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Transcript Excerpt - Evaluation of Competency

Interviewer: Tell me why you decided to interfere in the universe known as Anomaly CAS-1. It is my understanding that the members of the council had already reassured you that they did not hold you responsible for the incident in question. Why attempt to meddle?

Subject 3468-19: Boomerangs.

I: Boomerangs?

S: Out they go, back they come. If you aren't ready to catch, then whump, thump, bump - it will get you in the head. Can't have that. We can't have that. Too different to mesh. Too many changes, but it still pulls back toward the place where it started. What happens when it can't? What then? What then? Everything tries to fit together in places that have forgotten how to fit. Too much pressure and it all goes boom. All those people, all those lives, all gone, gone, gone. All my fault. It would have been all my fault. I couldn't let that happen. She tried to warn me, but I wouldn't listen. No one was going to do anything.

I: So, you believe that you were, in fact, pursuing a course of action that was intended to save lives?

S: Lives? Try worlds. pause They stare in the hallways.

I: I beg your pardon?

S: They stare in the hallways, and they whisper. I hear them. They saw awful things because they don't understand. It's not like I wanted to hurt anyone. It's not like I was trying to see out some horrid personal vendetta. I was just correcting my mistake. It was my responsibility. It's still my responsibility. One life is precious, but aren't many lives just as precious? It was her or the world. She even said how a choice like that should turn out - later, much later. She would understand that it wasn't about her even while everything was about her.

I: There are innumerable differences inherent to CAS-1. Why focus specifically on Chloe Sullivan?

S: What a foolish question. They don't tell you much, do they? She's the touchstone. It all hinges on her. Every change, every difference - it is all wrapped up in the fact that she exists.

I: Let's think logically about your plan for a moment, shall we? Let's say you successfully eliminated her. What then? All of the changes that had already occurred would still be applicable.

S: No, no, no. You people never listen. She is the change that makes all the other changes possible. The other changes begin to unravel without her. It had to be her. She was the key to the restoration.

I: What about the differences that you, yourself, caused? Should you not be worried about the potential for your own interference to cause problems of its own?

S: You never listen. I only did what I did because she was there. She is the anchor point for my interference. It was because of her.

I: I have to admit that I do not find your reasoning very plausible.

S: sigh No one ever does. It's the rules that cause the problems. You can't go back again. You can only go forward. They are so worried about time loops that they've made it where you can't go back. No time loops, but that also means that you cannot fix it when your efforts were not good enough. There are so many things that I could have made better if I could have gone back and repeated trips. Isn't it ironic that even with time travel at our fingertips that same clichéd rule of reality still applies? It's always rules, rules, rules until the rules don't suit them any longer, and then they do as they please - "the lords of the comic book endings."

I: I think that quote is actually "the gods of the copybook headings."

S: You would.

I: Perhaps we could go back to your decision to target Chloe Sullivan. Did you know that you were acting in direct violation to a directive from the council in addition to participating in conduct unbecoming a member of the Legion?

S: Well, isn't that just a loaded question? I'm not insane. I'm not lacking clarity in my thinking. I have perfect clarity in my thinking. That's why it had to be done. You have no idea how hard I tried to head them off before she ever came to be. Nothing worked. Nothing. So many tries; so many days spent making the next plan and covering my tracks so that I could not be stopped before I had succeeded. So much effort and nothing worked for the longest time. Do you know what it is like to pour your everything into fixing a problem that stubbornly refuses to be corrected? You have notations in that file you keep referring to that say things like fixated and obsessive behavior. I was dedicated. I am dedicated. They didn't understand that. They fought me at every turn.

File Note - Session paused due to subject's agitated state. Session resumed 45 minutes later.

S: I needed something more drastic. I needed a grand gesture; I needed something which could not be ignored. I knew where Moira and Chloe would be traveling that day, and it gave me an idea. What if instead of bits and pieces of kryptonite landing around the globe, a massive quantity of it followed Kal-El to Smallville? A meteor shower of that type - no one would think twice about one little girl ending up a casualty. It was sad, of course, but something had to be done. Nothing subtler was working. How was I supposed to know that the large scale radiation would cause such effects on the populace?

I: The council would be interested in knowing how you managed to draw the planetary wreckage into the ship's wake. Would you like to elaborate?

S: What if I propose a trade? I'll tell you if you share with me the method the council uses in order to produce time travel fields around jewelry.

I: I'm sure you already know that there will be no authorization for disseminating such classified information.

S: Then, I suppose that the council will keep their secrets, and I will keep mine.

I: You endangered thousands of lives and caused untold environmental damage in order to facilitate an attempted murder. It never occurred to you that you were taking things too far?

S: shrug Moira turned out to be a better driver than I expected. It's always something. Why is it always something? Why won't things just work with me in order to put them back the way that they belong?

Session ended due to subject's refusal to speak further. End of excerpt.

Timing was going to be everything. He had spent an unreal amount of time checking and rechecking to be sure that he had his window of opportunity perfectly figured. He couldn't afford anything else - despite his best efforts, he had found no way of overriding the parameters that never allowed anyone to travel further back in any one universe than they had previously gone. Any more tampering would have gotten him caught, and he was already amazed that none of his previous attempts had garnered any attention. The simple fact of the matter was that there were other things going on in the world (and the universe) that drew enough attention away to let him get away with the little things that he had tweaked and meddled with in regards to Gabe and Moira. He hadn't gotten caught, but he also hadn't fixed anything. It had been failure after failure, and he knew he had no further options but to pursue more drastic measures. It had felt like ages that it had taken him to work out how to cause the debris from Krypton's demise to be pulled along in the wake of Kal-El's ship. If a huge meteor shower was not enough to take care of his problem, then he had no idea what would be.

He forced his eyes away from the blond toddler animatedly swinging her arms as she chattered at the dark haired woman who had her balanced on her hip. He needed to take a moment and collect his thoughts. He had decided on a drastic course of action, and he had to follow through with it. There was no room in his plan for sympathy for the child who was his ultimate target. She had to go. That was the only possibility that remained to fix the mess that he had created. She was the anchor point on which the splinter universe balanced. Everything could be corrected if the anchor point holding it to its different course was removed.

There would be time for sympathy later. After he was successful, he would be able to take the time to come to terms with the child who was going to have to pay for his mistake. It was his fault, not hers, but that did not make the required course of action any less necessary. He would shoulder the responsibility and the guilt for all of it, but that would come in a time where there was breathing room and the ability to reflect - not when the potential annihilation of two worlds was at stake if he allowed himself to become squeamish.

The second hand of his watch finished another circuit, and he stepped forward to get her attention. If Moira Sullivan noticed that the young man who asked her for directions was looking at his watch rather than her throughout their conversation, then she chose not to comment on it. He needed to look at the watch. Timing was crucial. It also kept him from making eye contact with the little girl who kept smiling at him and repeating the word "hi." He had to do this. He had plotted everything out; he had considered every possibility there was to consider. He couldn't even remember the last time that he had actually slept rather than passed out from exhaustion. There was no other way. He had already decided. There was no backing out now.

It was strangely captivating to watch as Moira steered the car through what had become a minefield descending from the sky. There was nothing of panic to be seen on her face - there was only a strange (or perhaps not so given the cargo that the vehicle was carrying) determination as she did the best she could to avoid each piece of rock as it came into her vicinity. He could see it in her eyes at the moment when she realized that her best efforts were about to be in vain. There was no possible way that she was going to be able to avoid an impact at worst or a crash at best. The resignation that he could see in her expression was barely visible underneath the determination that seemed to harden and double as he watched. She spun the wheel as hard as she could sending the car sideways and skidding. It took him a moment to figure out what it was that she thought that she was accomplishing.

He made a choking sound in the back of his throat when he realized what she had done. With nothing else available to her, she had flipped the car around so that she herself would be between her daughter and the danger that was coming. He silently applauded her dedication - he had nothing but respect for the woman's motives, but he doubted that her choice would make any difference in the outcome. There was not time for him to see - he was pushing the boundaries of being caught on his unauthorized excursion as it was. He had to get back - this time he was certain that there was no possible way that the anomaly pushing the splinter universe on its divergent course could continue.

It took him less than three minutes to know that he was wrong. It took him weeks of research to determine the extent of the damage he had created in his latest attempt. Who could possibly have foreseen that stray pieces of the former planet Krypton could have such an influence on the underlying genetic structure of the human beings exposed to it? It was really pushing the boundaries of what he could reasonably have been expected to predict.

He was going to need another plan.