CHAPTER SEVEN
In the homely comfort of the Turtles' lair, Splinter poured another soothing cup of herbal tea, determined to get Carter to drink one slowly, as he had been guzzling them down with a determined ferocity, as if eager to engage more in a topical conversation than to calm his noticeably shot nerves.
He handed the cup to Carter, who began to drink franticly once more.
"Master, trust me, if I had the time to digest this, I would, but everything could reshape and reform around me at any moment, I need to get you guys up to speed so we can make haste" Carter said
"The soul needs soothing Carter, in the hour since you have arrived you have not begun to settle before you start, as a result, your words are scattered, and we cannot immediately anchor them to our minds and absorb their meanings"
"Yeah, tell us all about what you've gotten up to in the future" Raphael suggested, "Judging from your get-up, you seem to be packing the long firearm of the law" he continued, observing the weapon in Carter's pocket
"I'm a peace corps member, and don't worry, the gun isn't lethal, it freezes the motor functions in the body, temporarily of course" Carter revealed
"It is fitting that while you engage in a life of combat Carter" Splinter continued, "It is to enforce the peace and civility of your world, we all aspire to settle our problems via non-lethal means, hearing that you solve such issues with weapons that immobilize rather than eradicate allows me to sleep peacefully at night knowing the ambitions of all dreamers are given form in the future"
"That depends greatly on us avoiding the current temporal crisis...somehow EDX was allowed to be mass distributed at some point in this period in the timeline and it reshaped the perspectives of the entire planet"
"Donatello informed us about this just today" Leonardo said, "Looks like your hunch about the philanthropists were right, they are hoarding the EDX and are thinking of distributing it publicly"
"Now almost the entirety of Earth's collective humanity has been transformed into war-mongering conquerors, slaves to their darker sides while all their great good and potential are locked away in other dream states, being forever entertained, while the part of them that knows it's not real is allowed to wallow in their pessimism, bitterness and anger, they only know irrational hate and they threaten to control or crush everything around them, including my world, my friends...and my wife"
"Your wife? This just gets sweeter with every sentence, who's the fortunate fair lady?"
"Merrick" Carter replied.
Raphael was flabbergasted.
"Wow, congratulations and all, that's certainly a relationship that can call time on itself. If a wedding day got ruined because of heavy rain, you could always go back and tell your past selves to marry on a brighter continent or fast forward to the warm and toasty summer" he said
"Hey, we manage the old fashioned way and take the slow path like everybody else" Carter said, chuckling.
"As a mutant Turtle, I happen to move like a real cat, I take exception to being called slow" Raphael replied
"So...wait, if none of this has happened yet, why did you say time could restructure itself at any moment?" Leonardo asked
"There's something I haven't told you, but if I did, you might not volunteer to come with me" Carter responded
"Come with you where?" Leonardo asked
"Back in the future, I had a source, an old acquaintance of ours who told me, after some 'bodily malfunctions', everything back in the future. We need to go where the EDX's 'impossible' helix strain was conceived, to the distant past, to the twilight of the dinosaurs and to the genesis of humanity"
"So long as it's not the genesis of McGillicuty" Raphael said, which turned a couple of confounded heads.
"Hey, it's a wrestling joke...oh who am I kidding, who watches wrestling nowadays?" Raphael replied
"I take it you want me to come with you then Carter?" Donatello said,
"You're exactly right Don, we need your scientific knowledge to create some kind of counter strand to the EDX strain, we believe it was somehow placed in the primordial concoction the first basic life forms crawled out of, and over a period of time and evolution, when combined with the supply of prisms in the present day that triggered the dormant helix strand, it allowed this race's worst traits, the savage intent, to rise to the surface when the pacifist areas were driven to more dormant recesses in the mind"
"Which philanthropists or charity workers do you know that had supplies of EDX Don?" Leonardo asked
"I'll contact APE and get a list" Donatello said
"We don't have much time" Carter snapped
"Says the guy with a back and forth approach to travel" Raphael remarked
"Look, all I know is the supply of EDX is being shipped out tonight and in the original timeline, you guys were there to prevent it, now I'm taking Donatello back to undo this but if we don't make it back, it all falls to you guys"
"If time is essential to you Carter, we will respect your wisdom" Splinter replied
Carter, to show his gratitude, began to drink his tea a lot more slowly.
"I'll get in touch with April and see how Mikey is" Leonardo said
"I was just about to ask where she and Mikey had gotten to" Carter said, "They sort of took off as soon as I started sipping down on these cups"
"She wanted to take Mikey to the graphics department of Channel Six" Donatello revealed
"I just wonder what changed in the timeline to warrant us not intervening" Leonardo pondered, "If we can't deduce that, this whole journey could lead us into more mystery and uncertainty than we bargained for"
