In Quezon City, the Philippi.net, 1999 (or is it 2001 now?),
"I love you!" Maria-Mellisa Reyes went around telling everyone, just
before all images stored in their minds faded into oblivion.
"Alright, hold it right there," a member of the local Philippi.net
Net.tional Police told her.
"I love you!"
"Well, that's very nice but I have a wife. I've got her picture right
here." He pulled out his wallet and tried to find his wife's picture.
"It's gone! Her picture is gone and... Dios... I don't even remember what
she looks like!" He pulled out his gun. "You @#$%^! You did this to me!
You're under arrest!"
"Hold on, Jose," his partner told him, "there's no law in the Philippines
preventing her from erasing images stored in memory, so we can't hold her."
"Oh... kejude!" [1]
"All we can do is check to see if she's legally here in the Philippi.net.
If not, we can deport her back to whereever she came from."
"Fair enough," Jose decided. "Let someone else deal with her!"
A man with no imprint after eight and a half years shamelessly presents
Birth Of A Villain #32: "Stumping Stomper"
Mr. Stomper's Laboratory at Net.York University, 1984,
"Hey, Doc?"
"Yes?"
"How old are you?"
Mr. Stomper thought for a moment. "Twenty four. Why?"
"Where are you going with this, Lite?" Mouse asked.
"So in 1992 you'll be thirty two, right?"
"Yes."
"And in 1999, you'll be thirty-nine, right?"
"That's right."
"You know, Doc, you really haven't aged. I mean, in 1999 you still look
like a man in his mid-twenties. I mean, you will."
"That's nice to know," Mr. Stomper said, even though he didn't actually
believe that the foursome of Easily Discovered Man Lite, Mouse, Twaeila
Brock and Coward Lad had actually come from the future.
"But that's how it always is, Lite," Mouse told him. "You've been Easily
Discovered Man's sidekick since 1993 and you're still a teenager. I joined
the LNH the next year and, although five years have past, I'm still a young
girl."
Easily Discovered Man Lite checked Mouse out. "Maybe you're a late
bloomer."
"It's the nature of the Looniverse or any comics based universe. It's why
Kitty Pride is always sixteen or why Aunt May never dies."
"Except in alternate futures. Which reminds me: if we had a son would he
be Easily Dicovered Man Lite Juniour?"
"So the fact is that it's perfectly reasonable for Doctor Stomper to still
be in his twenties in 1999 even though he is already twenty-four in 1984."
"Maybe, but the LNH wasn't even around until 1992, except in flashbacks.
If eight years pass between now and 1992 then he would already have been in
his thirties when the LNH started!"
"OK," Mouse conceeded, "so he was in his thirties then and he's still in
his thirties now thanks to the fact that LNH stories continue to be written.
I always took for granted he was older than the average LNHer anyway
because he had a Ph.D."
"So I will get my Ph.D.," Mr. Stomper noted with satisfaction. "That's
nice to know because I haven't even settled on a thesis topic yet."
"Am I to understand you are only a student in this time period?" Twaeila
Brock asked.
"That's right, although you can continue to call me 'Doc' if you like."
Twaeila Brock let out a deep sigh. "I seem to recall you guys saying that
this Mr. Stomper was -and I quote- 'hot stuff'."
"Actually Lenny said that," Lite pointed out, "and he's only a squirel so
what does he know?"
"Fine, but it was Mouse who promised that he would -and I quote- know 'a
lot about time travel'."
"Hey, no fair!" complained Mouse. "You're accessing issue #23 from the
archive!"
"The point is that I was brought here by my Dad in 1999 to save you guys
from the Melissa clones and ended up going back with you to 1984 and in all
this time, for what frankly has seemed like months and months and months,
I've been patiently going along with you waiting for you guys to come up
with some scheme to get us back to 1999 or 2001 or whatever the year is
supposed to be now! It's about time you guys wrapped this storyline up so I
can get back to alt.barney.dinosaur.die.die.die!"
"She's right," Coward Man realised. "We're doomed."
"Look," interupted Mr. Stomper, "I don't really believe you're from the
future. I mean, if you travel back in time you're going to change your own
history and that means you might not even exist to travel back in time in
the first place."
"But Doc, I remember attending one of your special classes in which you
explained that time travel is possible in comic book universes because it
just simply creates retro-active continuity: everyone suddenly remembers
things according to the new continuity," Mouse told her.
"Yes," said Lenny the squirel, who had suddenly appeared at her feet,
"and, besides, even in the real world, scientists have demonstrated that it
is possible, thanks to quantum uncertainty, to send a message back in time:
it only remains to be seen if there is any physical law preventing someone
from receiving a message before it was sent, something which would be no
less of a causality violation than that described by Mr. Stomper here."
"Lenny, you're back!" Mouse said.
"I had to come back," Lenny said. "Nobody would have believed that line
coming from Lite!"
"Hey, I could have said that!" Lite insisted.
"In any case," Mr. Stomper continued, "if you _really_ want to go to the
year 1999 (or 2001 if you prefer) then there's a way to do it."
Net.York University, 1999 (or whatever),
Philip Martin breathed a sigh of relief. He'd just been informed that his
Master's Degree had been accepted. Now he needed a Doctoral thesis topic,
although, truth be told, he didn't really feel like doing physics anymore.
Maybe he'd go back to being the Colourblind Kid, fearless sidekick of the
nearsighted superhero known as Myopia Man! Or perhaps he'll go on the
university computers and start writing humorous comic book parodies. Or he
could just access some porn sites and look at beautiful, naked...
"So now you're free to work on a project that I've saved just for you to
work on."
Damn.
"Cryogenics."
"Cryogenics?"
"In 1984, four people and a squirel were frozen in one of the laboratories
right here in Net.York University."
"But I'm studying physics."
"This is physics. I mean, sure, other researchers will want to examine
them to see if they suffered any ill effects from the freezing process, but
it will be up to you to bring them out of their cryo-stasis. I'm counting
on you for this!"
Philip was suspicious. "Who are these people?"
"We're not sure. They appeared out of nowhere in 1984 and rescued a young
Mr. Stomper from Russian terrorists. In return, Mr. Stomper arranged for
them to be placed in stasis in the cryo-lab here at our university. As luck
would have it, few people were brave enough to undergo the process."
The Cryo-Laboratory at Net.York University, 1984,
"NO WAY! NO WAY! NO WAY!" screamed Coward Lad. "You're not putting me
in that thing! It looks so, so, so cold! I don't want to become a human
popsicle! I'm too young to die!"
"Oh, shut up!" Twaeila Brock said just before hitting him over the head
with her energy rifle, rendering him unconscious.
Net.York University, 1999 (or whatever),
"We were lucky to find any volenteers, let alone five! The science of
cryogenics was only just getting started back in 1984."
"How do we even know they are still alive?"
"That was the really good part: they told us that nobody had even heard of
them back in 1984, whatever that meant, so there wasn't going to be anyone
to sue if they didn't survive, but we think they did."
"Think?"
"There's one way to find out."
Philip's thesis adviser led him down the hall to a stairwell that led to
the basement of the building. They walked a little further until they came
to a door with a label insisting in big letters 'AUTHORIZED UNIVERSITY
FACULTY AND STAFF ONLY'. The aging scientist typed a numerical code into
the pad next to the door and waited for the light to turn green. "Don't
worry about the notice on the door," he quiped as he opened the door, "as a
teaching and research assistant you qualify as university staff, and I am
hereby authorizing you to come in!"
The door led to another stairwell which led to a subbasement. Equipment
left running fifteen years ago were, incredibly, still functioning, thanks
to redundant back up generators that hummed softly in the otherwise quiet
room. Philip went to turn on a light. He could see the five pods, four
large, one small, the last one presumably originally intended for a child
but was modified at the last moment for a squirel.
"This reminds me of the Star Trek episode which introduced Kahn!" Philip
respectfully walked over to where the frozen specimens were kept in stasis
and started wiping frost from the pod windows.
"Hold on! Wait one second! I know these people! They're Net.Heroes!"
WHO ARE THE FOUR PEOPLE FROZEN IN THE PODS (DUUUHHH!!!)?
DOES ANYONE REMEMBER PHILIP'S LAST APPEARANCE IN LNH #87?
IS IT JUST ME OR WOULDN'T IT JUST BE REALLY COOL IF ALL THE MELISSAS BECAME
AMOROUS FILIPINAS???
WHY HAVEN'T ANY OF THE QUESTIONS FROM LAST ISSUE BEEN RESOLVED IN THIS
ISSUE?
WILL ANY OF THESE QUESTIONS BE RESOLVED IN ISSUE #33?
WILL THIS SERIES EVER COME TO A FINAL RESOLUTION?
Actually, I think it has to, for continuity's sake, although nobody seemed
all that bothered until about a month and a half ago.
Martin Phipps
[1] Should that have been censored or is it OK to use profanity in a foreign
language?
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