WalkMan May 3rd, 2026 6:12 PM

All Steven knew about his mother’s death was that it would happen somewhere between the accursed farm and Grandmommy Longleg’s home, sometime between now and 6 AM tomorrow. That left a 7 mile gap in a 10 hour timeframe. We would have to wait for the pair and trail them at a distance. The plan was solid, except for one crucial detail: we were exhausted.

Steven had left me alone while he had gone for ‘supplies’ about a half hour ago, leaving me to watch the path. The path was a literal walking path, snaking through a few miles of wilderness between two small towns. I passed the time by examining the WalkMan device that Warden had given me. I had no idea how this imaginary computer, or the belts and Sycxzezs’ message doohicky, had appeared with me in reality. I couldn’t describe how my own powers worked either. None of this shit made any sense, really.

A buzzing noise grabbed my attention. It was oddly sharp and whiney at the same time, like if a bee had developed a taste for espresso. I flung myself to the ground and rolled beneath the picnic table for whatever amount of actual cover it could provide, although nobody had ever been saved by a piece of wood with a poorly engraved heart and initials on it. Probably. The buzzing grew louder until it was directly above me, as if the caffeine bee was accusing me of hiding coffee on my person. A small helicopter thing lowered itself under the table and hovered, pointing a small camera right at my face. It had four small rotors on the corners of its small wiry frame, and held a box beneath it like a miniature cargo helicopter. The machine blinked a red light at me before dropping its payload and whizzing away.

I crawled out from under the table once I was sure the flying machine was gone, and examined the package. It was a small black metal rectangle, with a piece of paper tied to the top like a ‘to and from’ note on a Christmas gift. I readied my WalkMan just in case it was a trap, and gingerly untied the string. Nothing mechanical happened, at least that I could detect. I grabbed the note and unfolded it until it displayed a hand-written message.

Steven and/or WalkMan, this is the best I could do under such an impossible time constraint. Press the red button to activate the magnetic lock, and attach it to Doctor Doomsday’s torso or head. This will bypass the doombot frame’s shielding, an exploit I plan to patch out as soon as this ordeal has concluded, and reset the time travel-induced glitches present in his base mental coding. If this does not work, you’ll have to disable him and bring at least his head back to the Doomfort for cognitive reconstruction.

Certain behavioral ‘tics’ are required for a mind uploaded into a robotic frame to remain ‘sane’, at least in the state it was in pre-mental transition. For example, mine is a tobacco spitting sound and motion, from my previous lifelong habit of using tobacco dip- the very cause of my original flesh’s demise. The irony is not lost on me that the end of my life was caused by the habit that is holding me together in death. For Nigel Doomsday, that behavioral tic is his manic cackling, the pure joy he experiences from his benevolent mischief. I realized he has not been doing much of this lately, and it, along with the time travel related programming glitches, have contributed significantly to his current cognitive decline. His recovery will be dependent on both his coding and, in the future, his behavior.

Under such rigorous time constraints, I was not able to create a suitable replacement left hand for you, Steven. As we both witnessed in the laboratory, you will re-acquire the missing one in your future, and our past.

I wish you both luck in your upcoming endeavors. Please bring my grandson home. Family is everything to me, and I could not go on with the absence of any living relatives.

Cordially,

Aloysius Doomesdyæ

Doombot 0001

C.O.O. DoomSquad, Inc.

Interesting. Apparently Doctor Doomsday had changed the spelling of his last name when he had adopted his villainous persona, which wasn’t uncommon. I shook my head to clear my thoughts. I really needed to get some sleep, but that wasn’t important. What was important was the latest black metal box that a technologically advanced being had given, in a collection that was small yet staggering in its frequency to enlarge. I pocketed the note and examined the device. It was lighter than the one Sycxzezs had given me, and had a red button instead of a green one, but otherwise they were eerily similar. I wondered if that was a mere coincidence, or if Doctor Doomsday had stolen the technology from my grasshopper friend.

“What’s that?” Steven asked. I jumped in startled surprise and reflexively set my feet in a wide Krav Maga fighting stance, bringing my right leg forward and balancing on the balls of my feet. My fists raised and settled in a tense striking form, approximately 8-10 inches in front of my chest. My Krav Maga students would have ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’ at my superhuman speed, but Steven just stood there, holding his future gun in one hand and a plastic grocery bag in the other.

“Sorry” I muttered, relaxing overworked muscles and slumping back down onto the wooden bench. “Just… on edge.”

Steven holstered his weapon in the form-fitted plastic holster on his thigh and rummaged through the shopping bag he had looped over his left stump. He tossed the can he found within to me, and cracked open another just like it. “Drink it” he said, and proceeded to chug his entire can.

I examined the tall, white can. It had three jagged lines down the front, as if a tiger had taken a swipe at the exterior, and simply described itself as Monster Energy. I shrugged, popped the can tab, and drank. It was sickly sweet and almost thick, like drinking a chemical slurry. I immediately regretted my decision to chug the damn thing like Steven had.

“The fuck was in that?” I asked in between coughing fits.

Steven flipped his can around and read aloud. “165mg of caffeine, 2000mg of Taurine, natural and artificial flavors. Probably leans a lot more towards the ‘artificial’ part there. Basically, we just overclocked our biological computers for a few more hours of energy. We’ll need to take a big, long nap after we get this over with.”

I already noticed the effects kicking in. I wasn’t tired anymore, not really, but I also wasn’t rested. I was… well, restless. It was like I had found a new power source in my body, like I had started burning cholesterol as well as calories, and maybe the lining of my stomach as well. “And these are legal?”

Steven shrugged. “It says ‘not for children’ on them, at least. What did the DoomDrone drop off? I hope it was my new hand, this is getting really annoying.” He waved his stumpy arm to emphasize his point. “It was a note…” I began, then hesitated. How much of the note did I actually want Steven to hear? If he knew there was a way to easily pacify Doctor Doomsday, then that madman could send me away and go back to corrupting my son with his nefarious influence. I wasn’t sure how exactly this future had played out, but I knew for damn sure that anything would have been preferable to me dying by my own son’s hand in service of a self proclaimed super villain. If I could just get back to my timeline with my memories intact, with a bit of research into how this future had come to be, then maybe I could avoid it altogether. Maybe I could actually use the time machine myself, going back to specific key moments in Steven’s life and… No. This was selfish. I would be risking time itself just to manipulate the direction of my son’s life.

But I didn’t have to tell Steven everything.

“And what did this note say, exactly?” Steven asked, impatiently.

I shook my head as if clearing my mind from a daze. “Sorry, this ‘monster’ thing is kicking in and feels… odd. The note said Aloysius couldn’t build you a new hand in time, and you already know where and when to get a replacement.”

He sighed, and awkwardly opened a protein bar wrapper with his one functional hand and his teeth. “I was afraid of that. Anything else?”

“Yeah, he said we need to bring Doctor Doomsday’s head back, he can fix the code issues from that.” I lied by omission.

Steven closed his eyes as he chewed, seemingly lost in thought. After he finished the ‘meal’, he sighed. “I don’t have anything that can chop his head off. The only thing I have is my blaster, and it’s too wide of a shot to cleanly do it without hurting the critical bits. Do you have a decapitation song? Or some sort of cutting or slicing power?”

I pulled out the magic WalkMan device and slipped the headphones on. “Did you hear that?” I asked the annoying AI.

“Affirmative! There are no known songs that would induce a superpower effect like that. Would you like to sample some likely-”

I pulled the headphones off before the overly enthusiastic robot could finish. “No. Guess we’ll have to find something as we go.”

Steven grunted in response. He stood and threw away his trash, and I followed suit with my empty can of ‘energy’. We made our way to a hill that overlooked the path that Grandmommy Longlegs and Anchor Woman would take, and settled under some foliage as best we could. Hours passed in silence only disturbed by bathroom breaks and the occasional curious squirrel.

“They’re close,” Steven whispered. “Get ready.”

I squinted in the dark, but couldn’t make out anything. “How can you tell?” I asked in a whisper.

He didn't answer. He didn’t need to. The first spider that scuttled by was a clue, and the dozen or so others were the confirmation. The spider queen approached.

Steven May 3rd, 2026 3:00 PM

WalkMan stared at Warden. “Is everything OK in there, Manfred?” He asked.

Manfred? That wasn’t Warden’s real name, at least I didn’t remember it being that. And why was WalkMan on a first name basis with the narcissistic asshole? What had happened there?

“Да, I’ve figured out the controls, and everyone has at the minimum basic comforts,” Warden said in an uncharacteristic Russian accent. “Delphi insisted I make Sycxzezs a copy of his people first. He’s been chittering away with them for weeks now. I think one of them is a copy of his wife, or whatever their equivalent is called.”

“Um, what the hell?” I asked. “What is a Sycxzezs? Who’s Delphi?”

WalkMan didn’t reply at first. He hefted three objects that he hadn’t been holding mere moments before, two belts and one block of what appeared to be a flakey metal book. “Sycxzezs is the alien that made these. And the time machine.”

My jaw dropped. “The entity made the time machine? Fuck, Warden left that out of his report.”

WalkMan glared at me. “Report? When the fuck-”

“Warden worked for the Doomsquad for a few years before he left, for ‘conflicting ideological reasons’. I joined up a few years after the fact.” I said, “I read the reports in the archives during training. Warden was instrumental in the design of the conscious upload process, and transferred Aloysius Doomsday into Doombot 0001’s frame personally.”

WalkMan paused for a reflective moment. “Is that why he hates bright lights?”

“You can ask him yourself.”

Warden cleared his throat. “It’s Steven, right? I’m Communist Manfred, I’ve assumed control of this body and its subsequent powers. We have 2,439 souls in the mental prison system, not including myself, now liberated. I’d like to talk with you about the possibility of re-homing some of them into Doombot frames like-”

“That can wait, Manfred.” WalkMan cut in. “We have to deal with Doctor Doomsday and get the time machine back first.” He turned to me next, and handed me one of the belt devices. “Put this on and follow me. We have a time traveler to catch.”

I accepted the device and stood, fastening it around my waist. “Make your way to the Doomfort” I told Manfred-Warden. “We’ll make Doombot frames for everyone that wants one. Tell Stephan I authorized pre-production, authorization code 122-D-46.”

We left the restaurant quickly, damn near running out the door past paramedics that some bystander had called during Warden’s seizure. WalkMan slowed once we were out of sight of the Lazy Samurai, and led me down a side ally.

“How was-” I began, but stopped as the breath was driven from my lungs as WalkMan slammed me against the brick wall. He glared at me from inches away, his chest heaving with barely constrained rage. He held me against the wall with one hand around my neck, the other held back in a threatening fist.

“Did you know how long I would be trapped in there?” He snarled, “How Warden would imprison me? How I was going to be tortured for YEARS as seconds passed in the real world?”

I grabbed his wrist with my one functional hand, gasping for breath. “I knew you would survive” I struggled the words out. “I saw you in the fight at the lab. Doc said we can’t change the past.”

“You trust that maniac with my life?” He growled, squeezing my neck tighter. “You believe him? He abandoned you outside of your own timeline. He betrayed your trust. What if he was wrong? What if I had died there? What gives you the right to play with my life like that?”

I swung my blunt arm stub down on WalkMan’s wrist, breaking his grip on my throat and taking a greedy gasp of that sweet, sweet oxygen. “Because I killed you.”

WalkMan stepped back as I gasped for air. His back hit the opposing wall and he slid down it into a seated position. “That’s why you’re currently a pile of ash in a soundproof urn. That’s why we needed your help now. Before you went bad. Before you killed Stacy. Before you killed Doctor Doomsday and tried to kill me.”

WalkMan didn’t say anything. He just sat on the concrete alley, staring at his hands in silence for what felt like hours. I felt my throat and checked for any fractures, which thankfully came back negative.

“I know where we find Doctor Doomsday next” WalkMan said flatly, not meeting my gaze. “He was there when… when your Mother dies tonight. We… we can’t stop her death. I’m sorry.”

My mind froze in horror. I had to watch my mom die? And I couldn’t stop it? I had to sit by and see my own mother get eaten by a hoard of spiders? With my father, who now knew I’d eventually kill him? Was my whole fucking family doomed to exist in this circle of perpetual death and destruction by our own hands?

“I’m sorry” WalkMan whispered, barely audible among the bustle of city life outside the alleyway. “For trying to kill you. I really am. I don’t know why I would try.”

I sighed. “Probably a fit of rage, like just now. You fucking strangled me in anger instead of asking me a fucking question like an adult.”

WalkMan buried his head in his hands. “I didn’t want to-”

“But you DID” I snapped, “You always do this. You act in anger, then pretend like it wasn’t what you wanted to do. But guess what, asshole? It’s what you always DO. You never try to get better, to change your behavior, to try to improve yourself. You’re not a Super Hero, you’re a bully that wants to fight, but doesn’t want the inconvenience that comes with breaking the law. You don’t want to face the consequences of your actions. You don’t want to reflect on your own shortcomings. You just want to punch the problem until it’s not your problem anymore, not caring about the ruined lives you leave in your wake.”

WalkMan trembled on the ground, head still held in his hands. I took a few deep breaths as I tried to calm myself down.

“Let’s get to Doctor Doomsday, so you can go back to the past where you belong. I’m tired of treating you with kid gloves.”

“Do you know where it is?” He asked with a flat, defeated tone.

“I know the general area. We’ll have to find her before the attack and follow them.”

I glanced at my watch and made some mental calculations. I knew Mom had left ShepHeard’s farm with Grandmommy Longlegs right around 8:00 tonight, and it was just after 3:00 now. That gave us 5 hours to get into position. Alejandro the Uber driver wasn’t an option at this point, since he would be driving Doctor Doomsday and I to Grandmommy Longleg’s house in that timeframe. That meant either walking, hitch hiking, or stealing a car. I didn’t exactly revel the idea of walking several miles over the next few hours before starting a fight, especially since we hadn’t really slept since that last ride in Alejandro’s Uber.

Fuck it, I thought. “Get up, hero. We need to steal a car.”

WalkMan didn’t even protest the suggestion of the crime. He really was mentally broken, hopefully just for the moment. I decided to drive, just in case he was determined to test Doctor Doomsday’s theory of time invulnerability by crashing into a telephone pole.

WalkMan May 3rd, 2026 ???

I don’t know how long I fell, tumbling end over end through nothing, towards nothing. I had lost sight of the single row of cells ages ago. With no way to mark the passage of time, not even accounting for the time dilation in this fucked up mental realm, it could have been hours, days, or even weeks. My WalkMan was lost in the scuffle with Warden. The only things I had with me were the two tether belts, and Warden’s jawbone. I had tried to throw the bone away, but it hadn’t gone far, and now tumbled in a grotesque spiral just out of arm’s reach in our shared trajectory.

There was only one hope I had left. It was risky, but it was better than potentially thousands of years spent in this tumbling freefall. I put on one of the tether belts, fastening it with great difficulty, and activated it as Sycxzezs had shown me. Now, I just had to wait. I figured there were two ways this could work; either the bug alien would build a version of the ‘un-wait’ machine in here, or Doctor Doomsday would pass through this timeline and rip me out of here like a dolphin caught in a tuna net. I didn’t know exactly how the latter would work, if it would bring me into my body or if I’d end up as a disembodied consciousness inside the time machine. My hope was in the former.

Why in the fuck had Steven done this to me? We hadn’t even discussed what Warden’s power was before we went to that stupid fucking sushi place. He had thrown me in this prison, this puppetry purgatory, without even the decency of a lie. Was I this disposable to him? Did he just not care? Did he assume I would be fine, since he saw me alive during that brief glimpse of our future fight with Doctor Doomsday, his chosen father figure?

Why was I dead in the future?

These questions kept repeating in my mind as I fell. The world wasn’t spinning, since I had no frame of reference to compare my motion with. I could have been tumbling in an eternal backflip, and I wouldn’t even know it. I had tried to meditate, to clear my mind and endure the time until my potential rescue, but those damned questions kept coming back.

Why did Steven hate me? Why was I such a terrible father in the future? It felt like a lifetime ago that she had told me she was pregnant, when we held each other and wept with joy, when we had picked out the nursery colors and baby toys and books about how much we loved them. Somewhere, somehow, I had fucked that up. I had to fuck it up. If I actually got back, got out of this place and this time, I had to go back and be a terrible father on purpose. I was shown the future and forbidden from preventing it.

I snapped out of my self-pity monologue as my belt began to hum. The buckle lit with a familiar green hue, and a thin green line stretched through the vast emptiness. It grew thicker and brighter before suddenly pulling taunt.

Sycxzezs had mentioned this would “bad-feel” when it activated. Like any good dentist, he had understated the pain to a considerable degree. I screamed as I was pulled through the fabric of reality itself, shredded to pieces and forced through the strands of space-time like water through a cheese cloth. The time I spent floating now seemed like mere moments compared to the excruciating existence I phased through.

“It worked! Супер!” A familiar accent declared in excitement as my corporeal body returned. A dozen hands all helped me to my feet as a cheer erupted around me.

“What…” I began, but my question fell away as my vision returned. There were hundreds of people and one bug alien surrounding me, all celebrating wildly. Communist Manfred embraced me in a bear hug and kissed my cheek in what I hoped was a Russian custom.

“After you killed Warden, I rallied everyone together.” Manfred explained, basically shouting into my ear to be heard over the multi-species jubilation. “Sycxzezs built the anchor part of the ‘un-wait machine’ and activated it, and here you are!” He slapped my chest and grinned even wider.

“How did you know I even had the belts still?” I asked as dozens of hands reached for mine for handshakes, which I accepted and dismissed with rapid succession.

“Delphi told us you still had at least one.”

Before I could ask who this ‘Delphi’ was, a woman shouldered her way through the crowd. She had dark hair and a mediterranean glow about her complexion, and wore a Greek style toga around her slender frame. “I am the Oracle, Delphi” She introduced herself. “I have the power of foresight, which showed me your actions, our course of action, and my need to make this introduction.” She leaned into the conspiratory whispering range and spoke softly into my ear, her lips brushing the tiny hairs as she spoke. “I need you to take Sycxzezs, Manfred, and myself into Warden’s control room as soon as you are able. We have much to discuss and little time to converse.” She pressed a device into my hand as she drew back to socially acceptable personal space distance.

I didn’t need to look at the WalkMan that was back in my possession to activate the appropriate song. The Cocomelon song began in moments, and with it the power to control this mental realm. In an instant, I transported myself and the requested others into the ‘control center’ portion of the mental realm. Sycxzezs and Delphi seemed unaffected by their sudden teleportation.

“БляТь!” Communist Manfred exclaimed as he stumbled forwards, barely catching himself on the ornate wooden desk. “Where the fuck are we?”

Delphi threw her arms wide and declared “Welcome to Warden’s mental control room. All of his powers, and his physical form, can be directly commanded from here.”

Manfred’s eyes lit up with excitement. “So we can all get out of here? Замечательный! When do we begin?”

I knew the answer before Delphi spoke. “Therein lies the problem, my friend. The only one of us who even can get out is WalkMan. His mortal flesh is still outside, sitting across the table from our prison. Everyone else here doesn’t have a physical form to return to.”

The soviet’s face fell as if he had heard the potato had gone extinct. “But he’s the one with the power to…” He fell silent as he stared at the wooden desk under his hand. “Oh, БляТь.”

“One of us will have to stay in this command center for the rest of time.” Delphi confirmed. “While the rest of us stay out there. The good news is that this can become a paradise for the denizens of the mental realm. I have foreseen each ‘cell’ transforming into entire planets, populated with whatever the occupant desires. This command center has the potential of a God, but the previous owner acted as a Devil.”

Manfred stared at me with pained eyes, pleading silently for me to think of a better solution. “Surely this isn’t our fate, to be confined in a luxurious prison for the rest of time? There has to be another way.”

Delphi shook her head solemnly. “It is the only way, Manfred. You must take up the mantle of a benevolent Warden. I can teach you how to use the powers of this room to its full potential. Isn’t this what you wanted, to create a paradise of equality? With this responsibility, you can ensure that none go hungry, or suffer under the oppression of cruel, unjust leaders. This is the ideal that Marx couldn’t even dream of. No wants would be left unfulfilled. You could make an entire Pantheon for me, a new library of Alexandria filled with every text. You could make Sycxzezs’ homeworld, recreate his farms and cities and even his friends from his memories. This mental realm was once a Hell, but you can re-make it into Heaven.”

Manfred was silent for a long while, head bowed in contemplation. “I’ll do it,” he said at last. “I will build a Communist Utopia, free of corruption and strife.” He glanced up at Delphi and Sycxzezs. “I’ll never leave this room again. Can I summon you for company every now and then?” Sycxzezs placed a giant clawed hand on Communist Manfred’s shoulder. “ALVVAYS, MY FRIEND. SYCXZEZS VVILL NOT LET VVOU BE ALONE TIME-LONG. SYCXZEZS KNOWS THE FEEL OF LONELINESS, OF ISOLATION. I NO-SEE MY SPECIES AGAIN.”

Manfred sighed, and a contented smile crept onto his face. “Thanks, Comrade.”

The bug alien turned to me and bowed his thorax in a sweeping gesture, probably meant as a gesture of gratitude. “THANK YOU, VVALKMAN. YOU FREED US ALL OF OUR TIME-LONG ENSLAVEMENT. THE HATCHLING-LEASHES WILL LEAVE THIS REALM VVITH YOU WHEN YOU RETURN TO YOUR BODY.” He paused as he retrieved another device from a pouch concealed beneath his wings. “I HAVE FAVOR-ASK. THIS IS A MESSAGE FOR… FOR MY HATCHLINGS. FOR MY MATE. FOR MY PEOPLE. VVHEN HATCHLING-LEASHES CONNECT TO UN-WAIT MACHINE, YOU PUSH BUTTON HERE, WILL SEND MESSAGE THROUGH UN-WAIT BACK HOME.”

I accepted the device, a metallic rectangle with a single, obvious button set into the front. I slipped it into a cargo pocket of my tactical pants and secured it within. “Absolutely.” I grunted.

Delphi placed a hand on my shoulder and gazed into my eyes. It felt like she was sifting through my whole life, both past and future simultaneously. “You are a good man, WalkMan. Your fate may not be as sealed as you fear, but there are some things that cannot be avoided. You will find Doctor Doomsday at the time and place of Steven’s mother’s death. That, I’m afraid, cannot be stopped.”

I blinked away a tear that threatened to fall. “Thank you.” I grunted again.

Delphi glided to the control center and took Communist Manfred’s hand, guiding it through a series of buttons and levers. “This will send WalkMan back to his body. He must leave now, before his form asphyxiates.”

“What-” I said in alarm, but was cut off by the button Communist Manfred pressed. I was torn from the fabric of reality for the second time, and cast back into my real body. I opened my eyes, my real ones, and blinked in the harsh lights of the Lazy Samurai. Steven was still beside me, and the limp form of Warden slouched in his seat across the table, foam trickling from the corner of his mouth.

“What happened?” I asked.

Steven spun to face me. “I was going to ask you the same,” he said. “Why’d Warden slump over like that?”

“The fault is mine, Comrade,” Warden said as he sat up and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

WalkMan

May 3rd, 2026

???

“No,” Communist Manfred droned emotionlessly, lying flat on his back in one corner of the scorched white prison cell. “No. Nope. Nothin’. Nada.”

I cycled through song after song after song, testing each one for any sign of inflicting a new superpower. So far I had found 18 new abilities from the device of my namesake, each one saved and categorized for later use. Only two of them had any real combat use, one about a ‘Disco Inferno’ that made quite a spectacular display of pyrokinetics, and one particularly grating Cocomelon children’s song that seemed to heal me and Manfred at the same time. Fortunately for my Communist test subject, I hadn’t discovered them in that order.

Song after song played just long enough to either activate something inside me or not, which was averaging out to be around 15 seconds. With no way to keep accurate measurements of the passage of time without a clock or a window to the real world, this was the best thing I had. If my math was correct, which it honestly might not be, Communist Manfred and I had been at this for approximately three weeks. Three long, boring, uninteresting weeks. Neither of us got hungry or tired in here, so the days weren’t broken up by normal human milestones like meals or sleeping. It reminded me of all-nighters back in college, pounding energy drinks late into the morning hours to finish a paper I was supposed to have written over the entire semester instead of the last night. Except instead of disappointing professor Sanders, I was driving Manfred and myself insane. I would have greatly preferred to see his bespectacled scowl instead of my cellmate’s bored expression, even for just a moment.

“No.” Manfred said again. “No. Nill. Zilch. Nope. Wait…”

I had already pressed the ‘next’ button. I fumbled with the device until I found the ‘back’ button, and pressed it with a bit too much enthusiasm, sending it back two songs instead. I carefully eased it back to the song Manfred had indicated.

“What do you feel?” I asked eagerly. “Did your power go out?”

Manfred shook his head. “No, look!”

I followed his pointing finger and froze in place. The white wall had vanished, as it did whenever Warden appeared, but the mental jailer wasn’t there. Instead, the small white circle that acted like his personal transportation floated unoccupied.

I set the song to repeat as I stood and walked to the edge. I focused on the wall, and it re-appeared before I dismissed it once more.

“Ни фига себе!” Manfred muttered, “You didn’t discover the dampening power, you found the Warden’s power! What was the song that did it?”

I glanced at the small screen on the device as the information scrolled across its tiny screen. “Erm, it’s called ‘Open Shut Them’, by… CoComelon?”

Communist Manfred looked at me like I had two heads, and the second one had just insulted his entire lineage. “You really need to talk to a therapist about your kid issues, comrade.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying and failing to prevent the tears that threatened to fall down my face. Manfred must have noticed as I soon felt him embracing me in a warm hug, muttering apologies that I could barely hear over what turned out to be my own sobs.

“I came to the future because Doctor Doomsday asked me to help my son,” I said into Manfred’s shoulder. “But he hates me, for things I haven’t even done yet. For things I apparently must do. All of the songs that power me here are children’s songs. I don’t want to be a bad person, I just wanted to be a good father, but everything here is telling me I HAVE to be an awful dad to Steven and I don’t understand why or how or any of this…”

Manfred chuckled. “You did a lot of good in your life. I never really met you in person before today, but I have seen what you did. You helped hundreds of people in your time.”

I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. “Just not the one I cared about the most.”

Communist Manfred disengaged from the hug and patted my shoulder gently. “There’s still time to help him now. You said he’s waiting out there for you, right?”

I nodded.

“So let’s get back out there to help! Use that newfound power to break us free!” He declared, spreading his arms out towards the void beyond the open wall.

I shook my head. “Let’s wait, plan this out right. If we try something and fail, Warden would just take my WalkMan away and lock us up again. We’ll only have one shot at this.”
I played the song again and re-summoned the wall, sealing us back in the white cell. “Open, shut them, open, shut them, Clap a little, clap, clap, clap” The song declared as the wall rematerialized. I turned off the WalkMan and turned on the radio to Sycxzezs’ cell.

“VVHAT” Sycxzezs snapped. “SYCXZEZS VVAS SLEEPING. VVHAT DOES VVALKMAN-”

“I discovered Warden’s powers” I interrupted the grumpy bug. “I can let you get back to sleep if you’d rather discuss this later.”

“VVHAT? NO, THIS IS VVONDERFULL! SYCXZEZS VVILL AVVAKE-STAY NOW. VVHAT IS PLAN?”

“Are you done with the devices? From both requests?” I asked, careful to avoid giving myself away to Warden’s selective omnipresence.

“YES. SYCXZEZS FINISH TWO DEVICES, AND TWO HUNDRED TWENTY DEVICES.”

“Perfect. I’ll see you soon. Don’t mention the other parts when we get there, just slip one end to me and hold onto the other.”

“VVHAT?”

“The speakers. I assumed they’d be connected with a cord or something?”

“NO, VVHY VVOULD SYCXZEZS USE SUCH AN ARCHAIC TECHNOLOGY? THESE ARE VVIRELESS.”

Well, shit. There went the easy way to do this plan.

“Can you connect them with a string?”

“YES. HOW LONG DISTANCE BETWEEN CELLS?”

Double shit. I had no idea. “Yeah, no clue. Can you make a stretchy band thing?”

“YES. VVILL MAKE ELASTIC CONNECTOR-STRING. IS EASY.”

I nodded, even though this was a voice only transmission. “Alright. Thank you.”

The radio went silent. I set it aside and ran over the new plan with Communist Manfred before calling for Warden to bring me to Sycxzezs’ cell. Around a half hour later, we were ready.

The wall vanished, revealing Warden standing on the flat circle, arms clasped behind him in his over-confident pose. “I take it you have what I want?” He asked.

“Yes.” I said. The fewer words I actually spoke to Warden, the less information he could infer. I was never good at lying, and a sociopath like Warden would surely see through any of my amateurish attempts at subterfuge. “I need to get the devices from Sycxzezs first. Take me to him.”

Warden narrowed his eyes at me and scowled. “I don’t take orders from my guests, WalkMan. I am the law here. The Alpha and the Omega, the eternal God of the realm.”

I grunted, but didn’t elaborate further. If I pretended to go all submissive now that would only raise suspicion.

“A ‘please’ wouldn’t go amiss, WalkMan. It would be best to remember that.”

Warden expanded the circle, creating just enough room for me to join him without invading his personal space. Communist Manfred watched us leave like a sad puppy watching his owner leave for work as we rocketed away from the cell. Before I knew it, we arrived at the alien’s cell. Sycxzezs was waiting for us.

“VVHAT TOOK YOU SO TIME-LONG? SYCXZEZS PATIENCE ALMOZZT OUT.”

I shrugged and hooked a thumb at Warden. “Dunno, ask Mr. Time here. Do you have the leashes?”

The grasshopper alien buzzed irritably, but kicked a pile of corded bands at his clawed feet towards us. “IZZ HERE. LASH BELT AROUND THORAX, PUSH BUTTON TO TETHER TO NEAREST UN-WAIT MACHINE. TOUCH BELT TO UN-WAIT MACHINE TO TURN OFF.” He buzzed again before continuing. “YOU MAY BAD-FEEL VVHEN PULLED ALONG. IZZ MEANT TO ENCOURAGE LARVA NOT VVANDER AVVAY.”

I opened my mouth to thank the bug, but the wall closed off and we flew away before I could get a word out. I noted that he had managed to snag one end of the speaker line as the rest rapidly spooled out behind us. Each speaker along the cord looked like a knot in a climbing rope as it extended, and bounced in unison as the cord grew taunt. The small black hexagons struck the smooth white cell walls as we passed them and physically adhered to the surface. A few were spaced slightly off and missed, dangling over the abyss but held aloft by the cord. The most important thing, however, was that Warden hadn’t noticed.

“Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” He said, arms still clasped behind his back like he was a general staring at his men in parade formation. “Caesar has his little time belts. Now, God needs his dampening power.”

“That’s a bit pretentious,” I muttered as we approached my cell. The cable was reaching its end, and I was getting nervous that it would run out before we arrived. “Calling yourself God there.”

Warden chuckled in mirthful amusement. “Not ‘Caesar’ for you, though?”

“Nah,” I said dismissively as we arrived back at my cell. “Julius Caesar overthrew the Roman Government. With the help of his friends, of course.”

The wall fell, and everything happened all at once. Communist Manfred, crouching by the near corner with the radio in hand, snatched the free end of the speaker cable and rammed it into the auxiliary port. I activated the Cocomelon song and held my fist aloft before opening it dramatically, like a conductor signalling for the percussion section to fire the canon in the 1812 Overture. Every cell wall opened simultaneously.

Warden struck me with an elbow, knocking me off balance. I grabbed his arm and pulled, using his body as a counterweight to power a punch into his jaw. He extended the platform as he stumbled, catching himself before he tumbled into the abyss.

“Comrades! Prisoners of Warden! Hear my plea!” Communist Manfred cried into the radio. His voice echoed through two hundred and twenty speakers simultaneously. “We have been imprisoned here injustly, tortured mentally and physically for too long, raped and used and shelved like playthings for far too long! Today, we say ‘No More’! Today, we fight back! Today, we rise as one, and throw off the shackles of our oppressor!”

“NO!” Warden yelled as he tried to close the walls, but I held them open against his mental efforts through my sheer force of will.

“Open, shut them, open, shut them.” I sang along with the children’s song through gritted teeth. “Give a little CLAP CLAP CLAP!” I punched Warden in the face along with each shouted ‘clap’.

The platform rocketed away again, traveling further from the tethered cells with the speakers. Warden began to remove the platform beneath my feet as we flew. I stiffened my fingers into the knife-hand position and lunged for Warden, jabbing my hand fingertip-first into his neck just above his Adam's apple. As soon as my fingers felt warm and wet, I curled them around his lower jaw bone from the inside, and held on. My fingertips pinched the top of his tongue to his lower teeth as he screamed and gurgled. He grabbed my arm with both hands, frantically trying to get my fist out of his face. His eyes bulged in pain and fear as he tried to scream. The platform accelerated even further as we passed hundreds of other cells, each opened to reveal frightened prisoners gawking at us.

I pulled myself up by Warden’s jaw, hoisting my mass onto the platform like I was doing a one-handed pull up. Unlike the sturdy pull-up bar in my gym, Warden couldn’t hold my body weight with his wound, and he collapsed belly down onto the platform. I lost my footing and fell, only holding on with Warden’s jawbone in my blood drenched fist. When my arm went taunt once again, Warden unleashed a bloodcurling scream, and I felt his neck snap with a sickening jolt. Warden went limp on the platform, and his jaw tore free of his head with a grotesque sin ripping sound. The next thing I knew, I was falling, holding the lower half of Warden’s face in one blood soaked hand. I tumbled end over end, getting glimpses of the white square bottoms of the infinitely long row of cells above me. Even those vanished eventually as I fell farther and farther down into Warden’s subconscious.

WalkMan

May 3rd, 2026

???

Warden appeared as the wall disappeared, standing on that circle platform like he was a conquering general inspecting his victory. He grinned as I stepped onto the platform without asking.

“Did Sycxzezs understand what you needed him to do?” He asked as we started moving again, sliding along the opposite way we had arrived from.

“Sort of” I muttered, trying to count the cells as we whizzed past the other denizens of this hellscape. “I think he’s making us some of those leashes for unruly children of his species.”

Warden laughed, a deeply unsettling noise from the sociopath.

“Did he make the time machine for you?” I asked.

Warden’s smile faded as it changed into a more pensive stare. “Oh, that. It’s a long story. If you’re quick with my payment, I may have enough time to tell you.”

“Speaking of your ‘payment’” I said, trying to hide my disgust as we passed the nude women in their prison bedchambers, “What are you expecting me to do?”

Warden chuckled. “Not what those fine ladies do for me, I assure you. All I ask is to learn Steven’s suppression powers.”

We stopped in front of ‘my’ cell, the last in the long line stretching all the way back to Sycxzezs’ unit. It was still completely barren, just a cube of white. Warden placed a hand on my back and shoved me inside, much like he had back at the alien’s cell on the other side of the realm. I was expecting it this time, and leapt the short yet terrifying distance.

“Let me know what you need, and I shall provide it” Warden said.

“I’ll need my WalkMan, and a lot of songs,” I said, “And a radio or something to talk to Sycxzezs.” I had no idea how to replicate Steven's nullifying power, or if I even could, but I needed something. I felt unarmed without my musically powered abilities.

Warden waved his hand, and a WalkMan device complete with headphones appeared on the floor before me. An old fashioned CB Radio set appeared beside it moments later. “There. This will never need batteries, and it contains every song ever made by Humans. That will call Sycxzezs when activated, regardless of the settings. Will that suffice?”

I stared at the WalkMan in awe. This would make me one of the strongest super heroes ever if I could take it out into the real world with me. Assuming I would actually ever get out of here, at least.

“Um, yeah. Can you give me something to work on? Like a chair, or-” I paused mid sentence as I glanced up to find I was completely alone, and the wall had turned back to the blank white solid sheet of mental material.

“Fucking prick” I muttered. This was going to suck.

I crouched down and activated the radio, twisting a knob until it started blinking red. “Sycxzezs? Can you hear me?”

The alien’s voice came back loud and clear, almost like he was just yelling at me from across a football field instead of over the airwaves. “VVHO IS THIS? VVHO BOTHERS SYCXZEZS?”

“It’s WalkMan, we just met? Like 15 minutes ago?”

“VVARDEN HAS MANY UN-TRUTH TRICKS. VVE SPOKE MANY CYCLES AGO BY YOUR CHRONO-KEEPINGS. SYCXZEZS ALMOST DONE MAKING HATCHLING-LEASHES. HAS VVALKMAN MADE ESCAPE PLAN?”

I sat on the hard floor, staring at the radio in disbelief. I had literally just met the giant grasshopper mere minutes ago, but for him it had been… whatever the human equivalent to a “cycle” was. I shook my head and just accepted that things in here wouldn’t make sense, so I shouldn’t try to make sense of them.

“I’m working on it,” I replied. “I’ll need you to build something for me though.”

Sycxzezs buzzed through the radio in irritation. “SYCXZEZS ALREADY BUILDING SOMETHING FOR VVALKMAN!”

“I know, and I’m grateful for it.”

“YOU CONSUME GRATES? HUMANS DO NOT USE FOOD-PLANTS?”

I sighed. “Look, it’s not important. Can you build speakers? Little noise machines that play sounds you tell it to?” “YES, IS EASY.”

“Good. I need them to sync together, and I need them to attach to whatever these walls are made of. Can you do that?”

“YES. HOW MANY DOES VVALKMAN NEED?”

I closed my eyes and recounted the cells that I had passed by on Warden’s circle platform ride. “219, plus one for your cell. And one transmitter.”

Another buzz came over the radio, so loud it hurt my ears. “SYCXZEZS WILL MAKE. VVARDEN VVILL SEE.”

“If he asks, tell him it’s part of the leash you're making for me.”

“ACCEPTABLE.” Sycxzezs snapped, then the radio went dead.

With that part of the plan in motion, I turned my attention to the WalkMan music player and headphones Warden had summoned for me. It looked exactly like my old one, but the cassette tape part refused to open. Instead, a series of buttons glowed from the side, outlines of familiar symbols like “play” and “pause”. There was another symbol that looked like a magnifying glass from an old detective movie, the kind in black and white where the lead usually had a comically large pipe and a funny hat. I donned the headphones and pressed the last button experimentally.

“Hello, WalkMan,” A pleasant woman’s voice said, “I’m Sabrina, your AI assistant for this device. It is my pleasure to assist you! What song, genre, or sound would you like to listen to today?”

I pulled off the headphones and inspected them closer, then scanned the device before replacing the headphones. “Who is this?”

“I’m Sabrina, your Artificial Intelligence assistant.” The voice said in a slower, calmer voice. It was like a mother trying to calm their screaming toddler by showing an exaggerated example of being calm and rational. “I am a consciousness in digital form! It is my absolute pleasure to work with you on your future heroic endeavors. I’m looking forward to seeing what we accomplish together!”

“Um, hi” I said. “Nice to meet you. Do you report to Warden? The guy that made you?”

The artificial voice laughed softly, without any real emotion behind the expression. “No, WalkMan, Warden and I do not communicate. My programming simply directs me to provide whatever song, genre, or sound you request. I’m always happy to assist!”

I didn’t trust this robot for a second. For all I knew, this was Warden himself putting on a falsetto and toying with me. Even if this was a real robot lady, I doubt she’d be able to actually help me in my endeavors.

“Ok, let’s test this out. Play ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ by-”

The song erupted from the headphones like I was standing on stage with Guns N’ Roses themselves. It was so clear, so loud, so all-encompasing that I felt it activate my power instantly. My skin began to glow, my muscles ached with potential energy, and my vision grew red. I was fucking PUMPED and just needed something to hit.

“NO!” I screamed, thrashing at my head to throw the headphones off. The sound ceased before I could grasp the device.

“That song seems effective for combat scenarios” The voice said flatly. “I will add it to a new playlist titled ‘Combat - Physical’.

I shook my head to clear out the lingering rage. “Next time, let me finish saying the song before you blare it at me, ok? Someone could have been hurt.”

“There are no other life forms currently within your plane of existence,” Sabrina replied cheerfully. “So, fortunately, there was no risk of anyone else being hurt!” The computer program said, with as much enthusiasm as if she was describing a rather eventful county fair.

That was actually a really good point. How was I supposed to test the powers I manifested without a target to test them on? I needed some sort of testing dummy.

“Warden!” I shouted towards the wall I was only half sure was the original entrance. “Warden, I need-”

The wall to my left vanished, revealing Warden standing on his 2 dimensional circle platform. He had his hands clasped behind his back again, standing like a ship’s captain surveying his crew. “How can I assist you, WalkMan?” He asked.

“I could use a test dummy,” I said, gesturing around my otherwise barren cell. “Something with powers, so I can tell if I find the right thing or not.”

Warden nodded. “That makes sense. I’ll be right back.”

The wall re-solidified instantly, leaving me alone once again in the impossibly well lit cell. There was no obvious source of the light, but it was bright nevertheless. The light seemed to be coming from everywhere all at once. I glanced at the floor and walls around me and realized I wasn’t casting a shadow in any direction.

Warden returned without fanfare, merely dissolving the wall and shoving a person into my cell. “This should suffice. Let me know when you are ready with your payment.” He said. The wall re-appeared just as quickly as it had vanished.

The newcomer stumbled to his feet and looked around with wide frightened eyes. It was a young man, probably around 20 years old, with short cropped red hair. He scrambled on hands and knees to the closest corner of the room, tripping over himself in his haste to get away from me. He pressed his back into the corner and drew his legs in front of his chest and hugged them protectively.

I cursed under my breath. This fucker could produce a music player with damn near magical properties with a gesture, he could have easily given me a test dummy that wasn’t sentient. This was just cruel for the sake of cruelty. If I ever got out of this place, I swore I’d stop this psychopath. But for now, I needed to keep the jailer content, if not happy.

“I’m not going to hurt you” I said to the terrified man. I raised my hands in a calming air patting gesture and sat down on the bare white floor, far out of reach of the poor guy. “My name is WalkMan, I’m-”

The man screamed and hugged his legs even tighter, burying his head between his knees and started to sob. “No, nononononono NO!” He wailed. “This isn’t happening, this isn’t real, this isn’t happening!”

He repeated his frantic mantra over and over, rocking back and forth as he trembled. I let him be as he collected himself and survived the moment. Eventually, the shaking stopped, and the man dared a peak at me from the vantage point between his knees. “You are dead. You can’t be here. I’m in Hell, with you. That’s got to be what’s happening. Warden was always evil, but I didn’t know he was the actual ‘Devil’ devil.”

I felt a chill spread through me, freezing my blood in my veins as the pain in his voice spread to me like an infection. I was a hero, and yet this person saw me as a demon. A nightmare incarnate. A villain from his perspective. “I’m not going to hurt you” was all I could think to say at the moment.

“Readings indicate this person is experiencing a post-traumatic stress response to your presence,” Sabrina said. “A therapeutic response is advised! Would you like to listen to some calming music?”

I nodded, and the device began playing a soft ambiance of wind chimes and bird songs. It didn’t activate anything in my superpowers, but it did help me focus.

“I’m sorry” I said, “For whatever I will do. I am truly sorry. But I’m from the past. I haven’t even met you yet in my time. I know I’ll have to do whatever it is I did to you eventually, but I don’t want to. I want to be the hero people think I am in my time.

The man didn’t reply, but he did stop sobbing. I left him alone and went to the other side of the cell, and turned my back to him. I needed to start experimenting with the songs and the powers they would evoke.

“Sabrina, let’s go through a few different musical genres, maybe narrow it down when we find something that could stimulate a power dampening effect.”

“Ooh, excellent idea, WalkMan! Musical exploration is one of my favorite scientifically questionable activities! Let’s start with ambient music, move through classical, jazz, metal, and maybe some experimental noise. If nothing creates suppression powers, we can always try polka. I have a very good feeling about polka!”

I cringed as the robot began cycling through different songs, sounds, and objectively atrocious noises at rapid speed. I couldn’t even fully experience each power that emerged before it would switch to a new audible experience.

“Sabrina, slow down, I can’t even tell if these are affecting me!”

“Oh! Sorry, WalkMan! I got excited. Let’s proceed one genre at a time, with a controlled exposure period and careful monitoring of your superpowered response. Science works best when we can actually tell what’s happening! Isn’t that convenient?”

I held the device up and examined it closely. I found a few glowing lines that could be the standard control buttons, volume, and, thankfully, one that simply showed a circle with a slash above the letters ‘AI’. I pressed it.

“You have deactivated the AI safeguards! I am now operating at full power!” It said cheerfully.

I grunted in amused frustration. That bastard knew the robot was annoying as hell, and only put that button there to mess with me.

“Play ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ again”, I said. 

“Certainly! Playing ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ by Guns N’ Roses! Enjoy!”

I waited for the song to drag out my full power, growing in strength and fury each second the song played. At the peak, I formed a fist, and punched the music player as hard as I could. The device flew across the room, taking the headphones with it as it crashed into the wall. To my horror, it fell to the floor, completely unharmed.

“That hit was 422% more powerful than your standard punch! Excellent work, WalkMan! While there is still room for improvement, your performance was quite promising. Would you like to hear the most efficient song for your combat powers? I’m confident you’ll find it very motivating!”

The sound came from everywhere now, instead of through the headphones that now lay battered beside the indestructible music player. An unfamiliar song began to play, something very up-beat and… childish?

“The fuck is this, Sabrina?” I asked.

“This song is from the children’s music channel, Cocomelon! It is an exceptionally cheerful children’s song featuring repetitive lyrics, a bright melody, and an impressive quantity of enthusiasm. It appears specifically engineered to maximize happiness. This particular song describes a familial relationship between a child and his father.”

I felt sick to my stomach. It might have been the overwhelming power surging through my very soul, or the implications of the song itself. Either way, it made me vomit. I fell to my knees and heaved, expelling everything I had ever eaten and more. Tears mixed with the sweat that dripped off my brow as the song faded.

A hand gently rested on my shoulder. I glanced up to see the man kneeling beside me, carefully avoiding the pile of sickness I left on the otherwise pristine floor. “You really are ashamed of what you will become,” he said softly. “It must feel awful, knowing a good person will have to do bad things.”

I closed my eyes and wiped the tears with the back of my hand. “I only found out I was gonna be a father just before I was brought to this time. I met my now adult son, and he hates me for things I haven’t even done yet.”

The man helped me to my feet and led me to the far side, away from the music player and my mess. “You don’t deserve this. I’m sorry for my initial reaction, I… I had an encounter with the older you.”

I took some deep breaths to steady myself. “I’m sorry for whatever it is I will do to you.” I said, stumbling around the absolute butchery of tenses that talking about time travel caused.

“It’s… well, it’s not ok, but I accept your apology. Pre-apology? Whatever. The English language didn’t prepare for time-travel tenses.”

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Manfred, but you will know me as Communist Manfred in your time. We, um, we kinda fought a few times.” He admitted, glancing away awkwardly. “It was never, like, a fight to the death, but you did break my arm in three places last time. Some would say I’m your nemesis, at least-”

I shut that shit down as soon as it left the little weasel's mouth. “Strike one, kid. I know that Doctor Doomsday is considered future me’s Nemesis, not you.”

The communist agent looked embarrassed as he rubbed the back of his neck. “Shit, man, I was just tryin’ to make a good first impression. Guess I did the opposite there, my bad.”

I looked around the bare white cell, noting the discarded music player and pile of vomit as the only sights breaking up the monotone abyss. “Don’t lie to me. We’re the only ones here, and if we have any hope of getting out, we need to be able to trust each other.”

Communist Manfred laughed a deep belly laugh, the kind only known from the most jolly or most hopeless people. “Getting out? You must be new here, WalkMan. There is no ‘getting out’, nobody ever has…” His manic mirth faded as he looked at me again. “Hmm, but you’re going to get out. You have to. Unless paradoxes are real, which is far beyond me to understand. Your future happens out there, cause it’s my past. But if you’re stuck in here forever, then…”

I interrupted Manfred before his brain fried itself. “Just don’t think about it too hard. The important thing is I have a future out there, which means we succeed in here. So stop being a problem and start being a solution.”

Manfred took a deep breath and muttered some sort of mantra to himself, closing his eyes and really focusing on the moment. “I will help you however I can,” he said after a few minutes' pause. “Just tell me what you need.”

“I need a test dummy to experiment on.”

Manfred sighed. “I immediately regret this, but torture is better than my continued isolation. Proceed.”

“What is your power? I need to find out how to dampen power in others.” It would be really helpful if he had something obvious, like shooting fire or lightning that would act as a very visible ‘off’ switch.

“I… I can give very persuasive speeches” He said, rubbing his neck out of embarrassment again. “Maybe I can give a speech to you, and when you feel it wearing off, you’ll know it worked?

I glanced up at Communist Manfred, eliciting a flinch from the young revolutionary. “Perfect! You can inspire me to find the right song to manifest the dampening power. It’ll be like a feedback loop.”

“Really?” Manfred asked, his eyes widening with hope like a child told he could hold the flashlight for his father as he fixed his car. “That’s awesome! Could, um, could I ask for a favor in return?”

“No.”

“Awww, man…”

“I’m already working on a plan for what you were going to ask for. I’ll just owe you a different favor once we’re out of here.”

Communist Manfred did a little fist pump. I held a finger to my lips in the universal ‘shut the fuck up about this, he’s always listening to us in this mental realm’ gesture, albeit modified for our specific predicament.

I glanced at the puddle of sickness again and shouted to our captor. “Warden, can you make that go away?”

Warden didn’t reply. Instead, a bucket and a mop appeared beside the puddle, sloshing soapy water onto the floor. The liquid splashed across the music player as well. I hurried over and scooped it up, but the device was bone dry.

“Welcome back, WalkMan. I trust your absence was both productive and sufficiently reflective.” it said cheerfully.

I looked at Communist Manfred and nodded. “Yes, Sabrina. It sure did.

Steven

May 3rd, 2026

2:59 PM

WalkMan slumped onto my shoulder, completely limp. This was the expected outcome of what I had asked Warden to do. The drool that immediately began pooling on my jacket was not.

“Eww” I said involuntarily, and gently re-arranged WalkMan’s body until he was leaning his head against the window instead. The window began to fog up with each breath WalkMan’s body made automatically.

Warden closed his eyes for two heartbeats, then opened them to stare at me once more. “He’s made contact. Both parties are working diligently.” He snapped at a waitress, not the one who had previously helped us, and barked out “More of these rolls, and two sake’s.” The waitress turned and scurried away, but not before I saw the joy leaving her face.

“Did you know, Steven, that you and that Mother of yours are the only supers I’ve ever feared?” He asked.

“I didn’t, actually” I said, trying to decipher where this particular conversation was heading. Hearing him talk about mom so casually in the present tense threw me off for a bit, since she would still be alive at this present.

“My mental menagerie operates on power and mental segregation” He said softly. “People within my enclosures can still use their powers to their full capacity. Which would mean that the two of you could just ‘poof’, turn it off.” He flourished the sound with his hands, mimicking a magician revealing his assistant hadn’t really been violently dismembered in that sawing box. “You would run wild in there, unsealing any mental prison you’d like and doing lord knows what to my own subconscious, or hell, even my domconscious. I know it’s not really called that, but it’s how I like to-”

“Why are you stalling?” I interrupted. “You could have made months pass in there already. But instead you ramble about how much I frighten you.”

Warden paused his rant and glared at me, eyeing me up and down for an unsettlingly long moment. We remained silent as the sullen waitress delivered a new California roll to the table, whisking away the empty plate and my discarded spicy mouthful in the napkin.

“WalkMan is still working to discover how your power works” He said, grabbing a round morsel of sushi with his fingers and popping it in his mouth. “Once he does, and teaches me how to do it in the mental realm, I will be able to keep you or Anchor Woman safely in my prisons. I could pull an Uno reverse card on you, rendering you back to the sniveling coward of a child that you really are.”

My one functioning hand clenched into a fist. “Not if I turn you off like a lightbulb right now.”

He wagged a finger at me as he chewed the sushi. “Not unless you want your Father to be lost in unstructured mental subspace for all of eternity. And the moment he is released, I will have the upper hand on you. So why don’t we just sit here and enjoy our sushi while WalkMan finishes his work?”

He grabbed another sushi and brought it to his lips before pausing ever so slightly, staring at me over the white and black cylindrical slice of fish. “Or, alternatively, I could bring you in now, and release WalkMan. You could teach me directly, skipping the arduous trial and error he’s doing in there, and I promise I’d let you go once that’s finished.”

He tossed the sushi in the air, catching it in his mouth and leaning back, cradling the back of his head with his hands. He chewed noisily, not taking his eyes off of me as he did. “Take your time with this decision. I’ve got all the time in the world, and more. It’s just yours that’s finite.”

He closed his eyes again, presumably diving back inside his mental realm. He frowned.

WalkMan

May 3rd, 2026

???

I was in a white room. A moment before, I was in a shitty sushi restaurant with Steven and this Warden fellow, but now I was somewhere else. Somewhere imagined. Somewhere unreal. Somewhere deeply unsettling. There was no breeze, no background noises like the hum of air conditioning or the buzzing of insects. It was nothing. It was everything.

What in the fuck was Steven thinking?

“The entity might need some time to build what you seek” a voice boomed from above. I recoiled in shock, crouching in a combat pose and fumbling for my titular namesake. I swiped across empty space. My Sony WalkMan cassette deck was gone.

“Calm down, WalkMan. You couldn’t hurt me in here even if you were armed. If you play nice, I’ll give you a present. If not, well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that”

“Where the hell am I?” I said, switching to a mixed martial arts stance and bouncing on my toes. I wasn’t helpless as a fighter without my powers, far from it. I had become a certified Krav Maga instructor before I even discovered I had powers.

“You’re in my mind” the voice said, “A guest in my menagerie. One of many. And Steven has purchased a ticket for you to see one of my exhibits.”

“How many people do you have here? This is monstrous” I blurted out before I could stop and consider the wisdom of insulting this realm’s God.

The deep voice chuckled. “Oh, Hero, don’t worry your pretty little head about such matters. Once you have sufficiently talked with the entity, I will return you to this room to fulfil your obligations. Until then, play nice.”

The side walls vanished, revealing inky black nothingness in front of me and more solid white walls to either side. I glanced over my shoulder and saw more nothingness behind and above me. Warden stood on a white circle that seemed to only exist in two dimensions, lacking even a hint of thickness even as it supported his full weight. The mentalist stood with his arms clasped together behind his back, as if he was observing a painting at the Louvre. He extended a hand to me, inviting me aboard.

“Mind the gap” he said as I accepted the invitation. “You’d fall all the way down to my subconscious if you slip, and there’s no telling how that would turn out. He and I aren’t on speaking terms.” He let out a self satisfied chuckle at his own joke, like any other pretentious asshole I had ever had the displeasure to meet.

The circle began to glide like an elevator going sideways. It accelerated to frightening speed as it zoomed down the row of white cells, even though I never felt any of the motion itself. I guess the laws of physics didn’t really apply in an imagination. I caught a glimpse through each cell wall as we passed, opaque only on this side like a two way mirror in a police interrogation room. Every cell was occupied, although only a few were furnished. Some of the cell's residents had nothing but the clothes on their back, and a few female occupants didn’t even have that basic privilege. My skin shivered as I realized that those poor women were the only ones to have large, comfortable beds with sheets and pillows. The cells gained more and more furniture and decorations the farther we went, some with paintings or books or even one full entertainment system with a massive television and some futuristic video game setup.

“I reward the ones that help me,” Warden said, as if describing a loyal pet. “Others require more discipline. It’s incredible how compliant someone can become once they spend a few months or years without any sensory stimulation.”

The circle stopped suddenly in front of the largest cell I had seen so far. The entire room was the size of a football field, filled to the brim with complex machinery and what looked like scientific gadgets straight out of Star Trek. Tubes thick enough to drive a minivan through pulsed and constricted like an anaconda trying to digest its prey, sending a green-white flash every time it wriggled. It was revolting, yet I couldn’t take my eyes from it. Large machines were connected via these massive vertical tubes, leaving barely a shoulder width path between them. It reminded me of… something. I couldn’t quite place the feeling of familiarity.

Warden removed the wall without moving a muscle. “Sycxzezs!” He called. It sounded like he was trying to say ‘scizzors’ with as many lisps as possible, and also heavily emphasizing the buzzing sound of the z’s. I wondered what nationality a name like that was from.

As it turned out, it wasn’t from any nation. Not on this planet, at least.

An enormous insect flew down from the tube near the ceiling, landing right next to us where the wall had once been. “VVAR-DEEEN” It screeched, buzzing with a fury I’d never thought possible. It pronounced the ‘W’ as an elongated ‘V’ sound, buzzing to replicate the English sound with its alien mandibles. The creature looked like a grasshopper standing on its back legs, with the other four legs protruding like arms instead. It stood about eight feet tall, but could easily double that with its folded legs extended. The four clawed hands clenched, palpably extruding pure hatred and disdain for our jailer.

“Sycxzezs, this is WalkMan. WalkMan, this is Sycxzezs, ambassador of the unpronounceable name of a race of giant creepy bug aliens.”

The grasshopper snarled and lashed out at Warden with a lightning fast kick, unfolding its long back leg and smashing against the wall. I leapt back and almost fell off the circular platform. Warden merely chuckled.

“Sycxzezs will make what you need. Once he begins his work, you will begin yours. Please alert me when you are ready.” Warden said, gesturing for me to step off the circle and into the grasshopper’s cell.

I didn’t move. I wasn’t exactly thrilled to go into a box with an aggressive insectoid alien, and I damn sure wasn’t going to help this Warden with any of this supervillain bullshit. “I don’t know what ‘deal’ you made with Steven just now, but-”

Warden raised a finger and waggled it, tutting as he did. “Now now, WalkMan, you forget yourself. I’m the only one who can release you from my mental realm, and I am also in control of the passage of time here. I can make your stay as quick and pleasant as you wish, or as long and difficult as you require. The choice is yours. Now, go play nice. I’ll only be a scream away.”

He shoved me. I fell off the circle towards the cell, catching the edge with my fingertips as Warden vanished. I dangled over the abyss, holding onto the ledge of an alien bug’s prison cell.

This was less than ideal.

I pulled myself up onto my elbows, glancing at the alien with an apologetic smile that I hoped didn’t appear as forced as it felt. “Um, hi” I said.

The alien buzzed in irritation and leapt off into the nest of cables and contraptions. I took that as an invitation to finish climbing in, since he hadn’t ripped my head off with those pointy limbs or horrifying bug mouth while I was vulnerable. The wall re-appeared behind me as I finished clambering into the room, sealing us inside.

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry that you’re in here” I said as I searched for the insectoid alien. “I’m not exactly here of my own free will either.”

The loud buzzing words echoed strangely through the alien machinery, reflecting off of unfamiliar metals and compounds. “VVHY SYCXZEZS CARE? VVHY YOU TELL?” it yelled. It pronounced its own name with a lot more depth to the buzzes and other alien mouth noises that Warden had failed to replicate with his human mouth and distasteful demeanor.

“It’s called ‘empathy’, a human emotion.” I said, trying to keep myself calm as the gravitas of the situation fell on me in full. I was trapped inside a stranger’s mind, talking to a bug alien that was being held against his will. “You may not have experienced it in here. It means-”

The alien burst from a tangle of cords and tubes above me, buzzing down on large insect wings that folded seamlessly back as it landed. It reached its top arms towards its head, and slid a set of goggles that I had mistaken for eyes onto its forehead. The real eyes underneath the tinted lenses were still compound, but the ‘panels’ all angled in a way that mimicked the usual earth mammalian eyeball. I could tell it was sizing me up, looking up and down my body assessing me for threats. Apparently, I didn’t register as dangerous to the massive creature.

“VVE KNOVV EMPATHY” It buzzed, “VVE ZTUDIED YOUR ZPECIEZZ BEFORE SYCXZEZS COME. VVE NO GET EMPATHY VVEN VVE ARRIVE.”

I held up my hands and took a step back. “Warden is NOT how Humans are supposed to act. He has treated you poorly, and-”

“POORLY?!” Sycxzezs yelled, “POORLY?!?! VVE HAVE CAPTURED! VVE HAVE PRIZONED! VVE HAVE KEPT IN HUMAN BRAIN FOR TOO MANY LIVE-TIME! IS FAR PAST ‘POORLY’.”

“I agree,” I said. “I want to help you get out of here. Escape. But we will need to work together to do it.”

The bug scoffed, a surprising sound coming from Mr. Buzzy bites here, and he leapt straight up and clutched the underside of a cable about 60 feet in the air. It was an insanely impressive feat, but to him it was probably child’s play.

“VVE HAVE TRICKED BEFORE” he said. “VVE MAKES UN-WAIT MACHINE ONCE. VVE VVERE PROMISED FREEDOM. VVE WERE NOT FREEDOMED. VVE NO HELP VVARDEN.”

“Un-wait machine… the time machine?” I asked. “You MADE the time machine?”

The bug leapt onto his machinery again, and I finally realized what the tangled mass reminded me of. It looked like blades of grass, as seen from a bug’s perspective.

“VVE CALL IT UN-VVAIT MACHINE” he said, fiddling with the cable and, as I looked closer, tended to what looked like mechanical aphids scurrying the length of the tubes. “MY KIND LIVE SHORT TIME. FOOD-PLANTS TAKE LONG TO FOOD-MAKE. TAKE UN-WAIT MACHINE TO FOOD-MAKE HARVEST, TO PLANT NEW FOOD-PLANTS BEFORE.”

Sycxzezs spoke our language remarkably well for an alien insect, but it still took an awful lot of effort to understand his odd phrasing for describing technology beyond our comprehension. I tried my best, keeping in mind that I may have been only the second Human the alien had ever spoken to.

“So you used the time machine for crops? Like planting them in the past, or harvesting them in the future?”

Sycxzezs let out a deep buzz, flapping its wings and twitching its antennae. I took that to mean irritation. “VVHY REPEAT VVHAT I SAY? I CHOOZE MY VVORDS BEFORE I SPEAK THEM. DOES YOUR KIND NOT DO THIS?"

“Sorry,” I muttered. “Just making sure I understood.”

“LISTEN BETTER. KNOW MORE.” The alien said, leaping across the open alley to a new collection of strange machines. He reached inside one tube and retrieved a small device, and leapt back down to floor level. He raised it at me like a gangster in a movie holding a pistol sideways, and I reacted accordingly. I dove to the side, rolling behind one of the thick yet squishy alien tubes for cover.

“VVHAT ARE YOU DOING?” Sycxzezs asked in an irritated buzz. “VVHY RUN FROM SCAN?”

He raised the device again and activated it. The device pulsed with a terribly familiar soft green light. The machine buzzed at the alien, who scoffed and tossed it back into its nest of cables. The alien machinery stuck together like magnets until the cable absorbed the scanner like it was a giant jello ring, welcoming an ill advised shrimp to its ingredients.

“VVOU ARE OUT-TIME” He said. “VVOU NOT BELONG NOW. TOO LONG AWAY.”

“Yeah, that’s why I’m here” I said, emerging from my unnecessary cover. “The man who brought me to the future ran away with the time machine, and we need a way to follow him, or at least track him down.”

The alien buzzed again, leaping once more into his web of tangled machine wires. “NO TRACK. NOT POSSIBLE. BUT FOLLOW, YES. VVE HAVE HATCH-LEASH FOR NEW LARVAE.”

“Hatch leash? Like a tether?” I said, hopeful for the first time in what felt like an eternity.

“YES. IT SO DUMB LARVAE NO LOST IN TIME. USED ON ONLY THE LEAST SMART CHILDREN.”

Ah. It was like a leash for children. I felt myself flush with embarrassment as the realization hit me. “How long will it take you to make two of them?”

Sycxzezs peered down at me from a cable directly overhead. “VVAT TIME MEAN IN BRAIN-PRISON? YOU VVANT NUMBER IN HUMAN NUMBER OR SYCXZEZS CHRONO-KEEPING?” He buzzed angrily and flew to a farther blade of mechanical goo-grass. “BUT YOU NEED HELP-ME. I HELP-YOU, SO YOU HELP-ME BACK, YES?”

“We call that a quid-pro-quo” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “I’d love to help you, Sycxzezs. Let me guess, you want to escape?”

Sycxzezs leapt back to ground level and stooped until we were at eye level. He leaned in so close I thought for a moment he would try to bite me. “MORE THAN HUMAN CAN EVER KNOW. I GIVE YOU HATCHLING-LEASHES BACK OUT IN REAL-SPACE. I SEE MATE AND HATCHLINGS AGAIN. YOU STOP UN-WAIT MACHINE ABUSE.”

I stuck out a hand. “Deal.”

Sycxzezs stared at my proffered hand, tilting his head like a confused dog.

“It’s called a handshake” I said, guiding his corresponding upper hand into mine and pumping it up and down. His clawed hand was surprisingly cold to the touch.

“NO WASTE. GO PLAN ESCAPE. I BUILD.” Sycxzezs said, and leapt away into the wavy grass-esque machine.

Warden

May 3rd, 2026

2:54 PM

"Fear me, cogs of the Capitalist machine!" The villain cried, standing atop the rubble of City Hall. His jacket fluttered in the breeze, mimicking a cape in what was surely a coincidence. He held a red and yellow Soviet Union flag atop a pole he had ripped from the building’s rooftop that he kept trying to jam in between bricks in the scattered debris. "I will break you, I will reshape you, I will build you back stronger than ever before! I will cure you of this plague of-"

Suddenly, his malicious monologue ceased. Not quite as suddenly as he found himself transported to a small white room, but it was close.

"Economic enslave- oh DAMNIT, Warden!" He screamed, stepping down from the small bed that had replaced his collapsed building underfoot. "You are the LEAST fun hero to fight. Chairman Static at least makes it interesting with force fields, but you..." he gestured to the featureless walls of his prison, "you just do... this."

I smiled. Communist Manfred couldn't see it from his mental prison construct, but it wasn't an expression meant for him anyways.

"This has to be as boring for you as it is for me, yeah?" He said as he felt along the smooth walls of his current existence. "Can't be fun watching someone else not have fun. So why don't you let me out of here, and-"

"No," I said, breaking my silence. Communist Manfred jumped a bit, but tried to play it off as a villainous pose instead of a startled reflex. "You have broken out of every physical prison we've thrown you in. This mental realm jail cell is the only place we can guara-"

Communist Manfred blew a dismissive raspberry. "Pfffth, whatever. I think I preferred the silent treatment." I shrugged. The villain still couldn't see me. Not because I was hiding, but it was slightly difficult to see outside of one's current plane of existence. The featureless white cell that contained the red menace was located entirely within my mind. It was literally a figment of my imagination, which was ironic given the room's lack of creativity.

"So how long are you gonna keep me here this time?" He asked, nudging the small mattress with his toe. "A day? A week?" I sighed. I didn't enjoy what I was about to do.

"You've been sentenced to life," I informed Communist Manfred. “By myself. Here, I am judge, jury, and jailer. In time, you will wish I was an executioner as well.

Manfred jerked his head skyward, as if looking into a ceiling mounted security camera. "And how's that supposed to work? You control how time passes in this monument to boredom. I could be here for hundreds of years, and still not die. What-"

It was my turn to interrupt. "Not your life. Mine."

The boisterous villain was at a loss of words. He stared blankly, mouth hanging open and eyes blinking rapidly as my words sunk in.

"You mean I'm in here" he said slowly, "until you die out there?"

"Affirmative" I replied. "But you are wrong about one thing."

"Oh yeah? What in tap-dancing baby Jesus's tip jar do you mean by that?" He asked. His voice carried so much venom that I wondered if he could be related to Citra, the acid spitting villainess.

"It will be longer than hundreds of years for you. Much longer."

Communist Manfred slammed a fist against the border of his personal universe. "How the FUCK is that justice?!?!" He roared.

"It's not." I replied. It was the last outside voice the villain would ever hear.

I withdrew myself from the mental prison cell, and stepped back into my main mental realm. In this higher plane of existence, time flowed several orders of magnitude faster than in the cell level below. I observed Communist Manfred as he zoomed around his tiny cell over the course of months, even though it was only seconds from my point of view. It was like watching an old live stream of a zoo animal on super fast forward.

I stepped to the control center and waved a hand dismissively towards Communist Manfred's small slice of reality. The cell drifted in nothingness until it settled into its final resting place, stacked next to similar mental constructs. Most contained a villain, some had corrupt politicians, and one even held an NFL player that had the misfortune of being on my opponents fantasy football championship team. The rest of them were what I called ‘human resources’, a pun for my enjoyment alone. All of them locked away in their own personal cell, with their own passage rate of time. The ones that had submitted to me had tools of their trade, small trinkets of entertainment as rewards for teaching me everything they knew. Other, more stubborn individuals had nothing but time on their hands. One particularly stubborn hero didn’t even have a bed in their bare white cell, experiencing a year in there for every hour in the real world.

The only outlier had the complete opposite, a gilded cage designed to seduce them into compliance. And once this one did, I would be unstoppable.

I double checked my security measures, and withdrew another layer up into reality. This happened to be the top layer, what one might consider existence entirely. The bright sunlight stung my eyes as they tried to readjust to normal reality. I was standing over the limp corpse of Communist Manfred, posing heroically with one foot planted on his chest. Hundreds of citizens stood around us, applauding madly as I waved down at the masses. "Warden! Warden, we love you!" They cried. "You saved us again!"

I shot the crowd a winning smile, one I had spent decades practicing and perfecting in my mental realm. "Thank you, Citizens. You're the real Heroes here."

The Mayor fought his way through the onlookers and grasped my hand, viciously pumping it up and down as he shook it. "We are forever in your debt, Hero" he said, wiping a single tear of joy on his suit sleeve.

I smiled again. "Thank you, Maurice, but I'm no hero. I'm just a super doing my job."

My phone rudely interrupted my victory celebration, chirping out a rendition of 'Got You on my Mind' by Eric Clapton. I glanced at the screen and suppressed a smile. "Excuse me, Maurice. Duty calls."

I slipped away from the adoring crowd and accepted the call. “Steven! How’s your father doing these days?”

“He’s waiting for you in that sushi place two blocks to the east.” Steven said. “Meet him there. We have a proposition that I think you’d be interested in.”

The call ended. I glanced around as I slid the phone back in my pocket, trying to spot the wannabe villain. He could either see me or track me, an annoyance from most people but an exceptional danger from him. He and that stupid mother of his were the only people with a power suppression ability, and if I was being honest with myself, the only people I feared. They were the only threat to my mental constructs on this planet.

If I could capture him before he disabled me, oh, what a treat that would be. The only stumbling block there was the wrath of his adopted father, Doctor Doomsday.

I knew where the sushi restaurant was, naturally. They had my framed photo prominently displayed in the entrance, as did most places in my city. The businesses that didn’t have my likeness on their walls were the ones I tended to, coincidentally, not arrive in time to render aid with my magnificent powers.

I ducked into a side alley and accessed my mental menagerie once more. When I was back in my control room, I scrolled through the current occupants until I found one particular name. Delphi. I summoned her cell to the front and observed the woman within. She was short, with olive skin and jet black hair, and she sat in a meditative pose in her luxurious cell. The floor was covered in an elaborate oriental carpet, and dozens of tapestries covered the walls as far as the eyes could see. I liked to reward the guests that cooperated, and Delphi had caught on very early in her stay that cooperation led to the best outcomes.

“What can I help you with, Warden?” She asked in a slow sing-song tone. She hadn't opened her eyes, nor had I told her of my presence. Oracles were odd ducks like that.

“If you’re so all-seeing and shit, wouldn’t you already know? I said.

Delphi sighed and opened her eyes to glare at me through the now opaque wall. “I see all that can happen. I cannot see all that you desire. Shall I describe every event that will ever take place, every motion of every sentient creature, every action of every ant in every colony?”

If she wasn’t so useful, she wouldn’t be able to get away with most of the performative bullshit she got so high and mighty with. At least she would provide me with the answers I needed. She always did.

“Steven Doomsday just invited me to the Lazy Samurai,” I began. “Is it a trap?”

Delphi didn’t close her eyes. “There is no trap, Warden. He and his father are waiting for you in a booth in the far right corner, both facing the entrance. They have ordered the Volcano roll appetizers. It will arrive in six minutes, forty three seconds, and it will be unpleasantly spicy. I recommend ordering the California rolls from the concierge before taking your seat.”

“Thank you” I said, and dismissed the oracle with a wave of my hand. As the wall turned solid once again, I sent the reward she had requested and it appeared beside her. A small incense holder sent a twirl of scented smoke twisting through the air in the cell as I set her back in the mental realm holding section.

I opened my eyes, the real ones in the real world, and found myself back in the side alley. The entire interaction had happened during the span of a single blink. I took off in a relaxed stroll to the restaurant.

A gong sounded as I opened the door. A young woman with a painfully forced smile pretended to enthusiastically greet me. I held up a hand to cut off the charade. “I’m meeting someone. Please send us a California roll at your earliest convenience.”

I strode inside without waiting for a response. I made my way to the back where Delphi had said the two Doomsdays were waiting for me, and slid into the booth without asking.

I glanced up at the pair and froze. One was indeed Steven Doomsday, but the other was not the mechanical war robot I was expecting. It was a man in his early 20’s, with the same sandy brown hair as Steven.

I dipped back into my mental realm and summoned Delphi once more. I removed the incense from the cell and didn’t wait for her to acknowledge me. “You said Steven and Doctor Doomsday were here,” I yelled at the seer. “Who the fuck is that?”

Delphi opened her eyes and narrowed them at me in an accusing glare. “I said Steven was with his father. That is his father, at least a version of him from the past. I made no errors or omissions to your request.”

I huffed in irritation, but acknowledged the truth in her statement. “I’m not rewarding this behavior. You can get the incense back next time you help me, and only after it all plays out.”

I left before the protesting scream could reach my ears, returning to the present reality as a waiter set a volcano roll appetizer on the table. “Hello, Steven. Who is this?” I said, gesturing to WalkMan.

“This is the reason we’re here” He said as he plucked a volcano roll from the tray with his fingers. “I’ll make this quick- Doctor Doomsday has stranded this young version of WalkMan and myself in time, and we need a way to locate his next appearance and tether ourselves to the time machine.”

I waited until Steven popped the sushi roll in his mouth before asking a follow up question. “So you need someone to help with your time machine?”

Steven began to answer, but his words were replaced by a gagging yelp of pain. Steven’s face turned bright red as he grabbed a napkin and disposed of the mouthful of the appropriately named Volcano roll. “JESUS! That’s so fucking hot!” He said as he balled up the discarded sushi.

The waitress appeared with the California rolls right on time, setting them in front of Steven as he continued to gag. I broke open a pair of chopsticks and rubbed them together, removing any potential splinters from the wooden sticks before enjoying a roll.

I had eaten three of the delicious rolls before Steven recovered. WalkMan had remained silent the entire time, refusing to even pretend I was present. Quite rude of him, to be honest.

“Thank you for meeting us,” he said, dabbing his lips with one of the few remaining napkins. “We have an urgent matter that requires one of your… resident’s… expertise.”

I chewed the sushi, making no effort to hurry my reply. “You know my price, Steven. Who or what are you offering?” “You can learn one thing from WalkMan” he replied, “If you provide him with everything he requests. In exchange, he gets unrestricted access to the entity, and can take whatever they make for him.”

WalkMan startled, looking at Steven with an incredulous stare. “What? That’s not-”

“And you’ll stay here, threatening me with your dampening power?” I asked, snagging the last roll.

Steven nodded. “No tricks, no deceptions, no lies. One power for one audience.”

I reached out through my mental realm, feeling for WalkMan’s essence in the void between souls. WalkMan had no mental defenses whatsoever. His lifeless body slumped in the seat, its head lolling onto Steven’s shoulder.

His soul fit nicely in my menagerie.

Chapter 17
Steven May 3rd, 2026 1:00 PM

Doombot 0001 got to work replacing my stolen hand as WalkMan and I tried to piece together whatever the hell had just happened. From what we could tell, future versions of us were fighting future Doctor Doomsday, and we were following him through time with those green tether lines. 0001 had no idea what they were, so he was focusing on what he did know: building my replacement hand and faking the doomsquad laser logs. By my estimates, he had about 3 hours until he needed to call past-us with his excuse for a delay, then another 15 or so hours until the presentation of the laser logs in the meeting.

Which left us with two important questions: Where did we find Doctor Doomsday again, and where did we get those time tethers?

“Who else even knows about the time machine?” WalkMan asked as we left the house. I stopped to pet Finley in the neighbor's yard, who seemed a bit neglected as his owners continued to scream at each other inside their house. I declined to comment on the unfortunate familiarity as we left the neighborhood.

“Um, a lot of people, actually.” I admitted. “There was a… situation… that required us to inform everyone in the Doomsquad and the Hero’s Union 283.”

“What?” WalkMan asked.

I squeezed my eyes shut as I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Shit. Right. Future thing. You create it, actually. It’s like a labor union, but also like the UN but for superheroes. This local chapter is the 283rd one, you had insisted your own region be set up last to avoid favoritism.”

WalkMan didn’t respond to that for a while. I let him process this information while I went through my mental roster of potential time-tether builders. Chairman Static would have us both imprisoned for the safety of the timeline, or some goody two-shoes excuse like that. Magma Carter was dumber than the scorching volcanic rocks he left in his wake. Citra was clever, but more in the scheming and revenge kind of way.

“How does the mind transfer thing work?” WalkMan asked, breaking his silence.

“Fuck if I know” I muttered. I went back to my list of potential time machine assistants. Peter-odactyl just wanted to work on his grotesque body to achieve flight, which didn’t help us any. Maybe if he stopped waving around his flabby grey arm skin around so much at Terror-Con he could actually make progress with his mutations. Maybe Dynomike would at least try to help, but he always ended up exploding at the worst possible time. If only-

I stopped in my tracks. Of course, why didn’t I think of it earlier?

“I think I know how to answer both of our questions” I said, “But I don’t think you’re gonna like it.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t like it” I said, quickly hurrying towards a side street as I whipped out my phone. I pulled up the Uber app and sent a request. Alejandro accepted the ride and indicated he was approaching soon. I wondered if Alejandro was the only driver brave or desperate enough to keep accepting our rides, or if he was just the only driver in the region.

“Where are we going? Don’t keep me in the dark, Steven.”

I put my phone away and took a deep breath before speaking again. “There’s an exceptionally dangerous superpowered person, who worked on the mental transfer project with Doctor Doomsday.” It wasn’t exactly lying if I didn’t tell him the full truth. What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt… well, it at least wouldn’t kill him. Not if Doctor Doomsday’s theory on time being immutable was actually true, which it seemed

“I thought you said you didn’t know how that worked?”

“I don’t” I admitted. “But he does.”

“You called him a ‘superpowered person’” WalkMan said, “Is he a hero or a villain?”

“Neither. He doesn’t exactly get along with… anyone.”

“Sounds friendly. Why do you think he’d help you?”

“I don’t.”

WalkMan folded his arms across his barrel chest. “I don’t like riddles. Tell me straight; who are we meeting, and why are they so dangerous?”

I took a deep breath before replying. Lying like this was against my nature, and I knew I wasn’t very good at it, but maybe I could trick this younger WalkMan that hadn’t known me for a full 24 hours yet. “Warden is a mentalist. He can drag a person’s mind into his own, imprisoning them. We don’t know exactly how many people he has in his head, but we’ve estimated it’s over a thousand.”

WalkMan’s jaw dropped open as he stared at me in shock. “That’s… good lord, that’s messed up.”

“Yeah” I agreed, “He helped Doctor Doomsday… test… the mental upload device. He took a dying Aloysius Doomsday from his deathbed and put him into the first Doombot frame. 0001 then worked through the mental stabilizer issues, and now we can do it as easily as microwaving a hot pocket.”

WalkMan sat on the curb and clutched his head in his hands. “You want to go to a hostile super-shunned asshole who could trap you in his mind? Why in the hell would you trust him?”

This was going to be the hard part. WalkMan wasn’t exactly onboard with the idea of even visiting Warden, I couldn’t imagine he would accept what I would say without some next-level convincing.

“I can’t be the one to go in. My power is to nullify other powers, so I’ll need to stay on the outside as the muscle.”

WalkMan looked at me like I had grown a second head that screamed racial epithets. “You want ME to go in there?

I sat next to my father on the curb. It was mildly warm to the touch, having bathed in the afternoon sun for a few hours so far. “He’s not the one we need. There’s someone in his mental prison that I think has more info about the time machine. And if you’re worried, just remember, we at least make it out of there to fight Doctor Doomsday again.”

WalkMan put credence to his name as he leapt to his feet and began pacing. He wrung his hands together as he thought, muttering to himself as he made several passes.

“I wouldn’t ask this of you if it wasn’t absolutely necessary” I said truthfully.

My father closed his eyes, took in a deep breath, and nodded. “Okay,” he said, “I’ll do it. It’s what heros do, right? Sacrifice themselves for the greater good?”

I chuckled. “I may not be the best person to ask, considering my current employer.”

WalkMan May 3rd, 2026 9:18 AM

I was dead. At this time, at least, I was dead. I knew it in my gut before, but the implied reasoning behind that cranky robot’s words just twisted the knife in there. I didn’t care that I was dead, not really. I cared that the reason I was dead was somehow disgraceful. Like I was a villain. Evil. My death had been justified. And the ‘soundproof’ part meant they wanted to keep me dead, which was a whole other can of worms I wasn’t ready to deal with.

I emerged from the dark stairwell into the house above. I blinked away the pain of the sudden switch from dark to light, and found I had tears streaming down my face. I wiped my eyes with my sleeve and collapsed in the nearest seat, a reasonably comfy couch in what I presumed was a living room. My head collapsed into my hands as everything hit me all at once. I was destined to be a monster. I couldn’t even try to change it without destroying the entire fucking future. If I tried to be a better father, I would risk erasing this Steven from existence, or even destroying all of reality. How could I go on like this? How was I going to go back to my time, if that was even possible anymore, and hold my infant son, knowing I’d have to torture him?

“WalkMan?” Steven called, “WalkMan, are you up there?”

I held my breath, trying to silence my sobs before responding. Apparently this was too long of a wait for my adult son.

“WalkMan, 0001’s still working on my hands, I can’t open the door.”

Oh. Right. I stood and walked to the door, pausing again to calm myself before opening the door. Steven stood there, a look of pained embarrassment etched on his face. He looked so much like me, it hurt. I couldn’t see any hint of his mother in his features, just an older version of myself staring back at me. He must have seen I was crying, as his embarrassment softened to concern.

“Thank you,” Steven said, “For standing up for me. Can we sit down?”

We made our way back to the living room, where Steven collapsed into a chair across from the couch. I resumed my spot and stared at the luxurious hardwood flooring, tracing the grain and knots with my eyes just to distract myself.

“0001’s an old, cranky guy,” Steven began, “He doesn’t really mean the insults he says. He used to be a-”

“I don’t care if he’s the Queen of England” I said, my voice soft and quiet from the un-heroic crying. “Nobody deserves to be talked to like that.”

Steven tried to clasp his hands together, but just ended up clanking his two stubs against each other instead. “I know, WalkMan. I shouldn’t make excuses for him. For Doctor Doomsday either. But right now, we need to focus on finding him and sending you back. Everything else I can handle from here.”

I glanced up and met Steven’s gaze. Those eyes staring back at me didn’t show the same confidence that his voice tried to project.

“0001’s examining my hands to try to find a fix for the time particle interferences. Once he has that, and re-installed my hands, we’re going to find our version of Doctor D, and restore him too. I’m confident once he’s back to his old self he will agree to return you to your time.”

“And how, exactly, are we going to find him?” I asked. “He has a time machine. We can’t exactly find him on a map, and even if we did find him, he’d just time travel away before we could catch him.”

Steven sighed and fell back into the clutches of his comfy looking chair. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I was hoping to brainstorm with you about that. You are his Nemesis, after all.”

“Steven, I met the man about 12 hours ago. I don’t know anything about him besides the disturbing fact that he is a robot.”

Steven closed his eyes and sighed. “He’s a person, his consciousness was uploaded into a robot body. We think his brain circuits have been affected by the same time travel stuff that caused my hands to glitch out.”

“How did he get in there? Did they just hook up a wire from his real brain to a robot brain?” I asked.

Steven kept his eyes closed as he extended the footrest mechanism, raising his legs like my Drexel Heritage recliner. “He made a machine, tested it with his grandpa who you just had a screaming match with downstairs.”

“But how did it actually work? And why isn’t this time filled with robots driven by souls everywhere?”

Steven shrugged. “Fuck if I know. You’d need to talk to 0001 down there for an answer.”

My gaze drifted around the room, taking in the exquisite paintings and sculptures before stopping on the least impressive item in the collection. An urn.

Steven peaked at me after a few minutes of uncomfortable silence. He stood up after trying several times to close the chair’s footrest with his feet alone. “Let’s, uh, go back to the lab” he said. “I think 0001 should be done with the scans at least.”

I nodded, eager to get away from my own physical remains. I probably owed that robot man down there an apology.

We walked down the dark stairs as I tried to think what I would say to the robot. My foot slipped and I stumbled on the last step, landing awkwardly on the concrete floor of the laboratory. I cursed under my breath, apparently loud enough for 0001 to hear us.

“That you, Steven?” He yelled from the dark. “Or WalkMan?”

“It’s us, triple oh one” Steven yelled back.

“Why the hell is it so dark in here?” I yelled as I felt my way along the various lab tables and benches.

“I don’ like the lights” 0001 replied, much closer in the inky blackness.

“Why don’t you try wearing sunglasses, so everyone else can see? Or dim your cameras? You have the ability to transfer consciousnesses to machines, but not adjust your input brightness?” I grunted in irritation.

There was a long pause before the overhead lights flicked on. 0001 was standing beside us, looking around the place like a blind man that had just re-gained his sight. “Huh,” he said. “Never thought of this.”

“You’re welcome” I grumbled.

“Do you have my hands ready?” Steven asked, raising his stumps to eye level.

“Nah” the robot said, spitting as he walked to a table. “I got you new ones. Try these on, they’re magnetic.”

Steven approached the new hands with caution. “Do these shoot lasers too?” “Nah.” He said. “After I downloaded your data, I saw you had over a dozen mis-fire failsafe activations, which is a heck of a lot for someone who had these for just over two days. Figured you’d be better off using that blaster you’re so fond of.”

Steven flushed with embarrassment. “Yeah, uh, about that” he said, “Could you delete all of that? Not the GPS location of that one shot fired, but the rest needs to be gone. Maybe pretend it gets corrupted or something.”

Doombot 0001 raised an eyebrow, something I didn’t know was possible for a robot to do. “Now why in tarnation would I wanna do that?”

“Chrono-displacement procedure, section 4.2.2” he said confidently. “It’s something you’ve already done in my observed future.”

Doombot 0001 sighed. “I always knew you’d pull that rule on me eventually” he said. “Just kinda felt it in my circuits. Now I gotta try to falsify info in a system I built to be tamper proof. When do you need it?”

“Tomorrow morning, you’ll host a meeting first thing. You’ll need to have the entire Doomsquad laser records, and the one my hand fired needs to be corrupted. All except the GPS.”

The robot closed his eyes, which I think just meant he turned the red lights off in his eye sockets for a bit. “Damnation, Steven! That’s gonna be a lot of work. Getting that info should only be a few hours, but figuring out how to hide the other data, that’ll be at least 18 hours.”

“I think you told us you were delayed by Doombot 0028 using the bandwidth for a TV show.”

The mechanical man sighed and made another spitting sound. “I’ll figure it out. Anyways, try your new hands on for size.”

Steven reached a nub out towards the hands, then hesitated. “How do I, uh, put them on?” He asked.

Before Doombot 0001 could answer, the hands leapt from the table, rocketing towards Steven and clamping loudly on his arms. Steven yelped in surprise, but quickly composed himself as he examined his new hands.

“They’re standard for Doombot grip strength and durability,” 0001 explained as Steven raised his hands to the light, staring closely at the finger joints as he wiggled each in turn. “The only custom feature this time is the magnetic connection. You can activate them from around 20 meters and they’ll zip back over to ya, lickity-splitt.”

“Thanks, triple-oh 1” Steven said. He pulled his left hand off and tossed it to the couch, then held his stump arm out expectantly. Nothing happened.

“Oh, right, gotta put that part in your arms. Hang on.” The robot said, fumbling around in his workbench and scurrying over to Steven. With a flash of a welder and a loud whirring sound, Steven’s hand flew back to him and slapped loudly into place.

“Great,” I said, bored of the mechanical interactions. “Now how do we track down our version of Doctor Doomsday?”

Static electricity pulsed in the air around us, raising the hairs on my body like a startled cat. Green lightning cracked through the air, heralding the tell-tale green orb of a time travel rift opening above the workbench 0001 had recently vacated.

I flew backwards from the orb. Not “me” me, but another version, battered and bloodied, struck me back-first and threw us both into the scattered machinery. Doctor Doomsday flew through behind him, followed closely by Steven, both showing signs of a horrific battle.

Bloodied Steven raised a burned stump arm towards present Steven, and summoned the hand away from his old self and onto his new one. My present Steven leapt back, shocked by the sudden appearance of ourselves and his sudden disarmament. The battle-worn Doctor Doomsday kicked the new Steven in the back, sending him flying into the workbench with a sickening crunch. He stared at me and the wounded future me with an intense hatred, and summoned the time machine in his hand and disappeared just as quickly as he had appeared.

As Doctor Doomsday vanished, two green lines appeared, snaking their way from the orb and tethering to the other Steven and myself . Each attached to our future self’s belts and drew taunt, yanking them into the portal, dragging both in behind Doctor Doomsday as the portal sizzled closed.

Steven, Doombot 001 and I were silent, staring in uncomprehending terror at the sudden destruction that surrounded us. Steven looked down at his missing hand, blinking in confusion.

“...looks like I got a lot more work to do,” Doombot 0001 grumbled.

Steven May 3rd, 2026 8:35 AM

I watched myself fly away in the Osprey. It was a strange feeling, knowing I had been watched by myself without my knowledge, but I couldn’t let myself dwell on the oddity of time travel. I had to get WalkMan and myself into the house without raising an alarm that would summon the guards, record our presence, or otherwise risk destroying the entire time-space continuum.

You know, nothing major.

WalkMan shifted his weight, rustling the bushes we were hiding behind. I shot him a glare and made a ‘shush’ gesture. He shrugged in an awkward apology.

“Is someone there?” a voice called out from behind us.

A middle aged man emerged from the house behind us, holding open the screen door as he looked around. I recognized him as one of the neighbors, although I couldn’t remember his name. He must have told me half a dozen times now, but I just couldn’t recall. I knew how he liked his hamburgers from the neighborhood cookouts that Doctor Doomsday threw on occasion, and he had a dalmatian - lab mutt that was super friendly, but nothing else. He spotted us behind the bush and squinted.

“Close the damn door Bruce, you’re letting bugs in!” an angry woman shouted from inside.

“I thought I heard-” he called back, stopping when he finally found us. “Oh, nevermind, it’s just Steven. How’s it going, neighbor?"

I cursed under my breath. “Hi, um, Bruce. I’m doing well, trying to keep quiet though.”

“Close the goddamn door, Bruce!” His wife shouted again. His dog began barking, excited from all the shouting, and bounded out the door. The adorable dog saw me and bolted over, leaping on me and licking my face with the kind of enthusiasm only a dog could show.

I did the only thing I could. I pet the dog.

“Why are you still out there? I asked you to close the door!” his wife yelled again. “I swear you are the dumbest motherfucker-”

“It’s Steven!” Bruce yelled back through the door.

I glanced at WalkMan as the dog, I think his name was Finley, rolled on his back for belly rubs in front of him.

“Who?” she yelled again.

Bruce turned and cupped his hands around his mouth to answer. “STEVEN! Y’know, Doomsday’s kid? Our neighbor? Jesus Ashlyn, who’s not listening now?”

I stood up and wiped the dog slobber off on my pants. “So much for stealth. Let’s just ring the goddamn doorbell at this point.” I grumbled. WalkMan nodded, and we left the bickering couple with the friendly dog and just walked across the street.

The door opened before we had walked up the entryway steps. Doombot 0001, AKA Aloysius Doomsday, Doctor Doomsday’s grandfather, sighed. “Time travel shenanigans?” He asked. I nodded sheepishly. “Well, come on in.”

We entered the house and closed the door behind us. Doombot 0001 led us through the living room towards the hidden stairs to the darkened lab below. The light switch was still broken from my earlier mangling, just a hole and exposed wires that crackled ominously. The robot strode confidently through the darkness, maneuvering expertly around furniture and equipment that WalkMan and I had to feel our way around.

“Standard chrono-displacement procedure, just tell me when y’er from and don’t mention things that could fuck us all over.” Doombot 0001 said, finally turning on a lamp beside the couch in the corner. He finally realized who my companion was, and cursed. “What the- fucking hell, Steven, is that WalkMan? You brought a young WalkMan here? How fucking stupid are y’all?”

“He now, that was entirely Nigel’s fault” I said, patting the air with my metal hands. “I’m just trying to clean up his mess.”

Doombot 0001 grabbed my wrist and examined my heavily marred hand. “What in tarnation did you do? I just put these piggies on ya’, and you went and got chewed on by…” he squinted at the tooth pattern imprinted in the metal. “Some sort of shark?”

“Velociraptor, actually” I said.

Doombot 0001 chuckled, and made his tobacco spitting motion and accompanying sound effect. “Yeah, that sounds like somethin’ Nigel would do. Lemme fix ya’ up. In the meantime, why don’t’cha explain why y’all are here?”

Without asking permission, 0001 twisted my hands and removed them, leaving flat metal stumps behind. It was unnerving how easily my hands could just come off now, especially since I could still feel their tactile sensations while 0001 moved them to his work bench.

“What in tarnation…” he mumbled while connecting them to his computer. “All the code’s slightly off. Like, some bits got flipped at random.”

“Huh” I said. “Did the dinosaur teeth do that?”

“Nah” 0001 replied, pausing to do his fake tobacco spitting ritual. “It looks like you got hit with a burst of neutrinos or something. The bits got flipped in weird ways.”

I glanced at WalkMan, who just shrugged. Doombot 0001 sighed as he set the mechanical hands down with a thud.

“So y’all know how code is all 0’s and 1’s, right?” He asked. “Cause if ya don’t, then there’s nothin’ I can say that would make sense.”

I nodded. 0001 spat again and continued. “So all those 0’s and 1’s are basically just on and off switches, called a logic gate. These gates either let electricity through, or they don’t. Do that around a billion times, and you get code. Now, if somethin’ really small hits one of these gates, like a neutrino or somethn’, it can flip it to the other state. With me so far?”

I nodded. WalkMan didn’t.

“You’ve lost me,” he admitted.

Doombot 0001 grumbled and walked to his computer terminal. He typed at lightning speed, clicking and clacking like a machine gun until he found what he was looking for. A melodic tune started playing from the surround sound speakers, which I recognized as a Cocomelon song about monkeys jumping on a bed.

“What the fuck…” WalkMan started, but stopped as his skin began to glow. I recognized the pulsing golden light running under his skin as a sign that the song was working with his musical powers. “What the actual fuck is happening?”

“We have an extensive library of every song that gives you power and what said power does,” 0001 explained. “This’n helps you with numbers and comprehension.”

“But it’s a children’s song” he said, “how the hell did you figure this one out?”

“Some of your most effective songs are children’s educational music. Something about a deeper emotional connection or more direct lyrics.” I said. “We never got a chance to fully test this before… well, we never got around to it, I suppose.”

I could see the pain in WalkMan’s eyes as the song’s powers did their work. His enhanced comprehension meant he could probably figure out why children’s songs had the most emotional impact, and he was horrified by the conclusion. I couldn’t focus on that. I had to shove it down, repress that painful part of my past and his future and struggle on.

“So these little switches, they turn off and on, which affects other switches down the line, over and over and over again.” Doombot 0001 said, projecting his voice like he was giving a lecture at a University. “If something really tiny, like a sub-atomic particle, hits one of these, it can manually flip the switch. It’s really rare, but it’s been seen before, mostly in satellites and spaceships, and once in a Super Mario 64 speedrun. But I’m willin’ to bet y’all ain’t been to space recently.”

WalkMan glanced at me. “Do you go to space? I’d imagine there’s at least a moon base in the future.”

“No, we don’t go into space, 0001 is just making a point.” I said. “Right?”

“Yeah, I’m making a goddamn point,” 0001 said with irritation. “I’m sayin’ that y’all used the time machine, and it looks like that fucks with the Doombot software. It’s already hardened against EMP’s, but I think something about the time travel is getting around that.”

“Would that affect Doctor Doomsday’s Doombot hardware?” I asked. “That could explain some of his behavior recently.”

0001 facepalmed so hard that sparks flew from the impact. “YES. Good lord kid, if you were any denser you’d collapse into a black hole and kill us all.”

I shrank back in embarrassment, but before I could defend myself, I was saved by an unlikely hero.

“He’s just trying to help, asshole.” WalkMan snarled, standing up and stepping between me and 0001. “He’s asking questions to make sure he understands what you are saying, and you mock him for it? Would you rather he stay silent, not understanding what you’re trying to explain, and wasting all of our time here? No wonder Doctor Doomsday is such a narcissist if he was raised by YOU.”

0001 stared at WalkMan with intensely glowing red eyes and spat. “You ain’t exactly one to talk about raisin’ kids, WalkMan. Why don’t you ask your son here why your current residence is a soundproof urn upstairs?” WalkMan clenched his fist, but relaxed it again after a tense moment. He spun around and walked out of the room, his glow leaving a faint zig zag pattern as his trembling form disappeared into the dark recesses of the lab.

WalkMan May 3rd, 2026 2:04 AM

The green orb vanished with a cackle of lightning and robotic laughter, plunging Steven and I into total darkness. I cursed under my breath, chastising myself for ever trusting a villain in the first place. This fucking lunatic had claimed to be protecting the timelines, but he had just abandoned both of us outside of our times. Steven could probably live the rest of his life only displaced by two days, but not me. If I stayed here, whatever I had done would never happen, which would probably fuck up something important. Like the entire space time continuum.

Fuck, this was so confusing.

“We need to get out of here,” I said to Steven. My son was just staring at his robotic hands in silence. “Steven?”

He finally glanced back up at me, sliding his hands into his pockets as if he was holstering a weapon. “Huh? Yeah, let’s uh, let’s at least get off the farm. This place will be swarming with cops in…” he paused to check his watch, then quickly shoved his hand back into his pants pocket. “4 or so hours. Christ, where can we even go?”

I shrugged. “This is your time, not mine.”

Steven sighed as we jogged towards the woods at the edge of the farm. “It’s not mine either. We’re two days in the past. How the hell are we going to get back to the right time?”

“The old fashioned way I suppose. At one second per second.”

Steven began to object, then fell silent in contemplation. We walked for about an hour before he spoke again.

“I think I have an idea,” he said as we took a break in a small clearing. He sat down on a rock while I leaned against a tree, folding my arms across my chest. “We need to stay out of sight, so we don’t fuck up the timeline any more. We can’t just wander the woods around an active crime scene, and I can’t directly spend any of my Doomsday funds without throwing up a flag somewhere.”

I grunted in reply. “I didn’t exactly bring cash with me to the future, and from what I gather I’m dead in this present. Don’t think they’d keep my bank accounts open.”

Steven ignored my quip, which confirmed at least one of my suspicions. He withdrew a thin black rectangle from his pocket and began poking at it with his thumbs. “Our Uber account bills monthly, so we can get a ride the rest of the way to Doomsday’s house.”

“Huh? I thought we were trying to lay low? What does an assault on his compound gain us?”

Steven finished tapping and put the small computer back in his pocket. “Oh, no, the Doomfort is where we do all the operations. Doctor Doomsday has a house in a quiet suburb. We will leave there around 10 this morning, and we didn’t go back before you arrived. It’s one place I can guarantee we won’t run into anyone.”

I shook my head. “I don’t like it. Don’t you have security systems? Minions that would turn us in?”

“Nah,” he said dismissively, “The two guys that work there know about our time travel stuff, they’ll comply. We need to get going, I set the pick-up at a truck stop about three miles north of here.”

We walked in silence for an uncomfortably long time. I wanted to ask him something, anything, but I just didn’t have the words. I didn’t know what I had done to earn this treatment from my son. And even if I did, I couldn’t do anything to change it. Whatever it was, I was destined to do it anyway. I had to become whatever monster Steven saw me as now, in order to make him into the man he was now.

I could smell the truck stop before it came into view. The odd combination of diesel fuel, old coffee, and fresh pancakes made my stomach rumble, but we couldn’t afford to spend money or be seen. All we could do was wait for the car, which turned out to be Alejandro Uber again. Well, not ‘again’, at least not yet. Damnation, time travel was confusing.

Steven and I got a few hours of sleep as Alejandro brought us to a park near the house. Apparently it had a line of sight for the aircraft that Doctor Doomsday and Steven would be departing in this afternoon, and more importantly, a hacked vending machine. Steven wiggled his metallic fingers near the mechanism and the machine obeyed, dispensing a few bags of snacks and bottles of water. The junk food wouldn’t provide nutrients, but it would silence our rumbling stomachs. We sat at a nearby table and ate as the sun rose to its rightful place in the sky.

“So, how’s your life been, Steven?” I asked as I took another bite of my generic Honeybun. I hoped the park had a working bathroom where I could wash off this sticky glaze when I was done.

Steven paused, holding a wafer cracker halfway to his mouth. “Who the hell starts a conversation like that?” He grumbled.

I washed down the sugary bite with the unlabeled bottled water. “It’s lame as hell, I know. But I can’t exactly ask you specifics, and you’re still my son. I just want to know if you’ve been, y’know, happy.”

Steven huffed a single, pained laugh. “Funny. You never cared about that kind of thing when I was a kid.”

My heart sank in my chest. How was that possible? When I found out I was going to be a father just a few days ago, I was ready to dedicate my whole life to being the best father I could be. Why would I go so far the other way? It didn’t make any sense.

“I care now, Steven.” I said solemnly.

“But you won’t in your future. So stop trying now. We can’t fuck up the timeline, and you turning into Super Dad would do just that.” Steven said, chuckling at the sick irony of it all.

“Do you know why I did… will do… whatever it was that hurt you?” I asked softly.

Our conversation was interrupted by a child’s laugh. A man and his two children, one boy and one girl around 7-ish years old, had arrived at the nearby playground without us noticing. The boy was trying to launch himself off of a swing, while the girl ran in circles around the smiling father. I watched as he caught her and hefted her in the air before bringing her down into a hug. The boy, having completed his swing-assisted takeoff and landing maneuver, ran over and joined the hug.

I couldn’t look away.

“Did I…” I asked, unable to finish the question. Steven shook his head.

“You were always too busy saving the world, one petty criminal at a time” he said as he chewed his last cracker. “Whenever you did come around, you’d just end up screaming at mom and I before leaving for another few weeks.”

The honey bun didn’t taste so sweet anymore. I set it down on the plastic table and focused on my son, the man who resented me for things I was now expected to do, because I had already done them.

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.” I said. Steven didn’t answer. His watch buzzed, and he silenced it with a few taps on the glass face.

“We’re leaving now. Doctor Doomsday and I, I mean. We don’t return to the house in the next few days, so it should be safe now. Go wash up, 0001 hates sticky messes. And lights.”

I complied, using the washroom to clean my hands and wash away the tears that had started to form in the corners of my eyes.

Steven May 3rd, 2026 2:00 AM

I landed on dirt. Hard. Both the dirt I hit and the severity of the impact with which it was struck. I kind of recovered enough to turn the fall into a roll and drew my Doomsquad sidearm, sweeping the unfamiliar area just as Doombot 0028 had trained me. It was dark, it was a bit chilly, and it was familiar.

This was ShepHeard’s farm. Why the hell was I in ShepHeard’s farm? Doctor Doomsday had…

Oh. Oh no. No no no no no. That insane bastard had sent me to the scene of the murder, and I was willing to bet it hadn’t earned that moniker yet. This was a disaster. If we intervened and saved ShepHeard, we could destroy our current timeline. If we did nothing, we’d watch a man be murdered. We may witness the person doing the aforementioned murder, but we would have to let them go free without noticing us. This was something that we had extensive knowledge about in the future, and we couldn’t risk making any paradoxes, either by our action or inaction. My head hurt, aching with a dull throb. I dismissed it as a minor inconvenience.

The green orb that had spat me out began to gurgle like my guts after discount sushi night. I turned just in time to see WalkMan tumble out into the dirt, and Doctor Doomsday hop out right behind him. The green orb shrank away into nothingness as the robot frame twirled his hand, dismissing the machine back into whatever dimension he had managed to store it within.

“DOC!” I hissed quietly, yet forcefully. “This has crossed the line! We can’t be HERE, we investigated this place! If we leave any trace we were here, now, then-”

Doctor Doomsday rolled his eyes, a gesture I didn’t know he could make with those LED eyes, and scoffed. “We already had this discussion, my young ward. If we did something in the past, it already affected our future. Here and now, we can witness the murder first-hand, and we can eliminate them when we are back in the present. Easy peasy.”

“YOU DON’T KNOW THAT FOR CERTAIN!” I snarled, jabbing a finger into his metal chest. “You don’t get to risk the fate of the fucking PLANET based on how smart you think you are! If you’re wrong, you hurt every living person. But you’re so arrogant, so damn self centered, that you think you can’t possibly be wrong!”

Doctor Doomsday slapped my hand off his chest. “Be careful with that thing!” He snapped.

“Like how you’re being so careful ripping holes in the fabric of space-time?!?” I snapped. “Why do you care more about this than all of existence?”

“Because I know the consequences of my actions.” He snapped right back, his red eyes flaring to an admittedly intimidating degree. “Unlike you. Have you even read that manual for your fucking hands yet? Those two grippers you’ve used every moment of the day since they were installed? I’m sure ‘just winging it’ will work great, right up until you blow your balls off when you wipe your ass.”

He had a point, but I couldn’t let that get to me right now. This was far more important. The world could survive without me in it, but not with Doctor Doomsday fucking with the timeline.

“Don’t deflect this, Doc. You have to stop. Give me the time machine.”

Doctor Doomsday held up the device in his palm, and sent it back into the void. I had no idea how he’d managed that trick, he seemed able to summon and dismiss it into nothingness at will. The thing acted like it was part puppy, and part interdimensional demi-god. His smirk was so insufferable it physically hurt to behold.

“Don’t make me fight you for it” I snarled.

Doctor Doomsday cackled. His evil laugh echoed across the otherwise silent farmland. “I’d love to see you try, my boy.”

“He’s not YOUR boy” WalkMan growled as he came to my side. “He’s MY son.”

That was a whole can of worms that I didn’t need to open right now. If everything went even half decently, this can would be collecting dust, sitting un-opened right next to WalkMan’s ashes on the mantle. For now, I just accepted his help.

“Well, it’s not my fault he calls me ‘Dad’ now. But I’ll leave that explanation up to the young Steven, who is technically older than you are at the present moment.”

“You know we can’t discuss that with him!” I said, trying to balance the intensity of my words with the silence of the farmland around us. I didn’t want to spook the killer or draw ShepHeard over to investigate us, like we had investigated his corpse earlier... or later… damn, this time travel stuff was complicated.

“So what do you propose? We waste this opportunity, allow an innocent man’s murder to go unsolved?” Doctor Doomsday asked, sweeping his hand at our surroundings. “We’re already here. We can just observe and go right back. Hell, we can even record it if they want to do a trial or whatever legal bullshit.

“Counter offer” I snarled, “we go back to our time, send WalkMan home, and destroy the time machine.”

Doctor Doomsday glared at me with pure hatred shining from his eyes. “That’s not going to happen, my boy.”

“Yes, it fucking is.” I replied with the most conviction I had ever felt. “You’re going to bring the time machine back, give it to me, and sever whatever tech or magic or future bullshit you use to make it come and go.”

The robot glanced between WalkMan and I, narrowing his red LED’s to imitate a squint. “Are you sure you want to do this, Steven?” He asked softly. He brushed his lab coat aside, as if he was some old Western gunslinger moving his poncho out of the way of his trusty 6-shooter.

I heard a muffled song as WalkMan turned on his cassette player namesake. “I’m with you, Steven,” he said softly. “I’ll follow your lead.” A faint yellow glow outlined his muscles beneath his skin, shimmering like a cuttlefish trying to either eat or fuck.

No. This could not happen. If WalkMan died in this fight, we could bring him back, but that would require playing a song he hadn’t heard yet. Hell, it might not work on him now the same way it would in the future. His emotional reaction to the song wouldn’t produce the same superpowered effect. If I remember correctly, the song that brought him back to life last time was a Cocomelon song, and cocomelon didn’t even exist yet in his time.

“We can’t fight. Not here, at least. Our top priority is staying out of sight and not fuck up all of space and time by being dumb. Let’s find some cover.”

WalkMan turned off his cassette deck, looking a bit disappointed that he wasn’t going to fight my adopted father. Doctor Doomsday kept glaring at me before turning abruptly and making his way towards the tall corn stalks.

“Where was the body found? WalkMan asked. “We should make sure we can actually see the murder from our hiding spot.”

“Good idea, it’s right over there-” I pointed towards the barn and flew backwards. Spots danced in my vision as my mind scrambled to figure out what the hell just happened. A horrible flash of red light had left me blind, hopefully just temporarily.The red light of the Doomsday laser that fired from my fingertip. What had Doombot 0001 called it, a ‘phalangeal barrage’? Whatever it was called, it didn't prepare me for the violence it would unleash.

“Looks like we found the killer after all” Doctor Doomsday said without emotion. “Congrats on solving the case, Steven.”

WalkMan helped me to my feet as I tried to blink away the spots still obscuring my vision. I quickly wished I hadn’t. ShepHeard was laying on his back by the barn, clearly dead even from this range. A cow walked to the corpse and nudged it with its nose before lying beside the body, curling up next to it like a dog and mooing sadly.

I… I had killed ShepHeard? No, this didn’t make sense, I was only here to investigate the crime, I didn’t want him dead. I hadn’t even met ShepHeard. This didn’t make any sense at all.

“You… you did this” I stammered, glancing at Doctor Doomsday. “I didn’t want to murder him, I didn’t even mean to fire that, I…”

“No, you didn’t murder him” Doctor Doomsday said casually, “you committed Involuntary Manslaughter. That’s a completely different crime. Probably negligent discharge too, since you never learned how your literal firearms worked.”

I stared at my hands. They trembled slightly, reflecting the moonlight on the marks and punctures that Vincent the Velociraptor had engraved with his teeth.

WalkMan placed a hand on my shoulder and gently squeezed. “It’s not your fault,” he said softly.

“Yes, it is.” Doctor Doomsday said. “He needs to learn responsibility from this. Absolving him won’t-”

I glared at the madman in a robot body. “Responsibility? That’s rich coming from you, asshole. Take us back to our time. NOW.”

Doctor Doomsday fell silent. I could sense his building fury even in that robotic frame of his. The eyes glowed a bit brighter, and his fists groaned under the pressure his tightening grip inflicted. “You think ME irresponsible?” He said with barely contained fury. “I have studied the science of time and space for hundreds of years. Who are you to chastise me in ignorance? Who are you, the son of my Nemesis, to belittle ME? To infantize ME? To underestimate ME!”

Before I could respond, he held out his hand, summoning the time machine and activating it with impossibly fast fingers. The green orb appeared, sucking Doctor Doomsday inside and vanishing just as fast. The only sign he had even been here was the green lightning that danced around before fading from view.

“...shit”, I said. The distant cow mooed in pained agreement.

WalkMan May 4th, 2026 3:46 PM

My son. The child I only knew as a grainy black and white fetus on an ultrasound image was standing beside me. Real. Fully grown. A man around 10 to 15 years older than I was at the present. Well, at my present, not his. Possibly. Less than an hour ago I didn’t know time travel was real, and now I wasn’t even sure if ‘an hour ago’ was true. But what was true was my son. Right here. Real. In the flesh.

And he wanted nothing to do with me.

We rode in some sort of futuristic car driven by a chauffeur with poor style and hygiene. The man’s name was either Alejandro or Uber, and he seemed quite agitated and very unprofessional. He drove right past stop signs and rarely used his turn signals. I’d have to find his Taxi license number and report him to the proper authorities at the soonest opportunity. I couldn’t overlook his blatant violations of traffic laws, even if he was so considerate as to have a box of bottled waters with him. I shifted awkwardly in the middle seat, squeezed in tightly beside Doctor Doomsday and my adult son, and retrieved a quarter from my pocket. I placed the coin on the center console and took a bottle. “Keep the change, Mr. Uber” I said as I twisted the bottle open and sipped the lukewarm liquid.

The driver made eye contact with me through the rear view mirror. “No coin, Venmo or CashApp only” he said, tapping a strange blotchy black and white checkered square image.

“Um…” I said. I didn’t even know where to start with this, it was like he was speaking a foreign language.

“Allow me,” Doctor Doomsday said. He reached across me and waved his robot hand across the picture, and a small ‘ding’ sound chimed from some hidden speaker. The driver checked the bright computer screen mounted on the dashboard and nodded. “Thank you, Alejandro” The robot said, winking with his light bulb eye.

“The future is… strange.” I said as I took another sip.

“Indeed,” the robotic frame holding the consciousness of Doctor Doomsday said, “But is everything unfamiliar not strange until you get to know it? Then it becomes familiar, and the next-”

“We’re here” Steven thankfully interrupted. The car had come to a stop in the parking lot of a large hospital. “Wait here, Alejandro, we’ll be right back.”

We piled out of the car and approached the hospital. The large glass doors slid apart as we approached, probably the result of some futuristic technology or another, and closed behind us once we were inside. A young woman smiled at us from the front desk and asked “Can I help you?”

“Yes, Madam, we’re here to see Grandmommy Longlegs, can you tell us what room she’s in?” Doctor Doomsday asked, clunking one metal arm on the desktop

The woman glanced at Steven and I. “Um, I can’t disclose that information. Only those listed next of kin can visit her currently, I’m afraid.”

Doctor Doomsday’s charismatic aura vanished. It was the same way any narcissist reacted to being told no, even without the usual facial muscles to change his expression. “Madam, what is your name?”

The woman shrank back in her chair, her eyes widening in terror. “T…Tracy” she stammered.

“My dear Tracy, we need to speak with Grandmommy Longlegs on a most urgent matter. We are not related to her, but we are close professional acquaintances. So I will ask again, what room is she in?”

To her credit, Tracy managed to compose herself and sit back upright in her chair. “I cannot reveal that information. If you persist, I will have to ask security to escort you off the premises.”

Doctor Doomsday grinned. It was a wicked grin, completely devoid of humor or warmth. “I would be delighted to see their attempt.”

I stepped forward and placed a hand on the robot man’s shoulder. “That’s enough. We aren’t harming hospital staff.”

Doctor Doomsday glared at me with literal murder in his eyes for a moment before sighing and lowering the intensity of his eyeball lights. He shrugged out of my grip and stomped back outside. Steven and I followed after apologizing to Tracy for her fright.

Doctor Doomsday was pacing in the ambulance bay, leaving bootprint shaped craters indented in the asphalt. “Why did you stop me?” He snapped at me as we approached. “The whole reason I brought you here was to talk to her spiders. And for your information, ‘here’ is both this place and this time.”

“I won’t let you coerce that woman into breaking the law. She could serve jail time for-”

“For what? Helping us figure out who is murdering superheroes? Possibly saving a life before they strike again?” He scoffed, waving a dismissive hand in my direction. “Your strict adherence to the law will cost more than it saves, Hero.”

Steven stepped between us before I could respond. “Knock it off, both of you!” He snarled. “We will find a different way, without coercing innocent people into crime.”

“Fine” Doctor Doomsday snapped. “Let’s see what we can use to our advantage. Say, does that window look a bit infested to you?”

I followed his mechanical gaze and saw the window in question. It was on the 4th floor and looked like an overly eager Halloween enthusiast had gone too far decorating a haunted house. The window bulged with white webs, resembling a front-loaded washing machine overfilled with bedsheets.

“That’s obviously her room. Now, how do we get up there unnoticed?” Steven said. “We can’t just walk past the receptionist unnoticed. Unless… WalkMan, do you know how to turn invisible? Maybe we can-”

“I’ll cause a distraction, you two go up the fire escape while they focus on me” Doctor Doomsday said, then took off in a frighteningly fast sprint towards the parking lot. He rounded the corner and disappeared from sight. Moments later, an explosion shattered the ground floor windows, and a truly evil cackle reverberated off of every surface.

“Let’s go,” Steven said as he rushed towards the fire escape. I couldn’t contain my shock to pretend everything was ok with this scenario unfolding around us.

“You’re ok with this?” I asked, sweeping my hand towards the chaos unfolding around the building. “This destruction, this chaos, all for our convenience?”

Steven paused briefly, mere moments in contemplation, before nodding. “It’s not ideal, but it’s effective. Come on, we can’t waste the opportunity.”

I followed Steven up the rusty stairs, pausing every few steps to hold on to a railing as the building shook with each new ‘distraction’ the robot created. I could hear police sirens approaching from all directions, explosions presumably from cars in the parking lot, and maniacal mechanical glee from the madman. We stopped just outside the spider infested window and exchanged a glance.

“So, uh, you can ask these spiders what happened to Grandmommy longlegs?” Steven asked awkwardly.

“...no?”

“What?”

“I can’t talk to spiders, I just hit things very hard.” I answered honestly.

“No, but you have a song for everything. Just play whatever makes you understand animals.” He said, gesturing to the spiders that were gathering on the other side of the glass.

“What in the hell are you talking about?”

“Your powers! You can do whatever a song powers you up to do!” He yelled angrily.

This was news to me. I had only found out I could fight harder with this one Guns ‘n Roses album in my WalkMan, I never thought about trying it with other artists. Heck, for a time, I thought I was granted powers from a magic music player, or the album itself was something supernatural. I pulled out my WalkMan Cassette player and popped out the album within, inspecting both sides carefully. “No mention of spiders on this at all. So unless one of those zippered pouches on your outfit has a few dozen more cassettes, I think we should regroup and rethink this plan.”

Steven sighed and retrieved a slim black rectangle from his pocket. He began tapping on the flat side and sliding his finger around in quick flicks and gestures. “What are you-” I began, but Steven interrupted me by shoving the device in my face. It showed something calling itself ‘Spotify’ on the screen, an angry green bubble with odd lines running throughout the design.

“Tell me when one of these works” he said as he pushed the play button.

Sound erupted from the rectangle as if it were a top of the line boombox, clear and crisp even without any visible speakers. The words surged straight into my brain, zapping through my nerves like electrons in a power line. I felt a power rising within me, causing my hands to… itch. I glanced at my hands and saw fine hairs erupting from my fingers and palms, curling in on themselves instantly and scraping the skin.

“Damnit, wrong spider powers” Steven said, turning off this rendition of ‘The Itsy Bitsy Spider’.

“That’s about a spider climbing, of course it wouldn’t let me talk to spi-” I tried to chide, but Steven was already selecting another song from his list. The new song began with an ear splitting series of screeches before leaping into an upbeat rendition of a song I recognized. “Talk to the Animals doesn’t work, Steven. I tried this song before.”

Steven huffed in irritation as he closed the Dr. Doolittle soundtrack on his device. A tapping sound drew both of our attention to the window, where a rather large spider in a pink sweater and matching bow was trying to get our attention. It waved one of its hairy legs at us, as if it recognized us and wanted to catch up on old times.

Steven barely glanced at the large arachnid before going back to swiping his device. I waved back to the spider awkwardly. It perked up and clapped its tiny claws together like an excited child.

“How about this?” Steven asked as he pressed the play button.

The music was familiar, a pleasant guitar solo warbling over a classic drum before the lyrics began. “Kansas?” I asked.

Steven nodded. “On the Other Side, 1980. Figured a song from your era might help.”

“Actually, that song came out in ‘79” a new voice said. The large spider adjusted its pink bow on the other side of the window. “Mommy wuves that song.” It said, wiping one of its large black eyes before staring back up at me. “Hey, it’s you! Hi, WalkMan!”

“Did it work?” Steven asked, stepping closer and examining the large spider through the glass.

“I think it did,” I replied. “This one said it knows me.”

Steven’s face grew pale. “Oh SHIT, I didn’t think about that. We need to-”

The spider tilted its head like a confused dog as another explosion shook the building. “Why is Steven upset? This is good young WalkMan, not evil old WalkMan. You told me that yesterday.”

“Evil Old WalkMan?” I asked.

Steven’s eyes grew so wide that I feared his eyeballs might fall out. “Ignore that, just ask what happened with Grandmommy Longlegs and Mom.”

My blood froze. Was she involved in the attack? Was she hurt? We had only just found out she was pregnant in my present, how was I supposed to process all of this shit at once?

“Your Mother was-”

“Not now!” Steven shouted, ducking as a flaming tire bounced off the railing mere feet from us on the fire escape. “Ask him what happened last night! We don’t have time for anything else right now.”

I turned back to the window and saw the large spider resting at eye level. He adjusted the pink bow on his head and, for a moment, I could have sworn he smiled at me. The building shook with another explosion and an accompanying cackle. More sirens wailed around us, and a helicopter passed us overhead. I couldn’t tell if it was a news vehicle or a police one, but either one would have cameras.

“Um, spider?” I asked, leaning in close. The spider adjusted his bow again and nodded, which skewed its bow back to the side. “What happened last night?”

The spider tilted its head like a confused dog, shifting the bow to the other side of his head in the process. “Why?”

“Uh, Steven told me to ask you, that’s why” I replied.

“No, I mean why do you ask? Do you not remember?” The spider asked.

It was my turn to tilt my head in confusion. Maybe there was some spider vocal nuance that I was missing, or the spider had a learning disability. “I’m asking you what happened. Could you please tell me?”

The spider adjusted its bow once again. “But you already know what happened.”

I grabbed the railing as the entire building shook again. Doctor Doomsday was probably running out of things to destroy at this point. I had to be faster. “No, I don’t. Please tell me, erm, spider.”

The arachnid looked hurt. “My name is Bertrand. B like ‘bumble bee’, E like ‘elephant’, R like ‘rabbit-”

“I KNOW HOW TO SPELL!” I shouted in frustration. “Just tell me what the fuck happened last night! Who attacked you? Who killed my wife?”

Bertrand withdrew into the webs and hid his face behind his front legs. “Please don’t yell at me” he said, “It makes me sad.”

“Don’t shout at him!” Steven said, then added under his breath “Your yelling never worked with me either.”

My blood froze in my veins. I had been that kind of father? I had imagined I would be the patient and kind type, a hero to my son as I was a hero to everyone else.

My inner monologue was interrupted by another large impact. Instead of an explosion, it was Doctor Doomsday landing heavily on the platform beside us. His black lab coat was singed at the edge, and his robotic face had several small dents about the size of a 9 millimeter pistol round. “Any progress?” He asked. “I ran out of parked cars to blow up.”

“No, WalkMan is just screaming at Bertrand,” Steven said.

“Because the damn spider keeps asking why I don’t remember!” I snapped. “What’s the use of talking with a bug if it doesn’t even make sense!”

Doctor Doomsday’s eyes glowed briefly, and he smiled. “That’s because he saw you there. You just haven’t been yet.”

Before I could ask what the hell that meant, the robot held out his hand and summoned the time machine. It appeared in his palm again, just like it had back in my time.

“What? No, Doc, don’t!” Steven said in a panic, lunging at the device as it roared to life. The familiar green orb materialized between the three of us, crackling with that awful green lightning. Steven fell into the orb and vanished.

“STEVEN!” I yelled as my son disappeared in the green void. I heard a distorted echo of my own voice from within, with older and younger versions joining into the chaotic chorus. I could have sworn I heard a baby’s voice yelling pseudo-words at one point.

“He’s fine, WalkMan. Get in before the police stop us. We can’t help him from prison.” Doctor Doomsday said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder at the mass of police cars and SWAT vans that were quickly surrounding the building.

“Where… when is he-” I started, but was rudely interrupted by a vicious shove, sending me tumbling into the green orb. I fell through space and time, much more chaotic and violently than the first trip.

Steven

4/4/2026 11:38 AM

My mother was dead. My girlfriend had died alone, murdered in a future devastated by my father’s actions. My father was dead too, killed by my own hand. My only living family wasn’t even legally alive. Was I destined to be surrounded by death? Watching those I loved perish, slaying the rest myself? What was the point of living at all if it only manifested death?

A Doombot forced a cup of warm liquid in my hands, making sure my fingers gripped the beverage before letting go. I drank without even glancing at the mug, draining the scalding cup of vanilla mint tea in one painful chug. The soothing mint did nothing against the burn it simultaneously inflicted. Even as others tried to help me, I seemed destined to harm myself. The Doombot took the empty cup and retreated, closing the door behind him and leaving me alone in Doctor Doomsday’s office once more. Alone. Like I deserved.

Good.

I had always been alone here, I realized as I stared into the void. They didn’t trust me when I, the son of Doctor Doomsday’s Nemesis, WalkMan, joined the Doomsquad. They glanced at the bad Doctor whenever I gave commands, awaiting a confirming nod from their real leader before obeying. Hell, I was only the ‘leader’ of the Doomsquad because Doctor Doomsday had left me everything in his will, and the whole ‘being legally dead’ thing forced me into the role. I wasn’t a leader and I knew it, deep down in my very core I knew I wasn’t the right kind of man for this. I was forcing myself to continue with this charade, this farce, playing pretend while the real work was still being done by the ghost of Doomsquad leaders past.

I looked around the office and winced at my neck’s stiff resistance. How long had I been staring at a random point in Doctor Doomsday’s office? Why was I even here? Last I knew I was in the Wellness clinic. Did they bring me here after I was done, like dropping a child off in their parent’s office?

I discarded the blanket and rose to my feet, stretching protesting muscles and cracking my lower back inadvertently. I examined the room as if it was my first time in here, reading the framed newspaper headlines of Doctor Doomsday’s deeds. “Villain Destroys Bridge During Heist” one read, referring to a dangerously neglected bridge that the government had refused to fix. The DOT had no choice but to repair it properly after the attention the attack drew. “Orphanage Burned By Doctor Doomsday” read another, omitting the fact that it had been a front for child trafficking. Several of the rescued children had been returned to their parents, while a few of the oldest had joined the Doomsquad at their request. “Doctor Doomsday Betrothed To Nemesis?” A tabloid magazine cover read, showing the now infamous photo of the villain ‘proposing’ to WalkMan, a photo that had caused quite the stir in several communities. That ring had cut off WalkMan’s finger. There was no hidden philanthropy behind this one, he had just wanted to mess with his Nemesis. This last one brought a hint of a smile to my sullen features, despite my best efforts.

The office trembled. I grabbed the corner of Doctor Doomsday’s desk with one hand and drew my blaster with the other, sweeping the room in a blur of reflexes. The air grew thick with ionized particulates, and my hair stood on end, like a massive static charge was building around me. A spec in mid air surged into reality, discharging green electric bolts in every direction as it grew. I recognized it just before it spat a humanoid figure into the room.

“GodDAMNIT DOC!” I shouted, holstering the blaster pistol. “How did you get the time machine again?! Or are you some other version of-”

I stopped in my tracks as another humanoid emerged from the void. He was a young man, probably early twenties, with vaguely familiar features on his stoic face. His eyes swept the room before meeting my gaze and freezing in place. His features melted into… awe? Reverence? It was as if he was staring into the eyes of a god.

“...oh” Doctor Doomsday said. “I thought my office would have been empty at this time.”

“Who is that?” I asked. I felt a growing fear that I knew exactly who this was, an anxiety that several trauma therapists had worked overtime to quell. The familiar hardened eyes were softer than I remembered, the lines on the forehead less noticeable, the grey around his temples completely absent.

“WalkMan,” Doctor Doomsday said, gesturing to me for the newcomer’s benefit. “Meet Steven, your son. Steven, meet WalkMan, circa 1990.”

I had no words. Well, I had several, but none were vocalized. I was staring at a version of my father that was 15 years younger than I was at present. A version that hadn’t done the things I hated the current one for. A version that, with the wrong knowledge of the present, could drastically alter the timeline and posed a risk to the very fabric of reality. “Doc, we need to talk privately. Now.” I said. “And he needs to go back even sooner than that.”

An alarm blared an ear splitting shriek, accompanied by a pulsating red strobe light. “WALKMAN DETECTED IN SECTOR 1” A robotic voice shouted through hidden speakers. “ALL DOOMBOTS AND DOOMSQUAD COMBATANTS, DEPLOY TO CONTAIN AND INCAPACITATE IMMEDIATELY. I REPEAT-”

“Whoopsies” Doctor Doomsday said as he tapped furiously at his arm mounted interface. “Forgot to turn that off, one second.”

The alarm ended just as abruptly as it started. Doctor Doomsday raised his wrist to his mouth and spoke, his voice echoing from the speakers in real time. “Disregard, authorization 1-Alpha-Me. False alarm… Well, real alarm, but false pretense. Just… yeah, just disregard. Doctor Doomsday out.”

WalkMan stared at us in confusion. I closed my eyes and tried to remember how my breathing exercise went. Was it breathing in for 3 seconds, out for 5? Was I supposed to breathe in with my nose or my mouth? Should I hold my breath?

“Care to explain what that was about?” WalkMan asked.

“Absolutely not,” I snapped. “Just… stay here, don’t look at anything, don’t speak to anyone. Doc, hallway, NOW.”

I slammed the door as I left the office, leaving a very confused WalkMan behind. Doctor Doomsday folded his arms and glared at me in silence, a technique he had taught me to build uncomfortable silence that a weaker man would feel the need to fill. I knew it worked, and I knew he could theoretically keep his silence forever. Hell, he was probably playing solitaire in his mind while he lay in wait for the trap to be sprung. Living in a purely mechanical form had some neat perks like that.

“I told you not to use the time machine.” I said almost immediately, refusing to play into the psy-op waiting game. “I locked it down. And you blatantly went around me, got the machine, and used it to bring my fucking FATHER into the future. You risked my very fucking existance to, what, translate for a spider? The same thing we tried with ShepHeard’s death, that got us fucking nowhere?” I waved my arms around as I continued, getting more and more upset with the mechanical madman. “You claim to be so benevolent with all your minions, but you flippantly risk erasing us all from time and space for a mild inconvenience?!”

“My theory seems to be accurate,” Doctor Doomsday said coldly. “I hypothesized it would have minimal risks, and since we’re all still here, it seems you are becoming irate over nothing.”

“SEEMS? You risked everything over SEEMS?!?!”

“Yes. Any action taken in the past has already occurred, as is the nature of ‘past’. Therefore, any time traveling I have done, or will do, has already occurred in said past. There cannot be a ‘new’ past, by definition. So how about you stop throwing a temperature tantrum and let the adults handle this?”

My jaw dropped. There was so much wrong with all of this that I didn’t even know where to begin. I worked my mouth to start my rebuttal, but the words just refused to come out. I felt like a child again, being yelled at for things outside my understanding or control by the very man waiting behind the office door.

“Let’s discuss this further once WalkMan is back in his own time” I finally said. “But this shit has to stop. Once he’s back, we’re destroying that fucking machine, and hashing out who is actually in control here.”

Doctor Doomsday clapped his hands, making a loud ‘clunk’ sound like a mid-sized car crash. “Splendid! Let’s bring WalkMan to Grandmommy Longleg’s recovery room and ask her children what happened. Hopefully, with WalkMan’s help, we can catch whoever is killing my friends with my own weapons.”

He spun on his heels and threw open the office door, startling the young version of my father. WalkMan leapt into what I recognized as a Judo stance as the door slammed into the far wall. “Time to help, Hero. How do you feel about spiders, elderly women, and interrogations?”

WalkMan 12:25 PM, 10/21/90

A small bell chimed pleasantly as I shoved the Police station’s door open, dragging the unconscious man inside behind me. The officer at the reception desk leapt to his feet and unlocked the inner door without a word, ushering us into the holding cells. I hefted the man onto the bed, tucking a pillow under his head and the blanket over his clothes. The officer looked puzzled, but I headed off his questions with a finger to my lips. He nodded and withdrew with me, locking the cell behind him.

“Defecting Soviet spy” I told the officer once we were out of earshot. “Brought him unconscious as a cover. The CIA will arrive to collect him in a few hours. Do not let anyone speak to him. If anyone besides agent Weber asks about him, you don’t say a word. Got it?”

The officer’s jaw dropped. The poor guy probably signed on to the force to protect his community and rescue cats, not playing in international espionage. I tried to comfort him with a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “You’re going to do fine, son. Chances are-”

The officer shrugged out of my grasp and pointed outside. I followed his finger and saw… green lightning? Some sort of electricity arcing from nothingness into nearby benches and light posts, striking whatever was in its path. A green dot appeared in the epicenter and quickly grew into a green orb. Whatever this was, it was causing a public disturbance.

I leapt into action, pulling my headphones into position over my ears and rewinding the Sony WalkMan in my pocket. My belt of cassette tapes clacked as I ran towards the orb, ready to fight whatever this thing was. Could it be a Soviet weapon? Did they track Dimitri from the safehouse somehow? Maybe it was some new super villain, or an alien, or even-

A human shaped robot jumped out of the disturbance. The machine was sleek black everywhere except his eyes, which glowed an otherworldly red stare of unmistakable evil. It wore a black leather lab coat and a scowl. “WALKMAN!” It shouted.

The small device in my pocket responded with an audible click, signaling the cassette tape was fully rewound. I pushed the play button and waited for the music to grant me the powers I needed. I felt the power surge through me as the song filled my ears and soul.

“WALKMAN!” The robot shouted again, glancing around with a predator’s steely gaze. “Does anyone know where WalkMan is? I need to talk to him. You there, with the baby carriage, do you know where… ok, have a nice day ma’am. Does anyone know where I can find WalkMan?”

I waited until the robotic menace tried to ask another bystander before I leapt from my hiding spot and charged. ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ powered up my punch enough to dent the side of the metallic face as I struck, sending the metal demon flying. It tumbled into a trash can, adding the crime of littering to the public disturbance it was creating.

“WalkMan! There you are, how have you been?” The robot asked as it rose to its feet. The metal monster didn’t seem to even notice it had been punched in the face with enough force to kill a normal man several times over. “I ask because I know how you will be, and it’s-”

I tackled the robot, driving it to the ground with my shoulder and the sick guitar solo blaring in my ears. The pavement cracked under the impact, breaking a nearby hydrant and spraying water high in the air. I rolled off the robot and out of the downpour, careful to keep my actual WalkMan dry. This strange black robot didn’t seem to mind getting soaked in a deluge of hydrant water.

“I came back here for your help, WalkMan” it said, “But I’m always down for a fight with my Nemesis. You have NO idea how much I’ve missed this.”

I raised my fists as the cassette player started the next song in the album. The heavier tone and growling lyrics of ‘It’s So Easy’ spread a different kind of power through me, a faster and more hectic kind of combat prowess that let me easily dodge the red laser that the robot unleashed towards me. I rolled over the broken asphalt and threw an uppercut that would have taken a boxer’s head clean off, but merely glanced off the robot’s metal chin. The robot kicked me in the chest and sent me soaring. I landed in a decorative shrubbery, unhurt besides my pride.

“That was fun, but we should really get back to business” the robot jeered as it approached, wiping hydrant water and road dust off it’s lab coat. “I’m from-”

‘Nightrain’ burst from the headphones, flooding me with the power of… well, a train, I supposed. I rose to my feet and ran at the robot, building momentum that would not yield to anything, not even this strange robot. I lowered my shoulder and plowed through the metal man and the building behind him. I felt him claw at my back as I drove him through brick walls and glass windows, only slowing when I heard a civilian scream in terror somewhere in front of me. The sound of Axl Rose’s screaming voice suddenly vanished as momentum threw the robot off of me.

“Gotcha!” The robot shouted in insane delight. It stood in the rubble, clutching my WalkMan in its hand. “Now let’s see, I think this particular album had…”

He opened the device and clutched the cassette tape in his hand, squinting its red eyes at the label. He flipped it and inserted the tape back in on the reverse side and snapped it closed, casually tossing the device back to me. “I believe that is an appropriate track to listen to while I explain my proposal.”

I grabbed the WalkMan in mid-air and slapped the headphone plug back into the jack in one fluid motion. The robot hadn’t damaged it, only changed the track that the album would play next. It didn’t really matter which song played next, all of the tracks on Guns n’ Roses ‘Appetite for Destruction’ provided some sort of positive combat power for me.

The song began with a plucky, up tempo guitar pattern that I recognized as ‘Sweet Child of Mine’. The robot grinned and held his hands in a ‘surrender’ pose. “Your son needs you in the future. I cannot say more without risking the timeline.”

I froze. Matilda had only just found out she was pregnant last week, how in the hell did this robot… well, that gave it’s claim of being from the future some validity.

“Why don’t you ask future me to help?” I growled, raising my fists and ignoring the blood that trailed down my forearms. I must have cut them on the glass I had run through, or perhaps the rebar sticking out of the ruined ice cream parlor.

“You… you aren’t exactly a present father in my time” the robot said. “Again, I can’t say without, you know, unraveling the very fabric of the universe. Probably. I’m willing to give it a try if you’d like. I’ve lived a long and fulfilling life. But young Steven has not.”

“I’m having a son?” I blurted out, unable to stop myself.

“FUCK!” The robot shouted, stomping in the debris and sending a puff of dust in the air. “See? That’s new information in this timeline, that could have serious future implications! Just… just come back to the, erm, my present, your future, and help your boy? Please?”

Please. This time traveling robotic maniac had said ‘please’. Had a villain ever said ‘please’ to me before?

“I’ll go” I said, “For my child. But if this is some sort of trick, I will not hesitate to end you.”

The robot grinned. “Oh, that is more true than you know. I wasn’t always a robot, you know.”

He held out a hand and a green box appeared in his palm, as if summoned from the ether. He tapped a few buttons and the machine roared to life, zapping a green orb behind him like the one he had appeared in. “Shall we?”

Doctor Doomsday
9:00 AM, 4/4/26
I left Steven wrapped in a heated blanket in the Doctor Doomsday Clinic for Emotional Wellness. My personal therapist there was trained in bereavement therapy, which she had used to help me through the loss of my wife and children all those years ago. I trusted her with my life, and now with Steven’s too. All of the therapists at my free mental health clinic were personally vetted by my minions and I extensively.

Chairman Static was waiting for me outside, floating around the top of an ancient oak tree in the parking lot. He seemed to be observing a particularly large bird nest.

“Could you kindly float down here, Static?” I called up to him. “Or should I climb up to your level?”

The hero floated down like a limbless Mary Poppins after a freak industrial accident. “How is Steven?” He asked, sounding genuinely concerned.

“He’s in good hands” I told the limbless hero. “But he’s got a lot to process. I’m assuming control of the Doomsquad again while he recovers. Now, tell me what the Union knows about Anchor Woman’s death.”

Chairman Static glanced around, scanning for any potential eavesdroppers. Once he was content that nobody was dropping any eaves, he floated into conspiratorial range. “Anchor Woman was escorting Grandmommy Longlegs to her residence. They never made it. Grandmommy Longlegs is currently in a coma at St. Mercy’s hospital. Anchor Woman was…” he shuddered in mid air, closed his eyes, sighed deeply, and forced himself to continue. “Anchor Woman was consumed by spiders.”

I blinked, which involved more circuits and LED’s than a regular human body usually needed for the gesture. “So Anchor Woman, knowing that Granny’s spiders were instructed to kill her if their link was severed, was killed by said spider hoard? Did she suppress her? Why would-”

“Grandmommy Longlegs’s injury was caused by a 0.38 mm laser.”

I clenched my fist until pressure warnings overlaid across my vision. “The same used to kill ShepHeard.” I snarled.

“The same used to kill hundreds of-”

“Irrelevant” I interrupted. “I can account for those. What I can’t account for, is two of my friends being shot by my own proprietary weaponry. Were there any witnesses?”

Static shook his head. “Nobody saw what happened, except the spiders themselves. And Grandmommy Longlegs isn’t awake for translation. Although if she was, she could just tell us herself, I suppose.”

“And there are no other known heroes that can speak to animals?”

“The only people in our records who could do that are ShepHeard, Grandmommy longlegs, and WalkMan, and none are here to help us at the present.”

I blinked in surprise. It was so obvious, I scolded myself for not thinking of it myself. The solution had been within my grasp the whole time. “Thank you, Chairman Static. Could you excuse me?” I said as I left without waiting for his response.

“Don’t you want to look at the crime scene?” Static yelled at my back. I projected my response through the rear mounted speakers so I could continue my stride unimpeded.

“Nope. Not now, at least. Maybe sooner.”

“What? Do you mean later?”

I grinned, but didn’t answer. I most certainly did not mean later. I summoned a ride from a Doombot driver, like my own exclusive Uber but with less hostility to the end user, and tapped the destination into the GPS.

“Driving to: The Doomfort” The Doombot chauffeur said. He was a standard combat frame, except for the exquisitely tailored suit and white silk gloves covering his four hands. “Estimated arrival in 23 minutes, 12 seconds. Would you like to listen to any music on the way?”

“Yes, please,” I said. “Play a sample of every song in our WalkMan archive, and tell me what powers they would have manifested in him.”

The DoomDriver turned on the stereo with one of his extra arms, never taking his two standard ones off the wheel, and took off as the first song filled the vehicle. I closed my eyes and listened to the musical snippets and the known superpower effects they had bestowed on my dead nemesis. I flagged any songs that would be useful for download to my frame’s digital library. The sound acquired an echo as we entered the parking deck of the Doomfort, then died completely when we parked. I patted the minion on his shoulder as I stepped out of the car and into the elevator.

“Which floor?” The attendant Doombot asked, holding his white gloved hand near the control panel.

“Logistics, please” I replied. The mechanical fingers inside the white glove pressed the appropriate button and we began our descent. I found myself humming one of the songs from the WalkMan file, and couldn’t help chuckling to myself. It was poetic, really, which songs had which effects on my nemesis.

The elevator slowed to a gentle stop and the doors slid open with a pleasant chime. “Basement level 18, Logistics, Storage, and hot / cold spas.” The attendant said cheerfully. I winked and strode out like I owned the place. Stephan glanced up from his ergonomically arranged desk as I entered his domain.

“How’s the baby, Stephan?” I asked cheerfully. There was always time for pleasantries with your minions, and even the most basic of personal questions showed that you cared about them. It was what separated a villain and a super villain.

“He’s still not sleeping, but that’s kinda the norm for newborns.” Stephan said around a yawn. His slightly red eyes were underlined by dark bags, signs of either sleep deprivation or a good cry.

“Take the next 3 months off for paternity leave” I said. “Re-assign a Doombot to your duties and bond with your family. That’s an order, Son.”

Stephan blinked in surprise. “Really? Thank you, sir!”

I tapped a command into my wrist screed, summoning Doombot 5233 to Logistics and assigning it Stephan’s current duties. “Of course, this does not affect your current PTO hours. Let me know if you three need anything from us, babysitting included.”

Stephan stood from his well worn chair and hugged me. “You are the best, Boss. I’ll send some photos to the Doomsquad Slack channel.”

I patted his back and sent him on his way. The elevator spat out Doombot 5233 to make room for Stephan to enter, and with another wave he was gone. Doombot 5233 took his place behind the desk, ignoring the chair and extending his arms to compensate for the keyboard’s height. The mechanical man’s fingers flew across the keyboard as he logged in.

“Bring me the time machine, director access clearance.” I ordered.

Steven

Dawn came way too early. It arrived at the expected time, but it wasn’t welcome in my windows quite yet. I fumbled with the remote in my mechanical hands to try to dim the polarized glass, but ended up turning the ceiling lights on instead. I surrendered to the morning’s implied threats and got out of bed. The heated tiles felt wonderful on my bare feet as I got dressed and ran over my notes. This favor for the Hero’s Union was getting annoying already.

We knew the approximate time of the murder, and had an eyewitness account of a blurry figure of a person firing a red laser. The Doomsquad lasers were red. The hole in ShepHeard’s forehead was the right size and burn level of a Doomsquad laser. All we needed to do now was go over the laser firing logs, if Doombot 0001 had finished compiling all the data. That should be a quick and easy way to identify the murder weapon, and who it was registered to. Hopefully, we would just go talk to the gun’s registered owner, and work things out from there.

I opened the door. Something large and fast slammed into me, driving me down to the heated floor that didn’t feel quite as nice on my head as it had on my feet. I raised my arms in defense as teeth snapped inches above my face, sparking against my metallic fingers as it tried again and again to find something made of flesh.

“No Vincent! Bad raptor, down!” Doctor Doomsday’s voice echoed down the dormitory hall. The razor sharp teeth retreated along with the immense pressure from my chest.

“Are you alright, my boy?” He asked as I struggled back to my feet. “Vincent got a little too excited to see you again, apparently.”

“This is Vincent?” I asked, jamming one thoroughly dented mechanical finger at the full grown dinosaur. “The baby dinosaur that hatched last fucking night?”

Doctor Doomsday made a harsh clicking sound, summoning the dinosaur to his side. I couldn’t help but notice the leather collar and name tag dangling from the apex predator’s neck like an oversized pet as he bounded to his robot father’s side. “In the flesh!”

My mangled mechanical hand groaned as I clenched it into a fist. “You used the goddamn time machine to age it!” “No, no, that’s nonsense” he said, patting the air to pacify my temper. “I used the time machine to potty train him. The aging was an indirect result of how long that training took.”

I pushed a button on the back of my hand and held it to my ear. “Stephan? Yeah, it’s Steven. Lock down the time machine, restricted to my access only. Understood?”

“Affirmative, sir.” The head of logistics said.

I pointed at Doctor Doomsday and his new pet. “No more time travel. No more loopholes about sending probes. None. Nada. Zilch. Any questions?”

“One, yes” he said as he pet Vincent on the snout. “How are Stephan and his husband doing with the baby? You didn’t ask him about his personal life.”

“The… what?”

“Good lord, boy, you need to pay more attention to the Doomsquad! That strong familial bond we have is our core strength! I took blood samples from the two of them and genetically modified a donor egg to have traits of both fathers. The child was born four days ago.” He shook his head in disappointment. “If I hadn’t signed both our names on the card, they might have resented you for years.”

I sighed. It was hard enough running the actual business side of the Doomfort, I couldn’t even comprehend adding this level of community management on top of it as well. “You’re right, sorry.”

“Apology accepted, my boy.” He said with a wink. “I’m just trying to be a good mentor, that's all.”

I changed the subject. “Has Doombot 0001 processed the weapon logs yet?”

Doctor Doomsday kneeled down to scratch at Vincent’s proffered belly. The Utahraptor kicked one leg like a dog as it received the aforementioned belly rubs, its massive claw tearing large gashes through Doctor Doomsday’s lab coat. He didn’t seem to notice as he endured claws that would have disemboweled a normal man. “Yes, he requested a meeting. Didn’t you see the memo?”

I rolled my eyes. “Nope. Let’s just get this over with. Have someone send donuts and coffee to the conference room.”

Breakfast was waiting for us when we arrived. Donuts, croissants, bagels, coffee and my non-dairy cream all stood waiting on the table, and a dead goat rested on the floor for Vincent. A large water bowl beside the carcass had his name laser etched on the side, as well as a few cartoon hearts.

“What took ya’ so long?” Doombot 0001 asked as we took our seats. “Do y’all have any idea how irritatin’ these lights are to me?”

“Have you ever tried, I don’t know, sunglasses?” I snapped as I grabbed a donut and my seat. “There’s got to be some way to install shader lenses to those optical sensors.”

“Yeah, you’ve mentioned that before” 0001 grumbled. “I’ll look into it. But the reason we’re all here now is this.”

The lights dimmed as the holo-projector brightened, as if the device had siphoned the illumination from the room. A red 3D image of a standard Doomsquad laser pistol appeared above the projector and slowly began to rotate.

“All Doomsquad blasters have a serial number, a live fire log that tracks time and GPS location, and a unique laser signature” 0001 said professorially, pointing out each detail with a yellow highlight as he mentioned them. “Each and every Doomsquad blaster has these, even the ones on the Doombots and any Doomsquad member with an integrated prosthetic. Even your phalangeal barrage-”

“My what?” I asked.

“Did ya’ not read the manual? I put a lot of work into that, and y’all don’t even bother readin’ the damn thing. I bought a license for stock images for that darn thing!”

“Ok, calm your bits” I said, patting the air with my mechanical hands. “I’ll read the manual. Can you give me a quick-”

“Finger guns”.

“...ok, could you go into a little more detail than that?”

“Your index fingers have lasers built into them,” Doctor Doomsday said. “I can teach you how to use them after the meeting.”

I stared at my hands, careful to point away from myself as I examined my literal firearms. “You mean I could have accidentally killed someone by pointing at them? The fuck, triple oh?”

The cantankerous robot closed his mechanical eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “It. Was. In. The. Manual.”

“Regardless,” Doctor Doomsday chimed in, steering the meeting back on track, “the laser files?”

0001 clicked a few buttons and a new image appeared, showing a list of serial numbers and time stamps, with GPS coordinates listed beside each one. The list was replaced by a globe, with each shot marked by a red dot at the location. Hundreds of dots spread across dozens of cities around the planet, including three in Antartica. I’d have to ask Doctor Doomsday about those later.

“This is every shot fired by every Doomsquad laser in the past 2 weeks” He said. “No shots were logged in the area or time of ShepHeard’s death.”

The table was silent for a long moment, save for Vincent’s constant gnawing on his goat-meal.

“Um, didn’t Chairman Static say he died by a 0.38 mm laser? That’s our proprietary laser type, right?” I asked, glancing at the mad mechanical man that had invented the damn thing.

“Indeed,” he said as he examined the holograph, leaning forwards and resting his arms on the table. “Are there any reports of missing weapons?”

Stephan spoke up as he leafed through his notes. “None missing, but two were reported as destroyed in the field and the remains not recovered. It’s possible someone could have reverse-engineered those, but it’s highly unlikely they could have in the time between then and the murder.”

“Unlikely, or impossible?” Doctor Doomsday asked as his pet dinosaur finished eating the livestock.

“Barring any as of yet unknown breakthroughs in AI or robotic science, impossible.”

“What? It’s just a laser, we’ve fought plenty of people with lasers” I said, and instantly regretted it. It seemed like everything I had said only displayed my ignorance in a room full of professionals.

“Well, yes, but also no” Doctor Doomsday said with a wink that was probably meant to be reassuring, but came across as patronizing. “But the technology is quite advanced. And by advanced, I mean from the future. I acquired the design from an infantry laser rifle from the year 2630.”

“How many times have you used the damn time machine?” I snapped. “I know you think it’s trivial, but you could erase us all from existence!”

“Now now, don’t be hasty” He said, patting the air. “This was going to the future, not the past. If anyone was erased, it’s the future people I left alive.”

I leveled a finger at Doctor Doomsday, who flinched out of the way. Right. Finger lasers. “So the only possibility is someone recovering and using one of the two not quite destroyed lasers. If we get the locations of each, we can investigate-”

My orders were interrupted by frantic knocking on the conference room door. The minion entered without waiting for permission, and was followed by Chairman Static and a uniformed police officer. The latter looked around nervously, as if expecting the decorations to all be traps that could kill him at any moment. In reality, only 45% of them were armed, and none of them had anything lethal.

“Sorry, boss” the minion said, annoyingly directed at Doctor Doomsday. “You said Static could come in any time, and he insisted this cop comes with. We took his gun, after some… convincing… but yeah.” He said awkwardly. He looked more uncomfortable than the cop was.

Doctor Doomsday smiled and dismissed the minion by name. Chairman Static floated his way to the table and lowered his limbless torso into an empty chair. The officer remained standing, arms held tight against his sides as if afraid to soil his uniform sleeves on the evil walls. I noticed Vincent locking his gaze on the cop, becoming absolutely still and pointing like a hunting dog at an unsuspecting duck.

“Steven, we have a… situation.” Chairman static said.

“Yeah, we’re working on it,” I replied.

“No, there’s… well, I’ll defer to Officer Snyder.”

The nervous police officer stepped forward, removing his hat and holding it with both hands. He took a deep breath and said words that etched themselves directly onto my brain. “Steven, we are here to deliver bad news. Your mother, Anchor Woman, died last night.”

The man lay still in a crater, save for the aftershocks of the impact that had created it. His skin tight suit was torn to shreds, and the flesh exposed beneath wasn't in much better shape.

Why did these damn hero's always wear spandex? Is showing off your crotch vital to the hero process? Could Justice not be upheld without a wedgie? It certainly hadn't helped Whittler here. He was damn near dead, even with the overly clingy fabric still covering most of his indecent bits.

Near dead. I walked into the crater to check the validity of that statement.

Whittler groaned, rolling to his side and wincing at the pain it caused. I grinned.

"So you live" I growled, flexing my hand to extend the dinosaur claws within. "How delightful."

Whittler pulled at something beneath him, struggling to even lift his arm to shuffle some dirt around. I cackled at his feeble attempts to continue fighting. "There's no wood here to shape, Whittler. Your standardized number 2 pencil has been sharpened down to the metal crimp for the ineffective eraser of 'justice'. It's time heros went extinct in this-"

The man flopped on his back, revealing a gnarled root clutched in his bloodied fist. The underground wood leapt from the dirt and straightened into a spear, twirling the end into a jagged point. Whittler threw the root spear with all the strength he had left.

The spear clanked harmlessly just a few feet from my feet.

"Pathetic" I sneered, swishing my tail in annoyance. "Let's see who you really are, before I get too hungry."

I grabbed his mask and, with a mighty tug that the tattered garment would have considered overkill, ripped it from his head.

Whittler blinked at me. I blinked right back.

"Um... I don't know you" I admitted.

Whittler was a tanned man, with thick black hair and a scraggly beard to match. His face was... basic. Normal. He had no distinguishing features. He was so.... boring.

I turned to the news cameras that were capturing our final battle. "Do any of you know who this is?" I sneered, not too menacingly to the reporters I knew on a first name basis. In my line of work, I had to keep a good relationship with the press, mostly so I could have my demands and announcements published with reliable accuracy. There were few things worse in this world than watching your glorious manifesto read out on Fox news with the meaning totally skewed to their deplorable takes.

The press all shook their heads, murmuring to each other in hushed tones.

I glanced back at Whittler. He laid his head back against the crater and closed his eyes, sighing deeply.

I stomped one clawed foot on his chest. "You aren't allowed to die yet" I snarled in his face. I could almost taste the blood that continued to pool around him, temporarily turning the crater into a miniature gruesome lake. "Tell me your name."

Whittler coughed up a bloody bubble. "John" he whispered.

I snarled and pressed harder against his chest. "Your last word will be your last name. I can end your suffering. Your pain. I know you just want to close your eyes and drift into the dark. But I must know who I've fought all these years. I MUST."

"John... Doe..." he said.

I could feel his chest struggling to rise under my clawed foot. I didn't let it. I made him a promise, and I was a Dinosaur-Man hybrid experiment of my word.

I stomped. John Doe, AKA Whittler, died.

The air was thick with tension. The press and law enforcement gathered a safe distance from us waited. Even the birds had stopped their incessant chattering. Finally, one police officer discovered that his guts were good for more than just digesting donuts. "What was his name?" He asked.

I snarled, flinging my tail dramatically as I turned to go. "That is for me alone to know. You can call him... John Doe."

"Kndd, arg groe w wwefr toriew thewee." Frr ofo goijrrr nrf.

"What the hell? What you say?"

"Kdjnje eeddfe." Eroggg gnoiigg grekalsjf frelo kee elfj oi ejofi jeoifekf. Ke rot nnjrj f fiejf doweed eweifje.

"...huh. That wasn't very helpful, Chief."

"Arg groe w wwefr toriew thewee." D Frot ttoe do ireowenf isaae.e foriejsa. reiergje ejerogsirg rneaseori. "

"I guess by the pencil and paper, you either want me to write somethin', or smoke somethin'. Honestly, I'm down for either."

"Frrry. Daergiu frew wojiojfi feiww ffoierjweef. Ffewhif fgriwe sedrgf rrguhurir gfhire eoeriuhgfh." Gee of hjoawqert gorije eehwn whoeuirwf woiej ff fjhow foierjwerdif woirgo growewhf hw.

"I ain't got a lighter, so I'll do the writin', I suppose. What do you want me to write?"

Grre. "Rtiurehje Fwwwrh Tawerfgh ewwiww". Jeescjufir.

"You ain't gotta wave your hands around like that, brother. I'll write down wha'ever you want, just..."

"Arg groe w wwefr toriew thewee.". Ddsethrdft o gjroej gjeorg oaregwojwf.

"Erm... How about my lines from Pirates Of the Caribbean? I was in the 3rd one, I think. Maybe the 4th. They all kinda just merge together after the first two."

FREEPREE. "ARG. GROE. W WWEFR. TORIEW. THEWEE."

"I think I could stumble my way through the plot of the first, but I don't know why you'd want me to."

"GREEEM. FGREEE. LDE EOEEKFFEE!" Efee oprpe e irgjoer, reoigjoiree ergjoeg tottoooot.

"Look, man, y'all gotta just tell me what you want in plain English. I don't know whatever language you're yapping to me in, and quite frankly, I don't like your tone.

"DEEERRRPWEL. DEERPEFREG. ARG. GROE. W WWEFR. TORIEW. THEWEE." reoergojoeirgerjogijvv oweij ffgijwjie i woiejfo jwoje wwppp prej oigjroee erogijoiej weoijf ow wopij ejrwe gjrpjwj! "Frieo groei ggroie gprej w, wiefjo f reijwef weloe!"

"Man... just get me a joint and fuck off. I don't know what y'all are so invested in the Pirate's movies, those were hundreds of years ago, and I was only in one or two of 'em."

Steven

We landed back at the Doomfort shortly past one in the morning. The cafeteria had long ceased serving dinner and was busy preparing breakfast, with a small selection of cuisine left for any hungry late-night operators. I grabbed a chicken caesar wrap and collapsed into an empty booth. My robotic fingernail sliced cleanly through the environmentally friendly paper wrapping and the spinach-based tortilla beneath, smearing my fingers with caesar dressing. I was too tired to be annoyed by the minor inconvenience. Munching on the mediocre sandwich, I pulled up my notes on my datapad.

“What are you doing here?” Doctor Doomsday asked.

I replied without looking away from my notes. “Thinking” I muttered through a mouthful. “There’s no motive so far, and-”

Doctor Doomsday placed a hand on my shoulder. It was surprisingly warm, considering it was mostly made from titanium. I turned around to finally glance up into those glowing red eyes that somehow still conveyed genuine concern. “It’s late, Steven. Go get some sleep.” He said softly.

I shook my head, spilling even more caesar salad dressing from the corner of my mouth. “I can’t just go to sleep, this is gonna bother me all night. It’s like getting a song stuck in your head, but you can’t recall the lyrics. It’ll drive me mad.”

The mechanical man chuckled as he took one of the empty seats at my table. “I can assure you, my boy, that you are nowhere near madness. You’ll know when that line is crossed. Other people will start treating you much nicer, and offer less enthusiasm in their ever more fleeting conversations. That’s one of the reasons I make such an effort to be so personable with the Doomsquad.”

I was about to reply when a sharp chime sounded from the Doctor’s body. His red eyes flashed bright in excitement as his hand flew to his chest. “Speaking of madness, it’s almost time!”

“What…” I tried to say, but stopped before I could even begin when Doctor Doomsday’s chest swung open, revealing what looked like the glowing red insides of a toaster and a cylinder within. He took the container out and set it on the table, casually closing his chest cavity like he was closing a fridge door. He unscrewed the top and gently lifted an egg from within.

“The hell is that?” I asked.

“An egg.”

I rolled my eyes and took another bite of dinner. “You know what I mean. What’s inside?”

The egg decided to show me itself. A tiny claw broke through the spotted shell, followed by a tiny reptilian hand. Doctor Doomsday helped the creature free itself from its calcified cage and wiped the goopy grime from its snout with a dining hall napkin. “Utahraptor ostrommaysi” he announced proudly. “The first one born in 135 million years. I think I’ll call him ‘Vincent’. I’m hoping it will imprint on me as its mother, like some birds do.”

I stared at the tiny newborn dinosaur and sighed. “Have you been using the time machine again? I thought we had agreed not to use it in any potential reality-altering ways.”

“I haven’t traveled forwards or backwards in time since our escape from WalkMan” he said as he tickled the dinosaur’s chin. “I sent a probe.”

“That’s no better than going back yourself! Who knows what kind of butterfly effect style of catastrophic collapse you may have caused!”

“Oh relax, Steven. I took precautions. I sent the probe back to the time and place that the now fossilized Utahraptor fossil was discovered in the Dalton Wells Quarry, right after it had died but before the DNA could degrade too far. The probe took a blood sample from a corpse. It was completely sterile and was only there for less than 3 seconds. In and out. And now I have you little cutie! Who’s daddy’s little chomper?” The last bit was directed at the dinosaur, whom he was now feeding a morsel of my caesar covered chicken. The dinosaur seemed happy enough to eat its own evolutionary descendent.

“It wasn’t your call to make by yourself” I countered. “One little fuck up, and we could have been erased from the timeline! Hell, you might have altered human evolution entirely! We could all have never been born, and for what, a dumb pet?”

Doctor Doomsday made a shushing sound to the tiny predator on the table. “Don’t listen to Uncle Steven, Vincent. He gets cranky when he’s sleepy.”

“Come on, Doc, this is serious”

“I am being serious, Steven. Go get some sleep. It's the body's time to repair, rejuvenate cells, and process emotions, essential for everything from daily performance to long-term wellness.”

“No, about the nonchalant time travel. Don’t unweave the fabric of reality on a whim.”

Doctor Doomsday looked up from his pet as it sloppily ate more of my dinner. “Nonsense, Steven. I’ve given it a lot of thought, since I don’t need sleep, and I have developed a theory: Time cannot actually be ‘changed’. Anything that has happened in the past has already happened by definition. That includes any incursions that we have made, or will make. Those actions took place in the past, and there is only one past. While I’d prefer not to test this hypothesis by detonating a nuclear weapon somewhere noticeable, for example, Mount Rushmore, I’m confident that anything we will do or will have done has already occurred.”

I stared at the robotic madman as he picked the last morsel of chicken meat from my discarded sandwich and fed it to Vincent, who gobbled it up without hesitation. “That… you might actually be insane, Doc.”

He chuckled. “I’ve been called worse things by more powerful people, my boy. It’s nothing new to me.”

I gave up. Maybe he was right, about the time travel impact theory, but most definitely about the dangers of sleep deprivation. “I’m going to bed. Try not to fuck up the timeline while I’m asleep.”

Doctor Doomsday dabbed caesar dressing off the corner of Vincent’s snout. “Like I said, my boy, I’m not sure if I even could.”

Chapter 6

Grandmommy Longlegs

Bertrand adjusted his new bow as his brothers and sisters helped me out of the terrified man’s car, hoisting me upright with webs strung throughout the surrounding trees. The robotic man and his side-kick retrieved my walker from the trunk and wrestled it into position before me. I could have helped the pair by telling them how it unfolded like an origami swan, but it was more enjoyable to watch them struggle. Call me old-fashioned, but I loved watching people working with their hands, figuring out solutions with only their wits. I smiled as I accepted the walker, as much from politeness as amusement. Bertrand scurried up the walker, pausing only to secure a folding joint into place before settling into the relatively small dog bed between the walker’s hand grips.

“Thank you, dears,” I said to the Doomsquad leaders. I turned to thank the driver as well, but all I found was a cloud of dust and a pair of taillights receding into the night.

“Oh no!” Steven said unconvincingly, “My dairy-free scone was still in there! Dang it.” He flourished his bad acting with an overly dramatic sigh.

“Oh, don’t worry, Bertrand can make you another one when we get back” I said, deliberately calling his bluff. “Won’t you, my boy?”

Bertrand looked up at me and grinned, showing a flash of his impressive fangs. “Oh yes, mommy,” he said, “I would WUV to bake more yummies for the nice man!” He clapped his front legs together in that most adorable way of his in pure, authentic joy, the kind that only genuinely happy children could do.

Steven’s suppressed grin fell into suppressed dread. He hadn’t understood Bertrand’s words, obviously, but there was no mistaking the body language of an enthusiastic child, no matter how many legs they possessed.

“If we could return to the business at hand,” Doctor Doomsday said, “The witness is just over that hill. Would you require assistance walking that far?”

The robotic body hadn’t dulled Nigel Doomsday’s bright charm in the slightest. “Oh, no, thank you dear, I may be old but I can manage a stroll.”

I decided not to mention that dozens of my brood supported my weight with webs strung onto the walker in strategically placed braces. There were just some things that a woman shouldn’t disclose like that in public.

The walk was quite nice by my standards. We strolled through a farm plot, which my brood cleaned of any pests, until we arrived at a barn surrounded by police cars and yellow tape. Doctor Doomsday held the tape up for me to shuffle underneath without bending over. “The witness is just over-”

“What the FUCK is SHE doing here?!” A familiar voice shouted from behind. “Steven, get this villain out of my crime scene, NOW!”

Anchor Woman stormed towards us with the fury of a woman scorned. I could have sworn I saw her eyes glow from pure hatred, although that could have just been my old brain playing tricks on me. Bertrand hunkered down into the small dog bed, leaving only his eyes and his bow peaking over the plaid edge of his fluffy fortress.

“Mom, NO! She’s helping us!” Steven shouted as he leapt between us. “Don’t use your power! Her spiders will kill us all if they lose contact with her!”

Anchor Woman stomped to a halt about arm’s length from him, glaring between us. “Steven, I know you technically work for a villain now, but Grandmommy Longlegs is an actual murderer! She’s not like Doctor Doomsday there, who does good things in bad ways, she’s an actual fucking lunatic!”

She wasn’t wrong, honestly. Most people wouldn’t have the guts to say that in front of me, but she did. She had more balls than the rest of the Hero’s Union 283 put together, and for that, I respected her. Her son had a long way to go before that would happen.

“She’s here to help with the case!” Steven said sternly, still standing between his overprotective mother and I. “She’s going to talk to some spiders that had a vantage point of the murder.”

Anchor Woman glared at Doctor Doomsday. “Really? Is that true?”

Doctor Doomsday waggled his hand. “True-ish. It’s only one spider, technically, but yes. She is here to help us, and I will not allow you or anyone else here to harm her.”

The intensity of her glare could have lit paper on fire. Bertrand glanced up at me as he straightened his bow, unsure if this was turning into a fight or if he should just wait. I smiled at him reassuringly, but gave him no commands. If things turned violent, he’d be one of the first to know, followed by several thousand more of my brood.

“And there was no one else that could do this?” She damn near snarled, or maybe it was an angry plea for any kind of alternative. I was much better at reading arachnid emotions than human ones.

“The only registered superpowered individuals that can talk to animals are ShepHeard, WalkMan, and Grandmommy Longlegs, and two of the three are deceased.” Doctor Doomsday said, laying on his polite charm a little too thickly in my opinion. “This is our only option to pursue this line of investigation, unless Chairman Static would rather have us cease our cooperation instead.”

“Fine” she snapped, “you have one hour. If she is here after that, we’ll remove her ourselves.”

“Thank you, dearie” I said sweetly, “You always were one of my favorite nemesis’s.”

“You didn’t need to provoke her further” Doctor Doomsday told me as Anchor Woman stormed back to the police cars and the officers cowering behind them.

“Oh, I know.” I smiled. “That was for the love of the game. Come now, introduce me to this spider you’re so keen for me to meet.”

Steven glanced between us and the receding form of his mother in the dark. “Um, I think I should go talk to mom, get her to calm down before she calls in back-up or something.”

“Clever, Steven” Doctor Doomsday praised his ward as he led me away. “I’ll contact you when we’re done.”

The boy disappeared into the dark, following his mother like a duckling that had drifted away in a pond. I clicked my tongue and shook my head as I let the robot man guide me to the witness.

“That boy just can’t stop letting his parents pull him away from his duty” I observed.

Doctor Doomsday chuckled. “Can you blame him? After the torment his father put him through, abandoning him and only trying to make amends after I weaponized his existence against WalkMan? I may be the closest thing Steven has to a father figure, but Anchor Woman is still his mother.”

“A mother that decided fighting me was more important than raising him” I grumbled.

“A mother that kept him out of danger” Doctor Doomsday snapped. “What would you have preferred, that she brought him along in a harness strapped to her chest?”

That gave me a chuckle. “True. Bertrand would have eaten him like a human veal. But she could have just raised him and let someone else save the city.”

“The city that she lived in? The one she and Steven would have been in danger from your attacks in? She was a single mother, and you’re shaming her for what, keeping her son safe and protecting everyone else?”

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. My own child was part of my brood, fighting alongside millions of his brethren because he could. And my human children… well, they weren’t exactly on speaking terms with me.

“This is where the body was found” Doctor Doomsday said, snapping me out of my self-reflection. “And over there is the witness.”

The spider was an adorable little orb weaver, with a big beautiful abdomen that jiggled and wriggled as it danced across its canvas of intricate webs. I could feel the joy radiating from it as it added the finishing touches to its latest creation.

“Oh my, she’s wonderful,” I said to Bertrand. He wriggled in excitement as we closed the distance to the barn that she was using to prop up her webs.

“Do you need anything before we begin questioning the witness?” Doctor Doomsday asked.

I waved him off without taking my eyes off the tiny bundle of joy. “No, no, just leave me to this. Make sure we are not bothered.”

I felt the orb weaver turn in my direction more than I saw the movement. It’s chubby body and tiny legs made it difficult to tell much from my distance, and my old eyes weren’t helping. “Hello, darling,” I said. “Do you know who I am?”

The orb weaver bowed with her front legs, resembling a puppy about to leap more than anything regal. “Are you the All-Mother?”

I smiled. I couldn’t help it, the spiders all had different and adorable names for me, and hearing a new one was just so heartwarming.

“Yes, dearie. Did you see who killed this man?” I said, gesturing to the spot where ShepHeard had perished.

The spider danced excitedly on her web. “Yes! Yes! I did!”

I waited patiently for her to continue. She didn’t take the hint.

“Who was it?” I asked.

The spider shrugged. It was a difficult gesture to pull off with 8 joints instead of the traditional two shoulders. “I don’t know his name. You are the only Human who I know by name, All-Mother.”

That made sense, I supposed. I didn’t exactly introduce people to my broodlings, besides Bertrand, and I kept forgetting more and more names as I reluctantly grew older. “Can you describe them? What did he do?”

The spider glanced away in shame. “They were too far for me to see clearly” she admitted, like it was a shameful burden instead of a biological limitation. “I couldn’t see anything specific. I only saw the shape of a man rise from the field, and a bright red light, and then ShepHeard was dead.”

“I’m sorry, dearie,” I said softly. “Did you know ShepHeard well?”

She nodded, wiping her eyes with her front legs as if wiping away a tear. “He would check on us, from time to time. He would catch crickets and toss them into our webs. He… he was kind.”

“Thank you, Dearie. I’m sorry for your loss.” I said as I barely held my own tears at bay. I had killed hundreds of people without feeling anything, but now I was crying for a man I hadn’t known? I was growing soft in my old age.

She bowed again before scurrying back to resume her weaving. It was a beautiful web, more intricate than I had first observed with zig zags and swirls and other elaborate flourishes.

“Nigel?” I called out in the dark. “I’m ready to go home now.”

Doctor Doomsday came back as summoned, but he wasn’t alone. Steven and Anchor Woman followed him, with the latter scowling and averting her gaze. “Splendid! What did you learn from our diminutive witness?”

“It was a human, from over there, with a red laser,” I replied. “That’s all she saw.”

Steven pinched the bridge of his nose as he let out an exasperated sigh. “We knew that already. Did the spider give any descriptions? Any leads?”

“Spiders don’t see very far, dearie. I’m surprised she saw anything at all. Now, be a good lad and lead an elderly woman back home. It’s far past my bedtime.”

Anchor Woman shifted uncomfortably. Steven gave her a subtle poke in the ribs with an elbow, and she reluctantly spoke. “I’ll take you home, Longlegs. You’re helping us find a murderer, this is the least I could do to say thanks.”

I grinned. “Oh? That’s lovely, thank you-”

“I’m doing it for Steven, not you” she snapped. “If I-”

Steven stepped between us and pointed a scolding finger at his mother. “No! Remember, her brood will attack anyone close if she’s suppressed. You’re doing this as a Hero helping a volunteer home. Play nice.”

She shrugged him off and glared my way before storming off towards the road. “Fine. Come on, Longlegs, before I change my mind.”

“Goodnight, dearies” I said to Doctor Doomsday and Steven. “Good luck catching the killer.”

Doctor Doomsday

Steven was a good fighter, skilled with his Doomsday laser and hand-to-hand combat thanks to the decade he spent trapped in the future with Doombot 0028’s tutelage. He was a better man, with all of his mother’s compassion and empathy guiding his moral compass. His leadership skills were… lacking, at present, but he was trying his damndest to improve. His records at the Doomfort digital library indicated that he had at least checked out, if not read, over a dozen books on leadership, running your own business, and even one titled “How To Make Friends”. It was hard to tell which book he was currently reading, but I could see his eyes darting back and forth as he stared at the e-reader, flicking the screen every minute or so to flip to the next page.

A small light blinked on in my peripheral vision to indicate an incoming com. The caller ID simply read ‘0001’, my grandpa’s Doombot frame number. “Excuse me, my dear…” I glanced at the nameplate above a small basket of cheap refreshments and a QR code begging for a tip. “Alejandro. Could you please turn the music off? I have a call”

Alejandro slapped a palm against the dashboard, either turning off or breaking the sound system entirely. I supposed he may have been a bit nervous to be driving for such a well known super villain in a robotic combat frame. I scanned the QR code and paid the man enough to replace the dashboard and his speaker system before answering the call.

I set the call on speakerphone “Hi Grandpa, you’re on with Steven and I on speaker”.

The cantankerous clanker cleared his throat, which sounded unnatural and served no mechanical purpose that I knew of. It was one of his ‘core identity markers’, those little habits and mannerisms that kept the human mind grounded in their digital Doombot existence. It was one of my largest contributions to medical science, with countless real world applications. It would have already helped millions of people across the globe if only the research universities would answer my damn letters.

“Howdy Nigel, Steven, and that feller drivin’ the car,” he said. The Uber driver met my gaze in the rear view mirror and shook his head slightly. I winked in reply to his silent plea.

“I think Alejandro would prefer to stay out of this, Grandpa.” I said. The driver nodded enthusiastically before returning his gaze to the country road. “What do you have for me?”

“We got all the data from all active Doomsday laser guns synched” he said, pausing to make a spitting sound that was, unfortunately, another one of his core identity markers. “We have the logs downloading now from the entire arsenal. It should be ready in 5 or 6 hours, depending on 0028’s Netflix activity. He’s hooked on some show ‘bout a guy interviewing a gay vampire feller.”

“Um, can you tell him to stop?” Steven asked without taking his gaze from his e-reader. “It’s kind of important that we-”

“YOU try tellin’ a 9,000 pound murder machine to stop doin’ anything, Steven” Grandpa snapped. “I’ll let y’all know when it’s done.”

The call ended, leaving me staring at my own reflection in the dark mirror of the phone screen. The screen automatically brightened as our Uber left the well-lit main road into the tree tunnel of Grandmommy Longleg’s long and winding driveway. My optical sensors switched to the infra-red setting to compensate, revealing a swarm of spiders hidden amongst the tree branches. They skittered amongst the labyrinth of webs intertwined in the branches as they followed us towards Grandmommy Longleg’s lair.

“The fuck?” Our Uber driver muttered as the super villainess’ home came into view. “Oh HELL no, I’m not going near that. You two can walk from here.”

“What? That’s ridiculous, why-” Steven began, but I cut him off.

“I understand, my good man. Could you please wait here? We will need transportation back once our meeting has adjourned.”

I gave the driver a 5 star review and a generous tip as we got out. Steven fussed with turning off his e-reader, stuffing it into his sling backpack before taking in our surroundings. “Oh… yeah, I owe him an apology.”

Grandmommy Longleg’s house was once a cozy little cabin, but now more closely resembled a tent. Specifically, one of those massive white tents used for outdoor events like weddings or farmer’s markets. Instead of the standard woven cotton, this tent was made of millions of spiderwebs. The whole thing billowed with the wind, shifting like a sail from the devil’s personal schooner. Spiders swarmed the entire thing, repairing webs and cleaning out leaves and old bones from the strands.

I made a sweeping hand gesture to Steven. “Shall we?”

Steven took a deep breath. My bio sensors indicated that it hadn’t lowered his heart rate in the slightest, but he put on a brave front anyways. “After you, Doc.”

I hadn’t exactly been fond of spiders in life, but in this robotic body, I really didn’t mind them. Without the physical sensations of the sticky webs, crawling legs, or venomous fangs, I was completely at ease with the arachnids around us. I strode purposefully through the strands and, after clearing out a space on the door, knocked.

The door groaned as it swung open seemingly by itself, but most likely powered by a complex system of spiderweb pulleys and a disturbing amount of spiders. The interior was surprisingly clean and tidy, as long as you ignored the spiders and webs covering the popcorn ceiling. The top foot or so of each room had been taken over by the spiders and converted to their sticky version of a 20 lane superhighway.

I glanced back at Steven. His face had paled so much that it threatened to blend in with the webs around us. I gave him a wink that was closer to a camera aperture shutter than a genuine warm gesture, but he got the idea. I hoped.

“Grandmommy Longlegs?” I called out, “It’s Nigel, I hope we’re not intruding”.

A single spider poked its head out from a dark hallway, creeping out of the shadows as it appraised us as either food or threats. The spider itself was massive, with its dinner plate sized abdomen and visible fangs casting an intimidating aura that was only mildly counteracted by the pink sweater it wore.

“Bertrand?” An old woman’s voice called from beyond the veil of shadows deep inside the house. “Is it that pesky man again? Tell him to go away.”

The sweater clad monster scurried back towards its master. A few silent moments passed before the house erupted into a frenzy of arachnid activity. Spiders poured from the infested ceiling, crawling down the walls and throughout the home in all directions. Steven yelped, but otherwise held his composure as the swarm did its duties. Lights flickered to life as the spiders lit oil lamps and started a hearth fire, placing an ancient metal teapot on a hook above the flames. A parade of spiders bearing teacups and various socialite accouterments completed the settings.

Grandmommy Longlegs emerged from the back room, clutching her 8-legged walker with her pale spindly fingers. “Nigel? Is that really you? My word, are you eating enough? You’re so gaunt and boney.”

I bowed my head briefly. “In the synthetic flesh, madam” I said, “and my ward, Steven.”

She squinted at us and shuffled closer on her 8-legged walker. “Him I recognize. He looks just like his father.”

Steven let out a nervous chuckle. “That’s where our similarities end, I assure you”

Dozens of spiders descended onto the walker as the octogenarian shuffled to the table. They looped webs around her shoulders and lowered her ever so gently into a chair, moving as one unit in a harmonized dance. “Every child says that about their least favorite parent” she sighed as her old bones settled into the chair, “Even my own daughters. Granted, they were partially correct, since they don’t have any powers. But then again, neither did their fathers.”

Steven and I took the two empty seats, carefully avoiding any inadvertent spider squishing or web tearing along the way. “I inherited my mother’s powers, thankfully” Steven said as he warily eyed the pastries the spiders laid out. “Do these have any, uh…”

“Dairy?” I offered, trying to avoid any perceived insults to our host’s beloved pets and their stance on food safety,

Steven thankfully grabbed ahold of the social lifeline I threw him. “Yeah, do they contain dairy? I’m, uh, lactose intolerant.”

“Oh, honey, I forgot about that,” she said apologetically. “I’ll have my minions whip up something special for you. Bertrand?”

The massive spider in the pink sweater adjusted his bow before scurrying off to the kitchen. A flood of spiders followed him in, presumably to assist in the literal version of ‘Kitchen Nightmares’. Steven met my eye with a terrified plea for help. The only way he could get out of eating whatever arachnid baked atrocity they served up was to leave ASAP. Otherwise, he was doomed to eat at least some percentage of spider or spider web infused food stuff.

“So you have your mother’s dreadful suppression powers? Grandmommy longlegs asked. “She was my nemesis for, oh, 30 some odd years. Did she ever tell you that? We stopped fighting when she got pregnant with you, and when she got back from maternity leave… well, I just didn’t have it in me to take a child’s mommy away.”

The kettle began to whistle. Several spiders descended from the ceiling and wrapped a thick cord of webs around the handle, hoisting it into the air before swinging it to our little table. The spiders tipped the kettle of boiling water into the awaiting tea cups, as other spiders lowered tea bags from the ceiling like slow motion bungee jumpers.

“When she confronted me again, I told her I just couldn’t do this anymore.” She continued as her spiders added sugar cubes and cream to her tea. A water spider climbed into the teacup and stirred it from the surface, making tiny laps around the beverage. “I trained my spiders to attack anyone besides me if I ever was suppressed again. I forced a truce, for her benefit mostly.”

I glanced at my increasingly nervous companion. “Steven, I would strongly advise you to abstain from using your ability anywhere near Grandmommy Longlegs.” His entire head vibrated as he nodded his agreement.

“Hmm? Oh, that’s right, you have your mother’s powers, yes, you mentioned that earlier.” Grandmommy Longlegs said as she brought her teacup up for a sip. The water spider crawled out of the cup and scurried down the length of her arm, slightly disheveling the sleeve of her white cardigan sweater as it did. Or, at least, I had assumed it was a cardigan, but the spiders that poured out to repair the run with their webs made me second guess… well, everything in this house.

I had to take control of the conversation before the ancient villainess brought out photobooks or some other form of elderly torture. “We’re here to ask for your assistance in a murder investigation.”

Grandmommy Longlegs narrowed her eyes at me as she took another sip. “I don’t remember killing anyone recently.”

“Oh, no, not as a suspect” Steven said quickly, “We think a spider could have seen who killed ShepHeard, and we need you to-”

The elderly villainess dropped her teacup as she put both hands over her mouth. A team of spiders deftly caught the cup in mid-air and gently lowered it onto it’s saucer, only spilling a few drops on the way. “Oh my, not ShepHeard! Poor boy, he was so young.”

A ding from the kitchen warned that we were running out of time before Steven would be forced to eat whatever spider-baked delicacy awaited him. “We have a car waiting outside. Could you come with us, please?”

Grandmommy Longlegs rose to her feet, hoisted upright by dozens of spiderwebs like a puppet with it’s strings. “Of course! Let me grab my effects, we shall leave at once. Bertrand?”

The giant spider peeked in from the kitchen. I could see it was wearing an arachnid sized apron draped around its… thorax? Abdomen? Whatever large, creepy section of its body it was attached to, dusted with flour and powdered sugar.

“Wrap Steven’s food up to go and prepare the hoard. We’re going on a field trip.”

The spider clapped its front claws in glee, creating a white cloud of aerated confectionary powder around it.