13. And Last, For a Lifetime
Previously on 2.17 Seconds into Never, Ron Raven, Gaseous Girl, and the Wombat had defeated the Antichrist and saved the Titanic, but now, as the Green Moth and Constance are about to explain, things are about to go wrong again…
“Okay,” the Wombat said as the Titanic steamed calmly on through the cold waters of the North Atlantic, “First off, I’m freezing. Gaseous Girl, could you…?”
“Sure thing,” she said, and rapidly warmed the air around him and used the warmth to evaporate and dissipate the water he had been soaked in. Within seconds the Wombat was as dry as if he’d never gone overboard in the first place.
“Thanks,” he said. “Now-”
“We’ve done it,” the Green Moth said in an odd voice.
“Done what?”
“This ship has now steamed past 41 degrees, 43 minutes, 32 seconds north latitude, 49 degrees, 56 minutes, 49 seconds west longitude, without sinking. All other variables remaining the same, she will arrive in New York on next Wednesday morning, April 17th. When she does she will deposit safely on the docks exactly one thousand five hundred and seventeen people who should not be alive,” the Green Moth said with terrible emphasis. “Over a thousand people. Millionaires. People in power. Not just them. Perfectly ordinary people doing ordinary things of absolutely no consequence or a lot of consequence. Men. Women. Children. Everyone. All of them will make decisions, are making decisions, changes reacting upon changes reacting upon changes, people that shouldn’t have been or won’t have been or willn’t have happened yet-
She twitched and fell over. Before Ron or Gaseous Girl or the Wombat could do anything, Constance the angel arrived. “Ooh,” she said, “Willn’t, gotta write that down, send it to the Linguistics guys. They’ll love it.” She tapped a spot on her halo, then looked around at the placidly steaming Titanic. “Yikes. Y’all messed up.”
“What do we do?” the Wombat said bluntly.
“Wait, hang on,” said Constance. She sniffed the air. “Did you…drop a whale on my ex-boyfriend?”
Ron Raven put some things together very quickly. “Is your ex the Antichrist?”
The angel sighed. “Yeah. Long story. Really long story. You wouldn’t believe. I mean, the guy is-”
Suddenly the water exploded in a geyser of steam and burnt bits of sperm whale as Ben the Antichrist came blasting out of the water. “You think a damned whale can stop me?” he roared. “You think I’m freakin’ Jonah? Well I’m not freakin’ Jonah, let me tell you, I’m the-”
“Yes, we’ve heard,” Constance said coolly. Ben recoiled, lost his balance, and landed with an awkward thump on the deck. A blackened bit of whale followed and thumped him on the head. He scorched it into ash with a blast of fire, then rounded upon Constance.
“You,” he swore. “You absolute-”
Constance drew her sword, her eyes blazing. “Okay, pal, time to go! In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, scram!”
Light exploded in the North Atlantic, sending the Antichrist skipping across its surface like a stone thrown across a pond. They watched him as he disappeared over the horizon. The Wombat was about to say something when he heard the sound of doors opening and people yelling all over the ship.
“Oh shoot,” Constance said. “They’ve seen us.”
Gaseous Girl raised her eyes. The beam of light from Constance’s sword was still blazing like a torch out into the open sea. “You think?”
“Okay,” Constance said, very stressed, “Here’s what we’re going to do, we’re all, all of us, you and Meg and the other Meg and Arthur and Merlin the bear and everybody else, we’re all going back to our proper timelines right one-two-three now!” She snapped her fingers. There was a tremendous flash.
The Titanic, now without angel, superheroes, or incarnation of evil, steamed on, its passengers unaware that they were back on course towards the inevitable iceberg. Constance sighed. “I never did like this part in the movie,” she said. “Well, back to it.” She flew away sadly into the night.
Present Day
Meanwhile, Liz Flask and the two different versions of Meg had been playing the card game Uno. Liz had just pulled a Wild Draw Four and was waiting for just the right moment to play it when all at once the universe gave a sort of hiccup. Next thing Liz knew she was standing at her front door saying something about getting a new fridge, and only one Meg Atomic stood in front of her.
“New fridge?” Meg said. “What’re you getting?”
“Depends on what the insurance will cover,” they both said, breaking into a tired laughter.
“I don’t think I want to say the rest of it now,” Liz said. “Not after-”
“Yeah,” Meg said. “Agreed.”
“Explain sometime?”
“Sure,” Meg said. “You know, you have to give Keith one thing: sure, he was a supervillain, but he wasn’t the Antichrist.”
Liz blinked. She hadn’t expected that. “No. He wasn’t. Meg, what on earth?”
“I’ll explain later,” Meg said, laughing again.