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Qui Laetificat Juventutem Meamy This is one of my favorite sequences, and one The other concern was my spiritualistic moralizing throughout this and other space-travel sequences, where the concern was that, as a minister, I might be interjecting too much of my own belief system into Hal's process. Again, not a problem for DC, since Hal Spectre, after all, works for God (I was not allowed to mention this in the novel). God is a DCU character, who has been speaking—to Jim Corrigan, at least—for decades. My thought is that Hal Spectre has a much higher awareness of God, of some higher power at work in the universe. That's not me preaching, that's a logical investigation of the character and is soundly based on preexisting continuity. I'm sure this particular chapter drove poor Howard nuts with bad science and all this talk of architecture demanding an architect. I apologize for both, but I'm really quite pleased with this business and hope it survives the final edit. |
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ADVENTURES IN THE FUNNYBOOK GAME I stepped into the elevator out of habit, but as the doors closed I was the Spectre again. I motivated myself to Gotham City, where the sign outside the warehouse warned POLICE CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION. Inside the deserted, ancient building, moonlight intruding through broken glass and reflected off of my pale skin, making me either an incredibly chilling sight or, say, the ultimate pirate of the Caribbean. I stood outside a closet that was, much to my relief, just a closet, and not a transformer bridge—a star gate built by the Qwardian invaders Kyle Rayner repelled a few weeks ago. Green Lantern—and, yes, it’s awkward for me to call him that—shut down all Qwardian star gates and cut off their access to thousands of counterfeit power rings spread throughout time and space. The rings were designed to get into the hands of unwitting accomplices, who would become “sleepers”—enemy combatants planted among targeted populations. The Qwardians could then activate those counterfeit power rings via their star gates, and instantly flank us with a preplaced army of sleepers, each with power rivaling Green Lantern’s own. Kyle Rayner had reported the closet as a star gate, built decades before by the Qwardians, and used by a kind of “Hole in the Wall Gang” to evade police. Kyle chased the gang through this gate and ended up in a wholly different place and time. But the closet was just a closet now. Not a trace of any known electromagnetic or thermal emissions, and it amazed me with how fast I disregarded the Boss. I was supposed to be wandering Earth, shade-like. Avenging wrongs. Instead, I was sniffing around to see if a closet was still a closet. “It’s shut down, I assure you.” The voice melting out of the jet black might have most people jumping out of their skin, but beings who are aware—in harmony and community with the universe—are difficult to sneak up on. Besides, I expected Batman, though this was impressively fast. He chose to be a voice. He was in one of his I’ll just be a voice moods. My back was to him, but I could see him clearly. “So, you’ve been monitoring this place... and I tripped some kind of alarm.” “Everything in existence emits some kind of signature, Hal. It’s all about knowing what to listen for. About being in the right place at the right time.” Batman, a flesh-and-bone billionaire with a crime fetish, was trying to spook me. Me. A man who’s been to hell and back and back again. I had the power to level entire cities. He could bench press about 350. I could destroy the world’s most powerful beings with the sweep of my hand. He could punch out tubby losers dressed as penguins and so forth. There are no known limits to my omnipotence. Without water, he’s a dead man in ten days. Sell spook somewhere else, pal. We’re full up, here. “Don’t you want to know why I’m here?” I asked. “Not particularly.” I tried to read him, but Batman had had years of practice. He put nothing out into the world. A head full of static. I turned to address nothing at all, jet black. “Something’s wrong. I don’t know what. But something is terribly wrong.” “Of course it is...” a half-hiss, trailing. “How do you know?” “If it wasn’t, neither of us would dress this way.” My best Spirit of Vengeance glare. Nothing. It was like scowling at a brick. I blinked first. “Could be nothing.” “It’s not.” “Could be minor.” “It’s not minor.” “But you don’t know what it is.” “No,” he said. And, upon reflection, “But neither do you.” I’m not sure I ever liked him. When I was Green Lantern, he existed on the periphery of my awareness, which is where we both were the most comfortable. I didn’t approve of his methods. He thought I was too much of a boy scout. Neither of us had either problem anymore. A rustle in the black. Still here. Jim Corrigan, the original Spectre, was a police detective. He had the advantage of deductive reasoning. I was a test pilot. Flying by the seat of my pants. “The word you’re looking for is process...” Hiss, trailing. Now I was the one putting too much out in the world, and he was reading me. “Yes,” I agreed. “The worst thing a detective can have is an opinion. Opinion works against process.” Taking me to school, now. “Go on.” “Natural law, Hal. Magic, sorcery, God. The second law of thermodynamics. It’s all mathematics. The difference being what we process and what we do not.” “Something’s wrong.” “Absolutely.” “And it’s bad.” “Yes.” “And you don’t know what it is.” “No.” “And, that doesn’t bother you?” “No.” “Why?” “Because that’s my process.” “Mathematics?” “Two plus two, Hal. It’s right there.” Another rustle. I was boring him now. “Will you help me?” “I’m busy. But you’ve helped me, so I’ll help you. When it’s time.” He was leaving. I knew he was leaving, but only barely. I doubt a human being would have realized it because he’d begun throwing his voice, like a ventriloquist, making it seem he was still six feet away when he was more like twelve. “Things that seem right are probably wrong. Problems solved probably aren’t. Right is wrong, yes is no, victory is defeat. Turn things around and start there, Hal. Won’t take all night.” But, it did.
In geosynchronous
orbit above the planet, Gotham City
looked rather like a handful of dust. The
old warehouse was not perceptible to the
naked human eye, but a scientist with a good
satellite telescope could find it. I could
see it clearly and in minute detail from
22,300 miles above the planet. It still told
me absolutely nothing. The right time. Motivating myself to the orbit of Phobos, the Martian moon, I briefly marveled at the beauty of Creation. Even the swirling, red sandstorms of the ruined Martian landscape—once a living, thriving, lush utopia and home to an advanced race of philosophers and poets—existed in harmony with everything else. That human beings came to be the dominant species of this star system—at least for now—was an orderly progression of a larger plan. Lines on a manuscript we are not yet evolved enough to read. Looking at Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in our solar system, and Valles Marineris, the Grand Canyon of Mars, nearly as long as the United States of America is wide, I marveled at how well sorcery or spiritualism—or however regular people think of the source of the Spectre’s power—understood the laws of science. At the speed of light, it would take at least five minutes to get to Phobos. But I was there in the time it took me to want to be there. And, in the time it would take me to want to walk along Miami Beach, I would be walking along Miami Beach, with no appreciable time having elapsed. Moving at speeds approaching or surpassing the speed of light—hyper-fast travel within general relativity or “warp” speed, if you will—creates fundamental problems with things like watches and calendars. But, magic—mysticism, spiritualism—all of that seems to overcome such trivial obstacles as relativistic rules for time and space. Paper cover rock. The hand of God? Or is God simply science we do not yet understand? I’d spent my entire life being a scientist. And, yet, every time I charged my power ring and pulled on the green leotard I defied logic, reason, method and process to go dashing around the solar system—the solar system—and home again during the space of a Super Bowl commercial break. It actually took years for me to surrender myself to the notion that I could dash to the Kuiper Belt and back and not find everyone I knew dead for centuries. That the Guardians realized how important community—love, family and, yes, spirituality, meaning and purpose—was for temporal creatures. Part of the magic in the rings was immensely complex variables that dealt with general relativity, making us not only space travelers but time travelers: always moving forward and back in time as we traveled immense distances to perform our duties. Of course, the notion of a magic ring was insipidly childish and utter nonsense. For years, my effectiveness and, frankly, my power, was limited by how smart I thought I was. By how well I thought I understood physics. It wasn’t until I stopped wriggling in the mousetrap that I began to actually understand what science is all about: rational inquiry into things we cannot explain.. Mysticism. Theology. The magic Green Lantern ring was only magic because my mind hadn’t yet evolved enough to comprehend how complex a machine it was. Even now, in my oneness with creation, in my grasp of things seen and unseen, I am comfortable with the ring without completely understanding how it works. I have matured to the point that I accept the fact that it does work. That it simply is. And, that simply being can and often is sufficient. That acceptance has made me much more sane. Much more powerful. Much more dangerous. From Phobos, the universe still felt off-kilter. I could see more and understood less. The larger the palette, the more detail to process. Process, the man said. In Gotham, I was performing Batman’s process. Imitating him. Which is faulty process, since I am not, in fact, him. I simply am. And that is sufficient. Motivating myself to Ceres, within the asteroid belt near the massive gas giant Jupiter, the solar system still seemed wrong. And I still couldn’t put my finger on it. Process. Don’t do Batman’s process—do the Spectre’s process. What am I missing? I motivated myself to Charon, the icy moon orbiting Pluto near the extreme edge of our solar system. Nothing. Everything. The vastness, the simple incomprehensibility of Creation. The unlikely logic of it all—the math—demands not only science but something beyond that. Architecture. Art. Purpose. Perhaps, at the very end of intellect and reason, there is a precipice beyond which no rational thought exists. Perhaps faith involves leaping into that abyss and, in so doing, elevating our thinking beyond what we can prove on paper. Without dismissing intellect or reason we can evolve both and, in so doing, find that small piece of ourselves that we've been missing. Pondering the imponderable took my mind off the fact I was no closer to an answer than I’d been at the warehouse. Something was desperately wrong but I had absolutely no clue what it might be. As Green Lantern, the trip to Pluto might have taken me twenty minutes. I now realize the trip took twenty minutes to keep me from going insane. The real magic of the Guardians’ rings was making interplanetary travel occur along seemingly rational lines flesh and bone types could process. After all, if the power ring could get me to Pluto’s moon in twenty minutes—a trip that would take nine years, five months under the most optimal orbit alignment and by the most advanced space craft available to man—it surely could do it in the space of a thought. I could have simply willed myself there. And the ring would have automatically compensated for the time there and back— —then it hit me: process. Not Batman’s. Not Spectre’s. Hal Jordan: what would his process be? Hal was a scientist, not a detective. Not a Spirit of Vengeance. Hal’s process would be much more empirical. In special relativity, spacetime does not require the notion of a universal time component. The time component for events viewed by people in motion with respect to each other will always be different. In special relativity, in spacetime, simultaneity exists, but we cannot perceive it if the distances are too great. Right “now,” whatever “now” means, someone standing on Charon, Pluto’s moon, would be seeing Earth as it happened five hours ago, since it takes light that long to move from Earth to Pluto. Moving from Earth to Charon in an eye blink would require me to move at many times the speed of light, which is impossible. But somehow I am able to circumvent that limitation. The Guardians’ spacetime compensation envelope allows for that—for me to move great distances without the passage of significant time. The trip to the edge of the solar system felt like twenty minutes because, somehow, the Guardians figured that would seem about right to me. But, as Spectre, the Spirit of Vengeance, that was a crutch I no longer needed. I spoke to Creation, which was still not revealing much to me but did my bidding anyway. “Turn it off!” I needed to turn it off. Turn off the magic. The inexplicable compensation envelope for spacetime travel. The logic bubble that kept me from going insane when I moved from Earth to the farthest point in the solar system in only twenty minutes. Even though I was no longer Hal Jordan, no longer Green Lantern, I had instinctively been moving about the universe in a very... Green Lantern way, still using a time/space compensation scheme similar to the power ring’s buffers. I decided to experiment a little, now moving through time as well as space. No longer compensating for faster-than-light travel, I motivated myself to Miami Beach during the time I saw it from Charon, arriving half a day before I’d left Gotham City. The universe was still wrong, still off. I motivated myself back to Charon and back again, arriving in Miami the previous day. Before Janelle. Before Maybelle. The universe still felt wrong. But, I was on to something.
Process. To the Spectre, the Pleiades was merely another rest stop on the Intergalactic Jersey Turnpike. But Hal Jordan had explored only the smallest fraction of what were potentially thousands of cultures just in this one system alone, the Pleiades being one of billions of clusters of systems in the universe. Just being there momentarily overwhelmed me with awe and wonder—further exposing an unsettling vulnerability, a humanity, that was, in and of itself, evidence that the very universe I so appreciated was somehow way off-kilter. the Spectre wasn’t a space explorer, wasn’t an intergalactic defender. This was loafing on the job, and I’d already been warned by the Boss.
With the space/time compensation still off, moving much faster than the speed of light, I motivated myself to Balmerino Abbey, arriving in thirteenth century Scotland. Cold, damp. Gray Day. A gentle and winning loneliness that demanded pipers and drums. Mist on the moors. A place of ghosts. Suddenly, everything was right again. The universe, my place in it: it all made sense. The vibrations, all familiar. The currents of existence and awareness: comfortable and comforting. There, standing in the cobbled courtyard bordered by three arches of the Chapter House near the winding, cobbled Night Stairs, my cloak billowing ominously in the cutting morning breeze, the Spectre was surely that—a vision of God’s judgment and wrath. Drinking in the morning fragrance, the wind whispering by my ears, I closed my eyes and allowed myself the moment. The humanity. Bread was baking. Children’s laughter echoing off of the hills. Morning. Like I was noticing it for the first time. “Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam.” To God, the joy of my youth, I heard a gentle voice say. “Emitte lucem tuam et veritatem tuam: ipsa me deduxerunt et adduxerunt in montem sanctum tuum, et in tabernacula tua.” I turned to face the terrified young novice. She could not have been quite fourteen years old. Marie Tunnelly. She was crying, her tiny body rigid with fear and awe at this vision. Terror struck through her even as she blessed God for choosing her to receive this theophany. I translated her words, mostly for my own benefit, "Send forth Thy light and thy truth: for they have led me and brought me to thy holy hill,” I gently said to the novice, surprised I remembered it from Mass, “and Thy dwelling place.” She fell to her knees, bowing. I’m sure the Boss was irritated. It was a huge distraction. “Don’t be afraid,” I said, as gently as I could. I briefly thought of either vanishing or assuming a more human guise, but figured that’d just make things worse. “And do not worship me. I am but a mortal man.” She wasn’t buying it. She knew a spook when she saw one.
“Touch me.” I extended
a pale, bony hand. This was me being
selfish. I wanted her light. Just the
smallest fraction of it. “Go on,” I whispered. “Let me show you.” Humbled and shaken, the novice shared her light with me, completely oblivious to the irony, that, if any soul was being saved it was mine. I stoically looked down on the novice. I considered smiling but thought she’d pass out. “Now, go in peace.” She paused a respectful moment before scurrying back toward the Chapter House. I paused to cling to fleeting moments of how glorious, how excellent, my humanity once was. And how I’d squandered it. I allowed myself regret; the quiet dignity of suffering.
And then I remembered who I was. What I was. My place in Creation. And it alarmed me that, yet again, the Spectre’s immortal shell had failed me, exposed me to human weakness. Whatever was wrong in the universe was certainly not my concern, and yet my weakness—Hal Jordan—would give me no rest until I at least figured out what the threat was. Then I could alert the Justice League, or whomever, and it would be their problem. Having found a point in time where the universe seemed normal and stable, I now had a clue as to how to figure out what was wrong by first figuring out when it went wrong. I finally had a process. Bells tolled forebodingly in the courtyard as I narrowed my eyes into my very best Spirit of Vengeance glare. I’d found my process: when’s the last time you knew things were true? “Turn it back on!” I demanded of Creation and Creation continued to work with me, once again providing the inexplicable time/space compensation envelope as I motivated myself around the universe. By adjusting both my speed and the depth of the compensation envelope around me— a little more, then a little more than that—I was able to slowly click time forward toward the “present” until I found the last time the universe seemed right to me.
It was moments before
Kyle Rayner defeated Sinestro. |
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