Synopsis
Last issue Galactus rescued the Ultimates from the nothingness outside the Omniverse. But it ended with him seeing that Eternity was in chains, and Eternity giving him the task of finding out who did it. Oh, and it actually ended with Thanos following them back into the Omniverse from the outside where he'd been trapped since Secret Wars.
This issue opens with a voiceover describing a legend found on every world of a man pushing a rock up steep high mountain. He always fails and the rock rolls down to the bottom and he has to start again. The reasons why he has to do it vary across the worlds, but there's always the man, the rock and the mountain. What we see during this is a man in a spacesuit rolling a space capsule up the slope.
Now in the Alpha Flight space station in geosynchronous orbit above the Triskelion in New York (its HQ and that of the Ultimates) something is detected approaching which turns out to be Galactus carrying the team in a force bubble. He leaves the bubble and exits normal space. Ultimate Captain Marvel (Carol Danvers) is also Alpha Flight's leader and she contacts them for a spacecraft to pick them up and a 'friendly welcome' for a guest. The guest is the Anti-Man who they rescued (in #4) from the Neutral Zone, and Commander Abigail Brand correctly interprets 'friendly welcome' as an Omega-class containment vessel for a possible menace.
We follow Big G as he enters the Superflow between universes. He muses over recent events - the Ultimates turning him from Galactus The Devourer into the golden Galactus The Lifebringer (in #2) and discovering that Eternity/the Omniverse was caged (last issue). And he also remembers when as Galan he left the dying 6th Omniverse he merged with the sentience of that Omniverse (as told in the Super-Villain Classics 1-shot) to become Galactus in the 7th reality. And he reasons that this makes him the fittest being to take on the task of saving Eternity. But he gets an image of the space-suited man pushing the capsule, and tells himself to not let his pride blind him to the fact that whoever chained Eternity must be powerful beyond conception.
But before he makes a move on that foe he finds he has to face 2 others. Lord Chaos and Master Order, appearing as usual as giant heads, aren't happy with his recent transformation. They know that it was prophesied (SVC again) that he would 1 day give back infinitely more than he had taken, but they don't want that day to be now. Master Order is unhappy about the status quo being disrupted. Lord Chaos is equally unhappy that Big G has ceased his random acts of destruction. Galactus refuses to undo his evolution. The duo threaten to unleash their full force on him, here in the Superflow where it won't damage normal space. G admits that they *used to be* his superiors in the cosmic hierarchy. But no longer ...
... and he punches Order in the face, knocking a metaphorical tooth out and making his metaphorical nose bleed. He says that the metaphorical combat is actually a battle of ideas and identities. His new form challenges the distinction between the pair. But Order manages to encase him in a confining cube of space, until Galan breaks free declaring that proving he's the stronger further damages their view of how things are. Lord Chaos spews green fire at him which starts to randomly mutate parts of his body. But G contends that Chaos' fundamental weakness is that he and Order combine in a balance which is itself inherently a form of order, so he is forever the junior partner. Chaos protests this but has now shrunk so that Galan can crush the head with his fingers. And he sends the 2 cosmic being packing.
But the bubble of his success is popped by a voice which says he's seen nothing yet. A very large door appears and he's invited to enter. He recognises the voice and actually feels fear. Then he enters a white space which isn't a room but contains the contents of a typical lounge. And sitting on a sofa is the Molecule Man (Owen Reece), and Galan knows that MM could ended him with a thought as easily as he created this quasi-reality (and he's probably insane). Owen says it's just somewhere to keep his stuff. His wandering mind says he originally called himself Molecule Man because of the alliteration. Based on what he really manipulates it should probably be Atom Man or Proton Man or Quark Man or Superstring Man or even Information Man. He changes the basic information of reality, so maybe he's Narrative Man. He invites Galactus to sit down. (Owen and the furniture are all Galactus-size. Or maybe G is now their size.) Galan respectively declines but then Reese orders him to sit and he obeys.
Owen tosses him a can of soda and starts to talk about Eternity. He begins by manifesting a box and describes the Schrodinger's Cat thought experiment about the quantum cat in the box being caught between life and death until someone opens the box to look. But he then reveals that *this* box contains an Omniverse. The 7th Cosmos died in the Secret Wars event, but then was reborn with most of the same lives in it. He questions whether what they're living in now is actually a new 8th Cosmos, or whether the 7th Cosmos didn't actually die and this is a continuation. The cosmic powers themselves disagree amongst themselves. Some like Eternity's Children think the Omniverse didn't properly end. Others like Chaos & Order think it did end but it shouldn't have and are resisting any changes. MM himself claims to have retired from the cosmic stage and doesn't want to pick a side. But he uses his power to switch his TV on and it shows the spaceman and the capsule. He comments that the gravity on that mountain is strong enough to warp the currents of time, and everything points to the task being impossible. Galan says he's got to go because he has a duty to perform. Owen wishes him good luck and tells him not to stop pushing. And the image shows that the mountain leads to Eternity's chains.