7: Bearing Bad
Previously on 2.17 Seconds into Never, Meg Atomic, Gaseous Girl, Ron Raven, the Green Moth, and the Wombat are doing battle with the powerful wizard Merlin in the form of a bear, and it’s not going well! You might say they’re … barely winning!
Sorry. Anyway, we resume our story as the bear is charging right at Ron Raven!
Ron Raven could usually talk sense to an animal. He’d talked to bears, sharks, cobras; he had even enjoyed a fascinating conversation with a New Hampshire moose about Canadian politics. The problem now, though, was that this was no ordinary bear; this was Merlin in bear form, enraged over the apparent death of King Arthur, and he was in no mood to have a talk about it.
Ron’s real trouble was that other than talking to animals, he had only one other superpower; he came back after he died. Useful in the abstract, not much help in the moment. Now as he scrambled across the wrecked parade ground with Merlin the bear in hot pursuit, he yelled for someone, anyone of his superheroic comrades to help.
The Green Moth was closest. She didn’t see that she had much choice. She closed her eyes and made a half-turn to the left. There was a loud pop, and she, Ron, Gaseous Girl, Meg Atomic, and the Wombat underground, vanished, leaving the bear bellowing in confusion.
They reappeared on an abandoned street. “Well, glad that’s over,” Gaseous Girl said. “What’d you do, take us back? About time.” She broke into a laugh at the unintentional joke she’d made.
“Close,” the Green Moth said. She wasn’t laughing.
Meg reached for her phone. “I should call Mom and Dad, they’re probably worried, especially after-” She stopped talking. This was understandable, as she had just registered where exactly she was.
She, and the rest of them, were standing in the middle of Edison City, although it wasn’t the Edison City that they knew and loved. This Edison City looked like the other cities had taken it out back, beaten it up, and stolen its lunch money, leaving it whimpering and alone in the dark. This Edison City was all ruins and fires, smashed-up rubble punctuated with the snap and crackle of innumerable electronics exploding or just breaking down altogether. This was a post-apocalyptic Edison City just barely out of apocalyptic and not even started on the post yet.
In short, it looked a mess.
“What the-” Gaseous Girl began.
“What happened?” Meg asked.
“I brought us back to the present,” the Green Moth said bleakly. “In the urgency of the moment I was unable to remedy the timeline. Thus we left it with King Arthur either injured or dead and a magically-powered and terribly upset bear in the ruins of Camelot. This is the result. I don’t even mention the other timeline where your vaporization of the Tyrannosaur knocked the asteroid off-kilter just enough so that it destroyed the mammal with the essential genetic code necessary for evolutionary progress which basically means that whole timeline’s dominated by Neanderthals now instead of humans. It’s not fun. At least they managed to stay alive though. Unlike here, where Merlin the rage monster bear destroyed everything.”
The Wombat coughed. “Look, I saw the bear, it was plenty scary-”
“I’ll say, it almost ate me,” Ron interjected.
“But,” the Wombat went on, “I don’t get how one bear-”
“A powerful wizard in bear form gone berzerk?” The Green Moth almost laughed. “Sure, once you add in Morgana trying to stop it with her own insanely powerful magic, then all that magic let loose where the world’s already stressed with the timeline changes and all, of course it could. But hey, at least Guinevere didn’t run off with Lancelot. I think the bear smashed her spleen in, I don’t know, but the story’s fixed now anyway. Good job, you.”
“Hey, I didn’t mean-” Meg started, but then she stopped. After all, under the circumstances, she wasn’t sure the argument was important anymore.
“Look, okay, I messed up,” she said at last, “But if we broke it, we can fix it, right?”
There was a very long pause.
“Right?” Meg said again, more quietly, hoping for any sort of answer at all.
The Wombat had an odd sense of deja vu. “I’m guessing no,” he said at last. “Well. That’s a problem.”
Oh man. This is looking bleak. The description of Edison City actually reminded me of Bedford Falls when it becomes Potterville in It’s a Wonderful Life, although obviously a bit more (post-)apocalyptic.
Did you not hear me when I told you that the Arthurian stories had no basis in historical fact? Your superheroes would have done way more damage if they had killed a real ancient King of England, such as Ethelred The Unready...