Issue 4: "The Man Behind The Curtain"

Chapter One: “Black and White”

“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”
- Hunter S. Thompson

Cliff Steele took deep breaths trying to slow his heart rate, but he could still feel a low rhythmic pulse inside his ears. Little more than an hour before, he had reveled in his newfound humanity, but now it hung on him like a terrible weight. He held the experimental pulse rifle straight up in front of him and rested his sweat-beaded and scarred forehead against it. The silver and gray weapon hummed a barely perceptible tone, as he tried to clear his mind and muster his courage. He glanced down at the bodies of the STAR Lab guards dead scattered along the floor of the long corridor. He knew he was walking headlong into a massacre.

“Now I figure I can take a few of ya out before I go. Which ones will it be?” Cliff sneered his remark, but the lone invader didn’t wait for an answer as he unleashed a barrage of electromagnetic bursts into the room. He charged Warp with a sidekick and pulled the Doctor down onto the floor behind a long metal counter. He popped up to lay down a rain of fire into the room sending the Brotherhood of Evil into a small scramble.

“Woo, Doc. This ain’t good is it?” Cliff Steele’s lungs were on fire but he was excited, his eyes wide with action.

Niles Caulder scooted himself up on one elbow and looked gravely at Cliff. “There’s no way out of this, Cliff. You shouldn’t have come here.”

“Aw, c’mon, Doc. There’s always a way!”

“No… unh…” The doctor winced and gritted his teeth. His stomach felt like it could burst open. “There isn’t… They injected us with something… We are dying Cliff. They’ve already won.”

Cliff Steele looked in his old friend’s eyes and saw only a cold hard reality staring back at him. His expression shifted from deadly serious to crestfallen. “Godammit, Doc. Godammit.”

The hollow, digitized voiced sliced through them both as the Brain’s announcement filled the room. “Do not make this difficult, Cliff Steele. You have shown your usual bravado and lack of wit. Now put surrender that crude weapon and come out to meet your inevitable fate.”

Cliff searched Caulder’s eyes again for some glimmer of hope but found nothing. “Well there’s no way in hell I’m letting that thing get us, Doc. Tell me what to do. How do we take this whole place down with us?” Cliff’s bloodshot eyes were steadied with a desperate focus.

The Doctor closed his eyes and rested his head back against the counter. Tears streaked his face as he spoke. “In the far corner, there is a long cylinder with hoses running out of the top. It’s a scaled down version of my original Infinity Projector design, a scaled down version of my perpetual energy generator design that I use to power some of the larger devices here in the lab. On the top left is a small black and white box that regulates the power cycles. Destroy that and the device will quickly go into ‘meltdown’. That should do it.”

“The same type of device that sent us into that Bizarro Zone before, huh? Okay. That’s the plan then.” Cliff checked the power level on his rifle to see enough of a charge for just a few more blasts. He looked at his friend one more time. “We can’t seem to catch a break can we?”

The Chief just smiled. “Maybe in the next life, eh?”

“Right.” Cliff Steele took a deep breath and stood up firing off the last few rounds of the EMP gun into the experimental generator. Madame Rouge shot her free arm forward at the same time but was cut by one of the blasts. There was a sizzle and a flash as the odor of burnt rubber filled the room. She shrieked and recoiled, dropping her captive to the ground. Mallah charged the dividing counter and ripped it out of the flooring above his head leaving Cliff and the Chief exposed. There was a loud pop from the opposite side of the room as the device wound up with loud whine. The hoses blow off of the machine as it screeched wildly and a small explosion blew the casing of the device apart. Seconds later the room was engulfed as a field of white faded everything into nothingness.

Cliff Steele shook his head and stumbled forward with a loud footstep. He scanned the around the small street, looking for clues to his new whereabouts. Directly across from him was a full-sized window with the name “Butch Dykeman’s Fitness Emporium” scrawled in gold lettering. A smaller sign in the corner said “Become the Hero of YOUR Beach Today!” Inside he could make out frilled pink curtains around a large floral arrangement.

Robotman turned and looked behind him and noticed another shop named “Man of Fashion” with the motto beneath, “Bold New Looks for Familiar Faces”. And in the door hung a sign: “Bona to Vada, New Arrivals!” Again, the décor was fancier than one would expect, done up in lavender and pink. Cliff looked around as he further investigated this queer street, but store after store was more of the same mixed visual imagery. More over, it seemed very familiar. He looked down at himself and noticed he was wearing boots, black pants, and a sleeveless leather jacket with white, foam shoulder pads.

“Cliff!”

Robotman turned in the direction of a soft young voice and saw a beautiful yet disheveled woman waving to him from a doorway and standing next to Negative Man, glowing and hovering just above the step in a long trench coat and sunglasses. He approached them in a hurry.

“Larry! You’re a guy again!”

“Rebis, actually, and yeah… well… mostly.” Negative Man’s voice had always been low and languid, almost monotone at times, but now was something else. It sounded eerily distant, but as if it was at once both masculine and feminine.

Cliff puzzled. “But if your identity keeps changin’ around the negative being then what does that mean?”

Rebis shook hir head slightly. “I’m not sure I want to know.”

Cliff looked at the girl again with coal black hair and an oversized sweatshirt draped over her and spotted with red paint. “Jane?”

Crazy Jane clasped her hands in front of her mouth and her eyes welled. “I wasn’t sure if you were going to make it back. You’ve been gone so long, Cliff. Come on. Let’s go in the back.”

They strolled into the used bookstore. There was a heavy, musty aroma pervading the inside as Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon played quietly from a radio behind the counter. The trio passed a girl sitting at a large wooden table and drawing a picture with crayons of a Wicked Witch. Jane, with her arm wrapped around Cliff’s huge metal forearm, spoke softly to the young girl. “Come along, Dorothy. We’re having a meeting.”

The girl hopped up and ran ahead of them. Cliff was startled by her apelike features, but made no comment. They moved through a beaded curtain that looked like it had been crafted from bottlecaps and plastic jewelry. Robotman gasped aloud this time in an electronic rasp. “Oh no…. C-Chief?”

Niles Caulder’s disembodied head rested on a bed of ice cubes in what looked to be a litter box. His hair and beard were a dirty gray, making his weak pallor almost healthy looking in comparison. “Hello again, Cliff.”

“Holy hell, Doc. What is this?” He put his heavy metal hand to his bolted brow while his wide, red, electronic eyes glared at the scene in front of him. Dorothy skipped around in front of the group and then hopped up to sit on the table next to Caulder’s new set-up. She thumbed over a stack of books: Naked Lunch, Finnegans Wake, Metamorphosis, Slaughterhouse Five, The Teachings of Don Juan, Jabberwocky, The Eye in the Pyramid, True Hallucinations, and others. Rebis glided up next to Cliff without a sound. “Why does this keep happening to us?” Cliff’s voice was confused and desperate now. “This is too crazy guys. I don’t think I’m cut out for it. My brain I think is literally spinnin’ inside my head.”

“I’m starting to formulate a theory, Cliff. But at the moment we have more pressing matters.” The ice rustled under the Chief’s neck as his head as he spoke.

“But you’re just a head…” Cliff pleaded.

“And you need yours checked.” Crazy Jane whispered into Cliff’s antenna as she rapped her knuckles on his metallic dome.

Rebis coolly droned a reply to the Chief. “Let me guess, the Brotherhood has stolen the Infinity Projector.”

“Precisely. But it’s not quite our Brotherhood. But you’ll see when you step out the back door there. I believe Danny has brought us to the proper position now.”

“Danny?” Cliff was now terribly hopelessly lost in the conversation and in their current predicament.

“Danny the Street, silly. Are you okay?” Jane said as she turned the worn doorknob and a bell chimed as the door swung open.

“Yeah, just a rough day I guess. Let’s just go stop… whoever…”

“The Brotherhood of Dada, Cliff.” Jane assured him as they stepped out into a floral park in Paris. An abstract black shape of a man stood just ahead near a large aging fountain and the Infinity Projector rested on the ground as its generator wound up into a loud whine. He was surrounded by a group of bizarre characters holding signs reading things like, “Nothing Matters. Nobody Is In Control!” and “The End Of All Things Is Near, Pack Your Toothbrush!” and “John Lennon Died For Your Sins”. Mr. Nobody spotted the group and squealed.

“HellooOO, Doom Patrol! It’s never too late to join the party. We are about to make a hole in the cloth of space and time as the ultimate artistic statement! Let’s see those Scissormen sissies do that!”

“No. This can’t keep happening. The insanity stops here!” Cliff Steele bellowed as he charged the group.

“Oh dear, Robotman. Why would we want the insanity to stop? That’s just crazy talk.” Nobody motioned to the Love Glove, who dropped his sign and waved an armless glove at the cyborg barreling toward them, sending out a pink cloud that enveloped Robotman. Cliff stopped and coughed an impossible mechanical hack. He shook his head for a moment and then looked at Sleepwalk. “You’re right. What was I thinking?” He patted Agent ! on the arm, pointed and winked at Frenzy before throwing The Quiz back in an embrace. “I love you guys.”

The Quiz struggled. “I… I think you’re getting dirt on me.”

Mr. Nobody clicked his heels together and stretched his arms outward. “Apocalypse, please!”

The device reached a fever pitch and white light flooded the scene. Just out of view, the scenario was watched by the shape of a man in white with black letters covering him, but he too faded as the park ceased to exist.

Chapter Three: “Somewhere…”

“The more you try to erase me
The more, the more
The more that I appear”
- Thom Yorke

The group was reunited one final time in a vast blank wasteland, broken only by various surreal objects on the path and landscape around them or floating above their heads. Cliff looked at each of them without surprise. They were as they had been before, dressed in their purple and black uniforms and uninjured. The Chief’s motorized wheelchair rolled down the yellow brick pathway to them. Rita helped a now conscious and blinking Steve Dayton to his feet. Larry Trainor only rubbed his palm and straightened the bandages around his wrist. To their left was a large, chipped stone head, which appeared to have been left behind by some forgotten civilization long ago. A flock of strange colorful birds flew overhead, whistling an odd and haunting melody. There were a few patches of pastel colored clouds dotting the air far above. Some translucent geometric shapes moved around the weakly defined landscape. A blue sphere rolled down a hill in the distance. A red cube wobbled slowly nearby in the light breeze. A few yellow triangles lined the ridge across the way.

“Well.” Trainor looked around calmly. “This is new.”

“Is this even real, Doc?” Cliff kicked at a pile of green plastic army men on the ground.

“As real as it gets for the moment, Cliff.” The perplexed Doctor looked around intently and scrubbed the end of his beard between his fingers.

Rita touched Mento’s cheek. “Are you okay, Steve?”

“I…. I really don’t know, Rita. Am I?” He squinted at the brightest of the void around him sprinkled with strange artifacts and objects. “I don’t think s-so. This can’t be real either.”

“What happened to you?” She looked over Mento’s face with worry. “You were out of it back at the lab.”

“The Brain… implanted an idea in my head. A self-perpetuating meme. And it grew…” His voice strained at the last past as he pulled his Mento helmet off. “I dreamed I was dying. I woke up and then there was only the idea.”

“Just an idea?” Negative Man stepped in.

“No. It was viral. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It seemed simple enough. ‘Why do they make white crayons?’ I laughed at it at first. But then I couldn’t stop thinking about how the paper was already white. So why would you need them? Then it seemed like a terrible game and I couldn’t stop thinking about it and the idea took over my thoughts. How it was all a type of training and manipulation… a kind of mind control. Oh god, it was horrible. It was the same thing over and over and over again and it’s all I could think about.”

The group looked on in quiet horror. “It’s okay now, Steve.” The Chief spoke up.

“Really? Is it really? I come to and I’m in one place one second, the next I’m with a different Doom Patrol. Like an alternate world. And then it happens again and again. And now this place…?” He peered up. “It’s all white. Like some kind of purgatory…”

Rita pulled him in as he held his head in his hands. “Come on, we’ll find a way out of this.”

The Chief reflected on their surroundings and interjected. “Not so much a purgatory as a kind of nether space. A sub-level of reality if you will, where normal physical laws do not seem to be applicable. The only way to get it out is to find out what has drawn us here.”
“I would scout ahead but I can’t seem to project my negative self right now.”

“It’s okay, Larry.” The Chief reassured him. “I think this is the way.” He pointed over to a small green boulder nearby where two elf-like creatures stood. Both had silvery skin with small white robes. Each wore a name tag, one read “Hello my name is Un’jura” and the other said “Hello my name is U’qaro.” Each pointed along the way along the path.

Robotman looked at the pair in astonishment. “Well, that’s odd.”
Rita tried to establish contact with them. “Hello? We are the Doom Patrol.”

U’qaro only sighed and reiterated his pointing.

“Oh!” Rita said slightly offended.

“Do not waste your time, Rita. In all probability they aren’t even real.” Dr. Caulder began to roll himself along the pathway in his motorized wheelchair before Cliff grabbed hold and guided it along for him.

They topped a small hill with patches of grass around it and a blue tree with orange leaves at its apex. In the distance was a pile of symbols from various forgotten languages, and to the right a giant broken lightbulb was surrounded by small, unrecognizable plants. Rita jumped as an flaming eyeball streaked by above them. Other oddities dotted the landscape around them as they passed another peak. Beyond the shallow valley was another hill ahead, but on top of it rested a collection of furniture as it would be arranged in a room with a man inside. The hurried their pace and moved briskly past a river of green water swirled in places with yellow and pink. A crooked sign rested just before a bridge made of giant popsicle sticks. The lettering was wild and mismatched.

“Caution. Metafiction Zone Ahead.”

“Certainly ‘Thou art God’ – but who isn't?”
- Robert A. Heinlein

Steve Dayton, otherwise known as Mento, one of the most powerful minds on the planet when wearing his specially created helmet, sat on the couch, shaking his head and quietly talking to himself. “This isn’t real. This isn’t real. Snap out of it, Steve. Wake up. Wake up.”

“The Editor is it?” The Chief replied. “The Editor of what?”

“Of your story.” The man made a sly smile but then turned quickly. “Oh. I almost forgot to turn this off of standby.” He stepped back to a strange looking typewriter sitting on the desk on the far “wall” and flipped a switch on the side. It sprang into action and began click-clacking rapidly, filling up the paper which fed from a continuous roll somewhere underneath the desk. The instrument was a retroactive design, black with chrome trim running up its side, but had a glowing display panel and other small lights shining from various points on its surface. The man returned. “Cool huh? Just got it. It’s a multidimensional typewriter. Barth 3000, top of the line with great features like Thought Capture and Hyperphasics.” He looked at their puzzled faces. “Right.” He went to retrieve his mug from the microwave as it beeped.

The Chief prompted him. “Story?”

“Oh yeah. In my reality you are fictional characters.”

“Aw for cryin’ out loud, Doc. Do we have to listen to any more of this?” Cliff Steele grew impatient.

“Cliff, please. I do think this is important.” Niles Caulder turned back to their mysterious host. “What do you mean, ‘fictional’?”

The Editor stirred his warmed tea and took a sip. “In my reality, people read about your adventures. Just as you have fictional characters in your reality that exist somewhere else in the Multiverse. Sort of like the reality television. Every parallel world gets a ‘feed’ from others which shows up in our dreams and creative work. For instance, in my world you are beloved comic book characters. Here. I have some pages of artwork here. He opened the folder on his desk and handed them to the Chief. He looked over them and handed them to Cliff. Robotman looked at the pages in disbelief.

“The nature of comics is one of unrestrained imagination so they are easy conduits. It happens in other mediums too like television and books. Every thing possible is happening somewhere and every possible audience is somewhere observing it.” The man said matter of factly.

Rita Farr rubbed Mento’s back while sitting next to him on the couch but he just sat shaking his head and mumbling to himself. Larry Trainor looked over a collection of books stored in an old Victrola cabinet that had its doors removed and shelves added. He turned to join the Chief and Cliff, who were in the middle of the room with the man. “What’s a Multiverse?”

The Editor laughed. “Sure. That’s an easy question. Hmm. Okay.” He cleared his throat. “It’s the entirety of all possible universes, parallel worlds, higher and lower dimensions, and other subsequent realities, where all probabilities are realized. You should know better than most. You’ve been bouncing around in it for awhile now.”

Cliff tried to take it in. “So, there is more than one Earth?”

“Absolutely, millions in fact. Let’s back up a bit. In the beginning, you had the beginning of everything.” He laughed a little at himself. “And over time events occurred and life sprang into existence. As these free will radical elements interacted with the orderly progression of the universe, probability expanded exponentially. As lifeforms sprang up all over the universe and started to affect its natural course more and more, the more complicated the vibratory nature of time and space became and offshoot realities formed. Other probabilities took shape and alternate timelines came into being. Each major event only added to the complexity of these butterfly effects and you had all kinds of divergences. Fast forward a half dozen or so billion years and you have a large, complicated hierarchy of timelines splitting apart and colliding together. Each existing just a hair away from the others. And one day they’ll all collapse back into a lonely little singularity at the end of all things.”

“Let’s say I understood any of that. What in the hell does it have to do with us?” Cliff’s large frame shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other.

“Everything! Like I said, you’ve all been lost in time and space for a very long time now.”

“Since the accident thirteen years ago, correct? With the Infinity Projector?” The Chief’s perplexed brow wrinkled as his mind worked furiously with new theories and ideas.

“Oh no, longer than that. Since the original accident almost forty years ago. The first time the Doom Patrol died.”

“Whoa! What?” Cliff exclaimed.

“You were first discovered in my world by two men named Arnold Drake and Bob Haney in the early 60s and they related your adventures in my world until later in the decade when you first perished, the first time the Infinity Projector was detonated. See, you guys weren’t supposed die. And when you did you were directly on top of a hole punched right in the middle of the Multiverse, and well, you were drawn into the matrix of probability itself, regenerating, retconning, and rebooting new versions of yourselves in one reality after another, and each time meeting with disaster. The multiverse was trying to fix itself but it just wasn’t working.”

“Chief..?” Cliff appealed to the group’s mentor.

“Shh, Cliff.” Niles Caulder tried to take in each part of the information carefully.

“Other Editors and creative folks like myself have tracked your adventures over the years. Trying to focus in on your best characterizations and stories, and bring you back from this endless cycle you’ve been stuck in, but let me tell you it’s not been easy.”

“But there’s something else after us correct? Something to do with our being out of ‘continuity’?”

“Yes, like I said, when you broke out of your original reality you created a continuity error, a paradox. You continually rebooted for decades, which isn’t entirely unnatural for some characters to do, but yours was a special case. When we attempted recently to break the cycle and place you back into reality after the Projector knocked you back out, it began doubling the paradox in on itself. It immediately released the chaos beasts you fought in the first issue.”

“Chaos beasts? The dark creatures the group fought when they returned?” The Chief questioned.

“Yes. They are drawn to places with continuity errors and feed off of the chaotic energies they produce, but Un’jura and U’qaro managed to do a quick fix and plug the plot hole. Something else was pursuing you though and now it is very close. Something far more dangerous.”

“The Word.”

“You are the smart one, Chief!” The Editor took another sip of his tea.

“What is he?”

“It. It is the embodiment of continuity errors. It is every dangling plotline, mischaracterization, and typo come to life. It is bad storytelling personified and its hot on your heels. That’s why he was collapsing your timelines, trying to draw me out. Trying to find his way here.”

“And now here we are!” Cliff threw his hands up.

“And he hasn’t found us yet. But if he does it’s all over. In a place like this he’ll be unstoppable. All powerful.”

“And what is this place?”

“Somewhere inbetween!” The Editor waved his fingers menacingly before chuckling. “This is a little nook between our realities. A place where real objects become conceptual. Where ideas are real and reality an idea. The Neverending. The Immateria. The Tabula Rasa! Call it whatever you want, it won’t matter if we don’t figure out how to get you back into your timeline without the Word catching us.”

The Chief continued. “What do you suggest?”

Steve Dayton could take no more and stood up sharply. The staccato beats of the bizarre typewriter clacked away quietly on one side of the room, slamming into his brain like jabs from knife. He walked over to it and read the paper as it fed through in an endless loop. It read:



“No. No!” Steve lost it. Before the Editor could respond, Steve grabbed the typewriter from the desk and sped across the room. He opened the door and raced outside, the rest of the group in close pursuit.

“This isn’t real! Do you hear me? And I’m not going to listen to another damn second of it!” He hoisted the typewriter over his head. It still clattered away despite being torn loose from its paper feed.

“No. Stop. Don’t.” The Editor said halfheartedly, knowing that it was already too late. “Don’t do this, Steve. Why don’t you just chillax, come back in, and have some tea.”

“Tea? TEA?! YOU SHUT UP!”

“Steve, please.” Rita pleaded as she tried to move closer.

“No reason to be an a-hole, Steve. I tried to keep you from going down this character arc but if you do this it’s out of my hands. Break that typewriter and it’s all over. The Word will be on top of us in no time. You’ll finish us all.”

“Good! I know this is all still part of the Brain’s trap! And I know this is the only way OUT!” He thrust his arms straight down and the typewriter smashed into the ground below, exploding violently outward in a flash of multi-colored light.

“The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.”
- Philip K. Dick

Larry Trainor felt his pulse quicken as the negative being seemed to reignite within him. He launched his dark energy outward at the large, featureless man in front of them. But The Word only reached out and caught him with one hand. It looked at the negative with its blank face and spoke. “Light!”

A single spot of light appeared in the middle of the energy being and grew, burning the dark shape as it went until nothing was left. Larry Trainor groaned and crumpled to the ground.

Rita Farr was next. She extended a fist outward to the thing as she yelled. “This is for Steve!” But The Word only waved his hand at her.

“Deform.”

All of a sudden, Rita’s proportions grew at crazy and mismatched rates. Her head grew and her legs shrank. Her hand was that of a giant’s and her long, thin arm could no longer support its weight. She fell forward, her body twisted and misshapen in grotesque features. She whimpered as she writhed on the ground unable to control her power.

The Word advanced on the remaining three. Mento still sat on his knees as the barely human foe walked past. “Sleep.” Steve Dayton fell over to one side and rested peacefully at last.

The blank man pointed at Niles Caulder. “Pain.” And the Chief collapsed out of his wheel chair and clutched his stomach.

“Aaaaaagh!”

“Looks like you’ll have to go through me...”

“Move.” And Robotman skidded to one side.

“Oh no you don’t!” Cliff Steele bolted back at the shape and raised his fist to attack.

“Pow.” And an invisible force slammed into Cliff’s metal chest, knocking him backward. The Word turned his attention to the cyborg. “Bang.” Another blow slammed into Robotman, denting his chest inward.

“You have to get up, Cliff! You can’t let him in here! If he gets to the typewriter he can unwrite your entire existence!” The Editor pleaded from within the room.

“Smash. Crunch. Blam.” The Word assaulted the Robotman with one word after another. Each blow rained down on him with tremendous force. His robot body took each hit point blank and began to come apart. His chest was crushed and his arms shattered. The Word stood over him mercilessly. “Boom.”

Robotman’s body was now ruined and helpless.

The Word turned back toward the door in front of him and landed a punch into it that seemed to shake the world around them. Behind him, Robotman laid still, his arms and legs no longer able to work. His jaw hung half connected to his face and one electronic eye slightly ajar from its ocular slot.

“You can’t let him win, Cliff! Get up!”

Robotman’s voice crackled. “Shrrrrrzzk.. d-don’t think so…. Zzzzkt… s-sorry I let you… d-own… zzzzrk.” He looked down at his broken arms. “SSszzk… t-they look like strong hands, d-don’t they? Zrrrrk.”
The Word landed another blow and the door cracked.

The Editor shoved a bookcase over in a feeble attempt to blockade the door. “You can’t give up! This is your tale, Cliff. Your life. You are the hero of this story! It’s time to take control and choose your own adventure!”

Another blow and the door sank in as the world shook.

“If you give up there won’t be a Doom Patrol, Cliff! You’ll never have existed. It’ll be over. Save your friends! You only have to believe in yourself!”

A final punch and the door splintered in front of The Word.

“Anything is possible, Cliff! You have to get up and fight!!”

Cliff Steele stared at his hands and remembered. A smile, a kiss, a warm summer day, a beautiful woman, his favorite song, a race car as it sped under his control, the first time he looked in Jane’s eyes. He looked inside himself and found strength.

“REPAIR!!” Cliff’s voice was strong and sure. His chest plate undented itself back into a smooth and seamless surface. Wires and connections reassembled. Each piece found its home as his body worked itself back together. His robot body was like new again and he rose to his feet.

The Word pulled what was left of the door from its hinges and pushed over the bookcase inside.

“Hey. Whiteout Boy. I’m not finished with you yet.” Cliff stood with his metal fists clenched tight. “You’ve put us through the ringer and I figure it’s time you got a little payback.”

The large white shape turned to face his risen opponent. “Die.”

“Not gonna work this time!” Cliff rushed in and punched The Word into the invisible wall behind him. “You see. Maybe there’s something you didn’t realize.” Cliff landed another crushing blow. “You start trouble with us and sooner or later you’ll get yours.” Another powerful fist landed into The Word’s hypothetical torso. “You can push us down, beat us up, and even kill us a few times…” Another punch, Cliff’s blows rocked the foundations of the world around them now. “But we just keep getting back up!” He grabbed the throat of the now limp shape.

“W-why?”

“Ha ha ha ha ha. Are you kidding me? After all you’ve put us through and you have the balls to ask ‘why’?” Cliff drew his fist back slowly, the hydraulics and tension rods in his mechanical arm pulling tight under the restrained pressure. “Because we’re the god damn Doom Patrol that’s why!!!” He shot an uppercut into The Word’s jaw to punctuate his sentence and the thing shattered underneath the force of his blow. The blackness around them broke into pieces. Words, letters, and fragments flew in every direction and faded from sight.

“WOOO! Hell yeah, Cliff!” The Editor jumped up and down on his couch.

The Doom Patrol was whole again as they stood and gathered themselves, with the exception of Mento who still looked dazed. But the space around them had suffered too much and the sparse world shook and crumbled. What little details dotted the landscape broke apart and fell away. The Chief called out to the Editor. “What now?!”

“I’m not sure. It will be surprise!”

Then the ground gave way beneath all of them and they tumbled down into the infinite white.

Robotman walked with Steve Dayton in the stone corridor that had been refurbished into a comfortable passage. The floor was carpeted and large, and drapes hung on the sunlit windows. Strange devices in glass cases lined the walls.

“You gonna be okay, man?”

“Yes. Thank you, Cliff. I’m sure I just need to shake it off. It must have been some dream.” Steve looked around. “Down this way right?”

“Yep. Down past the living paintings and turn left before you get to the Unending Corridor.”

Steve nodded and made his way to the shower alone. He closed the door behind him and leaned against it, facing a large mirror. He was shocked when he saw how ragged he looked. His temples had grayed and he badly needed a shave. Dark circles outlined his eyes.

“Well, I certainly look crazed.” He said outloud with a laugh. But he knew better. He knew what he had seen and it didn’t matter if the others believed him or not. He was on his own now and couldn’t trust them any longer. He had learned the secrets and now he had big ideas. He was a man with a mission.