Crossover Earth '98

by Paul Cocker & Jay Shaffstall

Arthur Munroe watches in amazement as his sixteen-year old granddaughter scowls at the television, her one hand operating the remote control while her other skimming over the keys of her laptop computer. It isn’t unusual to have teenagers watching television and claim that they’re doing homework, but Jessica Munroe is an example on her own.

She sits back in the sofa and fast-forwards a video, assessing, studying the images that speed by the screen. Her other hand moves along her keyboard almost too fast for Arthur’s eye to follow.

"Good lord, Jessica."

Tacka-tacka is her only response.

"What on Earth are you doing?"

Tacka-tacka.

"Jessica!"

The young girls stops and whirls around to face her grandfather. She blushes slightly. "Oh, heh heh, I’m working on an essay for my Film Studies class."

"But you’re watching the film in fast-forward."

Jessica pauses the VCR and puts the remote control down on the coffee table. The image on the screen was in motion and so its features are a slight blur now. Arthur can still discern the picture, that of a shirtless bodybuilder with a funny wig and green make-up all over his rippling physique.

"Uh, I’ve already watched the show," Jessica says. "It’s an episode of the Incredible Hulk television series. Actually, my essay’s about TV shows that portray their main characters as drifters. I’m comparing this show to the Fugitive. You see, both shows have their star wander or hitchhike at the beginning or end of the episodes. It’s an easy but interesting way to link the episodes together to create a much larger story. I’m just looking for some fine points right now."

Arthur looks baffled then shakes his head. "Alright, have fun. I guess."

As her grandfather walks away, Jessica too gets up and leaves the den. She has spent several hours in front of the computer and watching television. She decides to take a break. She pads her way to her bedroom and opens her door.

Surprisingly, Captain Infinity flickers into existence before her, looking like an old television transmission punching through a storm.

"You’ve gotta stop doing this!" she whispers.

"Quickly!" he says, reaching to take hold of Blur's arm. Suddenly she's elsewhere, and Infinity is solid. He looks drained, as if he'd just done something that took his last bit of energy. Quite a difference from the normally serene and calm face he normally wears.

"I apologize for the abruptness, but it is time."

Blur and Infinity are standing in a wooded area, with a high chainlink fence topped with barbed wire fifty yards or so away. Blur takes a moment to activate Zephyr's beeper device he gave her.

She waits a second, but Zephyr doesn't race up to them. He must be indisposed.

"No matter," Infinity says. "We'll have to suffice. I have no more energy for transporting anyone else."

Infinity waves a hand toward the fence. On the other side of the wire mesh lies a four-square building. With a steel aerial tower beside the structure and two parabolic satellite dishes on its roof, Blur seems certain the building is a communications facility of sorts. Then she sees the two guards flanking its heavy-duty door.

"This is the compound where Dr. Martin's research project is housed," Infinity claims. "He and his assistant, Dr. Campbell, are preparing to start the experiment that will cause a quantum level explosion. You must help me to get to Dr. Martin before he presses the button."

Blur nods. "I’ll handle the two guards. Meet you over there?"

"Yes."

The teenager breezes across the field and over the fence, whizzing to the sentries. To the two guards her engagement is a frenzied dance of punishment, blows of force that go along in a streak of spandex. A flurry of punches form an attacker that is everywhere and nowhere, and between the gasping loss of wind and the gulp of a first breath, their world turns black with unconsciousness.

Captain Infinity appears beside Blur in a hazy, displaced flicker, his very being slipping in and out of dimensions of time. His body then materializes. He opens the heavy door and leads the young heroine down a series of winding halls. They approach what seems like a dead-end, but as they get closer, a wall hisses open to reveal a large chamber.

"In here, Blur," Infinity says and steps through the threshold. Blur follows suit.

The chamber is a laboratory, filled almost entirely with massive banks of equipment. Computers screens flash with formulae and schematics, coils and tubes pump strange liquids and gaseous substances, looping cables and conduits run from hulking machines. But squarely in the center of all this jumbled, incomprehensible hardware, standing before a control console, is Dr. Martin and his assistant.

They are arguing.

"I tell you," Dr. Campbell says, "we're moving too quickly. We don't know what the effects of our probing will be."

Dr. Martin shakes his head sadly. "I have no choice. My family has no choice."

Then two other men step from behind a bank of equipment. Blur is startled to see that they are identical twins. Both are a head taller than everyone else, with bodies that seem entirely of slabs muscle. Each have facial features so handsome that they verge on comely, with prominent cheekbones, an aquiline nose, a high brow, and dark hair. The look oddly elfin.

"Enough waiting," one twin says. "Push the button while we deal with the intruders." Neither of them had noticed the duo. Drs. Martin and Campbell look at Blur and Infinity with surprise.

"Don't hurt them, Vagabond," the other twin says. "We only need a delay."

Vagabond glances at the other man with an easily read contempt.

"They're not worth the trouble it would be to pull my punches, Traveller."

The Traveller is polite but firm as he and Vagabond close with Blur. "I'm sorry miss, but I can't let you interfere."

Vagabond is more direct. "Let's just kill her and get it over with."

Dr. Campbell shakes his head. He can't begin to know what his friend, Dr. Donald Martin, is going through. Having your wife and daughter murdered before your eyes would be enough to unhinge any ordinary person.

Then again, any ordinary person doesn't build a machine that might destroy the universe.

"Donald," Dr. Campbell tries again, "you have no idea what the effect will

be of unleashing quantum level energies on the macroscopic world. We simply cannot take the risks without more experiments."

Dr. Martin simply looks at Campbell with a dead expression.

"I know that not pressing that button will mean my family is still dead. That is an unacceptable alternative."

Dr. Campbell throws his hands in the air and starts pacing.

"This idea of yours, that tapping quantum level energies is going to give you the ability to travel in time to save your family, it's...ridiculous!" Campbell stops pacing and approaches Dr. Martin. "You're a scientist, and yet you believe this nonsense with no proof."

"Don't you understand?" Dr. Martin's voice cracks, showing emotion for the first time. "If I don't believe that then I might as well stop living."

Winds wail as Blur runs around the twins in figure eights and varying other shapes, no doubt trying to disorient them. Vagabond pounces, swipes, and swings punches wildly at indistinct shapes, hitting only air. It doesn’t take long for him to get aggravated. The Traveller merely stands still, trying to observe a pattern in Blur’s fleeting movements.

"Stand still, you witch!" Vagabond hollers.

But Blur moves with such incredible velocity, even within the confines of the laboratory. Vagabond continues to whirl about the chamber, bouncing this way and that, toppling desks and throwing chairs. Finally, he manages to get in a lucky shot once, stunning Blur. He steps in closer to finish her off.

"You’re dead," says Vagabond.

"I said no," the Traveller intercedes, and grabs his twin’s arm, giving Blur enough time to get back on her feet.

"Dr. Martin, you must not perform this experiment." Infinity's voice sounds confident and mysterious as always. A listener usually comes away with the impression that what he said is true, but Dr. Martin isn't convinced.

"Listen to him, Donald," Dr. Campbell says.

"To hell with both of you." Dr. Martin moves toward the innocuous looking button that would set the experiment in motion. One press of that button will unleash unimaginable quantum energies, and just might save his family.

"You will be changing the entire structure of space and time, Doctor." As Dr. Martin pauses, Infinity presses on. "Even if the universe survives, there's no telling what the effects will be. Do you want to be responsible for the destruction of the world? Of the universe?"

Dr. Martin's finger stops just short of the button as he considers Infinity's words. He raises his gaze to look Infinity in the eyes.

"Good riddance, then," he says as he presses the button.

And the universe explodes in brilliant white light.

Blur slowly comes back to consciousness and rises to her knees. The lab spins around her for what seems like an eternity, mixing with the fluorescent white of the lights above. When she comes to, she finds the Traveller and Vagabond crumpled against a wall. Dr. Martin is gone, leaving Infinity on his knees in the middle of the room. Blur can hear Infinity sobbing, a truly disquieting experience. Dr. Campbell lays off to one side, his clothing burned and a look of

supreme horror on his face.

The teenaged heroine staggers twice as she heads towards Captain Infinity and Dr. Campbell.

"All for nothing," Infinity says, his voice dead. "My family is still dead."

"What happened," Blur asks. "I think I blacked out or something." The spinning behind her eyes slows. She takes a very deep breath while closing her eyes, and the last of the spinning clears. "And where's Doctor Martin?"

Infinity looks up at Blur, and with a shaking hand reaches up to remove his hood. The cloth pulls away from his head to reveal the face of Dr. Donald Martin. A face lined with despair and grief.

Blur's face falls as both wonderment and perplexity overwhelms her. She can't find the words she wants to form, the remorse she feels she must express. "I-I don't believe this? Y-you're Doctor Martin?"

"I suppose I owe you the truth, now," he says. "The experiment did give me the power to travel in time, and I used it to try and save my family." Infinity shakes his head sadly.

"But I learned quickly that the past couldn't be changed. For every move I made, the universe made another to balance out the scales. My last hope was to prevent myself from performing the experiment in the first place, to force a paradox that might give me the power I needed to change the past."

Infinity drops the hood on the ground, his once proud shoulders slumped forward in defeat. "It was all for nothing."

Blur shakes her head. "No, Infinity -- I mean, Doctor Martin. I know what I say won't bring your family back, but you can't go through life killing yourself over something you can't change. If they were alive, would your wife and child want you destroying yourself? I mean, you're no Messiah. And what you've done wasn't for nothing. Consider all the other lives you've help save; I'm forever grateful for the help you've given me."

Dr. Martin smiles slightly, but it's a smile tinged with deep sadness.

"Some day, I might see it that way."  He gestures toward Dr. Campbell.   "Look at what my folly did to my friend.  He's been careening through time from disaster to disaster from the beginning of time.  Men have called him the Spectre; at least his journey has ended now."

The Traveller approaches Blur and Dr. Martin. "She's right, you know. When you've lost everything else, the only thing left is to find a purpose helping others."

Dr. Martin looks at Traveller, seeming to see beyond the man in front of him.

"Your future is one I would very much like to live in."

Blur nods with a slight smile. She can't help but feel relief that someone agrees with her. Then the realization hits her like a bucket of water, and she whirls around to see Traveller.

"You're from the future?"

The Traveller walks down the side of the road, picking his way along in the fading light. He shifts the pack slightly on his shoulders. He has ended up with very little out of this business with Dr. Martin, and yet he feels a sense of satisfaction.

Satisfaction somehow tinges with unease. The Traveller examines the feeling more closely. He worked with Vagabond to help Dr. Martin's experiment continue, thus saving both of their futures. Why is he uneasy?

He recalls what Infinity had tells Blur afterward.  Dr. Martin's experiment altered the structure of spacetime.  Where before the future had been predestined, now the future is fluid. What future comes into being out of all the possible futures depends on which actions are taken in the present.

That is it. He and Vagabond come from different possible futures. They've helped to ensure that both of those futures will continue to be possible. But only one of them can become real. Which one will depend on a series of events happening in certain ways. Which events, the Traveller has no idea.

The Traveller remembers the sense of cold cruelty in Vagabond. He doesn't want to think about the sort of future that would create a man like that deliberately. He will have to hope that his fragmented memory will lead him to the crisis events needed to keep Vagabond's future from becoming real.

Shifting the pack slightly on his shoulders again, the Traveller continues along the side of the road, vanishing into the darkness.

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