The Blank World

"Can't put it into words, can you?"

Ma Zhaodi sighed. "After discovering that I couldn't contact Clark Kent in this universe, I had a suspicion. So I called Metropolis, Keystone City, Central City, and Star City. This time, I didn't call any superheroes. I just found the phone number of some local resident."

Barbara asked, "Did you get through?"

"No. Same as with Clark."

"That's not right. Why would this happen?"

"Because Metropolis doesn't exist."

Ma Zhaodi replied, "This world is only about the size of a single city—perhaps slightly larger, but not by much."

"Impossible."

"Why is it impossible?"

"I've grown up all these years. I know so many people and have been to so many places. And... how could my life possibly be fake?"

Barbara subconsciously looked down at her legs. The phantom pain of the bullet that had pierced her spine that day had yet to fade from her memory. Yet precisely because that memory was so agonizing, she found it even harder to accept that her world was empty.

The reason she had made it this far in Gotham, and continued supporting Batman's operations as Oracle even after becoming paralyzed from the waist down, wasn't because she had a high level of acceptance toward her own life. It was because she had always firmly believed that what she was doing was right, and that its significance to this world far outweighed all the suffering she had endured. She could help more people avoid lives even more tragic than her own.

After living like that for more than twenty years, having a stranger suddenly appear and tell her, "The world is fake, and your sacrifices are meaningless," was something she simply couldn't accept emotionally.

"I'm calling Clark right now." She gritted her teeth. "If I get through—"