Before I could clamber to my feet, two of the Megaton Mice had grabbed Kozmik Kat by the whiskers and were flinging him around the clearing.
“Hey, you guys! Cut that out!” I shouted. But the other two had clamped onto my ankles. For their size, they were strong. “Ouch! That hurts!”
I shook them off; they went rolling toward the rubble pile. But Koz wasn’t faring as well. “Guys! I’m a different person now!” he cried, as one twirled him by his tail. “I would never chomp your brother today—really! He even tasted lousy, compared to other mice. I haven’t touched one since!”
The mouse let go, and Koz went flying right at me; I had to duck to get out of the way.
“The cat doesn’t even think our deceased brother tasted good!” complained one of the other Megaton Mice. “How do you like that? He’s a connoisseur of devouring our species!”
The two I had cast off and the other two scurried by me at lightning speed, and laid hold of Koz’s crumpled form. He was really taking a licking, and I wasn’t sure how to pull them off. I was afraid I’d yank off their tails, and I couldn’t bear dismembering a fellow Megatonian, even if they were of a different species. Kozmik Kat would have been in serious trouble if the Urban Renewal Eradicators hadn’t been coming closer all the while, their devastating rays destroying everything in their path.
The hill of rubble from the mice had toppled up began to tremble; the sound became deafening. Within moments, it was disintegrated and turned into a cyclone of powder. One of the flying bulldozers, so to speak, that had been responsible continued its sweep in our direction.
“Scram, brothers!” said one of the Megaton Mice to his comrades, turning Kozmik Kat loose. “Head for the hills! We’ll settle accounts with ol’ whiskers here another day!”
The four rodents then scurried in every direction, taking cover under whatever remaining debris they could find.
“That’s our cue, Sissy,” said Koz, scrambling on all fours. “Let’s light out for the territories before we get vaporized, too!”
***
Kozmik cat and I ran on foot several yards before I decided to grab him by the scruff of the neck and take flight. Narrowly did we escape the lethal rays of one of the Urban Renewal Eradicators. Soon, we were flying over the decrepit ruins of an outlying area of the city of which the URE’s were making short work. They still had miles of urban ruins to clear along the ring of the city, but they seemed unconcerned to pursue us.
“I hope those mice didn’t buy the farm,” I said.
“What are you saying?” said Koz. “Just because they’re wearing the same costumes as us doesn’t make ‘em good guys!”
Even though the skies were choked with smoke and dust, the higher altitude offered perspective over the scene. Huge swaths of this great future metropolis lay in ruins. Our sector, as I said, was being leveled, but it represented only a tiny fraction of it. The UREs still had hundreds of square miles of urban fabric to clear.
As I looked toward the skyline in the distance, I got a sense of the layout of the place. At the center of it all was the gleaming city of progressively towering skyscrapers, culminating in a pinnacle, toward which we were heading.
“Yep, Core City,” said Koz, using the name he’d recalled from his previous visit. “Impressive, huh? I must have aged through eight of my lives there.”
I’ll say it was impressive. Among all the maps and city plans I was studying in my major of Labor Studies and Urban Issues, I had never seen anything quite like. And it wasn’t only its sheer scale; the city was spread over a thirty-five-mile wide disc of land, surrounded by what appeared to be a moat two to five miles thick. The geography seemed to have once been natural, but had been so developed and regularized through its architectural and engineering improvements, is the geometric configuration of the place that was most pronounced.
“This can’t be Megatropolis,” I said. “It’s not New York City or any other modern city I’ve ever seen. Are we even still on planet earth?”
“I’m pretty sure we are,” said Koz. “The denizens still recognizably speak English. Why don’t you see if your visor gives you a readout and see what that tells you?”
“Good thinking,” I said.
I tapped my visor; the computer screens that flashed before my eyes began calculating data. Amazingly, I was able to identify streets, buildings, even bodies of water. “It’s Core City, all right, located on the site of the Manicouagan Impact Crater in Quebec, some seven-hundred and fifty miles north-northeast of New York. That’s six hundred miles from Montreal—assuming those places even exist anymore. And the center point of the city, where the tallest spire is, is called Mount Babel. Fitting.”
“Canada?” said Koz. “They don’t have a city this big.”
“Nobody has a city this big. We’re in the Forbidden Future, remember?”
“What year is it, anyway?” asked Koz. “I never caught a date when I last visited.”
“April 17, 2184,” I read off the tiny viewscreens near my eyeballs. “Saturday…exactly two centuries into the future from when we left the present. Could the Earth have changed this much? With a giant city springing up in what had to be mostly wilderness? And huge parts of its outer exurbs already crumbling to dust?”
“You know how cheap and shoddy they build things, anymore,” said Koz.
An even bigger question was where this information was coming from. My visor was wirelessly networked to the ICHHL databases back in the present, but something told me the Hairdryer couldn’t still possibly be orbiting the Earth. Somehow, my visor was automatically tapping into some global positioning system and other data network that was available in the Forbidden Future.
We flew straight toward the spire, but I couldn’t spot the hotrod anywhere. The skies were filled with myriad other flying vehicles, robots, and even caped megaheroes as we left the ruins behind us, crossed over the annular reservoir, and got closer to the concentration of newer structures in the center of Core City, which rose up like a virtual mountain.
We set down on a landing pad appended to the Mount Babel spire. The pad was big enough to land the hotrod and then some, but there was no vehicle in sight. I looked up at the spire above us; it was mostly glass. Although it had gleamed from a distance, up close it was dingy and dirty.
“You sure this is where you ended up, Koz?” I asked.
“Eventually,” said Koz. “Yarn Man and I got into more than a little derring-do along the way. But this was where we eventually saw the Wizard.”
I recalled that Yarn Man and Kozmik Kat had vanished on the Time Turntable back in the summer of 1980, and it would be more than half a year, March 1981, before they reappeared in the present, at the Partyers from Mars landing in Central Park. By that point, as a college sophomore, I had already met and moved in with Stella Starlight, the See-Thru Girl, who was pregnant with Megaton Man’s love child.
“You probably spent a good six or eight months here,” I said. “I don’t have that much time to waste in the Forbidden Future. I’ve got to get back to the present—I’m graduating college in just a couple weeks.”
“I don’t blame you,” said Koz. “Although I wouldn’t mind rescuing myself from the hair-raising exploits that await my earlier self out there in this teeming city. But I guess I’ve already lived through the worst of it. Besides, I wouldn’t even know where to look. Best to get on home, assuming the Wizard is in.”
We walked across the landing pad toward the building, which still rose dozens of stories above us. Where the pad connected to the spire was large doors.
“How the heck do we get inside?” I asked.
“Try knocking,” said Koz.
I tapped my visor. The huge metallic doors slid open for us, and we walked into the bright, gleaming interior within. “I supposed we must be welcome,” I said.
***
A flying robot that looked like some kind of butler hovered into view. “Ms. James, how nice to see you again,” he said, in a metallic, masculine voice. “Dr. Wertz will be most happy to see you. She was expecting you, I presume?”
“I’ve been here before?” I said. “No, I can’t say as I made an appointment.”
“No matter,” said the ButlerBot. “Ms. Megaton Man is always welcome.”
“I’ve been here before,” said Koz. “I recognize the layout of the place. And I remember you, the flying Jeeves.”
The ButlerBot gave Koz the once-over and made diffident gesture. “I’m sure we’ve never had the pleasure of your company, Mr. Cat,” he said.
Apparently, in my future, I was a frequent visitor to Mount Babel, much like the photo in Doctor Messiah’s study showed me to already be a member of some future Detroit Crime Busters. But Koz’s previous visit, which for him had taken place three years in the past, was yet to happen six months in the future. This was too much for me to get my head around, so I simply decided to just go with it.
We followed the ButlerBot down some hallway along the periphery of the floor, looking out the tall glass windows at the urban fabric that sprawled in every direction. After circling halfway around the circumference of the tower, we came to another set of doors leading into the central core of the building which opened to let us in.
I could tell I was in a futuristic, minimalistic laboratory, even though it lacked the clutter of labs I had seen in the present. Missing was the chaotic profusion of machinery and gizmos that seemed de rigueur for twentieth-century megahero teams. The equipment was sleek, spartan, and all in designer white. A few more robots hovered about, monitoring the machinery. Above us, rising to the pinnacle of the skyscraper, were walls of glass held together by thin tendrils of metal rising hundreds of feet above our heads.
A trim, older woman in a white jump suit rose from a white leather sofa that formed part of a cozy pit grouping of furniture in the center of the lab.
“Clarissa!” she called out. “What perfect timing. I’m about to have tea. Won’t you join me? How’ve you been?”
“I’ve been fine,” I said. “But we’ve never met, I’m afraid. You must be Dr. Winifred Wertz, I presume.”
“I’ve met you, Dr. Wizard,” said Koz. “Of course you don’t remember me—who would remember a talking cat?—but I’ll be running you for the first about six months from now.”
“Ah, the paradoxes of time travel,” said the woman. “No worries. And please, call me Winnie.”
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
Winnie Wertz had to be in her sixties but was well-preserved, with softened features and greying hair. She resembled a more mature Pamela Jointly, with a large nose and full lips.
“I was wondering why you hadn’t brought along the gang.”
“The gang?” I said. “I take it you mean all the megaheroes we saw flying about the skyline. Nope, not yet. I haven’t the pleasure of making their acquaintance.”
“Never mind,” she said. “You look a little flustered. Let me guess: you were tossed her by accident, in which case you’re probably in a hurry to get back to your present. You’ve come to the right place.” She pointed to the Dimensional Portal that stood off to one side of the lab. “I’ll be happy to send you home in a jiffy. But since you’ve already paid for parking, so to speak, perhaps you can relax for a moment. I’m sure you have a great many questions.”
“I sure do,” I said. “But, are you permitted to tell me stuff about my future? That would be great, and everything, but I wouldn’t want to disrupt the flow of time or anything.”
Winnie laughed. “Well, I couldn’t tell you everything, even if I wanted to. Besides, anything specific about the future career of Ms. Megaton Man may not apply to the specific timeline you’ll live out. We are talking about the Multimensions, after all. There’s no such thing as destiny, until after it’s happened. There are only infinite alternate futures, wherever you happen to go from here.”
***
We sat down on sofas facing one another around a white coffee table. Hovering ButlerBots were soon plying us with trays of butter cookies and cups and saucers and teapots of aromatic tea. It was quite delicious.
“I began coming to the future back in 1972,” Winnie explained. “I made so many trips back and forth, I got to know the political power structure intimately. As you can see, they set me up pretty nicely, with all the resources to conduct any scientific experiment I could dream up. The technologies I developed—and your visor appears to be based on one of my older designs—soon became so sophisticated, I could no longer bring them back to your present; they were simply too advanced, even to battle nefarious megavillains. The robots and other technologies that leaked back to the present were dangerous enough, as I’m sure you’ve found out. For that and other reasons I decided to remain here. You have to pick your era and stick to it, I always say. I always felt home in the future.”
A million questions did come to mind; I hardly knew where to begin. I wanted to learn about Winnie’s career as Gargantuella and the many other megahero personas she had assumed in the fifties and sixties, and about all the teams, such as the Doomsday Revengers, she had been a member of. But mostly, I wanted to understand time travel and all of the alternate realities that formed the Multimensions, and how two universes in particular—the Megaton and Meltdown, for lack of better names—seemed to be fusing together in my own present. So I asked her about that.
“Ah, the Great Conflation,” she said. “But perhaps I better take a step back and give you a primer on time travel and crossing over. As you may have guessed, there is an intimate link between temporalities and alternate realities. In fact, you can’t travel through time without traveling to an alternate reality, effectively creating an alternate reality by your very intervension into that other reality.”
“How do you mean?” I asked. “Isn’t this two hundred years into my future?”
“It may well be,” said Winnie. “But if it is, it’s a future in which you never left the present. It’s what would have unfolded had you never left 1984. But you did leave the present, didn’t you? So, logically speaking, this would have to be an alternate future, wouldn’t it?”
She saw I was bewildered, and tried to break it down for me in even simpler terms.
“Obviously, a person can travel forward and backward in their own timeline,” she said. “You could start in 1984, and go back to 1940, for example, before you were born. It would be the same 1940 that led up to your own present. But as soon as you stepped off the Time Turntable—or went through the Dimensional Portal, or however you got there—as soon as you set foot in that 1940, it would become an alternate past—one that couldn’t possibly lead any longer to your present.”
“Wait,” said Koz. “I thought you had to accidentally kill your grandmother or something to alter history; that’s what they tell you in all those TV reruns.”
Winnie laughed. “You don’t need to do anything that drastic to alter time. Just your very presence in the past will have already disrupted the flow of time. The past you visit may have been your past before you set foot in it, but now that you’re there, it’s no longer the same past that will lead to the present you came from.”
“I think I understand,” I said. “I’m really visiting the past, but it’s an alternate reality, so I can’t possibly change my own history. It’s for my own protection.”
“You could think of it that way,” said Winnie.
“But what about the future?” I asked. “I couldn’t possibly do anything to disrupt the flow of time by visiting the future.”
“The same holds true for the future as well,” said Winnie. “You could start in 1984, and visit 2184, as you have. Let’s assume that’s the very future that flows from your present. But it would be a future that would only have happened had you remained in the present. But you didn’t remain in the present—you left the present. So the future you’re visiting has to be an alternate reality; it’s an alternate future in which you never left the present.”
“I’m not sure I’m grasping all of this,” I said. “What you seem to be saying is that time travel would be impossible if time was monomensional—if history had only one possible timeline. We could never travel through time at all if there was only one reality, because we’d be continually fucking it up. But we live in a Multimensional universe—a universe composed of infinite alternate realities. And since we do, we can travel through time, since there will always be another alternate reality we can fuck up.”
“Again, you could put it that way,” said Winnie. “The point is, every time you travel through time, you’re creating another alternate reality, and whether you fuck it up or not, there are always consequences. That’s part of the ethical problem I came to realize. That’s why I decided to stay put here, in this Forbidden Future.”
“But what about getting back home?” I asked. “I can still return to my own present, can’t I? Or is it impossible to locate my exact present from among all those infinite realities?”
“Finding the timeline you left isn’t as difficult as it would seem,” said Winnie. “I’ve developed computers that can pinpoint it quite accurately. Unfortunately, the same rule applies as with any other time travel. You’ll be starting here; this is your reality. Even if you return to the exact timeline you left, it will become an alternate reality the moment you set foot in it, because from that moment on, it will be different from what it otherwise would have been.”
I tried to grasp the implications of all this.
“But the Troy+Thems are back in the lab, waiting for us,” I said. “My sister Avie, Fanny, Jasper—all my friends. Won’t I ever see them again?”
“Yes, of course you will,” said Winnie, with some assurance. “And they will see you. But there will always be an alternate reality, somewhere in the vast Multimensions, in which they will never see you again. In that reality, you disappeared and never returned.”
I was horrified. “How can that be?”
“As I said, the same rule applies as with all time travel. You’ll be starting from 2184, and you’ll be going back to 1984. You’ll be returning to the present that you had left just a short time ago. You’ll have only been gone maybe an hour or so. But the minute you set foot in it, it becomes an alternate reality, simply because you’ve entered from another dimension. It becomes your reality, because your experiencing it, but there will always be another reality in which you do not return.”
“That’s terrible,” I said. “It was accident, me and Koz coming here in the first place. Now you’re telling me that even if I get back home and see my sister Avie again, that somewhere else in the Multimensions there will still be a Avril James who’s crying her eyes out because—in that dimension—I never come home!”
“I told you, that’s why I stopped time traveling,” said Winnie. “I call it the Tragic Realization of Temporal-Dimensional Travel.”
“This is an outrage,” said Koz. “Wizard, you gotta go back in time—and stop the invention of time travel!”
“I’m afraid it’s a little too late for that,” said Winnie. “After our timeline split in two, I created the Dimensional Portal in what you call the Megaton Universe. Meanwhile, Rex Rigid invented the Time Turntable in the Meltdown Universe. We both crossed over freely throughout the 1950s and 1960s, crisscrossing back and forth repeatedly between the two realities, and a lot of other dimensions as well. We failed to understand, however, the havoc we were creating.”
“Is all that crisscrossing the reason the two universes are fusing back together in my present?” I asked.
“No doubt it was a contributing factor,” said Winnie. “Keep in mind, the splitting of the universe was something of an anomaly to begin with. In the entire scheme of the Multimensions, it represented a rare, unnatural act. The two universes might well have eventually fused back together anyway; who knows? But all those crossovers probably sped things along.”
“That’s how Megaton Man and the See-Thru Girl hooked up and had their little boy,” I said.
“Simon Phloog,” said Winnie, knowingly, nodding. “We know all about him in the Forbidden Future.” But she wouldn’t elaborate.
“You say that like the kid grew up to eat the world,” said Koz.
“I already told you,” said Winnie. “There’s no such thing as destiny.”
“Unless it’s already happened,” I said.
***
We finished our tea and cookies, and the ButlerBots cleared away the cups and trays. Winnie offered Koz and me a quick tour of her lab.
“As you can see, I have all the resources I could ask for,” she said, without bragging. “But it comes at a price. Our society is no more balanced or socially progressive than yours, although we’ve advanced significantly in technology. We have the same, basic, eternal problems humans have always had, being mortal organisms.”
On a bookshelf sat a device almost identical to the Multimensional Transceiver Jasper had hooked up to the Dimensional Portal. Winnie noticed our interest in it.
“Rex and I invented those when we were just kids,” she explained. “We built seven or eight prototypes. They were designed to communicate with other dimensions. Of course, since they all existed in the same dimension, we couldn’t exactly test them. As luck would have it, one of our colleagues was fiddling around with Mutonium Particle, and wound up splitting reality in two.”
“That was when the thirteenth scientist split reality into the Megaton and Meltdown Universes, wasn’t it?” I asked.
Winnie nodded. “Rex and I suddenly found ourselves in opposite realities; we used the transceivers to establish a feeble communication link. It was intermittent, but at least we knew the other group of Atomic Soldier scientists was still alive.”
I said, “Subsequently, half a dozen scientists created the Original Golden Age Megaton Man in one dimension, the other six created Major Meltdown in the other.”
“You know your history, Ms. Megaton Man,” said Winnie. “I was on the team that created the first Megaton Man, along with my uncle, Elias Levitch. Although I didn’t have much to do; I was committed to the Meltdown theory. Your grandmother, Mercedith Robeson-James, was on that team, along with Rex Rigid, who’d rather have been on the Megaton team. Ironic, but there you have it.”
“To this day, Rex still claims he’s the father of Megaton Man,” said Koz. “And boy, does he had the Levitches.”
I told Winnie, “You must know that your cousin, Joseph Levitch, is the scientist who created my father, the Silver Age Megaton Man. His counterpart, Julius, became Doctor Software. I think they’ve both been ripping off your future technology—that’s how I got my visor.”
“I’ve gathered as much,” said Winnie. “As long as it stays in the family.”
***
We finally came to the Dimensional Portal. For all intents and purposes, it looked like the very same device Kozmik Kat and I had passed through to land in the Forbidden Future.
“I don’t know about you, Sissy,” said Koz, “but the sooner I get back to Troy, 1984, the better I’ll feel. I’m not a big fan of the Forbidden Future—no offense, Dr. Wizard. Right now, somewhere in Core City, Yarn Man and I are going through some changes—not to mention that those pesky Megaton Mice are out to get me. If you don’t mind, Wizard lady, I’d like to cut this visit short and skedaddle.”
“I still have so many questions to ask you, Winnie,” I said. “You’re my favorite size-changing female megahero of all time, among other things, and it’s been such an honor to meet you. But will I ever see you again?”
Even though our visit had been brief, tears were welling up in my eyes.
“Very likely, you will,” said Winnie, smiling. “And very likely, you won’t.”
One of her Bot assistants was at a control panel, revving up the Dimensional Portal. I gave Winnie Wertz and hug, and Koz and I stepped through the archway.
On the other side was the headquarters of the Troy+Thems, unchanged except for the fact that about an hour had passed since we’d left it.
***
Avie screamed and race forward to hug me. Jasper and Andrea Revell, at the control panel, looked up. “Finally,” said Jasper. “We thought we lost you guys for good.
Dana, who had shed her armor and assumed a slouching seat at the Y+Table, grunted in disgust. “My rival returns,” she said. Apparently, while I was gone, she had made herself at home, and from all appearances had been accepted back into the fold by her former teammates. Kiddo, who sat with her, kind of sneered at me as well.
“How was your first time traveling experience?” asked Fanny, who was next to hug me.
“It wasn’t as bad as I thought, Phantom Jungle Girl,” I said. “It could have been a lot worse. It seemed more like a tutorial than a full-blown time-traveling adventure.”
“I suspect it won’t be the last such trip,” said Tempy. “Not with the Time Turntable and this portal lying around.”
The Brilliant Brain, burbling in his pink fluid, said, “I know for a fact that it won’t be! I’m the Brilliant Brain—I know everything!”
Bobo the gorilla, in his cage, farted absent-mindedly.
***
During our drive back to Detroit, Avie must have told me a hundred times how worried she’d been, and how she’d thought for sure she’d seen the last of me, like all those other megaheroes who’d gotten themselves lost in other dimensions for decades—like Clyde, Farley, the Teen Idols, and even Winnie herself.
“What about me?” asked Kozmik Kat from the back seat. “Nobody cares if they ever see a talking cat again. I’m the perennial second banana to a second banana.”
I changed into my civvies as we drove, and Avie dropped me off at the Union Stripe Café, where I worked my evening shift as a waitress. There, the big news was I got stiffed by a table full of doctors from the medical center, after which I went home and did some homework. Before I went to bed, Avie hugged me again goodnight, before she went to her own bedroom.
As my head hit the pillow, I thought of that other reality out there somewhere, the one alternate to this one, in which never came home. In that reality, Avie was still crying because she’d never see me again.
I didn’t sleep very well that night.