Cosmic Debris

Not long ago, he was the superhero Arsenal.

Now he was Peter Cat, and he was falling through airless clouds that made his nerves tingle with a deadening chill over a landscape of gray stone. There was no air, and not need to breathe.

He looked down, and saw that he would not be dashed on the stony surface -- a tiny hole was directly below him. He was accelerating in the airless void. His gaze was fixated by the rapidly growing spot of darkness that approached at terrific velocity, growing into a chasm that swallowed the misty horizon as it flashed past.

He fell into the darkness, illuminated from above by a ray of light. The sides of the pit came into view, festooned with stalactites like the hairs inside the belly of a carnivorous plant, pointing down into the abyss.

A huge mass of jagged gray stone flitted past, a double-ended conical lozenge of rock floating in the air. As Peter gawked at the spike of stone rapidly receding into the tiny point of light that marked the entrance to the chasm, his peripheral vision picked up a hint of motion.

A manacle on a chain was approaching him, falling with him to match his velocity. His body was numb with dread. The manacle clamped on his left forearm.

Three further manacles clamped to his free arm and his legs. With a tremendous jerk, his fall came to a sudden, wrenching stop. Above him, the spike of gray stone, tiny in the distance, hovered unsupported in the airless mist.

The chains tightened, pulling him up as they were drawn taut. He was being lifted up, fist slowly, but ever quicker, and with a moment of sick panic he realized that he would be impaled on the pointed end of the lozenge of stone.

Peering over the edge was a dark figure with glowing blue eyes. She was looking at him, and her laughter echoed through the airless pit.

The incongruity shocked Peter for a moment, and with the shock, the feeling of dream paralysis faded. He concentrated, and tried to use his powers to free himself.

The laughter stopped. Everything faded to featureless white. The manacles disappeared.

Peter felt around himself with his hands, and determined that he was lying on his back on a plane invisible in a dimensionless white room. He opened his mouth, and tried to remember how to breathe.

Jinx sat in her recording studio, blinking her eyes, awake from her trance. The psychogram was still running, still recording her mental landscape to be sent to the Corporation's Entertainment Division, but she was no longer there, and sat for a moment in her chair before the mixing board, stunned and numb. With a start, she realized that the white image on the studio monitor was from the inside of her own head.

"What? What?!"

She closed her eyes, her face contorted with fury.

She re-appeared in the mind-scape, wielding a barbed whip. She strode towards Peter, who rolled over and tried to stand. "What did you just do!? Don't--" She lifted her arm to scourge him, and then --

Nothing. She blinked in her studio chair, but recovered quickly. Re-appearing again, she confronted Peter, who was standing unsteadily in the featureless mind-scape.

"STOP THAT!" Jinx was apoplectic.

"Why do you want to hurt me?" Peter was calm, but the horrors of the last few moments were rapidly catching up to him. The dimensionless, airless void made him dizzy.

"We've covered this. This is the afterlife--"

"--and I'm in Hell." Peter crossed his arms and turned away from Jinx. "No way. Not possible."

"Why would I lie?" Jinx stood, arms akimbo, and barely resisted the urge to strike Peter.

"Everybody knows that clones don't have souls. How can this be the afterlife if I don't have a soul?"

Jinx felt puzzled. "Who told you that? They deceive themselves to quiet a bad conscience."

"What?" The confidence Peter regained was fading quickly. He felt an emptiness in the pit of his stomach, and wished he could remember how it felt to vomit.

"Mortals like stories better than reality. When a soul rejoins eternity, it must be purged of the lying taint of self." Jinx spoke coldly, her words were muted in the not-air of the afterlife.

Peter's legs buckled beneath him, and his hands scoured the featureless surface he was standing on. He tried to retch, but had forgotten how, so he simply curled up into a ball.

"You have not answered my question." Jinx became stern. "How did you banish me?"

"I don't know... I just wanted to defend myself..."

"You tried to use your powers?" Jinx's eyes narrowed.

Peter lifted his head, scowled at Jinx, and rallied. He looked her in the eyes, pushed himself up, and began to laugh.

Jinx, enraged, lunged at him -- only to spend the next moment spasming in the chair of her recording studio. She leaned forward, eyes burning with rage, and confronted Peter, who was grinning uneasily.

He taunted her. "Well, how about that? The big bad demoness is powerless inside her own mind! I can send you away any time I like--"

"Laugh it up, mortal! Let's see if it's so funny after I leave you alone for ten thousand years!" She disappeared again, this time voluntarily.

Inside the studio, she turned off the monitor, paused the recorder, and then sat, concentrating, with a cruel smile on her face.

She remained sitting for a few moments, opened her eyes. She resumed recording, turning the monitor back on, and returned to her mind-scape.

"Not so funny now, eh?" She strode towards Peter.

Peter turned to face her -- unchanged. "What? When do the ten thousand years start?"

Jinx was caught flat-footed. "Umm... how?"

Peter seemed annoyed and confused. "You told me it would be ten thousand years, but you were only gone a few minutes."

She looked at him, and her expression changed. He had become something of a mystery to her. "You have some means of perceiving external time. That shouldn't work. Count the seconds until I return."

Jinx returned to the studio. As she looked into the monitor -- showing a feed from a realm inside her own mind -- she saw Peter standing in the featureless white room.

He was defiant, and he was looking at her.

She switched the monitor off.