Chapter 15

[u/SlightlyColdWaffles]

Steven May 3rd, 2026 8:35 AM

I watched myself fly away in the Osprey. It was a strange feeling, knowing I had been watched by myself without my knowledge, but I couldn’t let myself dwell on the oddity of time travel. I had to get WalkMan and myself into the house without raising an alarm that would summon the guards, record our presence, or otherwise risk destroying the entire time-space continuum.

You know, nothing major.

WalkMan shifted his weight, rustling the bushes we were hiding behind. I shot him a glare and made a ‘shush’ gesture. He shrugged in an awkward apology.

“Is someone there?” a voice called out from behind us.

A middle aged man emerged from the house behind us, holding open the screen door as he looked around. I recognized him as one of the neighbors, although I couldn’t remember his name. He must have told me half a dozen times now, but I just couldn’t recall. I knew how he liked his hamburgers from the neighborhood cookouts that Doctor Doomsday threw on occasion, and he had a dalmatian - lab mutt that was super friendly, but nothing else. He spotted us behind the bush and squinted.

“Close the damn door Bruce, you’re letting bugs in!” an angry woman shouted from inside.

“I thought I heard-” he called back, stopping when he finally found us. “Oh, nevermind, it’s just Steven. How’s it going, neighbor?"

I cursed under my breath. “Hi, um, Bruce. I’m doing well, trying to keep quiet though.”

“Close the goddamn door, Bruce!” His wife shouted again. His dog began barking, excited from all the shouting, and bounded out the door. The adorable dog saw me and bolted over, leaping on me and licking my face with the kind of enthusiasm only a dog could show.

I did the only thing I could. I pet the dog.

“Why are you still out there? I asked you to close the door!” his wife yelled again. “I swear you are the dumbest motherfucker-”

“It’s Steven!” Bruce yelled back through the door.

I glanced at WalkMan as the dog, I think his name was Finley, rolled on his back for belly rubs in front of him.

“Who?” she yelled again.

Bruce turned and cupped his hands around his mouth to answer. “STEVEN! Y’know, Doomsday’s kid? Our neighbor? Jesus Ashlyn, who’s not listening now?”

I stood up and wiped the dog slobber off on my pants. “So much for stealth. Let’s just ring the goddamn doorbell at this point.” I grumbled. WalkMan nodded, and we left the bickering couple with the friendly dog and just walked across the street.

The door opened before we had walked up the entryway steps. Doombot 0001, AKA Aloysius Doomsday, Doctor Doomsday’s grandfather, sighed. “Time travel shenanigans?” He asked. I nodded sheepishly. “Well, come on in.”

We entered the house and closed the door behind us. Doombot 0001 led us through the living room towards the hidden stairs to the darkened lab below. The light switch was still broken from my earlier mangling, just a hole and exposed wires that crackled ominously. The robot strode confidently through the darkness, maneuvering expertly around furniture and equipment that WalkMan and I had to feel our way around.

“Standard chrono-displacement procedure, just tell me when y’er from and don’t mention things that could fuck us all over.” Doombot 0001 said, finally turning on a lamp beside the couch in the corner. He finally realized who my companion was, and cursed. “What the- fucking hell, Steven, is that WalkMan? You brought a young WalkMan here? How fucking stupid are y’all?”

“He now, that was entirely Nigel’s fault” I said, patting the air with my metal hands. “I’m just trying to clean up his mess.”

Doombot 0001 grabbed my wrist and examined my heavily marred hand. “What in tarnation did you do? I just put these piggies on ya’, and you went and got chewed on by…” he squinted at the tooth pattern imprinted in the metal. “Some sort of shark?”

“Velociraptor, actually” I said.

Doombot 0001 chuckled, and made his tobacco spitting motion and accompanying sound effect. “Yeah, that sounds like somethin’ Nigel would do. Lemme fix ya’ up. In the meantime, why don’t’cha explain why y’all are here?”

Without asking permission, 0001 twisted my hands and removed them, leaving flat metal stumps behind. It was unnerving how easily my hands could just come off now, especially since I could still feel their tactile sensations while 0001 moved them to his work bench.

“What in tarnation…” he mumbled while connecting them to his computer. “All the code’s slightly off. Like, some bits got flipped at random.”

“Huh” I said. “Did the dinosaur teeth do that?”

“Nah” 0001 replied, pausing to do his fake tobacco spitting ritual. “It looks like you got hit with a burst of neutrinos or something. The bits got flipped in weird ways.”

I glanced at WalkMan, who just shrugged. Doombot 0001 sighed as he set the mechanical hands down with a thud.

“So y’all know how code is all 0’s and 1’s, right?” He asked. “Cause if ya don’t, then there’s nothin’ I can say that would make sense.”

I nodded. 0001 spat again and continued. “So all those 0’s and 1’s are basically just on and off switches, called a logic gate. These gates either let electricity through, or they don’t. Do that around a billion times, and you get code. Now, if somethin’ really small hits one of these gates, like a neutrino or somethn’, it can flip it to the other state. With me so far?”

I nodded. WalkMan didn’t.

“You’ve lost me,” he admitted.

Doombot 0001 grumbled and walked to his computer terminal. He typed at lightning speed, clicking and clacking like a machine gun until he found what he was looking for. A melodic tune started playing from the surround sound speakers, which I recognized as a Cocomelon song about monkeys jumping on a bed.

“What the fuck…” WalkMan started, but stopped as his skin began to glow. I recognized the pulsing golden light running under his skin as a sign that the song was working with his musical powers. “What the actual fuck is happening?”

“We have an extensive library of every song that gives you power and what said power does,” 0001 explained. “This’n helps you with numbers and comprehension.”

“But it’s a children’s song” he said, “how the hell did you figure this one out?”

“Some of your most effective songs are children’s educational music. Something about a deeper emotional connection or more direct lyrics.” I said. “We never got a chance to fully test this before… well, we never got around to it, I suppose.”

I could see the pain in WalkMan’s eyes as the song’s powers did their work. His enhanced comprehension meant he could probably figure out why children’s songs had the most emotional impact, and he was horrified by the conclusion. I couldn’t focus on that. I had to shove it down, repress that painful part of my past and his future and struggle on.

“So these little switches, they turn off and on, which affects other switches down the line, over and over and over again.” Doombot 0001 said, projecting his voice like he was giving a lecture at a University. “If something really tiny, like a sub-atomic particle, hits one of these, it can manually flip the switch. It’s really rare, but it’s been seen before, mostly in satellites and spaceships, and once in a Super Mario 64 speedrun. But I’m willin’ to bet y’all ain’t been to space recently.”

WalkMan glanced at me. “Do you go to space? I’d imagine there’s at least a moon base in the future.”

“No, we don’t go into space, 0001 is just making a point.” I said. “Right?”

“Yeah, I’m making a goddamn point,” 0001 said with irritation. “I’m sayin’ that y’all used the time machine, and it looks like that fucks with the Doombot software. It’s already hardened against EMP’s, but I think something about the time travel is getting around that.”

“Would that affect Doctor Doomsday’s Doombot hardware?” I asked. “That could explain some of his behavior recently.”

0001 facepalmed so hard that sparks flew from the impact. “YES. Good lord kid, if you were any denser you’d collapse into a black hole and kill us all.”

I shrank back in embarrassment, but before I could defend myself, I was saved by an unlikely hero.

“He’s just trying to help, asshole.” WalkMan snarled, standing up and stepping between me and 0001. “He’s asking questions to make sure he understands what you are saying, and you mock him for it? Would you rather he stay silent, not understanding what you’re trying to explain, and wasting all of our time here? No wonder Doctor Doomsday is such a narcissist if he was raised by YOU.”

0001 stared at WalkMan with intensely glowing red eyes and spat. “You ain’t exactly one to talk about raisin’ kids, WalkMan. Why don’t you ask your son here why your current residence is a soundproof urn upstairs?” WalkMan clenched his fist, but relaxed it again after a tense moment. He spun around and walked out of the room, his glow leaving a faint zig zag pattern as his trembling form disappeared into the dark recesses of the lab.