- 10 -

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, December 8th, 1999. The patient's name on the door read: Mrs Carter Preston. I entered quietly and stood for a moment gazing down at the old woman sleeping there, before sitting down in the chair next to her bed. The sound of me doing so woke her, and her eyes went wide when she saw me.

"Who are you?" she said, sounding fearful.

"Calm yourself, Dolores," I said. "I'm not here to hurt you. I just came to say goodbye. It's me, Dr Marten."

"Marten?" she said, frowning. She peered at me more closely, then her eyes went wide.

"It is you, but how are you so...? Oh no. Time-travel."

"Yes," I said, nodding. "I borrowed your time machine."

"How could you have?" she asked, eyeing me suspiciously. "I destroyed the time bubble in 1970."

"I took it from the cellar of your mansion in 1948. I've had it for a while now, but there's a preset that will return it to a few seconds after I took it from you when I'm done with it. And I obviously did if you destroyed it in 1970."

"All this time and I never suspected. Be done with it soon," said Dolores, gripping my wrist with an aged hand. "The more you use it the more chance there is of coming to the attention of the Time Stealers and you don't want that, believe me. And whatever you do keep it out of the twenty-first century!"

"I will," I said, but that was a lie. I needed to visit it one more time, though after that I had no intention of ever doing so again in the time bubble. "So, the Time Stealers. I once overheard you mention Degaton and Despero. Would that be them?"

"Yes, along with me in a monstrous body not of my choosing after they recruited me from my first deathbed. Those are not happy memories."

"So why did you destroy the time bubble?"

"If you overheard me talking about Degaton and Despero in 1948, what else did you overhear?"

"That you put your mind in the body of a 4 year-old clone of Dolores Winters, who you then raised as your daughter, Debra. I had no idea that cloning someone was possible, so my first trip in the time bubble was to your cloning facility."

"The preset," said Dolores, nodding. "It would have taken you there at a point in time a few seconds after I last departed the facility."

"I'm curious as to why you had a brand new operating table there under wraps yet never used it."

"I can see why that would puzzle you. Though I had no intention of ever using it again, I acquired the ability to transfer my mind into other bodies without the use of surgery. But I'd had that ability before and lost it, so it seemed prudent to have equipment on hand for if I lost it again and needed to resort to surgery instead. Since I haven't used the ability in more than half a century, I may well have lost it again through disuse. Fortunately for you I'm not minded to try doing so."

I gulped, realising that even on her deathbed the old woman might still be dangerous.

"I also heard you tell Debra that in August 1969, when she was 26, she would go back in time to become her mother," I said, "to raise that child who was her, and so close that circle. But Dolores Winters was 31 in 1948, so you're actually five years younger physically than the 82 years your medical records have you at."

"When Debra vanished from 1969 she also had to vanish from the lives of her family, of me, her brother and sister, and her father. I made one last trip in the time bubble, my first since 1948. I took a clone of the right age from the cloning facility and brought it back to our apartment in 1969. It had never truly lived and now it served as Debra's corpse. The body was found in the apartment and the coroner ruled her death as heart failure. I had to do this, but I love my family and the grief it caused them was almost unbearable. That's when I decided I needed to destroy the time bubble. With it and with the cloning facility I could potentially live forever, but I didn't want to. I'd lived several lifetimes already, not all of them as a good person - though I was never as bloodthirsty as my Earth-2 counterpart. And that was enough for me. Do the two lives that were blameless balance out the one that wasn't, I wonder? Not that I believe there's any such cosmic accounting, or an afterlife. I wish there was because I have no hope of being reunited with Clark. I loved Carter, but it was Clark who was the love of my life, of my lives."

"Am I supposed to know what Earth-2 is, or who Clark was?"

"No, no one in this universe is. And for oh so many good reasons it has to stay that way."

She looked at me thoughtfully, weighing me up before continuing.

"I cherish these last two lives I've lived. They've been so much more fulfilling than ruling the world ever was."

"You ruled the world?!" I said, astonished.

"I did. I achieved what had been my driving ambition as the Ultra-Humanite, and it didn't fill the hole inside me like I thought it would. I've lived two normal lives since then, and part of living a normal life is growing old with your family and eventually dying, which I'm now ready to do. I've made my peace with the universe at last. Since you're here now I assume I don't have long left?"

"Two days. You die surrounded by your children and grand-children, all your loved ones. You don't make it into the twenty-first century again."

"I'm glad," she said, giving a little smile. "You were here at Cedars-Sinai sixty years ago when it all began, so I suppose it's appropriate to have you here at the end as well."

"It does seem like fate, doesn't it?"

"It does, yes. That first brain transplant seems so long ago now and it is, but far longer for me than for you. I once told a shrink that my father was a violent man angry at the world, my mother an alcoholic, and that I was a genius, which isn't exactly true. I was smarter than other kids, but it was a scientific experiment the gave me one of the most agile and learned brains on Earth. It was probably also that which enabled it to survive so many transplants."

"I never knew that."

"Not many people did. Strange that I should be unburdening myself to you at the end like this, as if you were a priest and this my confession."

"Except that I'm not in in a position to give you absolution."

"Nor would I accept it if you tried to. If you have any questions for me ask them now, because this is your last chance to do so."

"I don't think there's anything else I... no, wait. One thing I always wanted to know is whether anything happened between you and Tarantula back in 1942 when he, Green Lantern and Phantom Lady came to L.A. to publicly apologise to you."

"I was aware of the rumours at the time, of course," she said, chuckling. "But no, nothing happened between Tarantula and me. It was Phantom Lady I seduced. That girl was a real tiger between the sheets, and one hell of a kisser."

"Wow, if that don't beat all," I said, shaking my head in admiration.

"And you? What's next for you?"

"I have a wrong to put right first, then I'm returning the time bubble to 1948."

Well, after one little thing for myself, that is.

"Ah, a wrong to put right. So you're seeking redemption," she said, shrewdly. "I hope you find it, Marten."

I leaned down and kissed her on the forehead.

"Goodbye, Dolores," I said, and then I left.

Next stop, the twenty-first century.

- 11 -

I've never much liked wearing a suit and tie but it was worth it for the look of astonishment on his face when the guard brought the old man up from his cell. It was everything I'd hoped, but he kept his cool and gave nothing away.

"Ten minutes, Marten," said the guard, as Neil sat down across the table from me "then your lawyer has to go."

He exited the room, the metal door shutting behind him with a clang, leaving us alone together.

"My lawyer, eh? Why are you here, Dad?" asked Neil, eyes rheumy behind his thick glasses.

"Because this will be our last chance to talk, son, and because I can't believe what I read about you. Tell me it's not true."

"Oh, it's true alright. Rita hooked up with a woman named Roulette who organised underground fights between metahumans, fights to the death. This provided us with a steady supply of body parts for criminals who wanted a power boost, with biogel allowing for near instant healing. Oh, and Rita figured out the secret of the biogel, by the way, the secret you were keeping from her."

"The secret...?"

"That if she used it as an all over body lotion a couple of times a year it would grant her eternal youth."

Huh? But that's not how it works at all. Its healing properties were amazing - and using it in conjunction with putting a brain in a younger body clearly had a rejuvenating effect - but it couldn't grant eternal youth.

"Save for the small quantities needed for surgeries, she kept it for herself," Neil continued, not registering my confusion at this revelation, "and wouldn't share it with anyone, not even me, but that's OK. She's was perfect and I wanted her to stay that way, forever young and beautiful. I see you kept some for yourself, too. You don't look a day older than when I last laid eyes on you in 1959."

I nodded, still trying to figure out what was going on. Then it came to me. The unknown particles that had streamed through the time bubble when it was loaded up with biogel must have somehow mutated that batch. It was a fluke that was probably unreproduceable.

"What exactly happened to Rita?" I asked.

"There was a group of non-American superheroes known as the Global Guardians that a villain named Prometheus later slaughtered his way through. One of their number was Sigrid Nansen, a woman known as Icemaiden who had the most perfect alabaster skin. As soon as she saw photos, Rita wanted it for herself. She paid a villain named Warp to kidnap Icemaiden and then had me conduct the necessary surgery. I flayed her and gave Rita the alabaster skin she craved. Having it also gave Rita Icemaiden's cryogenic powers, which was unexpected, so she started calling herself Endless Winter."

"Wait, you flayed a woman alive?" I said, aghast.

"Don't worry, she didn't die. She was placed into a hydration womb within a facility of S.T.A.R. Labs. Last I heard she was comatose, but alive."

"That's... that's monstrous!"

"You don't get to judge me, father," he snarled, "not after all that you've done."

We glared at each other for a moment, then I sighed.

"So what exactly happened that you ended up in the state pen?"

"A costumed type named Dr Mid-Nite. Not the punk you knew of back in the forties, but the third person to take that name. You wouldn't believe the garbled account of Dolores Winters's kidnapping this pompous ass believed. He thought Ultra-Humanite had an ape body before that first transplant was performed. Can you believe that? It makes no damn sense at all. And it's partly Rita's fault."

"How so?" I said, wondering why he might think Ultra-Humanite had had an ape body.

"When Mrs Carter Preston - Ultra-Humanite - died none of the few obits there were mentioned her movie career. Dolores Winters had been entirely forgotten, which got Rita really pissed. That had been her career and she wanted the name Dolores Winters to be remembered, and if not for fame then notoriety would do. So she started spreading the story of her abduction, of how Garrett Fairfield was involved and was working for Ultra, and that it really *was* her the JSA fought in 1942. Her apparently being in two places at the same time being a trick. So imagine Rita's surprise when Ultra-Humanite showed up in the body of a white gorilla a few years ago having somehow cheated death."

Being unaware of her time-travelling Neil had no way of knowing that her criminal career in the twenty-first century happened before her life as Mrs Carter Preston in the twentieth and that she hadn't cheated death at all. A white gorilla. So that's the 'monstrous body' she referred to!

"Garrett Fairfield had nothing to do with any of that," I said. "It's only because of me that anyone thinks he did. Blackening his name was an act of petty spite and one of the things I'm ashamed of. He immediately enlisted after Pearl Harbor, and he gave his life on Iwo Jima. He was a hero and he deserved better from me."

"Nice to know you can be as petty as the rest of us," said Neil. "So, anyway, Mid-Nite gets wind of the arrangement between Rita and Roulette and tries to shut things down. When we capture him Rita can't help gloating and has me tell him all we've done. I've been claiming the credit for all your work for years to enhance my reputation, which she backed me up on."

"Didn't he get suspicious about you claiming to be old enough to have been performing operations in the forties?"

"No, no one ever does the math, and with this ugly mug... Anyway, Rita couldn't resist boasting about what we'd done to Icemaiden and, knowing Mid-Nite was a medical man, I threw in all manner of stuff to hide the fact that its success was down to biogel. Unfortunately, he got free, Rita escaped, and I was captured."

"And Rita, how did she die?"

"It was a few months later. Prometheus forced various super-powered individuals to work for him. He kept them in line with a lethal electrical charge that could be delivered via a device surgically implanted in their heads. Step out of line and he activated this with results you can imagine. Somehow, he got to Rita. When she failed him and was defeated by a superhero named Batwoman... that was it for Endless Winter. She was a goddess, the love of my life, and now she's gone. I could kill him for that."

It seemed such a random death. If there was any justice in the world I'd have been involved in taking her down. I could see the irony of her dying while being forced to fight someone, but she went out not with a bang but a whimper. Then there was the biogel. Somewhere out there was a batch of the stuff that could grant eternal youth, and the secret of its location had died with Rita.

The metal door opened and the guard reappeared.

"Your ten minutes is up, Marten," he said. "Time to return to your cell."

"All the choices I made were my own," said Neil, "and I regret none of them. So where do you go from here?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

And with that he was led away. It was the last time I ever saw him.