and sighed. The operation had been a success. Thorne helped me into a sitting position and I glanced over to where my gorilla body was seated, a large hole in the back of its head where he had removed my brain. That brain was now sitting in one of my brain-preserving receptacles on a nearby bench. I raised a hand to the back of my head, to where a strip of surgical tape concealed a row of stitches.

"Is that you in there?" said Thorne, frowning. "Are you the one in charge?"

"Of course I am," I said, testily. "The graft is working perfectly."

"Your brain is already regenerating the section I removed it from," he said, nodding to where it lay. "That healing gel is amazing!"

"It's not only the gel," I replied. "I used to think it was just my intellect that made my brain superior, but it has regenerative abilities beyond those of most brains. I doubt it would've survived being transplanted so many times if it didn't."

I got off the table and examined myself in a full length mirror. The aged figure of Johnny Thunder stared back at me, the JSA's most bufoonish member.

"What happens now?" asked Thorne.

"Now you take your money and depart, doctor. This is a Council facility, one whose location has been compromised. Time for us both to leave, I think."

I had then made my way to JSA HQ, where they were astonished to see Johnny Thunder lucid once more. They were all so happy to see me, including the Thunderbolt. That bright pink genie was all over me like a happy puppy, suspecting nothing.

"This is amazing, Truly amazing," I said in Johnny's quivering voice. All these new faces, all these..."

And there he was, little Jakeem Thunder with his cute dreadlocks, looking surprised.

"Hi, Johnny," he said.

"You must be Jakeem. I'm delighted to meet you," I said, shaking his hand. "I have time to catch up with everyone in a bit, but first I think we should chat."

We retired to the study, Jakeem, the Thunderbolt and I.

"Wow! This rocks! All of us, here!" babbled the Thunderbolt, excitedly.

"You think we 'Thunders' could have a moment alone?"

"Of course. Just say the magic words, Jakeem."

"What? Oh, yeah," said the kid. "So cool."

With a crackle and a thunderclap the Thunderbolt vanished into Jakeem's fountain pen. Interesting. So when it comes to genies it appears fountain pen ink works as well as the oil in an oil lamp. Which, since both are fluid based mediums, makes sense.

"So I..." - "Sorry you go ahead." - "No you."

"It's good to see the Thunderbolt has been looked after," I said.

"Yeah, uh, thanks. I've been so much with the JSA, but really, I've been waiting to meet you. Seems like forever."

"And I've been wanting to thank you for keeping an eye on the Thunderbolt while I've been away."

"An eye on him? What do you mean?"

"I've come to take him back."

The kid looked shocked, but I pressed on. After a little bit of guilt tripping he handed the pen over to me.

"Stupid boy!" I said, as the pink lightning began to crackle around me. "First to fix this decrepit body..."

In an instant the Thunderbolt had turned the clock back on Johnny's body, making it twenty years-old again.

Then I changed the world.

I smiled at the memory, a smile that became a frown. I'd wanted to rule the world forever, so now that I'd finally achieved it why wasn't I happier? Was it being male again, I wondered? I looked at my reflection in the window, at the blond hair, handsome face, and the black suit over a white Nehru-style shirt my trim young body was clad in. True, I'd prefer to be female - though there were very good reasons for me to keep this body as it was for now - but, no, that wasn't it. Could it be that wanting to rule the world was more fulfilling than actually achieving that goal? Was that why it felt hollow?

"You've won," Dr McNider had said during our first session. "You're finally the ruler of the world. So now what?"

It was a good question, one I was perplexed not to have a good answer to. Which was when another question occurred to me: why my sense of deja vu around Superman? It was a question I was suddenly determined to have answered. I took the fountain pen out of my pocket.

"Cei u (say you)," I said, and with a flash of pink light the Thunderbolt appeared before me.

"Yes, o master?" he said, making little effort to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. "How may I serve?"

"By delivering information," I said. "Do you know why I experience feelings of deja vu around Superman?"

"I do," he said, now very serious, "but this is not something the universe wants you to know."

What an odd thing to say.

"Nevertheless, I want to know," I said, "the universe be damned."

"Very well. The reason is that he used to be your arch-enemy."

"He did?" I said, puzzled. "I think I'd have remembered something like that. When were we enemies?"

"From 1939 onward."

"193...? But Superman didn't arrive on Earth until decades later."

"The current Superman, yes, but not ours, not the Superman of Earth-2."

I'd never heard that name before, but it sent a chill down my spine.

"Earth-2? What is Earth-2?"

"It's the world you and I were originally from, back when there was something called the multiverse."

Another term I wasn't familiar with and yet somehow I was, and it sent another chill running down my spine. I felt as if the rug was being pulled out from under what I'd always thought was reality. It was a horrible feeling, but I had to know more.

"What... what happened to the multiverse."

"A great crisis, the biggest of all. Uncounted numbers of universes died, until the surviving few were fused together to form one, just as this Earth, New Earth, combined several Earths that had survived, including Earth-2. Where once the JSA and JLA had existed on separate worlds, the earlier group was now the ancestor of the latter, and those in the older group that were doppelgangers of those in the younger ceased to exist. Everyone else in the world, like you, has no memory of the previous reality and now only remembers the current one. I can only remember it because of what I am."

I was outraged.

"This... this is intolerable!" I said. "That earlier existence is a part of who I am and I want those memories back!"

"I'm capable of many things," the Thunderbolt said, sounding sad. "I can take you to the past and to the future, but taking you to a reality that no longer exists is beyond even my abilities."

- 9 -

When the assault came I was ready for it.

The heroes who had managed to stay free of my control had temporarily defeated my Thunderfront and had now come for me, yet I was far from defenceless. Using the Thunderbolt's power I had conjured up an army of mindless mystical copies of my gorilla self, savage, powerful creatures who could stop anyone and anything. A titanic battle followed.

But I had miscalculated.

Since I had not replaced my brain with Johnny Thunder's, he was still in there. The more pressure they poured on the looser my control over him and the Thunderbolt got, until finally Captain Marvel was able to impale me with a grounded spear. The resultant shock drove my mind out of Johnny's body and back into my own brain, which resided in a receptacle in a special chamber a mile away. Barely two minutes passed, and then:

"I knew one of you would find me," I said telepathically, as the JSAer called Sand oozed into the chamber and reformed himself.

"You can see me?" he said, surprised a disembodied brain without eyes could do so.

"I can sense you, Sand," I explained, "your thought patterns. You think you've stopped me, but you haven't."

"Don't you get tired of it? I mean, look at you. You're not even human anymore."

"Neither are you. Like you I have evolved. I have surpassed the limitations of the fragile human form. Death has no power over me any more."

And it didn't. Thanks to the Thunderbolt I could now communicate telepathically and transfer my mind to another body without recourse to surgery, abilities I hadn't had since the 'ultrasaurus' affair, long ago. I had the Thunderbolt give me these abilities then wipe his memory of having done so, specifying this could not be undone even when he put everything else back the way it had been, as he surely would. Nor was that all I had had him do.

Other JSA members showed up then and began fighting over what to do about me. The new Crimson Avenger won out when she emptied her handguns into my brain. I pretended to feel this, a little bit of theatre for her benefit - and then I was gone, my mind transferred into a new body a couple of miles distant.

Opening my eyes I sighed, and climbed out of the stasis tube that had been keeping that body in suspended animation. As I did so, the lights came on. I was in a windowless, doorless secret chamber deep underground - and I was once again the white gorilla. Regrettable but, for the moment, necessary. This was one of the two clones I had created, both of which were now crucial to my plans. I crossed to the time bubble, the only other thing in the chamber and climbed in, setting the coordinates for the cloning facility, my base in the future. As I dematerialized so hidden charges went off, collapsing the chamber behind me and leaving nothing that might be used to trace me.

Early in my association with the Time Stealers we had a member on our team who had once tried to join Rip Hunter's Time Masters. He went by the name Rex Hunter, but his name was as false as Rip's own, and with good reason. 'Rex' revealed to us his real name was Jason Goldstein, so when Rip Hunter captured him and we were at risk of being exposed, we went back in time and Degaton killed him as a baby in his crib. It was then I realized that my partners could do the same to me if I ever wanted out. Oh, they couldn't kill me in the crib - no one knew my real name - but they could kill me as Dolores Winters if they ever realised her body, her life, was my chosen one. Perhaps I was being paranoid, but I wanted to give them no cause during our dealings to suspect my true nature. So until I could get out from under it was male bodies only, with the gorilla as my default in order to be their muscle, as I'd agreed to do. Which was another thing.

As soon as I had the means to do so I had done 'due diligence' on my partners, investigating their pasts. In the case of Despero, he had once ruled a planet called Kalanor until being deposed, at which point Degaton had recruited him. However, this wasn't Despero's final form. The next step in his physical evolution would see him transform into a hulking giant far stronger than my gorilla body. Degaton would have known this, known he could not hope to exert control over Despero at that point in his life-cycle. But he could control me.

When I arrived in the main cloning chamber the first thing I did was to check on the condition of the clones. My beautiful Dolores Winters clones were all developing nicely at their different ages, while the remaining fully-developed gorilla clone was held in stasis, no further development required. On its head rested a helmet that was feeding it false memories.

Something else I had had the Thunderbolt do was give this clone my intellect and scientific knowledge, but not my personality or memories, and particularly not any memory of having a time bubble. Instead I was programming it with false memories, convincing it that it had started life as a sickly boy named Gerard Shugel, one who became obsessed with finding a means of transplanting his brain into a stronger, healthier body and who had eventually been recruited by the Time Stealers. And there actually was a Gerard Shugel for them to find if they went looking for him in the past. When conditions were right, I would have the clone take my place.

But first I needed to set up the next part of my long-term plan. If it succeeded I would become Lois Lane.