Chapter 22

I stared at him a moment, feeling the earth beginning to slip out from under my feet —only metaphorically, although with everything that had happened already I could hardly be more surprised if the floor had started to actually spin. "Sure, why not?" I asked after a moment, speaking too loudly for the room. "We already have reality alteration, why not add a nice dose of time travel to the mix? Tell you what, we've been going about this all wrong. We need to sit tight until the League of Super-Friends gets here, and they can solve this whole mess for us! That Wonder Woman, she's a hottie, eh?" I realized I was beginning to babble and I shut up.

"It doesn't have to be time travel," ventured Brock. "Don't forget, we're dealing with something that can re-write what we see as real. Maybe ... I dunno. Maybe I did have time to completely write that routine, and then made myself forget it? Or ... something," he finished weakly.

"Why on earth would you make yourself forget what you'd done?" I asked. "How does that make any sense at all?"

Brock shrugged.

"Maybe he didn't make himself forget." This from Lisa, who spoke up unexpectedly and then seemed to wilt a bit from all the attention that was suddenly focused on her. "Maybe he just forgot to make himself remember."

I started at her. "Not getting what you mean," I said. "Or, more succinctly ... huh?"

"Well, what if he did something to undo some event? I mean, suppose you, are even all of us, got caught up by Professor Doom, and Brock had a chance to tell the machine to make that not happen? Couldn't we end up back here now, before the event happened, in a way?" She paused, confused. "I dunno. It was clear in my mind, but when I try to say it..." she trailed off.

Brock nodded violently. "I get it," he said. "Picture this: what if we somehow got to the machine and changed the reality that the cop guy, the one that kidnapped you, was ever born? And let's say we signed that computer code: 'This erasure of existence brought to you by Brock!' OK?"

I nodded cautiously.

"Now, in this new reality, at the exact same time you were kidnapped, we'd be just sitting around with you ... er ... not kidnapped. Right?"

I nodded again.

"OK, what if, at that point in time, if we looked at the code the computer was running, what would we see?" he finished triumphantly.

I looked at him blankly. "Uh..." I began.

"Don't you see? We'd see our code, our 'This erasure brought to you by Brock' signature, but we'd have no idea what it was talking about ... because in our reality, the cop was never born, so we wouldn't have had to write that code!"

"I ... I think I see," I said hesitantly. "But if he was never born, then how does the computer remember him?"

"The computer is insulated from changes in reality, Rick," Brock responded. "It has to be! It wouldn't work otherwise!"

"So ... it's not time travel." I said more confidently.

"Not really, although in a weird way, it kinda is," Brock said. "All time travel is, if you think about it from the point of view of the person travelling, is just a massive change in reality—right?"

"OK," I said more firmly. "Enough. Who cares what it is. The point I want to answer is very simple: can this information help us get to Victor and kill him? If not, let's move on to something that can."

I had expected that my harsh statement would produce some shocked demurs, but I saw only nods ... and then I remembered that each one of the women in front of me had experienced Victor's evil in a more up-close and personal fashion than I had. All I saw were grim nods. Brock, if he had any reservations about retributive murder, kept them to himself.

"So — what can we do? We need to get back in to that facility somehow, and we need to wreck the machine, and we need to stop Victor from breathing, permanently. The floor is open to suggestions."

I waited a moment, and then said, "And then the crickets chirped."

Lauren shot me a grin. "Do you have a plan?" she asked innocently.