“So, what, Max, are you saying time travel is impossible?” Delwyn’s small eyes blinked dimly. Maxim was so accustomed to seeing the ugly, potato-shaped visage of his cellmate that he was no longer bothered by it.

“No, that is not what I’m saying,” Maxim said. Despite his stark white hair and emaciated figure, Maxim could easily have been mistaken for a much younger man. He showed no signs of arthritis, osteoporosis, or any other skeletal ailments common with age. But most strikingly, his complexion was that of youth, defiant of his years. Bright blue eyes stared intently at the bars of the cell, waiting.

“Then what?” Delwyn asked, confusion in his tone.

“I said that you can’t go back in time to change events and succeed.”

“I don’t understand.”

Leaning closer to the bars, Maxim peered both ways down the hall. Sitting on his cot, he sighed. “Lets say you wanted to stop somebody from getting badly hurt in a car accident. You jump back in time and fix the brakes on their car before they leave that day. Then what?”

“Everything’s good,” Delwyn said.

“No,” Maxim said. “You now have no reason to have ever gone back in time to fix those brakes because the accident didn’t happen. So now you never go back, but then the accident did happen, and you go back.”

Delwyn stared blankly.

“It’s a paradox, and so something will go wrong to make sure you don’t achieve the goal and lose the original motivation for suddenly appearing in an earlier spot in the time stream. It’s actually quite safe to become a tourist in time, because you will not be able to make a change significant enough to prevent yourself from being there. Well, I shouldn’t say safe. You could still get yourself killed, since that is something time doesn’t give a damn about. So long as the causal relationships are maintained.”

“So…”

“So what you really need to do is to set up a stable time loop. Make sure that you still have a means and a reason that will work both with and without the change being made.”

“How do you do that?”

“That, Del, is the real question. I’ve been mulling it over for decades and keep finding flaws in each of my ideas. Maybe I’m too smart for my own good.”

“Don’t say that! You’ll figure it out.”

“I wish I had your confidence in me.”

The sound of footsteps in the hall got their attention. The sheriff’s deputy standing there motioned for Delwyn to back away. The large man did so. He turned his attention to the older prisoner. “Maxim Mason, it’s release day.”

“I’ve been waiting weeks to hear those words.”

The deputy tilted the radio handset on his shoulder and spoke into it. “Open number five.” The iron bars rattled open, and Maxim stepped into the hallway. “Close number five.”

Maxim turned around as the bars rattled shut. “Hang in there Del, it’s only three more weeks.”

“See ya.”

Maxim gave a curt nod, but decided against voicing the hope that he didn’t have to see his cellmate again. He drew in a deep breath, and turned towards the deputy. “Lead on.” The two walked to the security checkpoint. Once checked through, Maxim was led to the property clerk. He examined the clothes and the contents of the manila envelope, and frowned. “Where are my keys and phone?”

The property clerk looked at his monitors. “There were neither keys nor phone on the initial inventory.”

Maxim frowned. “I always have them on me.”

“You didn’t when you became one of our guests. Sign here.”

Maxim signed, then stepped into the bathroom to change from his jail attire to the clothes he’d been brought in wearing. A few more forms and a half hour later, he walked out the front door of the jail. A familiar, battered, green car idled by the side of the road. His face furrowing, Maxim descended the stairs and climbed in.

“You son of a bitch,” Maxim said.

“Watch how you talk about our mother.”

“Just drive.”

* * *

Maxim remembered the torrential rain of that night. The rain sheeted off his umbrella as the boom faded into the distant thunder. The sudden displacement of air was not subtle, but no one would notice it in that weather. The warm glow of the lobby lighting spilled through the doorway when a small cluster of people emerged, umbrellas first, into the storm. Whether they saw a young man with white hair or an old man with oddly youthful skin, Maxim didn’t care, so long as they didn’t care. He stepped into the lobby and shook the rain from his umbrella. There were a couple of customers at the coffee shop and the guards at the security desk, but no great bustle of activity. The security guards looked up at Maxim’s approach, but had no reaction. Fishing out his identification, Maxim signed in as if everything were ordinary.

“Who are you here to see, Mister Mason?”

“Christoff Jorgensen.” The answer didn’t raise an eyebrow, and he passed through the scanners, raising no alarms. With the elevators running up the outside of Sterling Towers, Maxim had a stellar view of the lightning flashes backlighting the buildings of New Port Arthur. The buildings’ own lights illuminated the rain, creating a dance of shimmering halos throughout the vista that faded into the night before returning anew as the downpour waxed and waned in different neighborhoods. With a ding, the elevator doors opened onto a drab hallway. Strolling casually down the hall, Maxim found the men’s bathroom and stepped inside. Making sure he was alone, he waited.

With a pop of displaced air, the case appeared. A black, hard-sided briefcase, the container itself was completely ordinary.

“Good, my math was correct.”

Opening the case, Maxim looked over the devices inside. The largest was slightly smaller than a backpack and had straps like one. It had a slim rectangular shape made of burnished aluminum. On the back was a raised circle around a raised protrusion shaped like the speaking horn on an early telephone. Maxim slung the device on his back and made sure the controls clipped to the straps were at the right spot to be easily operated. The items remaining in the case were a set of lockpicks and a six-inch cylinder of black plastic. Maxim slipped both of these in his pockets, closed the empty case and faced the door. Stepping out into the hall, he began a mental countdown.

A flat, mechanical voice spoke. “Mister Mason, you know that smuggling in unapproved-”

“It’s all there in the name, Shiva, unapproved, and smuggling. I thought a computer would at least be able to read dictionaries.”

“Security has been alerted to your actions.”

“I expected no less.” Finding the door he wanted, Maxim tested the handle optimistically. Unsurprisingly, it was locked. “Time is of the essence,” Maxim whispered to himself, foregoing the picks and extracting the cylinder from his pocket. The laser had only enough charge to punch through one lock, but it was all Maxim needed it for. Tossing aside the expended device, Maxim tugged the door open. The deadbolt thumped to the floor. The room beyond was a windowless lab Maxim knew far too well. Every surface was cluttered with materials, drawing a frown from his face. “You never could put your stuff away when I worked here, it’s only gotten worse since,” Maxim said.

“Doctor Whalen is not here,” Shiva said.

“Of course not. He might try something stupid if he were.” Maxim had to pull out a chair to find a clear space to open his case. Picking through the clutter, he found the components he needed and moved them to the case. He heard the sound of boots in the hall as he snapped the clasps closed. Activating the controls on his shoulder strap, Maxim listened to the rising hum. Turning to face the door, he opened his umbrella and held it over his head. As the security response team burst through the door, Maxim disappeared in a thunderclap of air collapsing into the space he had previously occupied.

The SRT swept the room, wary of a possible invisibility device.

“Shiva, report,” the lead SRT barked.

“Commander Jorgensen, the suspect appears to possess a form of teleportation that is able to bypass our existing anti-teleport measures. Unable to identify the materials taken due to Doctor Whalen’s poor inventory discipline. However, from observed characteristics, they appear to have been constructed in this lab rather than commercially acquired.”

Jorgensen sighed. “Contact Whalen and have him come figure out what’s missing. Also, save every scrap of information you’ve got on this incident.”

“Affirmative.”

* * *

Maxim had never been the best at picking locks, and the task was only made more difficult with an umbrella held in the crook of his neck. The rain continued to hammer down on the fabric as he fiddled with the tumblers. Then the lock gave, and he twisted it open. Slipping the end of the hard case in the door to keep it from closing again, Maxim turned back towards where the battered green car sat. Working the stiffness from his muscles, he walked over to the car and extracted the first of the aluminum-sided cases from the trunk. The road through the park was closed, so the odds were against someone stumbling onto him, especially with the downpour.

Opening the door with his foot, Maxim dragged the new case inside, but left the small one as a doorstop. The shack was a museum, albeit a very small one. Along the walls, the curators had crammed a number of small exhibits. Most were murals with stands of text and a button to hear the same text as a recorded message. Maxim frowned at the one diorama on the wall. The murals were older and celebrated sidekicks through the years. The diorama instead appeared to be celebrating a couple of criminals who’d gotten themselves killed. “You don’t belong here,” Maxim said. Turning his attention back to the middle of the room, he said, “And neither do you.”

In the middle of the room stood a solitary figure. Clad in a brightly colored outfit of blue and yellow, he had a yellow cape and red boots. The cape was wrapped around much of his figure. He appeared to be about twelve, but his blue mask covered most of his face. Neat red hair capped off his head. Looking at the sign in front of the figure, Maxim reached out and pushed the button to play the recording.

“The First Sidekick. Albion Dark was the first sidekick registered with the Bureau of Hero Affairs after the establishment of the agency. Despite this distinction, he was never that famous among the public at large. He mostly fought street criminals. This immobile figure was created in one of his few encounters with a supervillain. The offender has never been identified. When this figure could not be moved from the spot where it happened, the Sidekick museum was built around it.”

“The first BHA-Registered sidekick,” Maxim muttered, “Twenty years too late to be the first sidekick. But this isn’t the Community Fund museum.”

Maxim suppressed a chuckle. The whole shack could fit into a single room in the sidekick wing of the Community Fund’s hero museum. As the recording had played, he’d opened the case and begun setting up pylons around the figure of Albion Dark. He had to go back out to the car for the other case of pylons to finish the ring. With the pieces roughly in place, he affixed a ring near the floor, fine-tuning the position of the pylons so that everything snapped into place. The pylons were each a hollow framework of pipes propping up a teal-colored emitter frame with three off-yellow emitters embedded inside. One had a larger control module on the outside of the ring. Stringing cables between the emitter casings, he hooked them into a chain ending at the control module.

Grabbing the small case from the doorway, Maxim set it atop the diorama case and extracted the contents. Opening the control module, he began wiring the new components into the device. Looking at them balanced precariously on top, he applied duct tape to keep them from falling. The hard part proved to be finding a wall outlet to plug the cord into. The curators didn’t want the public leeching off of them. Maxim had to take a wall panel off and unplug the diorama. Adjusting the controls, he powered up the contraption. The emitters glowed dimly. Calibrating the new components, Maxim made sure all of the parameters were correct.

Even with everything matching the calculations he’d done, Maxim hesitated. Lifting the molly guard, he flipped the main power from ‘Prime’ to ‘On’. The glow in the emitters brightened. Setting the delay to zero, he pushed the squared red main activation button. A flash lit up the small room.

“…Right there!” Albion Dark said, finishing a sentence he’d started decades before. The youth looked around in confusion. “Where am I?”

“You’re in the exact same spot,” Maxim said.

The sidekick gave him a skeptical look.

“You were shot with a chronal cannon and were frozen in place for… quite some time. It is now the twenty-first century.”

Eyes wide, the youth leapt the cable ring and pulled open the door. The downpour made him hesitate, giving Maxim the time to grab his arm.

“Calm down, you’re not stuck here. Everything is set up to send you back to your own time.”

“So quickly?”

“I’ve had a lot of time to get the time machine set up.” Maxim motioned towards the device, which still glowed merrily.

Looking back at the lights of the city through the rain, the youth visibly contemplated the situation.

“Can’t I at least see some more of the future?”

“No,” Maxim said.

“Why not?”

“Because taking knowledge from now back to the nineteen fifties will change the course of events. I can’t let you do that.”

The sidekick looked disappointed.

“Look,” Maxim said, “You’re needed back in your own time. You do a lot of good. And I wouldn’t even be here if you don’t go back.”

The gears turning in the youth’s head clicked. He took a closer look at the old man’s face.

“Are we related?” Albion Dark asked.

“Yes,” Maxim said. It was clear the sidekick was holding back a deluge of questions that would rival the rains outside. “Please. Step back in the time machine, so I can send you home.”

With one last glance at the city, the sidekick released his grip on the door and walked sullenly back to the spot he’d stood for decades. There were marks where his shoes had been, slight depressions from where the concrete had been poured ever so slightly higher than the level of his soles. Maxim recalibrated the machine, disconnecting the new components as he did so.

“Why is that just taped on?” Albion Dark asked.

“It was primarily a time machine, and needed additional components to undo the effects of the chronal cannon.” Maxim caught himself before he started going into detail as to how it worked, closing his mouth, setting his jaw, and dialing in the correct settings for the trip. Moving around the ring, he swapped out charge modules for new canisters from the aluminum cases. Each canister was half as long as his forearm, and four inches across. Each emitter casing held two.

“What are you doing?” Albion Dark asked.

“It takes a lot of power to run this thing, and- And I shouldn’t go into detail.” Once back to the control point, Maxim checked the gauges. “This will be loud, but painless.” He pushed the button before he could hesitate. With a flash and a crash, Albion Dark was gone.

“Bye, Max. See you in sixty-five years.”

* * *

The sunlight landing on Maxim’s arm was making it uncomfortably warm. Shifting it below the edge of the car window made the rest of his posture shift in an uncomfortable manner. Readjusting his entire body, Maxim grew irritated. “Did I get the time wrong?” He checked his phone and frowned. “Did I get the day wrong?” His questions were answered when the door to the building opened and disgorged his passenger. The man climbed into the car and pulled on his seatbelt.

“You son of a bitch,” he said.

“Watch how you talk about our mother,” Maxim said.

“Just drive.”

Maxim put the car in gear, signaled his intention to merge into traffic, and pulled away from the curb.

“You set me up.”

“Jails are full of people who are there for things they themselves did,” Maxim said.

“Usually it’s for things that happened before they’re incarcerated,” the younger Maxim said.

“Well, there’s those who were there for things like failure to appear-”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

“Of course I do, I was the one saying it not that long ago.”

“I still haven’t figured out how you did it,” the younger Maxim said.

“Don’t worry, you’re just as smart as I am.”

“Why are you here now?”

“Because if I picked up my life at a time when I was supposed to be in jail, I might get arrested for escaping.”

“You’re not expecting to become my roommate. You know I wouldn’t put up with another me that long.” He paused. “You’re expecting me to leave soon.”

“Well, you’ve already done the time, you might as well do the crime,” the older Maxim said.

“But I can’t figure out how you did it.”

“You said that already.”

“Security response time in Sterling Towers is no more than two to five minutes. I built the anti-teleportation measures protecting those buildings, so I get that the new design can bypass them. But it takes half a day to recharge, and I didn’t make the power pack swappable.”

“A bit of an oversight, that,” the older Maxim agreed.

“Can’t make a second one. The materials don’t exist unless I cannibalize parts from…: he trailed off as an epiphany flared in his brain, “-The time machine.” He glanced to see if there was a reaction from the older version of himself, but there was none. “You didn’t, because you didn’t have to. You used the time machine as a teleporter, sending what you needed to a safe spot in the building so that by the time Shiva knew something was up, you were already at the lab.”

The older Maxim said nothing, focusing his attention on the familiar side streets of the suburb.

“And of course, there’s no time crunch when you can adjust your own arrival time to suit.”

The younger Maxim was confused by the frown on his counterpart’s face.

“What is it?”

“The lawn is so badly overgrown,” he said, turning into the driveway.

“I’ve been in jail!”

“There’s a notice on the door, probably warning us to cut it.”

“Are you even listening?”

“Yes, you’ve been in jail, you want to use the time machine as a teleporter. I’ve heard every word you’ve said.”

“So why are you ignoring me?”

“Because confirmation from me would be bootstrapping. I’ve come too far to create a paradox now.”

“You know what I think about that.”

“You also know that I’m not sold on a stable time loop being temporal scar tissue over a paradox.”

“Was I always an asshole?”

“Yes… No. Only once you got old.”

The younger Maxim sighed. “I’ve got a lot of math to do to pull this off.”

“Good luck.”

“What are you going to be doing?”

“I think I’ll mow the lawn,” Maxim said, shutting off the car. The younger Maxim opened the garage door, and the older went inside to where the lawn tractor sat. Checking on the engine, he kept one eye on his younger self until he was again alone.

Starting the engine, Maxim let out a long, depressive sigh.

“Here’s to uncertainty, and the unknown,” he said. Normally, Maxim found mowing relaxing, but fighting with the wild lawn was far from it. He ended up cranking the mower deck up to its highest setting and resigning himself to two passes to make things right. “Of course, sending myself to jail means I caused this problem in the first place…”

Maxim closed his eyes and silently swore.

His contemplation of the past had dredged up another memory. A very old memory. There was one thing left he had to do to close the loop.

He had to go back in time and shoot Albion Dark with a chronal cannon.