"TECHNOPHOBIA - PART ONE"

Issue #278

(This story takes place after the MANHUNTER WAR in FDC's Green Lantern series - DWG)

"Come on, Wally."

"No."

"You haven't even let me try to talk you into it."

"I'm saving you the trouble. The answer's still no."

"Why not?"

"Because I just got off monitor duty, I promised the Titans I would stop by their new digs, and I do have a life of my own to attend to, including a beautiful yet on-the-verge-of-feeling-jilted fiancée ..."

"But you're Wally West! The Flash! You're the fastest man alive! You're not allowed to use 'I don't have enough time' as an excuse."

"Says who? Is there a governing body on this somewhere?"

"Come on. You could add ten huge favors for your buddy Kyle to the To Do list and still get everything done by the time someone picked up a stopwatch to clock you. And I'm only asking for one little favor!"

"And I'm saying no to that one little favor."

"Are you doing this just to torture me?"

"Maybe."

"Wally, look. I have been looking most of my adult life for this limited edition of The Iliad illustrated by Vittorio Vajelo. I've been in every used bookstore in LA and New York. I finally find a copy on eBay, the guy who's selling it lives in Bangladesh, and all I need is for you to run over there and pick it up for me ..."

"In the time it took you to get up here to the Watchtower, you could have flown to Bangladesh yourself."

"Wally, don't you remember when you had a secret identity?"

The soft echo of footsteps in the Watchtower corridor connecting the Monitor Womb to the teleporters ceased, as the Flash stopped in his tracks. He cocked his head slightly and stared at the JLA's Green Lantern, Kyle Rayner, with his mouth agape in disbelief.

"Now what?" Rayner demanded.

"Kyle, are you trying to tell me that if Green Lantern picks up the book, it blows your secret identity, but if the Flash picks it up, you are Mr. Smooth Secret-Keeper?"

"Well, duh ... everyone knows that the Flash is Wally West. So, yeah."

"But how does Kyle Rayner know the Flash well enough to have him playing parcel pick-up for him? Don't you think that's the least bit suspicious?"

"Come on, you're a super-hero! Doing a good deed! The guy'll probably just ask for an autograph and that'll be that."

"RAYNER!" the Flash's voice exploded in exasperation.

"What?" a voice, unmistakably Rayner's, floated down the corridor.

Wally West's head turned reflexively toward the direction of Green Lantern's response, then snapped back to face the Green Lantern standing in front of him. Rayner stared back at the Flash, saying nothing. West turned to peer down the corridor again, and saw Rayner fly around the nearest bend, a faint halo of emerald light surrounding his body.

"You bellowed, O Patient ... One ...?" Rayner inquired, his words trailing off as he caught sight of his duplicate standing next to the Flash.

The Flash turned his head back to the Green Lantern he had been conversing with, scrutinizing the figure carefully. After a moment, the Flash's head slumped forward in resignation. "J'Onn?" he asked.

"I apologize for the subterfuge, Wally," the figure responded, its shape dissolving and changing colors until it took the green-skinned, blue-cloaked form of the Martian Manhunter. "I have been trying to practice my ability to disguise myself as a human being, not merely physically, but in behavior and speech mannerisms as well. In particular I am developing my skills in expressing emotions and bringing out emotional responses in others, through irrational behavior."

"So you picked me as a model of irrational behavior?" Rayner demanded.

"Yes ... after all, Plastic-Man no longer frequents the Watchtower," J'Onzz replied.

The Flash laughed, shaking his head. "Well, you were driving me nuts, J'Onn, so I'd say you're getting the hang of ... all those things you mentioned."

"I'm insulted," Rayner pointed out.

"That's just a little bonus," the Flash smirked.

"No insult was intended ..." the Martian Manhunter began to explain, but cut himself off and raised a silencing hand before his teammates. J'Onzz's deep red eyes narrowed, and quietly he informed the other two, "Someone is trying to gain entry through the lower hangar."

The Flash and Green Lantern listened attentively, and soon could make out the sound of irregularly timed impacts a floor below them. The three heroes were on the move immediately. The Flash sprinted down the corridor to the stairwell at a speed outstripping lightning. The Manhunter from Mars became intangible and phased through the metal flooring, descending slowly as a ghost. Green Lantern shone the light of his power ring on the floor and caused it to desolidify enough to allow him through in a headfirst dive.

The Flash was waiting for the Martian Manhunter and Green Lantern. As they reconvened in front of the hangar's inner door, the sound of the outer doors being shorn from their moorings and clattering across the hangar floor reverberated through the walls. "Guess they got tired of knocking," the Flash observed.

"Time to send forth a scouting party, then," Green Lantern suggested. He aimed his ring at the hangar door, and four tendrils of verdant light radiated outward. At the end of each tendril, a seven-foot tall figure materialized, in varying shades of green: a barbarian warrior, clutching a massive battleaxe in both fists; an armored Valkyrie wielding a longsword; a wizard in a long robe, with a bald pate and a long beard, balancing a ball of fire in one palm; and a buckskin-clad elf, gripping a longbow with an arrow nocked against the string. The emerald wizard reached out with a free hand and depressed the button in the wall to open the hangar door.

With the outer doors breached, the decompression countermeasures had been activated. A forcefield covered the gaping hole where the hangar doors had been, to prevent the artificial atmosphere within the Watchtower from being sucked out onto the surface of the Moon. Due to the power diverted to the forcefield, the lights in the hangar area were extinguished, and as a result only shadowy figures were visible in the gloom beyond Rayner's glowing avatars. Before the three Justice League members could make out the invaders in any detail, a rush of red and yellow burst through the doorway and through the emerald ring constructs, colliding with Green Lantern and sending him crashing through the far wall. The ring constructs dissipated rapidly, sizzling apart like green droplets of water on hot metal.

The Flash and the Martian Manhunter started to follow after Green Lantern and the projectile blur, then stopped in defensive stances as two men stepped through the hangar's inner door. The man on the left wore green combat boots with black cargo pants and was stripped to the waist. His torso, arms and face were covered in snarls of black and green wires with a harsh metallic sheen. His right hand was missing, replaced by a fist-sized circle of glowing metal, its surface changing from black to green to white in a repeating cycle. He held his right arm out stiffly before his body. Where the circle met his wrist the flesh was red and raw, and similar angry discolorations marked areas on his body where the wires embedded in his skin. His companion was clad only in blue spandex shorts, and the majority of his skin was covered in plates that resembled circuit boards, green laced with myriad golden lines in complex patterns, surrounded by savaged scarlet flesh. Two blunt aircraft-style wings of blue metal jutted from the second man's shoulder blades. A circuit-covered dome rose from the crown of the second man's head to just above his brow, and two red-lensed apertures covered his eye sockets. Both men appeared slack-jawed, and the eyes of the man on the left were glassy and dazed.

The Flash wasted no time, charging swiftly at the nearer of the two, the man with one hand. The glow of his opponent's circular prosthesis intensified and bolt of energy erupted from it, streaking toward the spot where the Flash had been standing. As the Flash was about to lay his hands on the intruder, his right leg gave out and he tumbled through the hangar door at blinding speed, crashing into one of the spacerunners docked within the hangar. A roaring pain in his right thigh brought his hands clamping down on a gaping wound there. Even more disturbingly, the Flash realized that he now remembered the pain from before he had started running at the black and green wired man. "J'Onn!" the Flash yelled. "These guys are carrying some serious payloads, watch yourself!"

J'Onn J'Onzz flew headlong at the remaining intruder, intending to tackle the man and carry him back out of the Watchtower through the hangar. The circuit-encrusted man became airborne as well, and unleashed twin lances of searing energy from the red apertures taking the place of his eyes. The energy bathed the Martian Manhunter in a pain he scarcely recognized. He had encountered fire before in many forms, braving his vulnerability to it when circumstances demanded. This was to fire what a tsunami was to a spilled glass of water. Instinctively the Martian Manhunter crossed his arms in front of his head, and as the sheer force of the energy propelled him backwards through the corridor, he could feel the skin of his forearms blistering, blackening, and being flayed from his body.

Green Lantern shook his head in an effort to clear the ringing that had begun when he had been slammed through the corridor wall. He looked up to see a tall, burly man standing over him wearing dark red overalls. The overalls ended midway down his shins, and from beneath them extended pylons of dull, bolt-studded yellow steel, widening to two feet in diameter where they touched the floor. The man's bare arms were covered in relays of red wires, and rows of golden coils in zigzag patterns sprouted along the limbs as well. Two golden backswept antennae emerged from the man's temples, and he stared down at Green Lantern with deadened eyes.

Green Lantern willed his ring to create an emerald forcefield around his body in the shape of a Panzer tank, as he tried to regain his footing and face his attacker. The man in the red overalls extended his left arm, and the limb began to vibrate, becoming a fan-shaped blur of red and yellow. When the arm connected with Green Lantern's forcefield, the verdant energy warped and retreated from the vibrating limb. The burly man then shot out his right fist in a punch too fast for Rayner's eyes to follow, but which doubled him over in pain as it connected with the Green Lantern's stomach. Behind the man who had felled Green Lantern twice, more figures began to emerge from the hangar door.

In an upper-level room of the Watchtower, two members of the Justice League stood facing one of its youngest members. Superman's legs were spread wide, and his powerful arms were folded across the yellow and red S shield emblazoned on his chest. Beside him was Wonder Woman, her hands braced on her hips. The Amazon was nearly as tall as the last son of Krypton, and together they made an imposing pair.

Opposite them was Firehawk, almost a foot shorter than Wonder Woman, but trying very hard to compensate for her more diminutive stature. Firehawk's back was ramrod straight, and her chin was slightly raised. Still, her eyes were downcast, not meeting the gaze of either of the senior Leaguers, and her hands fidgeted against one another behind her back.

"Firehawk," Superman intoned, "we need you to take on an assignment which is extremely important to your membership in the League."

"I'll do it, sir," Firehawk blurted out immediately, with a vigorous nod of her head.

"Why don't I let Wonder Woman tell you what the assignment is," Superman continued, smiling slightly. Firehawk nodded sharply again, waiting for Wonder Woman to speak. A few seconds of silence passed, and Firehawk shifted her eyes to look into the deep blue pools beneath Wonder Woman's golden tiara. The Amazon princess's aquiline features seemed stern, until she smiled and said, "Don't be nervous."

Firehawk brought her hands out from behind her back, trying to let them hang loosely at her side. She relaxed her posture slightly and said, "Sorry. Just ... wondering what you need me to do."

"And so I've told you," Wonder Woman insisted. "The assignment is for you to allow yourself to be more comfortable in your role here. It seems sometimes as if serving in the League intimidates you. It shouldn't. It seems as if you question whether or not you belong here. You do. You've been performing all of your duties impeccably, but fearfully. Conquering that fear should be your first priority as of now."

"It's important that you have as much confidence in yourself as we have in you," Superman added. "Everyone in the League depends on each other, which is a responsibility that I know carries a lot of pressure. Adding to that by second-guessing yourself or believing that you don't measure up to the other members of the team does more harm than good."

Firehawk shrugged uncomfortably. "It was that obvious?" she asked.

"Well, as Diana said, you haven't let us down in any way," Superman pointed out. "But it was becoming clearer and clearer that you weren't entirely comfortable on League missions. You appeared to be making an effort to do the job without drawing any extra attention to yourself. Believe me, I'm something of an expert on the subject."

"I realize what we're asking is easier said than done," Wonder Woman offered. "The first step was bringing it to your attention, which we've done. Now it falls to you --"

Wonder Woman was cut short by a single telepathic cry blaring inside of her skull, as well as Superman's and Firehawk's. CYBORGS! shouted the mental voice of the Martian Manhunter, followed by an agonized scream that faded as quickly as it had begun. J'Onn J'Onzz's thoughts no longer reached his teammates' minds as the telepathic link was broken.

In an almost perfectly synchronized motion, Superman, Wonder Woman and Firehawk rose into the air. "J'Onn sounded like he was being tortured," Superman stated, indignant anger underscoring his words. "If this is Henshaw, looking for paybacks, he's going to regret it ..."

"Didn't you and Batman also recently face cyborgs based on Apokaliptian technology?" Wonder Woman inquired.

"Popular motif these days," Firehawk said, in a voice she had intended to sound cavalier but which was hushed and a little frightened.

Before anything further could be said on the subject, the floor of the room exploded inward, and Superman was propelled backwards by a speeding man-sized projectile striking his midsection. Firehawk and Wonder Woman had no time to react as three more figures entered the room through the crumbling floor. The first was a young woman in what appeared to be a one-piece bathing suit with yellow, red and blue stripes. Her hair was strawberry blonde and pulled back in a ponytail, her eyes pale blue but unfocused. A dusting of freckles covered her cheekbones and the bridge of her nose. Her hands were covered in a silvery metal that extended in bulging pods up to her elbows, where it seemed to bite viciously into her skin. Her legs from the knees down appeared to have been replaced by red steel struts and pistons. White and yellow wires ran from the metal structures to puncture wounds on her upper arms and thighs.

Behind her followed two men with extensive biotechnology grafts of their own. The first wore only gray sweatpants, the rest of his body covered with dark blue wiring ranging from gossamer thin strands of metal to strong cables at least three inches in diameter. Wicked spikes of blue steel protruded from the sides of his forearms. The circuits encasing his body converged in a bat-like pattern across the scarred and puckered flesh of his chest. Two pointed antennae, also dark blue, rose from the sides of his head, and the top of his skull was covered by a shiny blue metal cap. The other man wore only a yellow Speedo, although his legs were bound in scale-like loops of green wire, while his upper body was covered in copper circuit patterns. The lower half of his face was hidden behind several yellow tubes that seemed to combine into some form of breathing apparatus. Both men shared the thousand-yard stare with their female cohort.

Despite the semi-conscious expressions on the cyborgs' faces, they were unhesitating in their actions. The man-machine with the breathing apparatus lunged toward Firehawk, unleashing a fine chemical mist from nozzles that protruded from where fingernails had once grown. The compound coagulated around Firehawk's body, and the young heroine in turn attempted to to intensify the flames around her body to burn it off. Instead, Firehawk found herself unable to ignite a flame within the confines of the goopy blob of blue-green gel. The amorphous chemical remained attached to the cyborg's fingertips by thin strands, and no matter how Firehawk struggled to emerge from the morass, the cyborg controlled the shapeless mound to keep her within its volume.

Wonder Woman found herself surrounded by a cyborg on either side, as the young woman apparently modeled after her and the man with dark blue circuitry embedded in his flesh ranged around her in a gradually shrinking circle. Wonder Woman waited patiently for one of her opponents to make the first move, and did not need to wait long. The male cyborg leapt into the air, brandishing his forearm spikes as his parabolic path brought him down toward the Amazon princess. Wonder Woman balanced on one foot and made a sweeping kick with the other, effectively parrying the incoming attack. She had intended to send her aggressor across the room, but the layers of circuitry increased his weight to such a point that she merely deflected his approach. Undeterred, Wonder Woman quickly uncoiled her golden lasso and threw it around the female cyborg, who seemed not to have been programmed for agility. The noose easily slid around the upper body of its target, and Wonder Woman pulled the lariat tight. "Do not fight me and do not struggle against the bonds," Wonder Woman commanded.

The young woman's head slumped forward and her shoulders went slack, but her forearms rose as if of their own accord, and her silver-clawed fingers raked at the golden rope. Her upper arms trembled, and the tremors spread to her torso. Fresh blood began to seep from the joint where the machinery met flesh at the young woman's elbows.

"Incredible," Wonder Woman gasped, "the body responds to the Lasso of Truth, but the technology is unaffected." Wonder Woman's mind raced as she contemplated how to contain the mechanical monstrosities without allowing them to tear themselves apart. Her prisoner began moaning, a keening, pain-filled sound. "I cannot believe these transformations were voluntary," Wonder Woman opined, just as the decision was relieved from her. A shoulder wrapped tightly in midnight blue wiring slammed into the backs of Wonder Woman's legs, knocking her several feet across the floor. Wonder Woman lost her hold on her golden lasso, and the female cyborg was able to slip from its circle. Before Wonder Woman was able to regain her feet, the strawberry-blonde was standing over her, and drove both her fists into Wonder Woman's stomach. The blow struck with impossible force, driving Wonder Woman at breakneck speed through the floor, as well as through the next several floors of the Watchtower levels below.

Superman was able to wrestle control of the cyborg pushing him backwards shortly after the impact, and flung the man-machine away while spinning in mid-air. The cyborg looped through the air and turned around to divebomb the Man of Steel. The cyborg's head was shaved bald, with perhaps a week's worth of stubble across his scalp, and had light brown sideburns shaved to points halfway down his jawline. He was clad in a light blue union suit and, like all the other cyborgs, enmeshed in snarls of wiring that perforated cracked crimson flesh. Two small red metal wings also protruded from the tops of his shoulders like bladed epaulets.

Superman watched the cyborg's approach, listening to Wonder Woman's revelations while his own opponent completed his aerial loop. Superman reached back with one hand, ready to defend himself but also concentrating on pulling his punch. The cyborg neared and Superman swung out with a left hook. The cyborg made an unbelievably tight turn in mid-flight and reoriented itself, all in time to throw a punch of its own that smashed knuckles to knuckles into Superman's own hand. Superman reflexively recoiled and cradled his hand; the impact had stung, and actually sent a sickening chill through his entire arm. The cyborg brandished its knuckles at Superman, and the last son of Krypton could see that some of the flesh had been scraped completely off the joints. Instead of the red and white of blood and bone, however, all that was revealed beneath was the deep green glow of kryptonite fragments. Superman glanced at his own hand and realized it was bleeding, just as Wonder Woman was sent crashing through floor after floor of the Watchtower.

"Batman, this is Steel with a highest priority distress call. Are you receiving this signal?"

"I hear you, Steel. What is the situation?"

"We're under attack by a group of seven cybernetically enhanced individuals. They're trashing the Watchtower. The power levels and energy signatures they're putting out are ... frankly, they're off the charts. Even my sensory equipment can barely make sense of the data. Plasma bursts ten orders of magnitude above supernova intensity, 50-gee unidirectional force wells, hyper-frequency energy dispersion waves, amplified negative tachyon beams ..."

"Understood. However, I'm in the middle of something at the moment. Aren't the other members of the League available to respond?"

"Firehawk, Green Lantern, Flash, Superman, Wonder Woman, J'Onn and I were all here when the invaders arrived. Our side's not faring well. J'Onn is already seriously injured, Superman may actually be the next to take a serious hit, and Diana ..."

"What about her?"

"She's here with me. She was on the upper level, and something hit her with one of those force wells I mentioned. It drove her body through everything between the upper floors and my lab. I ... I've never seen her in this bad a shape."

"What about the other reservists?"

"One of the first material casualties was our communications relay antenna. We're deaf and mute to the world now. Only this direct channel to you is still working, since it operates on its own circuit. And I've got to get out of my lab and add another body to our side while we still have a side. Can you back me up?"

"..."

"Batman?"

"I'm on my way."

The teleporter hummed and glowed and a moment later the Dark Knight stepped out of the standing module. He could hear the din of battle all around, in as many as four different locations now. He made a minor mental adjustment and proceeded down the corridor. He spotted one of the multiple gaping holes that now existed within the Watchtower's structure, and detached his mini-grapplegun from his utility belt. He fired the line up through the hole, felt the hooks catch, and triggered the rotors that lifted him up to the next level.

As he reattached the gun, Batman raised a field communicator to his lips. "Steel," he said.

"Not ... unnggh ... a minute too soon, Bats," Steel's grunt came through on the relay. "I'm on the fourth level, hurry."

"No time for that. Are you currently airborne?"

"What? Why --?"

"Land. I won't tell you again," Batman answered. He clipped the field communicator to his belt, grasping the mini-grapplegun once more. He twisted the grappling hook off the muzzle, then reached into the folds of his cape and produced a something shaped like a grenade, fitted with batwings on either side. He screwed the grenade onto the end of the gun, pointed it toward the ceiling, and fired. When the grenade struck the ceiling, the two batwings clamped down, their pointed edges digging into the Watchtower and holding the grenade in place. Batman turned around and repeated his motions, firing another grenade into the ceiling on the opposite side of the room.

That accomplished, Batman unclipped the field communicator, and opened a small panel on the bottom surface. He depressed a button revealed beneath the panel. The grenades detonated.

The explosions, as physical forces, were as benign as the popping of a balloon. But inside the grenades were microcyclotrons which had been charging for the past two minutes, which released their payloads as the grenades burst apart. Two powerful electromagnetic pulses radiated throughout the Watchtower, and instantaneously every piece of electronically powered technology within the Watchtower ceased to operate. The moonbase went dark, every system went offline, and the seven cyborgs collapsed like so many scrap metal scarecrows.

Batman climbed up to the fourth level, then retrieved a baton full of luminous chemical compound from his utility belt and snapped it to produce a murky, phosphorescent blue light. He found Steel, lying on the floor, immobile.

"Are you all right," Batman said more than asked, a formality rather than a concern.

"What the hell was that?" Steel asked, his voice muffled under his helmet, his electronic voice amplifier dead.

"Field test of EMP grenades," Batman answered curtly.

"EMP ... are you out of your ..." Steel stopped himself. "You just killed our life support, our teleportation system, our communications..."

"Communications were already dead," Batman pointed out. "And the rest can be repaired, well before we're in any danger. But the major threat, the cyborgs and their 'off the charts' technology, has been neutralized. I'll give you a hand out of your armor."

"How gloriously predictable," a voice gloated over Batman and Steel's head. Batman turned with a wide sweep of his cape, and found himself staring at a man surrounded by a strange device. The man, taken on his own, was a nondescript white male who would be passed on the street as wholly unremarkable. His dirty blond hair was buzzed short, and his hairline receded. Only his eyes hinted at a life outside the norm - intense green, with wrinkles at the corners and dark circles beneath that marked him as a man who live in a constant state of pushing himself to new limits. Around his head was a circlet of metal and circuitry, which in turn was connected to several curving metallic rods. Two rods curved in C-shapes from the crowning circlet to points just in front of the man's chest, where he gripped the end of each one in either hand. Two rods curved more gently down the sides of his body and under his feet, and he stood upon those. For more stood out from the compass points of the circlet, shorter than the others, their purpose not yet revealed. One was copper colored, one platinum, one dark green and one bright red.

"I had hoped," the man in the hovering device went on, "that my biomech experiments would pave the way for my entrance, taking some of the fight out of the vaunted Justice League, perhaps even convincing you to make some heroic self-sacrifice. I designed them accordingly, after all. All your storied abilities, the feared powers of the so-called superheroes, were simply problems for me to solve, mathematical progressions to define a superior series for. I know that I succeeded in that endeavor, since you willingly crippled yourselves to avoid witnessing the proof of my theorem!"

The man's floating apparatus began to slowly descend through the darkness of the Watchtower. "Of course it was a binomial all along. First the cyborgs stormed the castle, while I waited a safe distance behind. Then when I registered the electromagnetic pulse, I knew the time had come for me to show myself! And having done so, I can now complete the equation, canceling out the factors of the JLA!"

"Better than you have tried and failed," Batman retorted through gritted teeth.

"Where they failed, I shall succeed," the man assured the Dark Knight. "Technically, the Justice League can be beaten, and now that I am the only one with working technology, I will prove that so! For I am ... THE TECHNICALITY!"

TO BE CONTINUED...!

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NEXT ISSUE: TECHNOPHOBIA CONTINUES! The Technicality has made his move against the World's Greatest Heroes, and the odds have been calculated to work out in his favor! Can a battered and bruised JLA fend off an attack inside their dead and dark Watchtower? Find out in the next installment, coming soon to cyberspace near you!