“Good,” Grandpa said. “I’m sure I must have told you how I t him. He’d been summoned by a Nazi sorcerer and trapped. We later ca to suspect he’d allowed himself to be trapped, simply so that he could et . He never fully explained why.”
I nodded, “I don’t know either, but I think I’ve got enough of a picture of his long term goals that I can guess.”
Grandpa laughed. “I’m in the sa position. Too bad comparing notes might have disastrous consequences for both of us.”
He looked over my Rocket suit. “It’s good to have confirmation that this,” he indicated his suit with his hand, “doesn’t kill or my children.”
“I’m sure it does in so universes. I think I might be from one of the lucky ones and even we’re not completely unscathed.”
Images from the last few years passed through my mind, ranging from the guerilla war on Hideaway to the people the Cabal murdered in Grand Lake when we were starting up and ending with Travis.
My grandfather turned his helt toward Spark. “We haven’t been introduced. I’m the Rocket. You appear to already know the second Rocket.”
She nodded to him. “I’m a sentient computer program designed to be a guide and user-interface to the device around you.”
Grandpa nodded. “I knew Lee’s people were far ahead of us, but a computer program that can think is far beyond where we are in my ti—though I’ve fought a few computers that appear to have gained consciousness by luck.”
Spark smiled, “I’m aware. I’m in touch with the artificial intelligences of Earth. One or two of them that you fought are still alive and assisting your grandson on his current mission.”
“Are they?” Grandpa tilted his helt to look in my direction. “Which ones?”
I thought back to stories he’d told and what I’d read in the League archives but couldn’t think of anything until I rembered the steam powered Difference Engine and its robots. “Have you ever fought a Difference Engine? It had robots. They’re so combination of gears and ancient batteries.”
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He shook his head. “I’ve fought robots like that near Chicago. How did you convince them to join you?”
“Magnus had the potential to attract the attention of Lee’s people and they’re likely to destroy the planet that we all happen to be living on.”
“Of course,” he said. “They’re machines. Rational self-interest would work. I wish it worked as well with human beings. All the sa, it’s remarkable that you got their help at all.”
I nodded. “We had help. We got together a bunch of people who didn’t trust Magnus—heroes, villains, unhappy forr employees of his, and also the world’s AIs.”
Grandpa put his gauntlet on my shoulder, the hard surfaces clicking as they touched. “It’s impressive. I can tell you from experience that even getting groups of superheroes to work together is enough of a challenge. There’s a man who calls himself Vengeance… He’s impossible. That magic dagger he’s got scrambled his brain.”
I raised an eyebrow. “He’s been around that long? I’ve t him. He‘s a pain.”
Grandpa nodded and stepped back. “Every now and then, we hit a problem on the spooky side of things and we need help. Even when he does, he’s got his own mission and if it doesn’t fit with yours, there’s no compromise.”
Grandma appeared next to Grandpa, phasing in out of nowhere, her white costu and twin pistols as I rembered them from old photos.
Rachel appeared behind her. Despite having dark hair instead of blond, she could have been a twin. Rachel’s white costu was obviously an updated version of Grandma’s with the obvious differences being that Rachel had only one pistol, but also had an axe.
I’d only seen a mont of it during the fight, but they seed to have worked out a cooperative fighting style where one would disappear and the other remained visible, switching off unpredictably.
“What happened to Ray?” Rachel asked.
“After Magnus died, he took control of the device with this,” I held up the stone, “and wouldn’t let ti move forward unless I figured out a way to allow him to survive.”
She blinked, “What did you do?”
I didn’t want to explain it again. What if she thought of a way to avoid making a deal? “I figured out a way to allow him to survive, but beco a soldier for the Xiniti and leave Earth for a while, hopefully forever.”
Above her mask, her brow furrowed. “That’s not bad. How easy is it to change the past?”
“Easy,” I said, pausing, “but hard to change it in ways you can control.”
“Of course,” she said, checking behind her. Almost everyone was close now, including Red Lightning, but also Haley. “I can think of a few things people might want to change. Let’s not play with fire.”
I used the GCD’s internal systems to connect to Spark, asking, “I don’t have the skill to use the system for predicting the effects of changes. Do you have the ability to figure out a way to save Travis without destroying our past?”
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