Hearsay Horizons

 I met Viv at a bookshop, so you’d think the anthologies would have been my first warning. I forget what edition she was reading when I stopped beside her at the bookshop to ask—how do they churn them every year?—some fantasy thing. She’d lifted it to show me the cover. It was so damned generic. “That’s cool,” I said. “I just tracked down this title from my favorite urban fantasy author. Actually, she has two series with the same vibe that somehow don’t overlap and—” Viv listened and I sat down beside her and she listened some more. We went out for coffee first; I had no idea Starbucks had tasting samplers. Second date was at some low-risk chain restaurant. I got the steak tips, and Viv got a combo platter. We went to a taco bar next and she got the variety tacos. Steakhouse? They had a mixed meats option I never noticed before she ordered it. Never just one flavor of beer or seltzer, always a variety pack. It bled over into her yard: long flowerbeds, not even straight, all flowers...

Nine years ago, sudden upheaval fractured a world into three paths: us, the One Earth Regime enforced with a hand of steel and laser lobotomies, and the fairytale world where nothing too bad ever seems to happen, where villain plots occur just to get foiled. Sounds nice. Here, Superman did kill Lois Lane and their unborn child through the Joker’s machinations. He then murdered the Joker. Nothing went nuclear here—at least, not physically. Superman... shattered. He vanished in the chaos. We know he’s still alive: a silhouette waiting on rooftops for Batman, a silent shape hovering below a balcony for Wonder Woman. He’s fast and he’s elusive, but there are cameras everywhere—not that we put more up. The Initiative isn’t the regime. Emergency protocols kept the Justice League functional until we put out the worst fires. On the face of it, two deaths probably shouldn’t have led to the League’s dissolution, but those two in that way applied pressure to fault lines in the League. Existing te...