Chapter Two: Debriefing

Five minutes later, in a room with red banners and swastikas in it, Ron watched Ms. Possible get some snacks. Wade and Kim were sitting around the table like this was all perfectly normal.

"So what you mean to say is that we're not dealing with a self-fulfilling prophecy?" asked Wade.

"No! When I went out there, it was an accident!" said Ron. "I was trying to stop Drakkan from altering history and ended up getting thrown back in time instead of him. Then I have one conversation with Hitler, and when I get back, everyone is wearing S.S uniforms."

"So what was history like where you're from?" asked Kim.

"Germany lost World War 2," said Ron. "They um... they tried to exterminate all kinds of ethnic groups and ended up losing to a combined alliance of Russia and the Allies. Hitler committed suicide, and Germany got split into two places.

"Then we had this huge Cold War, and well... I'm not very good at history."

"Why would the Fuhrer ever want to exterminate ethnic minorities?" asked Kim. "He's always speaking about making efficient use of them."

"Kim, in this situation, it's conceivable that whatever Ron did led to the Fuhrer being a different person," said Wade. "They met before the Fuhrer even went into politics, that could have set off an entire series of smaller changes.

"The Fuhrer before he met Ron had been attacked repeatedly by the Conspiracy and in his autobiography admits he blamed the Jews. It's possible that without Ron, he could have thought it necessary to exterminate them. And once you decide to genocide one minority, why not others?"

"So... we averted a bad future?" asked Kim. "Nice job Ron."

"But everyone is a Nazi!" said Ron. This was so wrong. Nazism was like the exact opposite of what America was about.

"Yeah, but the Nazis in your timeline may have had no resemblance whatsoever to the Nazis in this timeline," said Kim.

"Well, I can say with absolute certainty that Ron Stoppable has undergone some kind of transformation since he got out of the timestream," said Ms. Possible, coming back in.

"What do you mean?" asked Kim.

"Kimmie, Ron was diagnosed with mental illness when he was young," said Ms. Possible, looking like she was talking about something weird. "Standard practice is that people with mental disabilities be sterilized to not damage the gene pool. I performed the sterilization process myself.

"Ron, however, is now showing any signs of the chemicals we used.

"So either he altered time, or time altered him."

Ron stared in horror, feeling violated. "You...

"You sterilize the mentally ill?"

"Yeah, why wouldn't we?" asked Ms. Possible. "Eugenics is all about ensuring future generations are stronger than past ones. It's standard practice all over the world."

"That's horrible!" said Ron.

"What's so horrible about it?" asked Wade. "It's not like we physically hurt them. The process we do has no unintended side effects; the Fuhrer was very adamant about that."

"Okay, okay, this is not a good future," said Ron, standing up. Could this get any worse?

"Wade, how do we even know that this is our Ron?" asked Kim. "I mean, couldn't it be an alternate universe Ron who somehow ended up in our timestream."

"Multiverse theory has been disproven, Kim. Remember the Stitch in Time incident?" asked Wade.

"How can I forget," said Kim. "Shego turned the whole world into a dystopia ruled by her ego."

"I remember that that happened with us too," said Ron, glad to have something in common.

Wade blinked. "It did?"

"Why is that weird?" asked Ron.

"Well, given the sheer number of differences between our timelines. It seems odd that we'd have the same incident," said Wade. "What happened in it?"

"Monkey Fist, Dr. Drakkan, Duff Killigan, and Shego all team up to try and rewrite history to destroy us," said Ron. "Shego ended up hijacking control to become a dictator."

"Same here," said Kim, blinking.

Wade took out a sketchbook and wrote on it. "But all those timeline alterations didn't lead to an alternate timeline. They just altered the timeline that we existed in. So it stands to reason multiverse theory is a bust. Let me just boot this up..."

Turning to a computer, he turned it on.

And waited, and waited, and waited.

"That computer is taking a while to boot up, isn't it?" asked Ron.

"What are you talking about? This thing is state of the art. It's a DOS operating system," said Wade. "State of the art."

"...We're still using DOS?" asked Ron. "That is like, the exact opposite of state of the art."

"Well, what else are we going to use?" asked Kim.

"I dunno, Apple? Windows?" asked Ron. "In the future, I remember DOS has been outdated for decades."

"Really?" asked Wade, sounding interested. "How many megabytes can your computers run?"

"We measure them in gigabytes, Wade! Gigabytes!" proclaimed Ron. "This is awful! We've got to set history back!"

"Wait a minute, that doesn't make sense," said Kim. "Why would technology be less advanced than in Ron's future?"

Ms. Possible sat down. "...Well, historically, conflict often incentivizes innovation. The Fuhrer managed to achieve world peace. It's theoretically possible that, in a world where independent nation-states continued to feud, there might have been other advances.

"Probably no big deal, though; it's not like they're landing on the moon."

"We did land on the Moon! Decades ago!" said Ron. "Kim, your Dad builds rockets that go into deep space! And your Mom is a brain surgeon!"

"Well, we have world peace, at least," said Kim. "I mean, the Ukraine Uprising wasn't that big of a deal. And the Middle Eastern Rebels don't really kill more than a few thousand years outside of the Middle East."

"So do we," said Ron. "We have a United Nations where independent nations negotiate. I mean, it's not perfect, but we aren't sterilizing people."

"But how do you do all of that without a centralized army?" asked Wade.

"I don't, I'm not an expert!" said Ron, feeling somewhat offended that everyone was looking to him for answers. "But I do know that this is not a better world."

Silence.

At last, Wade spoke. "...We have to consider that possibility that Ron is right."

"What, you're serious?" said Kim.

"Is it really so hard to believe?" asked Wade. "Most stories where a bad future happens have things be post-apocalyptic in nature. The world is dying, people getting shot in the streets—that sort of thing.

"I've never read a story, though, where everything was just slightly worse."

"Well, what if he is right?" asked Kim. "Why does he even remember any of this? The timeline should have altered his memories."

"This building is time-locked, Kim," said Wade. "The Fuhrer specifically designed it to be that way, so if we made a mistake while altering time, we could fix it. We only built this thing because the Fuhrer was concerned about someone altering history. When Ron was in the past, the future hadn't been written yet.

"So when he came out here, he kept his memories and such."

"So does that mean the Ron I grew up with just kind of ceased to exist?" asked Kim, sounding genuinely upset.

"Not exactly," said Wade. "It's possible that as soon as he steps outside this building, history will reassert itself, and he'll go back to being the way he was.

"Right now, Ron sort of exists independent of the timestream."

"It's also possible that Ron is just suffering from extreme stress as a result of time travel," said Ms. Possible. "It's not a fully explored science, after all."

Ron didn't like this conversation. Ms. Possible seemed to be speaking about him as though he wasn't here. "So what are we going to do about this?"

"Well, the first thing we need to do is gather more information," said Ms. Possible. "Ron, I'm going to debrief you about the timeline we came from. Depending on what you say about it, I can figure out whether the future you describe is plausible."

"And what do we do if it is?" asked Kim. "If this is a... bad future, what do we do about it?"

"Depending on what we find, we might need to correct the timeline," said Ms. Possible. "We'll consult the Fuhrer for confirmation.

"So, Ron, how did you and Kim meet exactly?"

"In pre-school. She helped me out against a bunch of bullies," said Ron.

"And did you attend the same schools?" asked Ms. Possible.

"Yes, obviously. We've been together through all of it," said Ron.

"Well, that sounds right about so far," said Ms. Possible. "What was your first mission?"

"A billionaire, Mr. Paisley, got trapped in his own laser-net," said Ron. "Kim and I went to stop it."

"That all matches up pretty well, doesn't it?" asked Ms. Possible.

Kim shuddered. "A little too well."

"Given the alterations in history, Ron and Kim meeting at all is miraculous," said Wade. Behind him, whose DOS computer had booted up. "Having them have basically the same history in a different form is suspicious. Unless..."

"Unless what?" asked Kim.

"Unless there are forces at work trying to ensure history goes a certain way," said Wade. "Based on this theory, human history is actually predestined. But the details can vary widely. So, some kind of worldwide organization was going to happen.

"But for us, it was the Fuhrer's new world order. And for Ron, it was the United Nations. Likewise, war on an industrial scale was inevitable. But the specific winners and losers can be changed."

"So you and Kim were always going to team up, no matter what happened.

"Is there instability in the middle east?"

"Worse than ever," said Ron. "Every time I get on a plane, I have to go through a checkpoint these days."

"This seems evidence for predestination," said Ms. Possible.

"What about the Stitch in Time incident?" asked Kim. "Shego completely changed the future."

"Yes, but as soon as we destroyed the Monkey Statue she was using to do it, everything she did vanished," said Wade. "We only know about it because we observed the effects on the timestream from here. Ron, how do you know about it?"

"Oh, um, Kim and I went and saved this secret facility that utilizes extra time as a renewable resource," said Ron. "Long story, no biggie."

"That sounds pretty cool," said Kim.

"Yeah, I was totally awesome in it," said Ron.

"Anyway, my point is that what Shego was doing was a brute force approach," said Wade. "She forcibly altered time, so events unfolded in a drastically different fashion. Her attempts to alter time thus were pushing against a river of sorts and couldn't stand."

"My guess is that the Monkey Statue was needed to keep the changes in place," said Ms. Possible. "In contrast, what Ron did is much more natural. He didn't forcibly change the Fuhrer's place of residence. There wasn't any series of wild coincidences that derailed history.

"He just defeated an assassin and had one conversation with the Fuhrer. That conversation made the Fuhrer act in a different way."

"I don't get it," said Ron.

"Well, think about it," said Ms. Possible. "Shego forced you and Kim to break up. After forcing her parents to move to Norway. You spent the entire timeline fighting against that change.

"And she then had to force alterations that made it so could never arrive in time to help Kim.

"Meanwhile, you changed the Fuhrer's mind about ethnic minorities. You were an example of a good jew during a period when he was becoming increasingly hostile to them. Your actions caused him to become a better person.

"So he wasn't fighting against the change. And nobody in Germany was complaining that they had an even more enlightened Fuhrer. By the time the Fuhrer started conquering places, the stream of history was on his side.

"How close was World War 2 in your timeline?"

"Very," said Ron. "Um, if England had surrendered and Hitler took Russia, we'd have been finished."

"Maybe not being a supervillain was enough to push the Fuhrer over the edge to total victory," said Kim. "Drakkan always makes some critical mistake."

"Anyway," said Ms. Possible. "your changes to the timeline made one person better. And the changes were in them, not in physical locations.

"So they are probably more subtle and more long-lasting."

"Does anyone want some more snacks?" asked Ms. Possible.

"Yeah, thanks. Can we order from Beano Nacho?" asked Ron.

"Um, what?" asked Ms. Possible.

"Beano Nacho. The restaurant we always go to," said Ron.

Kim paused and looked to Ms. Possible and back. "...Ron, we've been going to a hotdog stand for years."

Beano Nacho... didn't exist?

"NOOOOOO!" cried Ron.

"I'm not sure why, but I think this is definitely Ron," said Kim.

They had to set right what had gone wrong.