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It was pretty late. 'Pretty late' by a hospital doctor's standards was maybe not the same 'pretty late' the rest of the world swore by, as this was a subculture that had a special name for people who spent 24 hours on the job (Jack Bauer, and Gene Baskov had received the honor of that Power Hour more than once). This time Gene got home pretty late and pretty late was around 3 AM, which wasn't so much a super-odd shift as it was a shift that lasted a few more hours than it was supposed to, in a ward that didn't normally run past midnight. But even that, in itself, was not out of the ordinary. Shitty, yes. Surprising, not really. Definitely no time to go out tonight, and here he'd allocated some -- ah well, the city of neon and chrome could wait. Everything could wait. Brillo and the newest presents from TiVo couldn't wait.

The doorman waved to him. The elevator went all the way up to his apartment without interruptions, which wasn't really remarkable, since it was going up. It was remarkable if he was going down, and to this day he still hopefully counted the floors in case it didn't stop, but inevitably when you lived as high up as he did it would. Tonight was 3 AM, though. Tonight, pretty late, no stops.

He unlocked his front door and stepped in, already saying, "Brillo, Daddy's h --" But Brillo always heard the door before that, anyway, so it was a little strange that --

Brillo did look up at him. She had her head in Ray Gordon's lap, and Ray Gordon had his hand on her head. His normal hand, anyway: his other hand had a bandage on it, Gene could see from where he was resting his arm on the back of the couch. And that's where they were, just sitting there on Gene's couch. Ray had a book in his other hand: Thomas Pynchon, V. He didn't look up.

"Dream tonight of peacock tails, / Diamond fields and spouter whales. / Ills are many, blessings few, / But dreams tonight will shelter you. Well, at least you haven't got company," he said. "You know. This could've been awkward."

Ray dogeared the book and tossed it aside with a flick of his wrist, and in the same moment, let out a deep breath close to a sigh. He closed his eyes, stroked Brillo's head one more time and took off his glasses, letting his head drop back to rest on the back of the couch. There were deeper circles under his eyes today. Whatever he'd been doing lately, in between yanking Gene's chain, it didn't appear to be sleeping. In fact, he looked sort of indefinably -- unwell. It gave Gene a moment's pause.

"I'll drop the bullshit," he said. "I'm sorry for breaking into your apartment. I wouldn't have done it if it wasn't kind of important, all right? And also kind of an emergency -- I've given it a lot of thought."

The last two things contradicted. He seemed to know it, too, because he shook his head after and raised his bandaged hand as if to stop Gene from saying something. But he didn't say anything for a moment after that.

Finally: "Sit down, I fed Brillo."

"'Hooker' is not the word I would've used," said Ray with his eyes open again, and cracked a smile at Gene when he looked very briefly concerned. Very. "It's all right, baby. I cut myself making fruit salad. I was going to say 'stir-fry,' because that sounds manlier, but no, it was fruit salad." He settled his glasses back onto his nose and made a face for a moment, then sat up and scratched Brillo behind the ears. "That's not the emergency." He looked a bit rejuvenated. It might've been inexplicable to someone else, but Gene was aware that Ray had the vision of a naked mole rat without his prescription, and if he kept it on too long it started giving him a mild headache. So it always came down to that choice: headache or mole rat. Ray opted for "headache" and had already gotten used to it by the time he met Gene. God only knew what kind of terror he'd been not used to it.

Brillo whined a little, very quietly, in Ray's lap. Gene habitually checked her feet again for something that might be hurting her, but Ray shook his head, which stopped him in place -- still did, now.

"Pour me a drink, Genya," he said. His voice had gotten low. "If it's not a terrible imposition."

Ray took the glass with his uninjured hand and knocked back the first gulp or three, grimacing a little. "The last alcohol I had was Sam Adams. On account of that being practically all I keep in my fridge nowadays. Also Bailey's," he felt the need to note. "What have I become, my Swedish friend."

Ray Gordon, it was generally observed, hated Johnny Cash the way some people hated Miley Cyrus. (He did not hate Miley Cyrus the way some people hated Miley Cyrus -- in fact, Gene was willing to bet he knew all the words to "See You Again." Pity it had come out in their years apart. He might've known for certain.) As such he took every opportunity to make fun of him, including anytime "Hurt" came on the radio: and during those times he'd infected Gene as well with that particular accursed mondegreen. And Gene had used to like "Hurt," too. At least it wasn't "Walk the Line," which Ray complained about not making sense, which was big words from someone who liked Creedence Clearwater Revival. Or at least, he used to. Things could change.

Waltzing into a hospital ward was one thing. A person's locked apartment was another, wasn't it? Did the doorman -- but that didn't make any sense?

Ray slid a coaster over from the other end of the coffee table and set his glass down on it. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees for a moment or two, looking at the glass, thinking. "We need to talk," he said. "What I'm going to say is going to sound a little out of the blue, but you are going to listen to me, you are going to take me seriously and you are going to answer me when I ask you a question, aren't you?"

Of all the sentences in all the towns in all the world. He had to say that one.

Vodka in a glass looked like water. It had in the past and it did when Ray picked it up and swirled it around now. Ray had mistaken a lot of things for water in his life, the most egregious being vinegar, which he had once absently attempted to drink out of the bottle in the kitchen before spitting it out and swearing comprehensively in German. He didn't have his glasses on then. Such were the things that happened when he didn't have his glasses on.

He took his damned time of going ahead, that was for certain.

"So," Ray said, "have you ever wondered what the hell happened to our city?"

In fact, Gene had, but it wasn't exactly what he'd been expecting to come out Ray's mouth at this very moment. Ray stroked between Brillo's ears.

"Remember when we were in school? This place used to have a normal crime rate, normal natural disasters, you know, stuff that made sense and had explanations," he gestured with his glass, "where reporters didn't sound as baffled as the government who didn't sound as baffled as the police. It's worst around Meadowview, they just find hosts of -- people. Dead or comatose. And people say they see animals, animals that attack people and explode into dust. Independently, they say that. Old grannies and schoolkids and like, businessmen. One of my coworkers swears he saw a French cavalier leap through a mirror in the science lab. And sure, maybe 30% less it'd be nothing. Some kind of hysteria. Maybe 20% less."

Ray leaned back and downed more of the vodka and stared at Gene straight on, with a look that said he expected him not to look away until he looked away. Neither of them did.

"Sailor soldiers," he said. "Little superheroes in costumes, fighting crime. Organ rings. Subway terrorism. Gene, do you ever feel like you're in Harry Potter London and you're a Muggle?"

Ray nodded and rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand, still covered in that bothersome bandage. It was tied clumsily, the wrappings weren't remotely parallel, the kind of dressing an untrained person gave themselves with one hand. His sleeve had slipped down enough once or twice to reveal that the white gauze wrapped around his wrist and ran up his arm at least somewhat. He'd cut himself cooking?

"I know," he said. "Kind of like the world should be ending, ain't it?"

He gave Brillo another pat and then leaned forward to set glass down on coaster again. About half the liquid was left in it and that stilled quickly. Then he stood up -- not quickly, but suddenly enough to get Brillo's attention; she looked between them quickly to see if she should be following him, saw that Gene wasn't going anywhere and stayed where she was. Ray walked around to the back of the couch and leaned against it, his hand a few inches from Gene's shoulder. Gene accordingly turned to look at him a little, but he had his back to him. He looked to be staring out the floor-length windows that overlooked the lights of nighttime Destiny City on the other side of the room.

"You know, I read this book once -- it was called Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn. The whole thing was the sort of doom-and-gloom environmental doomsaying that's at once entirely true and entirely useless, but there was one thing stuck with me, Genya. The wise old sage tells the narrator this fable, and it's about how, traveling back in time, an anthropologist encounters this jellyfish and asks the jellyfish to tell him the story of the world as he knows it: and the jellyfish very proudly does so, the whole rigamarole, Big Bang and evolution of life and all that jazz, and then dramatically ends it -- 'and then there was the jellyfish!' And the point the book's making is, that's how we humans think of humanity, isn't it? The pinnacle of creation? This, our modern era, the epitome of progress, the epitome of everything. And not only that, we're the alpha and the omega. It's not just that history started with us. It ends with us too."

Silhouetted against the distant neon and glowing white Ray tipped his head back a little to look up. "We have this -- we have this notion that we, this, now, are human progress, that the future is now. That we've nearly conquered all there is to conquer, that we are as advanced, as brilliant, as powerful as we are ever going to be -- it's why science fiction has such a confounded terrible imagination, you know. The sky's the limit, and all we can think of is spaceships and mechanical men? We think this is it. We think we're here. We think this," he gestured to Destiny City and the white gauze reflected the light, "is the world of tomorrow and it's us that look down on all the wretched creatures who the good Lord neglected to bless with living here. What beautiful, arrogant creatures we are."

He was a silent for a good long while. Gene knew him, he knew the way he spoke, and he knew when he wasn't done speaking -- so he let him think, and, after a while, he went on.

"Genya," he said, "what would you say if I told you we were still living in dark little caves -- what would you say if I told you we still thought the earth was flat?"

Brillo, from where she was sitting, got up and took a few steps forward to lay at Gene's feet this time and nose him. Gene put his hand on the top of her head as well.

Ray said, "Before the dawn of anything we remember we lived here in a world we can't even conceptualize. And it burned, and everyone with it, before we could commit it to memory. But now," he took a deep breath, "it's emerging from its ashes, and that's what's happening to Destiny City."

He rested both his hands on the back of the couch now and looked over his shoulder. But he wasn't looking at Gene, he was looking at the coffee table. It was a strange thing to look at. Whatever he was saying, he'd never been the type to avoid eyes. And yet here he was, like he was looking for something on it. Gene glanced after him, out of habit -- but there was only the coaster and the glass of vodka, as there had ever been.

"But I know you," said Ray. "I know I'm talking in incomprehensible circles. And I know if I get any more specific without getting any more convincing, you'll think I've lost my mind. But I haven't. I found my mind, Genya. I had it lost for a long, long time."

There was an even longer stretch of silence between them, and this time Gene did wonder if he was meant to say something. Brillo panted and the clock on the wall ticked, maddeningly loudly in the silence.

"Look at the glass on the coffee table," said Ray.

Gene did -- and the glass on the coffee table, still filled with liquid, rose into the air. Nothing was pulling it, nothing was holding it, and there was no sort of bang or click or anything else that might have made some -- sense -- it merely floated up like it was lifted by an invisible hand. He stared at Ray. He stared at the glass. It floated up, slowly, and he didn't touch it; it floated over his shoulder and, as he watched, it floated into Ray Gordon's uninjured hand and he closed it around it, lifted it to his lips and knocked the rest of it back. Abracadabra. What you are about to see is considered -- safe.

He let go of the glass again and it stayed in the air. It swooped down and set itself on the coaster again, empty. Ray's eyes were level and met Gene's.

"We are living in the Stone Age," he said. "I've stolen fire from the gods."

He nodded to the space next to him.

"Come here. Stand up, come here, and take my hand."

Gene was still and silent for a moment.

"Go on."

"Come here," Ray said again.

He stood there while Gene hesitantly complied and Brillo looked up, a little confused. Gene wanted to say something to her, but that would have required looking away from Ray while he stood there with his eyes fixed on Gene's like he might put him under a spell that way. (And God knew if even -- God.) Blue was not the most uncommon human eye color: it was more uncommon than brown, certainly, but it was, well, it was blue. Ray referred to his eyes as his only handsome feature, and Gene often tired of the false modesty, though sometimes wondered if it was really false at all to him. Nevertheless, blue was a common color. It had always been a little uncommon on Ray.

Ray held out his hand.

Gene blinked, and Ray wasn't Ray any more. Or he was, he had to be, but he -- wasn't the person who'd been standing there before. Behind him, Brillo had started a low rumble of a growl, but he said, dumbstruck, "it's okay, Brillo, it's okay" and she left off again. She was a good girl. She was always a good girl.

The man who stood in front of him was wearing dark grey and black and a indigo blue cloak wrapped around his shoulders, like something out of a storybook. The hood was over his head, but he pulled it back a moment later. His arms were covered in bandages, over which he wore bracers; there were crystal-shaped trinkets dangling from the fastenings of his clothing. He looked like some kind of -- some kind of sorceror, which, judging by the vodka glass and everything else on this incomprehensible night, might well be the truth. He didn't have his glasses any more. He didn't have any of his normal clothing. His eyes glowed a little in the dark. Gene stayed where he was.

"Take my hand," repeated the person that was Ray, and Gene took a step forward, and then another step forward, and he did.

Ray smiled at him. His eyes had faded to a normal color, though perhaps not precisely the color they had been before -- or was that a trick of the light, or Gene's nerves? -- and it suddenly wasn't hard to believe he was Ray Gordon. "It's all right," he said, and his voice was baritone, a lot smooth, a little south of the Mason-Dixon, and somehow it only clicked just then that he was Ray Gordon. It was strange, there were no words for it. There were no words for it and he wasn't sure he would've said them if there were.

The bandages felt strange against Gene's palm. They didn't seem like the ones that had been there before.

"Close your eyes," said Ray. Gene stared at him and Ray smiled again warmly and inclined his head a little as if to say, go on. After a moment or two Gene did, with some difficulty. It was surprisingly hard to close your eyes when you were freaking out.

The floor dropped out of his stomach, and he flinched and Ray squeezed his hand -- and then he was very cold. No, he wasn't cold. The air was cold. There was wind. There was wind? There was wind.

Stupidly, he kept his eyes closed until Ray said, "Well, you can open them now," and he did.

They were out-of-doors. Specifically, they were out-of-doors and high up, because they were surrounded by the dark, looming forms of nighttime skyscrapers, some of which were lit up. They were -- they were -- standing on some kind of building. On the roof. Not Gene's apartment. Most definitely not Gene's apartment. Ray put a hand on his back, presumably to steady him, while Gene stared and stared and stared, because there really wasn't anything else to do but stare. Right now everything Ray had said was a complete blank to him, except for one thing that had stuck in his head: I've stolen fire from the gods, he'd said. I've stolen fire from the gods. And this was it. This was fire.

A wind blew Ray's cloak around him and he pulled it tighter around himself, letting Gene go once he was sure he had himself together. He watched Gene for a moment or two, head tilted to one side, before he went on.

"We're on top of the Destiny City Municipal Bank Building," he said. "DC Memorial's over that way a few streets -- you should be able to see it, with all the lights." Yes, there it was. A hospital never slept. "We got here through teleportation, in case that wasn't immediately obvious --" it wasn't, "-- one of the finer benefits of magical powers, other than the ability to see the past, present and future in a crystal ball and cheating at billiards. I've had these since September. Well, and in a manner of speaking I've had them much longer than that, too: I can't explain it, but I've lived other lives and I've seen other things, but I wasn't -- I didn't know it, I wasn't together until September. And now here I am. And here we are."

Ray turned and walked to the edge of the building, which didn't have a rail, past the point where a normal person would have gotten vertigo. He motioned for Gene to follow him, which he did, having lost any decisionmaking in this sort of thing about five minutes ago.

"This is where we are," he said. "In Destiny City. On one side we've got the long-dead magical warriors of a long-dead kingdom or two warring to find their royals o'erthrown and set them up on thrones they think they deserve again -- that's the sailor soldiers and the cavaliers -- and on the other side we've got the less-magical warriors of another long-dead rebellion who want to rule the world themselves. They're the ones that make those monsters. And then on a completely different side," Ray turned his head to smile at him, "you've got me."

They were standing on the roof like they were looking over Gotham City, though Gene Baskov did not really feel like a member of the Justice League at this particular moment. There were cars below, in a crawling line downtown, and neon signs a little higher up, and a big, bright Times Square-ish electronic billboard a few streets over like the one in Blade Runner. Ray took a deep breath of the night air.

"And do you know what, Genya? I think it's ******** retarded. I think it's ludicrous. I think it's outdated and archaic by far, all of their causes, and I don't give a s**t who touts themselves as right. Because whatever it is they're doing, they're bad at it, and their minds are so very, very narrow. You see, costumed vigilantes or no costumed vigilantes, they're still trapped in that Stone Age I was talking about. And they're trapped in their little wars and their little city and their little kingdoms that are already in the dust -- and you know what? There's a whole wide world out there, there's a whole wide world right here," he stepped hard with one of his feet to emphasize, "and it hasn't occurred to anyone, not really anyone, to change it."

He stared down at the street below. "I have power like you've never imagined," he said. "And let me tell you, Genya." His eyes were glowing again. "I'm not using it to wage a doomed war for a dead queen."

They were at least 30 stories up. The roof of the Municipal Bank Building was covered in gravel that crunched under their feet as they'd walked across it, all except for the concrete lip of the building, where Ray stood, unconcerned about the drop. He was probably unconcerned about being seen, either -- he was dressed in dark, muted colors, colors that would barely show up at all in the Destiny City night. Even black was starker than dark blue and grey. The most anyone was likely to see was, briefly, very briefly, two pinpoints of fluorescent blue: and even then they'd be likely to brush it off as a trick of the light.

Ray turned to look at him. He was unsmiling again, and it was hard to say whether that was more comforting or less. He brought his fingers together and a cloudy marble sphere appeared between them, adorned with crystal. It floated just above his fingertips.

"Of course," he said. "I'm going to rule the world."

There was not an ounce of irony in his voice.

"Oh, I will. Look at me now," he said, "and go on and tell me that I won't."

It felt like there was something in the air. It felt like static electricity, the kind you felt before a storm -- something that made everything muddled and hypersensitive and a little painful to touch. Or was it all in Gene's head? Maybe it was and maybe it wasn't, but -- but the air was thick with electricity or something else and Ray stood there, in this place they couldn't be, with the impossible in his hands, and there didn't seem to be anything that he could tell him he couldn't.

"There's a hole in the world," said Ray softly, "like a great black pit. And it's filled with people who are filled with s**t. And the vermin of the world inhabit it. And it goes by the name of mankind."

The crystal ball dropped, neatly, into one hand. "Look at it. Look at us. This isn't the world of tomorrow. This is the Dark Ages. We live in a world where ignorant superstition is the second most powerful force of nature," he gestured with a bandaged hand, "and greed and fear is the first. Have you ever been to the Holocaust Museum? They have a silly refrain they repeat there. 'Never again.' Never again? Never again what our own government does and continues to do? Never again what happens everywhere one man doesn't think another man is human? And never mind how we destroy ourselves, let's be honest, Genya, we deserve it. We might be born innocent," he chuckled, "but there ain't a goddamned soul on the face of this planet who makes it out that way. Speaking of this planet. How much longer do you think it's going to last? Environmental sanctions. Treaties. Democratic action. Civilized discussion. Do you think that's going to do bullshit when we run out of oil and we run out of animals and we run out of trees and we run out of air?"

The glow had faded, so when he narrowed his eyes and stared at Gene it was only the force of his words that sent a chill through him. "Look at me," he said, "and tell me there's a single thing I could do in the process of fixing this place that it's not already doing to itself."

Gene said nothing. There wasn't anything to say.

"And as for whether I can," Ray smiled, "what do you think?"

He looked up at the sky. "I've gone thousands of years into the future," he said. "I've stepped through the timelines into a present day that never was. I've done much, much more. And if I break the final lock on my magic, if I accomplish what I'm trying to accomplish -- that'll be pocket change compared to what I'll do then. Do you need to see anything else before you believe me? If you do, then say it and it's done."

Ray drew his cloak around himself a bit more. Gene, against his will, shivered. Ray raised his eyebrows at him.

"But, you know, I don't think there is," he said, "is there?"

The city lights blinked at them. A neon sign flickered, on and off, on and off. A faraway ambulance siren wailed in the distance.

"I will say one thing, though," Ray said, rather blithely. "I can't do it alone."