The Man Of The Mountain Sitting With Himself

by Dex

The Man of the Mountain sat, crosslegged and floating in the air above his peak. It was a small mountain, bare and open in the arid land. Barely a mountain at all, but a finger of bare rock forced up jaggedly amidst the dry cracked ground.

All around him, the spikes of the shifts soared and keened and raced, like a sliver of rainbow oil on a body of water, or a flash of sun on ice.

Nate Grey(s) smiled into the maelstrom.

Any telepath of a high enough power knows that up and down spiral, different versions of himself exist. Those versions have a faint connection across the astral plane, like a vibration sensed by all of them, in vague awareness of their counterparts.

When reality collapsed, a thousand Nate Greys collapsed into one single body and mind. A thousand lives, experiences and voices in a single container. A pantheon of Gods in a single soul.

Nate Grey(s) was mad on his mountain.

***

His lank blonde hair rose in the wind, fluttering out from under his hat and the rubberband keeping it in place. He smoothed it back unconsciously, even as the wind ripped the strands from his hands and back in flight behind him. He didn't really notice, anymore than he noticed any of his discomforts. The sun was a ball of molten gold above him; waves of heat hammered the baked land. This had once been mile on mile of lush forest, richer than any other on Earth and supporting millions from it's rich black earth and towering trees. Now, it was a dustbowl; a crazed patchwork of baked, cracked earth and a layer of dust and grit which whirled and danced in the winds. At the edge of the shrieking gales was a higher sound, keening in pitch. That was the sound of the shifts, moving like chain lightning in the distance. They quieted the closer they got to you. Like any of the survivors, he had learned to fear the deep silences.

He wiped a hand across his face, smearing the dirt and sweat into long streaks as he did so, like a fierce and desperate warpaint. He had worn a mask long ago. Now he wore a mask again, but this one was a part of his face now. Never to be taken off or put aside. A mask of sun-baked and scarred skin, sunglasses over narrowed eyes that blinked rapidly and constantly to avoid blown sand, and a sun-bleached beard of pale gold, cut short and ragged. He remembered a different face, a thousand years and a hundred lives before. Now, he lived in a shift inside, constantly drifting to match his body.

There was only one thing in his life that remained solid; static. Unchanging in a nebulous world.

Sometimes his carried it under his arm, or slung on his back. Occasionally, he even strapped it to his forearm, but never for long. Too many memories leapt out from the quiet corners of his mind when he did that. It was his dream. He was the Dreamer.

***

"He's coming."

#He's coming.#

#He's coming.#

#Don't trust him. He brought down the Professor during the Gene Wars.#

#Trust no one.#

#We are gods!#

***

Who could have ever expected reality to break like a crystal goblet? The Dreamer tossed another handful of dry sticks on his fire and settled back, hoping that this kindling wouldn't explode or melt or do the other dozen things he'd seen happen. The shifts changed everything, from the trees to the air to the people themselves.

The Dreamer had traveled with a philosopher for a time, who had done his best to make the situation explainable. He called it a compression of energy; a sort of warping of dimensions until they overlaid entirely. Like taking a thousand layers of metal and compressing them until they became one single sheet; dense and wholly unrecognizable from the parts. His theory was that some event had been that source of compression; enough energy directed so that the spiral of dimensions simply began to collapse in on itself.

When the philosopher died, the Dreamer wasn't able to find enough of him to bury properly.

***

Nate Grey(s) sat above his mountain, but his mind moved the length and breadth and depth of reality. He could feel the shifts and touch the minds that were changed by them, or killed by them. Either was as common as the next.

Did the shifts affect him? For a man that could move up and down spiral when it existed, at will, it held little fear. Powerful telekinetics could move even atoms with their minds, but Nate Grey(s) was beyond even them. For a man who could make electrons dance, the shifts held no dangers. In fact, he even had some control over them. Not enough to separate the spiral or save a dying earth, but enough to effect everyone and everything on it.

He was also a man that heard a thousand opinions to every idea. It left him tired, directionless, and indecisive. However, Nate Grey(s) had an idea of his own. His help was on his way.

#It will never work! I'll be back in the hands of the Sugarman.#

#We'll be beaten and tortured! I've eaten my arm once. I won't do it again!#

Nate Grey(s), the Shaman of a thousand dying worlds tuned out his tribe and listened for one man.

***

The Dreamer came on the Man of the Mountain, sitting cross-legged a half dozen feet above the bare ground. Around him flowed the shifts, in terrifying and relentless fury. They arced and danced and spit and raged in an ever changing web over the mote in the tempest. But the shifts slid over and around him, creating a small circle of rationality. It was like a pool of clear water; a silvered plate, a pane of ice. It was a bare touch of sanity in a world gone mad.

The Man of the Mountain opened his eyes, and a path opened through the shift lines. It was for him. The Dreamer knew that, deep in his soul. He dropped his knapsack, with his carefully hoarded cans of food, tools, matches; trying to follow the rules of survival in a world of anarchy. He took the shield from his back, and slipped it on to his forearm one more time: a movement as automatic to him as breathing.

The Dreamer trudged up the hill, and sat across from the Man of the Mountain. He took his shield and set it between them, a pivot on which they could both turn. The Man of the Mountain stared at the white star set over the stripes, and nodded slightly. He reached out and wiped a small smear of dirt from the top, before lifting it and the Dreamer up with him, off the arid ground.

"We are Nate Grey(s)." He said finally, with a nod to the man. The Dreamer pushed a lank spill of hair out of his face and nodded back.

"Steve Rodgers. I was once Captain America. A thousand shifts ago."

"But no more, we think." Nate Grey(s) smiled. "No more and more, indeed."

#America voted President Von Doom to power six weeks before the start of the Seven Nations War.#

#He tried to bury me in the Can Beat, with his Marauders.#

#Are you all really here?#

#Careful goes, Shaman. Careful goes.#

Steve heard the voices; the endless cacophony of Nate Greys all speaking and talking and making themselves known. He looked up to see one man staring out of those grey eyes, and one voice above all.

"I am the original. The Alpha, so to speak. It's my body they inhabit, but it is still my body. We are not mad, America, but we are loud." Nate Grey(s) said.  

"Why have you brought me here?" Steve said, uncomfortable with his sudden levitation. Around them, the air turned to water, and a long snake-like creature covered in razor sharp spines undulated past their little bubble.

#Tell him nothing!#

#Tell him everything!#

#There is still blood on my hands. Marked, like Cain! Always marked...# That voice faded off in a wail and retreated back into the nothingness. Nate Grey(s) smiled wryly and shrugged in apology.

"What makes you think I brought you here, America?"

"I've been... homing on this place for weeks, I think. Lifetimes, for all I know. But I don't feel the tug anymore. If you didn't bring me here, then who did?"

"You brought yourself here, America." Nate Grey(s) said. "Do you know where we are?"

"No." Steve looked around the new-changed blasted landscape, even as purple algae blossomed over it. "Who can recognize anything these days?"

"In your world, this was once at the edge of a mighty ocean, surrounded by deep forests and cradled with cool winds."

#It was the sight of the execution of the last of the British Avengers, after the schism.#

#I spent a weekend with my wife here. We ate clams and white wine.#

"I don't know."

"Plymouth, Dreamer. This is Plymouth. Where your dream began, if you remember."

"Why here? Why are you here then?"

"Because, Rodgers, we need you."

"What do you need me for, Nate." Rodgers angrily scrubbed his hands through his grimy hand and scowled. "I used to be a hero, Nate. I used to believe in something. Now everything that I fought for is gone. Everyone I loved as well, or turned into some... thing that I don't recognize. I killed Henry Pym in an SS uniform a month ago."

"Are you what you were because of what you fought against, or fought for, America?"

"Don't call me that!" Rodgers said angrily. "Don't mock me."

"I'm not, America. I have touched your mind, like I have every other confused person on this planet. Do you know what a Shaman is, Rodgers?"

"A magician, sort of. Like a wise man."

"Close. A shaman lives for his tribe, to protect it. My tribe is this planet, America, and even I can't protect them from this. But that does not mean I am helpless." Nate Grey(s) smiled. "I have the power, America, but I lack what my kind once called the Dreamtime."

"What?"

"I have lost the Dream. That is what I need from you, Dreamer."

"I don't understand."

"America, you still hold a dream; an ideal inside you that will not die. You are going to dream for me, and I will pass it on to what remains of our worlds. We will bring hope to them, and in turn they will breed hope with each other." Nate Grey(s) smiled crookedly. "Can you dream for an entire world, America?"

"I don't know-- it's so much, Nate. So many people."

"Can you resume your mantle, Captain America? Can you represent your dream again?"

The Dreamer looked at his shield for a long time. It had been the one thing impervious to the shifts; immune to the changes. No matter what happened, he had always awoken next to it, wondering what it meant. It was symbol not only for him, but for thousands of others. Perhaps millions. Could his mantle ever truly be set aside?

Steve Rodgers took a deep breath, and said goodbye to himself. His was now the Dreamer. He was now America.

"Yes."

Nate Grey(s) smiled and reached out, laying his hand on the Dreamer's forehead, and touched his mind.

Across the blasted desperate world of shifts and chaos, a force rippled out and blanketed it. It was a thin web of interconnecting minds and one idea. One dream returned to the land. A dream of hope and persistence, and a world which could be rebuilt. The shifts shuddered; for a moment ebbed, and then resumed. The world knew that finally, someone was watching. The world was no longer final.

And atop a scorched mountain in the middle of a wasted island in a dead sea, the Man of the Mountain and the Dreamer sat, and dreamed a dream for a world.

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