“Keep on singing, little boy
And raise your arms in the big black sky
Raise your arms the highest you can
So the whole universe will glow”
Adam Amari is on trial.
They had stripped him of Antares Alpha-One. “This is a stolen Shard,” they said. “We are reclaiming it.”
But before they had gone through with it, Peri had asked for a moment with him. Because she was, in every respect, recruited by one of their own Agents, they gave her that much.
“Ya gotta understand Princesses an’ Queens,” Jordan had told him. “This is really important.”
Adam didn’t understand, and his sister could tell.
“Whenever there’s a princess anna queen,” she’d said, “the princess is always good an’ the queen is always evil.”
She ticked off examples on fingers. “Ya got Snow White anna Wicked Queen. Ya got Sailor Moon an’ Queen Galaxia. Ya got the My Little Ponies an’ their princesses an’ the changeling queen. Ya got that Scottish bear movie where Merida an’ her mom don’t get along.”
Sensing Adam’s comprehension, she moved onward. “So clearly it’s a rule of princessin’. BUT! The princess is gonna become a queen, right? 'Cause queens are princesses who grew up. Don’t become a queen. Ya gotta become an older princess instead. Even if ya gotta change the rules to do it.”
She’d stared at him intently. “The dinosaurs may-a’ died out, but they live on in our heart.”
Then the Collective took Antares Alpha-One from him, severing his connection to Peri, and Jordan Amari woke up on Earth, an infinity of light years away.
The chamber is inconceivably old. Adam can see what science class at school calls “geological layers” in the stone walls, and he can see the marks where the room was reshaped and resculpted from time to time. “Geological time” means millions of years, usually. Adam realizes that this room was once open to the sky, and it has literally been transformed into an interior room by time.
It’s round, with a dais at the center for someone to stand - a speaker, or a prisoner.
Today, Adam occupies that august central position. He stands alone, in front of a court made up of his supposed enemies, and an audience full of their supporters and adherents.
A sourceless voice announces the case to everyone in attendance.
“Adam Amari, you stand accused of defeating Ambra Nerach, one of our agents, on the planet Earth in the Milky Way galaxy. You infiltrated our most sacred temple. Despite your denial, you have worked in service of the Universal Concordance in the past. What say you?”
Adam thinks about this. “I got a lot to say, actually. Is that okay?”
“Speak,” the voice replies.
He collects his thoughts.
“That Ambra Nerach, we knew her as Sablestar. She attacked us. She was looking for a thing called a Keynome. A kind of anchor of reality. We fought her off, and she kept coming back. I went to a dark future and found an older version of her. I took her sword away. Here.”
He manifests the Continuum Sword he took, and it is bubbled away from him.
“It will be examined for the Truth of your claims and other matters. But as you have said yourself, you were not properly given it. These swords are sacred to us. Continue.”
“Sorry. I didn’t know.”
Adam thinks more, and continues speaking when he’s ready.
“Ambra Nerach. Miss Nerach? Uh, anyway. She said the Concordance were like neglectful parents. I’m kinda inclined to agree with her. You know how parents - well maybe you don’t, you’re aliens to me, the way I am to you - but on my planet, sometimes parents don’t have time or energy to do the right thing. They just tell their children to behave, and they’ll punish them if they don’t.”
He gestures at Quinn, who he’s spotted sitting in the audience. “The leader of the Dark Drifters told me the universe is such a mess ‘cause people find it easy to leave in places they’re not wanted. An’ a friend of mine asked me why the Concordance doesn’t help people in trouble outside their turf.”
He remembers something his father told him, about undercover work. He remembers some of the history he researched, trying to understand the problem in front of him now.
“My dad is in law enforcement. I asked him about how to do undercover work. What I did to get here, by pretending to be one of the Void’s agents already. He said, from the perspective of the street gangs, the cops are just another gang. Bigger, badder, and better paid is how he put it. But they still work like a gang. They’re just supposed to enforce the law, instead of their own wishes. But too often, someone will cross the line.”
“So you guys don’t like the Concordance. Well, I don’t really like the Concordance. But they’re supposed to be doing the right thing. They talk a big game, if you’ll pardon an Earth term.”
“I had a broken Shard. Sol Gamma-Two. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. And some of their Agents were pretty mean to me. But they let me do a lot of stuff, even stuff they really didn’t want me doing.”
Another memory mixes with his current situation, and makes him laugh out loud, just for a second. “You know, they even put me on trial too, once.”
He grows more serious, and permits himself a moment of pride. Princesses and queens…
“I think I know why. I think I made them look good. I did the stuff they were supposed to do, so they got to point at me and say, see, our system works. Even when it doesn’t. And maybe they hope that someday, I’d become like them. But I’m not going to do that.”
“Instead, I came here, to find you guys. And ask you this question. If you think the Concordance is so bad, are you really doing better than they are? You don’t like them and you don’t like me because I worked for them, I get that, but have you really figured things out? Or are you both just gangs to each other, that have different philosophies? Is your way to live really better, or only better for people just like you?”
He can feel the aggression in the room growing. Most of these people - the adherents of the “negative” emotions - want to rush him, take him down, erase him.
He’s attacking their way of living. He knows that. But he’s also challenging them to be better than their enemies, rather than just think they are.
That challenge puts a responsibility on them that they didn’t ask for.
He knows, more than he wants to accept, how that feels.
The sourceless voice replies to his challenge. “You wished to know what we’re like. You’re going to learn.”
“Adam Amari, you will be subjected to a Trial by Conviction.”
“What’s that?” he asks.
“You will be placed on the surface of this planet. The light of the twelve suns will reduce you to cinders in an instant unless you maintain a barrier. During that time, our law neither binds nor protects you. You may do what you wish, as can anyone else who ventures to the surface. Be ready to defend yourself.”
Adam isn’t sure about this. “What does that accomplish?” he asks finally.
“It’s simple. Nobody knows what they’ll really endure to see their wish through - not even the person themselves. Stand defiant against the cosmos until the trial ends. Surrender to us. Or fail and die.”
“And if I endure all of that?”
“You go free. And we will have seen who you are.”
Adam blinks. “Well. Okay, I guess we’re doing that.”
With shields up, Adam finds himself teleported to the surface.
What they said was true enough. He’s assaulted almost immediately by a ferocious heat and a powerful light. He tunes his shield to block these out as well, yet finds himself already out of breath and sweating from even that briefest of exposure.
The surface of this world is a desert to end all deserts. Nothing lives here - nothing could live here. Any rock that was once here has been baked by the heat, then cracked by geological processes, then turned into a fine dust by time. There’s no atmosphere here. It’s like pictures of the Moon he saw - and then the real Moon, when he visited - except where that was all darkness and stars, this is like High Noon in a Western film, all sunlight.
Others are starting to warp in as well, all around him. They come in twos and threes, but it’s clear there’s a concerted effort here. What he said didn’t go over well with a lot of the audience in court, and now they’re gonna express their displeasure.
Adam realizes that he may have miscalculated.
How do Jason and Leo do this all the time? he asks himself in annoyance. It works for them.
So that was their plan. Just let him get wiped out, but “legally”.
They gave him an out, the surrender option, where he goes back inside and they get to laugh at him and keep doing what they do. And he probably gets killed there too.
It’s kinda scummy. But on the other hand, they aren’t doing what the Universal Concordance does, and pretending like they know how to run everything. This is just folks defending their turf with their rules. Like any other gang.
All of this thinking, and he still doesn’t have a plan. There’s a lot of powerful looking starry people, all around him, and they’re all warming up their various attacks.
I wish I could get through to them. I wish - I wish I knew what to say, what to do, to show them–
The blasts and beams open up in a concerted barrage.
Adam feels something nagging, like one of his palms is itching. And he feels a new sensation. It’s not a voice - not really - but it’s an invitation. He can kind of get the message even if he has to supply the words himself.
Your power is unequal to your need. You will not hold me for long. But for now, if you choose, you may see that honor is upheld.
Adam’s hand closes around the grip of Excalibur.