The One Above All

The One Above All moves through creation wearing whatever face suits the moment, and here he takes the form of a decorated US Army general seated among the crowd gathered to honor Captain America. A medal for valor is to be pinned on the hero for his rescue of hundreds of captured men, and the assembled brass and public wait to lay eyes on the legend himself.

The moment does not go as the ceremony intends. When a stand-in walks out in Steve Rogers' place, the disguised watcher of all things leans to the man beside him and remarks that he thought the hero would be taller. He observes, comments, and passes on, his hand never quite touching events yet always somehow present at them.

At a New York shoeshine stand, an unremarkable older gentleman settles in near the fugitive Howard Stark, the two of them raising newspapers like shields. Stark is hiding a wanted face. His neighbor is just catching up on the news. The gentleman leans over, asks to borrow the sports section, takes it, and vanishes back behind the page without ceremony. The author of every reality has slipped into a borrowed suit to sit for a shoeshine among his creations, and his one and only intervention in mortal affairs is to bum the box scores off Howard Stark.