Four Alternative Christmas Presents

By Tam MacNeil

It’s Christmas Eve, and newly minted superhero Matt AKA “Strong Man” is in the middle of taking down one of Central City’s most notorious criminals, the mesmerist and villain Dr. Destructo. It’s Matt’s first mission, and he’s working with his idol and secret crush, Jake X-Ray. He doesn’t want anything to go wrong.

Unfortunately for him, everything goes wrong. Soon Matt finds himself racing through alternative presents, trying to capture Dr. Destructo and trying to figure out why all the Matts in these other scenarios have the one thing he really wants—a relationship with Jake.

L
OGAN
G
IBSON
—known in superhero circles as Dr. Destructo, well-known villain and crackpot—had once given Matt his business card. The card read
Mesmerist, alternative-dimension specialist, villain. No crime too small to commit, no hero too super to overcome
. That was what had brought him down.

Matt was new enough on the superhero scene that Dr. Destructo hadn’t recognized him as a member of the League of Justice, so he’d fallen for the sting the League had set up. It was a pretty crummy thing to do on a Christmas Eve, but the League had good intelligence that Dr. Destructo
had
been planning a diabolical act for Boxing Day, so that made Matt feel a little better.

All Matt’d had to do was pretend to be in the market to hire a villain. He’d managed it, in spite of his pounding heart and sweating hands, and they’d nabbed Dr. Destructo in his lab. Matt tried to feel a sense of pride at the sight of Dr. Destructo held between Fiona (AKA the Elastress) and Adam (AKA Cat Man) as they marched him out of his undeployed escape pod and back into the main room. After all, he should be proud. It was his first mission, and a success. But he was still uneasy.

Fiona’s face was calm, but Adam looked agitated. He’d been agitated since they’d been deployed on this mission. At first Matt had thought it had something to do with the fact that it was Christmas Eve, but now he wasn’t so sure.

When Dr. Destructo looked at Matt, his scowl turned fierce. Matt swallowed, reminded himself he’d done well, and tried not to keep clenching his sweaty hand around the crumpled business card in his pocket.

“Good job,” Jake murmured at him, and he said it like he was congratulating a dentist for pulling out a tooth all in one yank. If there was any inch of Matt not red with a combination of shame and pride, it was squeezed out of existence by the sound of Jake’s low, soft voice.

Matt knew Jake hadn’t wanted him as a student, and hadn’t been happy about being forced to mentor Matt. He’d never made a secret of not liking Matt, and he never, ever gave compliments.

“We woulda got him eventually,” Jake added, as if suddenly aware he’d broken his personal protocols. “I’m not sure if Dr. Destructo’s the smartest dumb guy I’ve ever fought or the dumbest smart guy.” He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter, really, as long as he can’t use his machine and you don’t look into his eyes.”

Matt nodded and wished one more time that he was back at League HQ. It was evening and snow was falling, slowing traffic to a standstill, making the world soft and quiet and aglow with Christmas lights. If he had his way, he’d be on the couch in the common room, probably in sweats and a T-shirt, which would be
substantially
more comfortable than wearing his armored supersuit under his regular clothes. He’d have a mug of Fiona’s special cinnamon tea, and there’d be a classic Christmas movie on the TV. He’d be able to sneak a glance at Jake once in a while, just to appreciate his shape, his features, to admire from afar. It would be so much better than standing here, far too close to Jake and painfully aware that Jake seemed to think Matt was only marginally more useful than a hangnail.

“You fools!” Dr. Destructo shouted again, at Fiona this time. “You will pay for this outrage!”

Matt was new to the superhero thing, but he was pretty sure the only reason to shout
you fools
was to fulfill a contractual requirement for arcane and pointless postbattle banter, regulated by the Organization for the Advancement of Evil. That was the other thing on Dr. Destructo’s business card. He was secretary treasurer. Matt didn’t know much about them, but he knew there were rules about capes and haircuts and things you had to say when apprehended.

“Okay, okay, okay,” Jake said, rolling his eyes. “You’ve done the crazy laugh, you did the raging, and you shouted ‘You fools.’ That’s it, right? You’re done for a bit?”

“Yes,” Dr Destructo said, a little sulkily. He curled his top lip up at Matt. “And I won’t forget your face,” he added.

“Yeah, well, we’ll just see how long he stays around,” Jake answered, and it was so offhanded and so damning that it hit Matt like a piano falling from a second-story window.

The thing was, Matt had been following Jake’s career as a superhero from just about the moment the handsome, dark-haired sharpshooter with the x-ray eyes had hit the scene. When Matt was trying to decide if he really wanted to major in chemistry, Jake X-Ray had been saving kidnap victims from concrete tombs, and on every news channel and magazine cover. It was always a heartthrob picture—Jake smiling faintly, his pale blue eyes gazing forward, steady and certain. Not like Matt, who most days tried not to dump a vial of something dangerous on himself, and then one day couldn’t even manage that.

When he realized the chemicals had given him superstrength, he went looking for Jake. Maybe he did that because it made sense, and maybe he did it because he’d been daydreaming up a fantasy of being admitted to the League, of rescuing Jake from peril, of that cinematic summer evening kiss. But summer ran into autumn before the League even got back to him, and it was November by the time he did tryouts, and in December, when he and Jake were paired up, Matt knew he’d made a terrible mistake. He’d heard the old saying “You should never meet your heroes.” He just thought it wouldn’t apply in this case.

“You think you can get me to talk?” Dr. Destructo scoffed at Jake. Jake shrugged.

“Aren’t you professionally obligated to?” he asked.

Dr. Destructo paused for a moment, mouth pursed. “No. But if there was any breed of superhuman more eager to share their diabolical schemes than the villain, I have yet to encounter him. Tell me,” he added, turning his head to look directly at the machine they were standing near. The reason Matt had been given this mission. “Have you met my latest creation?”

Matt looked up at the machine. It was tall enough to reach to the rafters in the huge vault of the warehouse and made mostly of metal components. It looked, he thought, kind of like the engine of a fan, the sort he’d had in labs and offices his whole life. The central housing enclosed something that, Matt figured, probably spun and whirred, and maybe even crawled with fingers of electricity when it was actually running. Jake glanced up at it too, but only glanced, didn’t gawk like Matt was doing.

“C’mon, what is it?”

“That, you garden-variety hominid, is a dimensional hopper. It is a work of art and science.”

“Okay,” Jake said, nodding now. “Yeah. A dimensional hopper. But humor me here, Logan. What does that actually mean?”

“Simple.”

Dr. Destructo almost hissed the word. This was a thing villains seemed to like to do, Matt had noticed. Maybe it was a villainous affectation, like capes, or maybe it was from getting punched in the mouth so much. He’d have to ask Fiona later. He didn’t want to ask Jake and come off sounding stupid.

“The universe is massive. All possible realities exist at the same time. My device merely moves the user from one reality into another and resets once every twenty-four hours.”

“Merely?” Matt asked in something that sounded almost like a yelp.

“Stealth boast,” Jake shot back. “Don’t humor him.”

Well, Dr. Destructo did look pretty pleased with himself. His eyes were gleaming, bright as Christmas lights, almost inhuman. It was a little mesmerizing.

“Hey,” Jake said, jogging him with his elbow, “pay attention.”

Matt blinked and nodded. “Yeah, just… thinking,” he lied.

He turned and looked at the device again. There was a single large red button in the middle of a control console, facing him. He might be new to superheroing, but even he knew better than to touch
that
. Instead he fingered the rail that encompassed the platform in front of all the dials and switches.

“Yes,” Dr. Destructo whispered in a low, silky voice. “You are fascinated by it, aren’t you? You are thinking back to the accident that changed you and wondering what your life would be like if only you hadn’t done whatever it was you did.”

There was something hypnotic about the way he spoke. About his voice. Matt found himself leaning in, as if listening to a story. When Dr. Destructo began to mount the three metal steps up to the platform, he realized Fiona and Adam had let him go. He was moving around free, moving toward the machine.

He blinked, shook his head. He looked at Jake, who was gazing into the middle distance, and the others, doing the same.

“Hey!” he shouted, and his mouth seemed to move as if stuck together. His words weren’t a shout so much as a soft cry. Like nightmare sounds. He shook his head again, harder, and the syrupiness of the moment seemed to thin, then fall away, and suddenly Dr. Destructo was pounding on the machine and Matt and Jake were shouting, scrambling up the metal steps. There was a burst of steam, and the acrid stink of diesel filled the air, and then….

And then the world lurched and the machine landed, as if it had been dropped from a very short height, with a
clang
that blew the sound out of Matt’s ears and left his head ringing. Through the haze and ringing in his ears, Matt heard someone holler, “Oh no you don’t!” before something heavy crashed into Matt’s head and sent him stumbling back against the machine. He slumped down, heard Jake shout—louder now that Matt’s hearing was coming swimming back—and suddenly Jake’s hands were gripping Matt’s arms. He looked up into Jake’s face, saw those blue eyes warm with concern.

Oh yes, please
, he thought.

“You okay?” Jake asked. Matt nodded.

“I’m okay. Where’s—?”

“Getting away, come on!”

Jake pivoted and launched himself over the machine’s rails, down onto the factory floor, in pursuit of the caped figure running pell-mell for the door at the far side. Matt stumbled down the steps, had an instant to wonder where the others were, and then pelted after Jake.

Dr. Destructo slammed the door open and disappeared. Then he and Jake hit the door too, shoved it open, and raced out into an alternative Christmas present.

I
T
WAS
dark outside and hot, hot like midsummer. In California. And the air dry enough to crack lips and sting eyes. A blood-red moon hung in the sky, and the city seemed to hold its breath. There was no wind, and the air was almost thick, like the air above rotting garbage. “What the heck?” he shouted as he chased after Jake. “Where’s the snow?”

“Alternative present,” Jake shouted over his shoulder. “Remember?”

Postapocalyptic
, Matt thought, but didn’t say it.

In this reality, the gate to the warehouse compound wasn’t on this side of the building. Instead there was a tall chain-link fence. Dr. Destructo shimmied over with surprising dexterity for a man in pantaloons and a cape and then raced off down the dark and eerie street.

Matt made a leap for the fence. If there was one thing he was good at, it was obstacle courses. He’d trained hard to pass the tryouts to get into the League, and that fitness, coupled with his superstrength, had really come in handy.

He heaved himself up and over the fence with hardly any effort at all, then turned to give Jake a hand, but Jake had done it too. In fact, Jake had launched himself right over as if the fence was nothing more than a nuisance.

“Holy crap,” Matt said before he realized it was rude. Jake staggered in surprise, then looked up.

“Wow,” he said, suddenly grinning and delighted. “I like that.”

Matt stared at him for a moment. It seemed to him that Jake’s skin was lighter than it had been, and his pale eyes were strange and dark. Matt dropped down beside him.

“C’mon,” he said. “And let’s hope Dr. Destructo’s not superstrong too.”

D
R
. D
ESTRUCTO
moved really, really fast. They nearly lost him as the buildings changed from industrial to domestic, but the streets were empty and silent. No cars moved, nobody seemed to be sleeping on the street, so it was easy to follow the sounds of his pounding feet, even after he took a hard right and then ducked into an alley.

Matt followed, Jake rushing behind. An alley. Empty. No Dr. Destructo. Heaps of garbage bags slumped against tall brick walls and a brick dead end, sure, but no Dr. Destructo. Matt looked around. There were no ladders going up, and yes, there were a few doors on either side of the alleyway, but none of them were open. There were a few windows too, cracked open a little as if there was a breeze to let in, and all of them lined with some kind of garland. Not a Christmas wreath. Maybe garlic? Matt couldn’t quite be sure. And at any rate, they were far too high up to jump.