by Nicholas Ahlhelm
Jack Flash fell out of the sky and crashed hard to the pavement below. He struggled to his feet. Heat radiated off his body on to the already hot pavement. He looked up in to the shining sun high above.
He looked down and saw the Odin Statue. Or at least what was left of it. Only a few scattered pieces of rubble still stood on the base. Dark scars radiated out across the cement.
Is this where I left? Did I do this when I disappeared?
“It wasn’t you or your attacker that did this. Perhaps you could have prevented it should you have not started your journey, but even time travelers cannot predict everything.”
The words came from a wild-haired old man sitting beneath a nearby oak tree. He wore only a pair of khaki shorts and broken down flip-flops. The old man wobbled to his feet. His skin was deeply bronzed and weathered from the heat.
“It’s been a long time, Jack. For me at least.”
“Who the heck are you?”
The old man shook his head. “I would think it hadn’t been that too long for you. You’ve only made a half dozen jumps since we spoke last.”
“Doctor Cosmic?”
The old man slumped back as a light mist rose from his body. A few seconds later, the familiar form of Doctor Cosmic formed in front of him.
“It took you long enough, Jack. You’re a clever guy. I thought you would get it a bit faster.”
“I’m sorry if I didn’t listen to you. I just thought I could stop Hero’s death. I thought I could save all those people—”
Doctor Cosmic held up his hand. “I should have warned you about the temptation. It seems all travelers feel the need to play god at some point. It never works out well for them.”
“Yeah, I noticed.” Jack said nothing more.
“The funny thing about time travelers is that they always seem more lost than a normal run of the mill person. Take that boy over there. He seems perfectly happy with his life as it is.”
Cosmic held up one hand to point at a boy running out of a copse of trees. Jack looked up at the small, dark-haired boy. He couldn’t be more than ten.
Jack’s head screamed in pain as he realized he recognized the boy. He clutched his skull as he turned to Doctor Cosmic.
“How?”
“It seems I was off by a few years when I reviewed your temporal displacement. It seems you’ve been displaced so long you’ve grown roots in to the wrong point in the timestream.”
Jack looked at the boy again. The pain still throbbed in his skull and it only worsened when he saw the child.
His younger self continued to play around the trees as Jack turned away, no longer able to watch.
“I remember things. I remember my past. How is this possible?”
“I’m not sure, Jack. I think you planted those memories to protect yourself. But tell me Jack. Do you just remember details, facts about the past, the time you lived through? Or do you remember your family, your childhood, all the people you’ve met from a life growing up at the end of the twentieth century?”
“Oh God…” Jack collapsed to his knees. Every word from Doctor Cosmic’s mouth forced his history ever clearer.
Cosmic was right.
He couldn’t remember his parent’s faces. He couldn’t remember his childhood friends. He couldn’t remember details of his education, where he got it or how he knew what he did know.
“How did I never realize it? I never even noticed.”
“I suspect it’s because you didn’t want to notice. You came back to this time and wiped your own mind for a reason, whatever that might be.”
“So if I’m not from now, where am I from?”
“I’ve traced your temporal links over the past seventy years. It seems you have a good twenty years to go before you reach your native time. That’s why you are just a child over there, playing in the park.”
“Twenty years from now, but why?”
“You’ve popped up several times over the course of the last decades, pulled out of the timestream again and again. Did you find any common denominators to your stops?”
“Hero. He was there every time.”
“I don’t think a dead metahuman, no matter how great, is our key. Anyone else?”
“The villain, Overlord. He said he had been trying again and again to defeat Hero. He talked like he was a time traveler himself.”
“I think that’s your key, Jack. For whatever reason, you know this Overlord and you’ve been sitting in this time period to avoid him.”
“Do you think he’s from the same future as me? From the same time period?”
“I strongly suspect it, yes. But only you can find out for sure. You need to return to your time and investigate for yourself.”
“I don’t know if I can,” Jack said. “It seems like I’ve already been through a life time.”
“It’s up to you to find your own answers, Jack. I cannot give you anymore.”
Doctor Cosmic said nothing more, but his eyes remained focused on Jack. He wanted an answer, and Jack wasn’t sure if he could give it.
As long as he remembered, he was a superhero. First in Detroit, then in the Divide, and recently on his time-jumps. Now he wasn’t sure if it was all just a lie.
“I know this decision is hard, Jack. But the knowledge I’ve given you, coupled with your own younger self’s presence, makes you a danger to this time period. You need to jump again soon or dire consequences could result.”
“So I don’t have any choice? What if I want to stay here, right now?”
“It could bring about havoc across the entire timestream.”
“So I don’t have any choice, do I?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“That’s it then. I guess I’m going to the future.”
Doctor Cosmic rested a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Despite my age, I am still only a man. I cannot see the future; only divine its possibilities through prior knowledge. You will be on your own again when you arrive.”
“I understand.”
Doctor Cosmic nodded. He stepped away. “I suppose that means it’s time for you to be on your way.”
“I suppose so.”
Jack met Cosmic’s eyes one last time. He felt the flames rise up off his body. Seconds later, he vanished again in to the flow of time.
*****
Nicholas Ahlhelm is an avid writer as well as the editor and administrator of both Metahuman Press and Pulp Empire. Even with projects like Out For Vengeance, Living Legends, and Timeline appearing at MHP, he still finds time to write the webcomic Arc.