Guess who's back?

Disclaimer: noneofthecharactersaremine,butbelongtoImpossiblePictures.

In the beginning, there was chaos. Philip Burton fell as if he was being thrown around in every possible direction at the same time with live DC currents running through him at the same time.

And then there came a word, and the word was "Stop." (Simultaneously, there was a sound and a feeling of a switch being turned on.) And miraculously, the chaos stopped. Philip suddenly found himself sitting on the floor in a crude version of a lab (well, not really crude, except for Prospero's standards), plus in front of a woman with whom he had regular talks online for the last few years.

"Helen Cutter!" he said excitedly. "What an honour to finally in person!"

There was a pause as the woman of Philip's dreams (in a manner of speaking) looked at him very oddly indeed. "Really?" she said in a very careful voice. "Fascinating, and I'm sorry, but my memory was very faulty lately, due to certain experiments that I have done with myself. Can you please remind me who you are?"

"Philip Burton," her interlocutor replied, his excitement replaced now by confusion. "Oh yes, the Christmas of 78. I remember."

"Um, I thought that we agreed never to mention it again," Philip said, now feeling decisively wary. "In fact, I expressed that I was very grateful that you agreed never to hold it against me-"

"And I won't," Helen said with an earnestness that made Philip believe her. "That said, I mentioned that year because it was the last time we met in person, correct?"

"Well, yes," Philip said thoughtfully, realising that what Helen said was truth. "But we had plenty of talks online-"

"Oh, dear," Helen exclaimed and took another look at the crude lab around her. "I'm sorry to tell you this, but I believe that somebody was impersonating me to have you achieve their goals."

"What?" Burton stared. "Are you saying that you don't believe that the energy of time can be harnessed to achieve a new source of pollution-free fuel? That time isn't a new source of energy?"

Now Helen stared at him as if he stated that she didn't believe that the moon was made from green cheese. "Philip – Dr. Burton, I remember that you were in engineering, so let me draw you a scheme."

She pulled out a knife – an Indian kukri by the look of it, and sketched something resembling a crude sausage on the floor with it. "There! This is the basic flow of time, from the future to present to past. We're moving from the past to the future, of course, but that is not the point. My point is that the time anomalies are what they are because they compress millions of years worth of time into a very, very thin sheet, so to speak."

"And that takes a lot of energy that can be harnessed," Philip suggested helpfully. Helen just gave him a look.

"No. Well, maybe, but were you listening? It's still time, that same time that we're living in! Time is one smooth, united process! You mess with it at one time, and the whole process – and that's milliards of years – begins to shake and break down! You could've destroyed this entire dimension completely!" Helen's voice, formerly even began to rise. "You – engineer! Even Nick's little sycophant had more sense than you!"

"I know," Philip confessed. "But you – or someone like you – well, finding a pollution-free source of energy is Prospero's main goal. I'm not just an engineer, you know?"

"You like building or making machines, don't you?" Helen asked back tartly. "You always will be an engineer at heart, just like I'm an anthropologist." Her voice softened now. "Anyways, it seems that the crisis is past and you haven't been able to destroy Earth and the rest of this dimension."

It was then that April fell. On the floor, from the ceiling, facing Helen. "I'm dead," she muttered weakly. "That blonde dwarf, Maitland... and it's you," she addressed Helen, failing to see Philip at the moment.

"And another mystery solved," Helen muttered softly, as she reached towards a weird-looking crystal pendant that was on April's neck. "Hello, oh daughter of Vigdis."

"Helen, that you," April muttered weakly, still clearly unfocused and not wholly there. "You had the last laugh, again..."

"Who's Vigdis?" Philip was feeling lost again.

"Let's see," Helen looked thoughtfully. "In two hundred years – that's the twenty-second going onto twenty-third century – humans will develop space travel to the point where they'll be off to colonize other planets and their moons. Back on Earth, however, they'll continue to experiment with their genetic make-up creating new species of hominins and hominids, not to mention mutant versions of their own selves... To make a long story brief, this all resulted in collapse of our civilization and extinction of our species several centuries after the space exploration age..."

"Prove it," Philip said. "Mutants?"

"Yes, of course," Helen nodded serenely and took off the pendant from April's neck. Immediately, the blonde began to grow in height and broaden in the shoulders, her hair parted from the back of her head and began to hang down from the sides of it, and her skin actually turned purplish. Still, it was the rudimentary face on the back of her head that finally convinced Burton that she wasn't a regular person. "April," he half-said, half-whispered. "You're a mutant?"

"Yes," April agreed, before finally recovering her senses fully. "I mean no. I mean – where's my pendant?"

"In my keeping," Helen spoke up, smiling rather nastier. "Hello again, April. Clearly, for all of your posturing you really do have only half of your mother's wit, do you not?"

"Um, can I have it back? Please?" April/not April said in a small voice.

"Hmm," Helen made a show of thinking, before quickly kicking April in the gut, causing her to bend double. "Of course, here you go." She slipped the pendant back onto April's neck, and within moments April looked wholly human, albeit still bent double. "Go forth and never impersonate me again, or else I will remind you why I am still standing and your mother is not."

"Duly noted, "April grunted, straightening back up. "Oh, and by the way? My father has been a regular human, so this kick did hurt."

"My apologies," Helen shrugged. "Anyways-"

"While it is nice to see that you two are getting along so well," Philip Burton decided to interject himself into this conversation before he got left behind in it for good, when his phone rang. "Yes? Who is it? Ah, Mr. Minister. I am currently-" he blinked and looked around taking a better look at his surroundings for the first time. "Ah. Well, I am still at my company's testing grounds, only my latest experiment hasn't gone as I expected it to – such things tend to happen with new inventions, even mine. James Lester thinks I'm dead? Well, sir, to be frank the professional relationship between the two of us has been full of misunderstandings and miscommunications from the start so I am not surprised that this has happened. If you don't mind, my assistant and I will be here shortly to clear it up. A shareholders' meeting? No problem."

Philip put his phone down and looked at the two women. "Does either of you know a Dame Frevisse? You see, she has shares in the ARC, alongside Prospero and the government, of course, and her presence is needed at the ARC – the minister is holding a court there-"

"I'll go and get her," Helen said, smiling slightly as if she was in on some sort of joke that Philip wasn't. "I'll see you soon." With these words she walked into the shadows and was gone.

"So, that's the actual Helen Cutter," Burton said thoughtfully. "Interesting woman, but not the only one. April, let's go. We're up for a long ride, a longer talk and an even longer day, full of her Majesty's government among other things."

"Yes sir," April nodded meekly and they left.

Tobecontinued.