"Countdown to Doomsday (Part One)" - Part Two

Part Two

There were many libraries in the TVA, depending on which universe they monitored. When it was once all about protecting the Sacred Timeline, the one library in the headquarters was a rather dull room with an old-school filing system that archived everything about the Sacred Timeline.

The library for Earth-M was far more interesting, much like the universe itself, and even more advanced. It was practically a spacious museum with working holograms and computers, as well as chambers used specifically for multiverse analysis.

As Bobo led them into one chamber, Cici and Kara were surprised to find a few familiar faces…

Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and his assistant, Beaker, were working at one of the stations. From the holographic models that Bunsen manually manipulated in front of him, they could see that the pair was examining a ‘Universe Probability Matrix.’ They had a stack of TVA books on things like timeline analysis, variant reports, multiverse protocols, and branch containment.

But the most striking thing about the two Muppet scientists: they were dressed like members of the Fantastic Four!

Assisting them was the third face they recognized—that of their father’s third incarnation, a young Asian blonde self-named ‘Miya.’ She was holding a TVA-sanctioned tablet that displayed the countless glowing spheres that made up Bunsen and Beaker’s research.

“Well, guys,” Miya addressed her lab partners, “we may have narrowed it down to the best of our ability. And it is a rather dangerously fascinating problem, I’d say.”

“Indeed,” Bunsen concurred.

“And what exactly is the problem?” Cici asked as she entered with Kara and Bobo.

Miya jolted with joy when she saw her and Kara. “Neas! You’re here! Both of you!” She went right to the two incarnations of her daughter, giving each of them big, warm hugs. Cici was exactly the same height as her, which made the hug all the more endearing as the sides of their faces touched. Kara, on the other hand, towered over Miya, so Miya’s head rested against Kara’s chest. “You got my call!”

“You sent the distress?” Cici said.

“Pop, you never told us that you worked for the TVA,” Kara noted.

“I’m not exactly ‘working’ for them,” Miya said with a shrug. “I’m just a temporary consultant—between the Earth-10005 incident and what’s happening right now.”

“Yeah, we heard some of what y’all were talking about,” Kara said. “What’s going on?”

Miya led them back to the station, indicating the hologram. “You see these two spheres here? They’re supposed to exist independently of one another. Two entirely different universes. Different histories, different laws of physics, different everything.”

Cici and Kara analyzed the hologram.

The spheres were drifting dangerously close together.

“They look like they’re about to collide with each other,” Cici said.

“Precisely!” Bunsen exclaimed. “Normally, they would remain completely separate. Rather like two bubbles floating peacefully in a bathtub!”

“Meep, meep!” Beaker said.

“Yes, Beakie,” Bunsen agreed, “except these bubbles contain trillions of living organisms, countless galaxies, and several billion years of cosmic history!”

“But when the two touch? That’s the unfortunate part,” Miya said. “When two universes begin occupying the same dimensional space, their respective physical structures become increasingly unstable. Eventually, one reality may collapse into the other.”

“Or they could both collapse.” Cici was catching on.

“And it’s happening everywhere,” Miya told her, leading her to a touch table that displayed branched timelines. “Entire realities are starting to bleed into one another. Places, people, even events that shouldn’t exist together are suddenly sharing the same space.”

“Beaker and I witnessed one such incursion when we worked with Miss Miya’s future incarnation and a very helpful little boy named Finn,” Bunsen recalled. “We concluded that our efforts prevented the incursion meant to occur between Earth-M and our universe, Earth-828M. Yet the problem persists, not because of the source we originally encountered, but because of someone who is intentionally moving through—or manipulating—the weakened boundaries.”

“So, this isn’t another natural anomaly?” Kara asked, putting the pieces together.

“They’re being deliberately accelerated,” Miya elaborated.

“Do we know who the culprit is?” Cici asked.

“Not yet, we don’t.”

A voice outside their party spoke up, turning all heads towards the chamber entrance. There stood a tall man dressed entirely in black, including a long coat that carried the insignia for the S.H.I.E.L.D. organization. He had a goatee. His dreadlocks fell around a very strict-looking face that reminded Cici much of her past eleventh incarnation.

“Ah, Director Livingston!” Bunsen identified him in his address. “How is the situation in Earth-M? Are Miss Zeeva and Finn alright?”

“Finn’s still been having weird dreams,” Livingston relayed. “Something about a man in an iron mask.”

Miya frowned. “He’s dreaming of Iron Man?”

Livingston shook his head. “He says that it doesn’t look like Iron Man. I believe his exact words were: ‘A really terrifying version of Iron Man’. Whatever the case, we’ll keep an eye on it. In the meantime, Earth-M’s copacetic. No signs of incursions anywhere in sight.”

“That’s good news,” Kara said, approaching Director Livingston with her hand out. “Good seein’ ya again, Sean.”

Livingston accepted her handshake. “Likewise, Kara. It’s been a while.” He then looked past Kara and centered his focus on Cici. “Is this her?”

Cici noticed a bit of uneasiness in his voice as he regarded her.

“Yep, this is her,” Kara told Sean.

“You two wanna stop talkin’ about me like I’m not standing right in front of you!” Cici griped.

Even the sound of her voice made Livingston quiver.

“Wow, she even sounds like her,” he gasped.

Cici’s patience was wearing thin. “Who?! Who are you talking about?!”

Livingston walked right up to Cici. He stared into her bright blue eyes, which were framed by the impatient scowl that she shot him. “There’s something I need to show you,” he told her. “Follow me.”

— — — — — —

Cici followed Director Livingston into what was labeled as the ‘Earth-M Archives’ chamber. It was another spacious area that contained technology far beyond any reality that the TVA monitored.

Along the way, Livingston offered her an explanation for the way he reacted to her presence…

“I didn’t originally come from Earth-M. My universe was much like Earth-616—or what was once known as ‘The Sacred Timeline.’ My universe was given the designation ‘Earth-012’. My mother and I lived there until the day that the TVA arrived and purged our whole universe.”

During the entire trip, Cici kept quiet and allowed Livingston to do most of the talking. However, when he mentioned his purged universe, she had to ask, “Why did they do that?”

“For a long time, I asked myself the same question. And then Loki, of all people, showed up at S.W.O.R.D. one day and brought me here to the TVA. He showed me this…”

He brought Cici to one of the unoccupied monitor stations.

He switched the monitor on.

At first, there was nothing but static snow, and then Livingston turned the knobs on the control panel until a clear live image manifested on the screen. It was of a small Muppet child, seemingly of African ethnicity, sitting at his desk in class and doodling a rather impressive rocket ship in crayon.

“Cute lil’ dude,” Cici observed. “Who is he?”

“His name’s DeShaun,” Livingston said. “He lives in Earth-M.”

“Why did Loki show him to you?”

“Because, when DeShaun was just a baby, he was accidentally sent to Earth-012—the Earth where my mother and I came from.” Livingston turned the knobs on the panel again.

Cici watched as the live image of DeShaun changed from DeShaun as a young boy to DeShaun as a baby. A beautiful redheaded woman in a black leather bodysuit was cradling him, while another woman—a dark-haired woman in her own black leather bodysuit that bore the S.H.I.E.L.D. emblem—tickled Baby DeShaun’s foamy little nose.

Cici focused on the dark-haired woman very closely, noticing the distinct resemblance to her current regeneration. “That’s…your mother?” she asked Livingston.

“Yeah,” he confirmed. He then pointed to the redhead and added, “And that’s me, holding DeShaun.”

Cici’s eyes widened. “Wait. You’re the redhead?! How?! Don’t tell me you’re a Time Lord, too!”

Livingston snickered. “No. It’s a long story. The short version is that my grandmother—the woman you see there on the monitor—was an alien being with DNA that could be broken down molecule by molecule. This mad scientist combined her DNA with mine, turning us into one whole being that we named ‘Agent X’.”

Even the short version of this story wowed Cici. “So…you walked around with your grandmother’s face until…”

“Until this…”

Livingston led Cici away from the monitor station and to a holo-table.

He activated the table, dialing in specific chronological coordinates.

Agent X reappeared in a hologram in which she was wearing a gauntlet with the six Infinity Stones embedded in it. Cici knew of this gauntlet—it was powered by Tony Stark’s nanotechnology, the same type of technology that made up his Iron Man armor.

In other universes, this ‘Nano Gauntlet’ was what brought back everyone Thanos snapped away…and killed Tony Stark to ultimately defeat the Mad Titan himself.

Livingston explained all of that to her as he showed the hologram. “Banner had wanted to do it himself, since he was in his ‘Smart Hulk’ form at the time and could take the brunt of the Stones’ energy. But then Sarah Williams—a sorceress and associate of Doctor Strange’s—said that I was the only one capable of handling it without any serious repercussions.”

“Because of the alien DNA from your grandmother that fused with yours?” Cici surmised.

Livingston nodded, gesturing to the hologram. “As you can see, they still caused some agony, but I survived the process…and everyone came back home.”

“And you returned to your natural-born self,” Cici said. “Sounds like a happy ending.”

“Not quite.”

He switched to a different hologram.

Cici gasped.

This one was of Livingston’s mother, who was now the one wearing the Nano Gauntlet. She was on her knees—battered, bloodied, and in excruciating pain—presumably from taking on the overwhelming energy of the Infinity Stones.

“My mother and I were the deciding factors in the fate of Earth-M. Whereas, in every other universe, the Hulk was meant to bring everyone back and Tony Stark was fated to die…in Earth-M, I was meant to bring everyone back and my mother…”

He couldn’t bring himself to say it.

After a long moment of silence, Cici looked over at him and saw how he longingly stared at the repeated hologram footage of his mother snapping her fingers with the Nano Gauntlet.

“I’m sorry,” Cici told him.

“She was dying…even before she put on that gauntlet. She was only delaying the inevitable with each breath she took every day of her life. She only did fate the favor of deciding when it was her time on her terms.”

Livingston looked at the hologram of his mother one last time…

…and then switched it off.

“Why did you show me all of this?” Cici asked him.

Livingston paused for a moment and said, “Because I believe whatever’s deliberately causing these incursions—the thing that your father, Bunsen, and Beaker are trying to find—knows about deviations like the ones I just showed you…and it’s trying to correct them.”

“To what purpose?”

“I don’t know. That’s what I’m hoping we figure out before it comes back and finishes where the last one left off for Earth-M.”

Livingston was about to leave the chamber when Cici asked him, “One last thing…your mother…what was her name?”

He stopped, looking back at her solemnly. “Ciciley.”

Cici stiffened at this…could she even call it a ‘coincidence’?

She knew more than anyone that there were no such things as coincidences in the multiverse.

            But what else could she have called it?