Just down the street, nearly a half century from that day in that diner, a frail old man slides a key into a rusted padlock, unlocking his stand for the day. It wasn't much, this large metal box on the street corner, but it was his pride and joy – his calling, if you will. He put himself on autopilot and set about his morning routine of opening the doors and awning to the stand, and changing out the old papers and magazines with the new ones sitting in neatly tied stacks on the sidewalk beside his stand, placing the old ones in a pile behind the small structure to deal with later. Next, he drags out the stool and wheeled cart from within the stand. He fishes out another key from his key ring and unlocks the tiny padlock on the wheeled cart and removes the small cash box, placing it on top of the cart. He fishes around in his pockets yet again and pulls out a few odd bills and coins and adds it to the box, not really caring how much or how little was ever in there. Finally, he sets himself down on the creaky wooden stool and awaits the business for the day, sipping his coffee and muttering about the incompetence of today's baristas.
This was the routine every day for the old man for many years. He sat in this very spot, selling papers and magazines as the world turned around him. That diner down the street wasn't a diner anymore; it had changed owners and names a few times over the years before finally becoming vacant and reinventing itself as a cheesy retro-style soda shoppe that was popular among today's youth. The town itself had changed names twice in the last half-century before settling on the one he had always been familiar with, and had grown from the tiny town a person could miss by blinking at the wrong moment to the bustling bright city he had always been fond of. From his perch at his stand, the old man watched the city around him unfold. He watched buildings rise and buildings fall. He watched protesters protest and political figures practice what they considered politics.
He hadn't always done this, selling papers on the street corner. No, as a young man he did his best to blend in with the new world around him, working small jobs that were enough to get him by and keep a roof over his head. But as the years trailed by he created a name for himself purely by accident. Word grew around the growing city about a man who knew things, things that hadn't happened yet. Important things, big things, world things – and they always came true. Always. People would seek the man out, asking questions about the future; their futures. The man did his best to fake knowing peoples' personal lives. He only knew world events, after all; wars, deaths, political events, companies who were going to make it big, and whatever random tidbits he remembered from his history lessons. He had been given a name by these people who came to visit him; a name that lead him to buy this little stand on the corner, a name that made him realize a role he needed to play if the world was to survive.
"Oracle? Oracle! Hellooooo?"
The redhead snaps her fingers in front of the old man's face, pulling him out of his deep thought. Startled, the old man adjusts his glasses and sits up straight on his wooden stool. He had been deep in thought, staring at his younger self and remembering this very moment. Today was the day. The day where he would tell the young girl and himself that this was the day they would defeat Cronus, that this was the plan that would work.
He watches the young man nervously glance at the girl beside him. The old man remembered thinking it was weird how the Oracle was looking at him that day – today.
"Oh—Oh, yes. Your question. Cronus." The old man coughed. He knew what he had to say, and he had to say it. If fighting the god of time had taught him anything, it was that if even the slightest thing changed then everything would end differently.
He told them it would work. All of it.
The idea for Theresa to use her psychic abilities in combination with Herry's strength to contain Cronus within a set parameter. It would work.
The machine Odie had been toiling on night and day for the last few months. It would work.
Archie and Atlanta, working in tandem, to keep Cronus occupied. It would work.
And the important job they were considering giving to Neil they should give to him, because it would work. (That, he knew, was an utter and total lie. But he had to follow the script. And it would work out. Only to create this timeline he got trapped in, not to defeat Cronus.)
The boy and the girl smile, their fears relieved. They thank the old man profusely before walking, and then running, back to the dorms, brimming with the excitement that this was it. That after all these years their hard work was going to pay off.
At least, that's how the old man remembered it.
After watching them sprint off into the distance and turn a corner he lets out a sigh. There was one thing that he didn't tell them, he knew now. One thing he couldn't tell them. The one thing that would go horribly wrong in order for everything else to work. Jay—
"How much?"
He snaps back to reality to find a suit-clad business man waving a copy of Time magazine at him.
"Sir?"
"It's free. Take it." The Oracle lowers his glasses and glares at the man. Being pulled out of his thoughts was starting to grate on the old man's nerves.
The man takes a quick glance at the magazine in his hands.
"Going out of business sale. Now take your irony-filled reading material and scram."
