Chapter Six – Fables

Ten Years Ago

Doctor Doom materializes in the past, the taste of Mystique still on his lips.

He stands in the Baxter Building but now the room is filled with daylight, and the cobwebs have gone. The room is empty; it is a time before the Fantastic Four moved in, a time before their tragedies. Doom knows he played a part in some of those tragedies, but he was younger then, more duplicitous, and now he feels ashamed.

Now he seeks to avert that future, but before he can deal with the present, he first has to deal with his past.

His first port of call is the office of Dr. Leonard Samson.

"Thank you for seeing me," says Doom, his face covered in bandages. He takes a seat. "I realise I don't have an appointment."

"You're welcome, Mr..."

"You can call me Doom."

"Well, Mr. Doom -" begins Dr. Samson.

"Just Doom," Doom corrects him.

"Maybe you can tell me what the problem is," says the young psychologist.

"I've come to tell you a story, about the future."

"The future?"

"That's where I come from," Doom explains. "I know it sounds unbelievable, and I know you might not believe it, but you will begin to, as the years progress, so I'll ask you to respect client confidentiality, , and never to mention this meeting of ours, otherwise I'll have to arrange for your death... again."

Doom looks at the young man, sees him trying to conceal his fear.

"Again?" Samson asks.

"It hasn't happened yet," Doom replies. "It happened in the future. That's why I came to you... I needed someone to talk to, to confess my sins. I even considered apologizing, but Doom doesn't apologize."

"Does Doom often talk about himself in the third person?" Samson asks, no doubt trying to lighten the mood.

"Doom does," concedes Doom. "Doom has a flair for the dramatic. But please, Dr. Samson, enough jollity, for Doom does not like jollity, and Doom is not a forgiving man."

"You better start at the beginning," Samson says.

"This is the beginning... or at least it was. You cannot even begin to imagine what lies ahead. We are on the threshold of an age of marvels, Dr. Samson. Of heroes and villains, with powers beyond comprehension. Even aliens..."

Samson looked skeptical. "Aliens? Do they come in peace?"

"Mostly not. Though there are exceptions: the Ovoids rescued me and taught me how to transfer my mind between bodies, there's a man from Zenn-La who likes to surf, but I digress. I was speaking about villains, . People considered me a villain once, though I thought I was on the side of right, believed that my ends justified the means, but looking back now, it seems I was the main villain."

"Do you regret being the villain?"

"Once you hear what I have done, then you'll know I do, for Doom is an honorable man." Doom pauses, lost in his thoughts for a moment, but then continues, "The first heroes are known as the Fantastic Four, three people with wondrous powers... and a robot called HERBIE. They were Earth's champions, fighting monsters from beneath the ground and aliens from beyond the stars. I was their main nemesis, which brings us to the first of my many sins."

"I'm listening."

"Do you play chess, Dr. Samson?"

"Yes, I have a board if you care to play."

"There's no point since I'd beat you," Doom says. "I only mention it because every year I played chess with the leader of the Fantastic Four, the only man on an intellectual level with Doom, a man called Reed Richards." Doom paused, his hand wiping a tear from his eye. "Only there was a year I didn't actually play against him, he just thought I did. I let one of my computers take over the task, while I observed the robot."

"HERBIE?"

"I'm glad to see you're paying attention, Doctor. Yes, HERBIE. In one of my previous battles against the Fantastic Four, I'd separated them. They'd thought I was trying to divide and conquer, but I was sabotaging their pet machine, altering its programming, waiting for that day to activate those subroutines and surprise them, but what it did on that day surprised me as well." Doom falls silent.

"Please, take your time," says Dr. Samson.

"It killed one of the members, leaving him a stone husk..." Doom's mind goes back to the recently-passed future, where Mystique had mistaken The Thing's remains for a statue. "And then there was Reed's wife, Susan, who had the power to turn invisible. It made her think that it had microwaved her baby within her, the shock making her lose control of her powers, driving her permanently invisible, so no one would ever see her again. No one except me, she'd never go invisible in my mind, I can never forget that look on her face." Doom turns his head away from Samson.

"And you feel responsible for these things HERBIE did?"

"No, I don't feel responsible, I am responsible," Doom corrects him. "After that tragic day, I tried to make amends to Reed and Susan, I helped them when Susan's invisibility went further out of control, I stopped the Kingpin when he went after their invisible son, but that just wasn't enough. They went further and further into decline. In a fight against some shape-shifting aliens called the Skrulls, Sue's body exploded, her invisible corpse staining my armor, and then, over the years, Reed's body stretched so thin that he was indistinguishable from cobwebs, the thoughts taking forever to travel between his synapses, his great ideas slowed down. The Fantastic Four had been defeated and I was in a large part responsible."

"And you didn't want to defeat them?"

"Of course I did," says Doom, "but not like that, not through such scheming and treachery, not through their own degradation. Doom is better than that."

"And what about your killing me?" asks Samson. "Did HERBIE do that too?"

Doom smiles. "No, with the Fantastic Four out of the way, few other obstacles were standing in my path. One of them will be one of your patients one day, a certain Dr. Banner. He's the one who actually kills you."

"He does?"

"He mistakes you for a giant cockroach."

"A giant cockroach? Was he on drugs?"

"No, Leonard, you and I had a disagreement in my plans for Dr. Banner, so I slipped into your office at night, used some Pym particles to enlarge a nearby cockroach, and then swapped my mind, first into the cockroach, then into you, then back into my body, leaving your mind switched with the cockroach's. Thus, one day, Leonard Samson awoke to find himself transformed into a giant insect."

"Had you been reading too much Franz Kafka?"

"Far too much," says Doom, pleased his reference isn't lost.

"Was it worth it?" Samson asks.

"I hope so," says Doom. "My final piece of treachery was to a lady called Mystique; well, I assume she's a lady. All I really know of her is that she was one of those shape-shifting aliens, a Skrull, who took the place of my beloved. She thinks she's deceived me, she thinks she can rule the future as me, but I sent a message to Dr. Banner, explained the terrible thing I did to you, and even now he'll be leaping to Latveria ready to get his revenge. He'll pound Mystique into the ground, thinking she's me."

"If she can shapeshift, won't she just be able to evade him?"

"That's why I gave her my armor; once it's on, she'll never escape it. She thinks it's a powerful weapon, but it's also a prison, holding her in there until an enraged Dr. Banner finishes her off."

"And you feel guilty about this too?"

"I feel guilty about your death, not about Mystique's. She deserved it for betraying Doom."

"So, what other sins have you committed?"

"We haven't got all day, Leonard. Besides, I have to meet with a young professor to try and rewrite the future, and then it's a date with Destiny, and finally, I'm afraid, yet another sin..."

"Want to tell me about it?"

"I'm going to kill myself," says Doom, with a smile. "I'd advise you not to try and stop me."


Doom enters a room to see a young scientist called Reed, lost in thought, hunched over the plans of a rocket.

"Interesting design," Doom says.

Reed turns around, with a face that looks ever so young, to see Doom, his face wrapped in bandages. Doom's voice no doubt sounds familiar to Reed, like that of an old classmate, but the body and demeanor are so much older.

"What are you doing here?" Reed asks, undoubtedly confused as to how anyone could have got past his self-devised security system.

"Just visiting my past," Doom says, looking down at the plans. "So, it can take four?"

Reed is still suspicious, but his love of answering questions takes over. "Well, it's taking three and a robot."

"A robot? I doubt whether that'll be as adaptable as a human. What if things go wrong?"

"With all the safeguards I've built in, I fail to see how things can go wrong."

Doom smiles, seeing Reed so young and arrogant. "The shields seem a trifle thin. I assume you've taken into account the possibility of cosmic rays. I realize such things are still theoretical, but better to err on the side of caution."

"Hmmm, Ben thought I needed to make the shields thicker too, maybe I could compromise slightly."

"And the robot?"

"I'm not sure who else I could ask. There's my girlfriend's brother, but he's a bit of a hotshot."

"He might surprise you."

"Maybe," Reed says, stroking his chin and nodding. "Speaking of surprises, how did you get past the security system?"

"It has a few weaknesses," Doom says. "Maybe you'd like to discuss it over a game of chess."

And with that, Reed moves the pieces on the chessboard, and the game begins.

Doom isn't sure whether he'll win this game or the next, but eventually Doom will be the victor, and this time it will be fair and square.


Doom's next visit is with a woman who can see the future, a woman called Destiny. His lover Mystique often talked about her, and if he's managed to change things this woman will surely know.

As he sits in front of her, Destiny looks at him through blind eyes.

"Things don't seem the same, there's a wind gathering, a storm," she says. "Things will change, because of you. I feel the words in my diaries being rewritten. I see a new blond hero, skin covered in flames, calling himself the Human Torch. But that's just the start of it, you've started ripples that will build into waves. He will find Prince Namor. the Sub-Mariner, who will in turn find the super-soldier Captain America. And then I see Sub-Mariner meeting a flaming mutant called Toro, and Captain America with a young man in a red-and-blue costume."

"Does he call himself Bucky?"

She nods.

"Pah!" Doom rises to his feet. "Those are The Invaders. Those heroes are long gone. You're looking to the past, old woman, not the future."


Before Destiny has a chance to protest, Victor is gone. The future doesn't matter, he will carve it himself. First though, he must once again confront his past, this time more directly.

Somewhere in Tibet, Doom waits in the snow for his younger self to arrive. He is ashamed of the man that he once was and of the past that he now wishes to erase.

He hopes that his advice to Reed Richards will save the Fantastic Four, make them worthy opponents, so his eventual victory will be that much sweeter.

And this time, he will defeat them honorably.

His mind recalls the last ten years, all the things he's done, all the acts that were beneath him. He seeks redemption and hope that he can finds it in his younger self.

"Move out of the way, old man," says the younger Doom, finally arriving.

"You'll have to make me."

"Very well. Only Doom will survive this encounter." The arrogant younger Doom raises his hand and uses his new armor to fire a blast at the old bandaged man in front of him, and then suddenly his mind is in a different body as he sees that same blast zooming towards him. And then there is only pain and then nothing.


Victor Von Doom flexes the muscles in his younger body, and smiles. His younger self deserved to be overwritten. As the wind gathers, and a storm brews, he walks off into the sunset whistling.

Just thinking about tomorrow.

THE BEGINNING