keyword "transform" title "the historical batman" in misc. flash fiction

In a thousand years, priests and scholars will still have their debates about history, whether they engage in holograms or in hovels, whether the arguments are in cave paintings or in non-fiction novels depending how much gets destroyed between now and then. If there are people alive and any traces of our past to pick through, men of God and men of record will continue in this dance and if the pieces of our present are found to last, they will argue over the true nature of Batman.

The priests will of course hold all writ about Batman literally true, that’s their priestly job, that’s what they always priestly do. Shapeshifters that transform and genies from the fifth-dimension, the clones and time-travel, everything set about Batman they’ll claim undoubtedly true. That is their priestly job, that’s just what they priestly do.

The scholars will differ and instead choose to talk about the historical Batman, the flesh and blood man who must have fought crime in our time, why else would he so well-remembered? Their suspension of belief, unlike the priests, would be scholarly and tempered.

“Of course, he wasn’t friends with an alien from Krypton,” they’ll say, “that would be stupid, but all the records clearly state the historical Batman fought normal crime in some normal way. Why else would they have taken the time to draw him so well?”

Scholars will comb the ruins of America looking for historical Bruce Wayne’s tomb, digging for a Bat-Cave without so much super-science but still definitely a Bat-Cave or else why would we have made so much film about him? “We’re exploring the gap,” they’ll say, “between myth and fact so we can better know the actual Batman.”

“We know for sure there was some real basis for Catwoman, of course, or else why would there be so much written about her but was she just his follower or was she really his lover?” the Dan Browns of the future will ask “Do they walk among us, their descendants, heirs to the bloodline of the historical Batman?” the Dan Browns of the thirty-first century will ask this and they will mean well. The pastors and professors, they’ll think they’re doing the two different sides of the same good work.

They’ll have no idea Batman could have been just made up to sell children magazines, the idea will be too ingrained for them to imagine a world where there wasn’t at least a historical Batman. Some will say didn’t know the gods by first name, some will say that he didn’t have a Bat-plane, but everyone will agree that there had to be a historical Batman.

In a thousand years, maybe the scholars will find this story and then hide it, convinced it would destroy their society founded on the teachings of the Bat, afraid to let them know the reality of the really-real past. Maybe one priest will read it first, though. Maybe she’ll at least get a laugh.