Chapter 154
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Note: Sara and Rip are from the Arrowverse. Marty and Doc Brown are from "Back to the future." Francis was a minor character from the 2004-2008 animated version of "Batman."
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In the old worlds, some of them anyway, time travel had been possible. At first, there had been hope that this could be done again. That they could go back and stop all of this. There was currently a meeting between time travelers. Sara Lance, Rip Hunter, Francis, Doc Brown, Marty McFly. They were hoping that they could work together and find some way to reverse all of this horror.
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Doc: It took me nearly 30 years to build a working time machine. When this machine, the Dolorean, was destroy, I no longer had to go by trial and error, and I was able to build a new one.
Sara: So you can do it again. Right?
Doc: I've tried, it does not work.
Sara: I don't understand, why wouldn't it work now?
Doc: As best I can tell, the physical laws of each universe are different. How they evolved differently, I could spend a lifetime studying it and probably never come close to figuring it out. What about you Francis? How did you go back in time?
Francis: I don't even know. I worked in a store that repaired watches. Me and my wife, we had a newborn baby, and the bills were piling up. In desperation, I stole a watch, and went to prison for 17 years.
Sara: Wow, mass incarceration was a problem in your world too.
Francis: When I ran from the cops I knocked a hot dog cart, into oncoming traffic. People died, which means my crime was technically felony murder. I was angry, bitter. When it became my job to fix the guards' watches, I became obsessed with time, thought I was going crazy. Somehow, I found myself with the ability to turn back time, but only by a few minutes. As much as I wanted to go back to before all of this started, all I could get was a few minutes. I wanted revenge against Gotham for all the time they took away from me, from my family. I made a plan to infect the city with deadly gas. I realized too late, that my own son was among those killed. In my grief, somehow I turned the clock back 18 years. I don't even know how, maybe losing Matthew was just the motivation I needed. I made better choices, didn't steal that watch, never went to prison. My family struggled financially for awhile, but we overcame, even started my own small business repairing clocks.
Sara: I'm happy for you, but no way you could do it again?
Francis: I've tried, no luck. And Matthew and my wife were raptured, so I doubt I could get that motivation back.
Marty: What about you Sara, any chance you could rebuild the Waverider?
Sara: Unfortunately no. Jefferson and Zaru knew it better than anyone, and they couldn't. We used its last remaining energy to get as many refugees away from the fire as possible. After that, it became impossible to fix.
Rip: Maybe if you two hadn't used it so much for personal gain.
Marty: You didn't use it to bet on sporting events, did you?
Sara: No. Mick Rory used it to help his daughter with a report on Charles Dickens. As a result we knew who killed Edwin Drood, his fiancee Rosa. And Jefferson used it to take his son to see some of the old baseball greats. Because of that we know that Josh Gibson hit 783 home runs in the Negro Leagues. And now Rip, who was willing to change all of history to save his own wife and child...
Francis: I can't throw stones for that.
Sara: Rip wants to blame that for our inability to time travel. But maybe there was always a limit to when we could do these things. The Hall of Souls was going to be empty at some point anyway, nothing could change that. As much as we'd all like a do over, that can't happen. All we can do is save as many people as possible.