Vanishing Wave, part nine: Franklin Richards

The Vanishing Waves, Part nine: Franklin Richards
son of Reed&Sue

(p.33 in comic form)
My Daddy tries to find the Box that’s causing so much trouble. I can hear him and see him, even though I’m really asleep and I’m just there in my dreamself:

“Perhaps if I can realize its location, I can concentrate on evading its effects on my morale!”

I can see the Box just fine, from where I was standing with my friends! They seem like they’re gone into the giant black robots! I concentrate, and make Daddy see me, and rush over to the Box: “Here! Don’t worry, the good part of the bad guys is trying to take them over and make them stop!” He talks again:

“Good…boy, Franklin! Uhh! Logic seems the only means to preserve my psyche! I’ve no choice but silence and shape! To avoid the Box’s control,… I must ‘become’ the box!”
Just like that, Daddy shapes himself like the Box, covering the whole thing so Mommy can see it clearly.
“Reed! It’s helping! I’ve got a spherical shield now in place…
I’m going to hold it or die!”

Yikes!

(p. 34)
My uncle Johnny’s yellin’ too, and pulling these cool purply-pink flames towards his hands: “There’s massive thermal radiation from the juncture! I’m the only one who can contain it!”

“Maybe you should try more light!” I tell him.
“Franklin?”

I watch Uncle Johnny stand there just a minute in mid-air; then he relaxes, and begins to pour his light into the space where the robot fingers play in front of its eyes..
.
That’s when the hooded, smallest one I woke up walks over to Unca Ben holding a necklace, as he stands there with his mouth open watching my Mom and Dad try to close off the Box. Unca Johnny puts up a shield of fire as the big brother one shoots a freezing beam. You can’t see for the steam! I hear a soft voice, though:

“Man-Place-of-Hidden-Treasures! This charm will keep the Invisible Woman free!”

My Unca Ben stands between them and Mom, who’s shielding around the Box.
“Hey, we were just rumblin’ with ya and now you wanna put a friendship token around Susie’s neck?”

I’m glad they can make their robots talk instead of fight now:


“The language to describe this seems to bend to me from the knowledge of your time---then quickly!
If she is to remain free of the will of the Box, then please, place this upon her breast,
that she may feel hope. And you, Treasure-Place Man, I believe you must stand in peace,“

“Treasure Face Man?”

“I have never met a man formed like you!
Perhaps, this Box cannot so readily sicken your blood with corruption!”

“ Least I won’t tarnish! Enny idea how do I stop folks from disappearin’ and the world from crackin’ up like a spilt jigsaw puzzle? “

“Your form as the mountain of man will symbolize the volcano, the transforming dwelling place, whose inner fires channel the location for the Box to be nestled within a third extra dimensional convergence
point, related but not identical to your time and mine, beyond the two skies above!”

“Sounds like you got yer longshot-describing lessons from Stretcho!”

“Can you feel? I’m telling the truth.”

“If it’s the bottom of the ninth with bases loaded, just show me where to take my swing!”

“Stand there before the box! Raise your arms! Dig in your toes! Feed on the earth! Make it your form! And hold no fear in your stomach, lest the transmetamorphosis continue its vanishing waves!”


“Guess we can’t have that…sheesh, I get ta make hero and there’s nothing to clobber in sight! It’s like witchy Viking medicine person said, though, Johnny! And I swear, I hear her whisperin’ in the middle a’ this cosmic tornader! This is the nexus where ya gotta conquer the fear a’ the transformation whatis---it’s like the box is a failsafe, tryin’ ta relieve people a’ the burden a feelin’ trapped here…playing on some subconscious fear a’ acknowledgin’ the layers of reality outside a’ eatin’ lunch and doin’ the laundry! “

“Thing is, pardon the pun, everybody’s already gotta go when it’s their time; what gives with this inner-dimensional transit system?”

“That’s more Rubber Head’s department, kid! But ya know what seems be fuelin’ its intensity? It’s like a reaction to a deep fear that we can’t pull ta’gether on this planet! That we don’t got a chance with too many of us, and lost discoveries, and just us not unnerstandin’ the value of each other! But I ain’t no blamed decider a’ men’s fates! And I ain’t afraid no more o’ vanishing away!”

“You may not be vanishing,” says my Mom, “but these twisting fingers can be made invisible, right before this largest one’s face! They seem to be generating that second world.”

“Ben, the past in the sky---I guess that’s the past!---it’s rolling away like a cloud.”
Unca Johnny’s right. My friends have gathered around this spiral metal thing they pulled loose out of the scary machine; they’re starting to spin towards the sky, where the other mountain is! I hear thoughts in a soft voice:

“When the course of events spreads its own vanishing waves across the face of human kind, what shall pass into the unseen, and what remains to be known?”

Gotta ask Mommy and Daddy what they think that means…


Suddenly, all three of the friends on the other side are together again beside me. When I watch the oldest brother, I see him take up a gadget of the sort Daddy loves to create; a circle lights up around them. “Thank you,” he says.

I look at the one I found first, and I see ripples of the speed of things changing all around. And when my friend raises her or his hand, they all three turn into peeled off pictures and dust that carries movies, and soar like a hawk into upside down mountain’s world---would we be their sky?

I think they want to change things so people don’t have to disappear, maybe even help them come back. But some of the vanished people are already finding somewhere else to play.

Suddenly all the storms stop, and I hear birds, and Unca Ben heaves a big sigh and says:
“ Looks like humanity’ll get to keep choosin’ their own existence anuddah day…”

I can see that’s true, from the place I walk, until I open my eyes and see Aunt Alicia stand beside the window, touching it with her pretty fingers.
She turns to me, and I’m in our hotel room in San Diego, and I think I just had one of those real dreams where I can go see things with myself in dream where things are really happening somewhere.


And now…it’s quiet a second or two…