#futuristic version

"You'd better get moving, Freyja. I don't think your little skirmish with Kink has left your little empire in the most sturdy of shapes. The Time Cops might be fixing things back to how they were but we both know you and they have a difference of opinion on how time should be. What I'm saying is that maybe while they're at it, they might decide to trim back on some of your territory. You know, a little here, a little there. Hey, look at that your spaceships are all gone." Tilly pointed down the street. The destruction was all gone, as if it had never been.

Freyja nodded. "Nicely played, Matti, but this game isn't over yet. Not by far."

"Uh-huh. 'I'll get you next time, Gadget.' Bye-bye, Freyja."

Freyja rolled her eyes and then vanished into the timestream. Lu Wu and the machine he was hooked up to disappeared seconds later.

The future Tilly stepped up to Jamal and gave him a hug. "Bye, Dad."

"You're going?" he asked.

"Yeah. I better." She waved her no longer cybernetic hand. "Time's catching up to me."

"Bye, Future Me," our Tilly said. "It's always really weird meeting you."

"No kidding," future Tilly said and then disappeared.

Past Jamal had also disappeared. It was just the three of us. "Ok," I said. "So how exactly are we supposed to get back to our time?" I guess I shouldn't have worried because we were soon surrounded by Time Cops. "Hey. Nice to see you guys back."

"Mr. Clay, Mr. Sampson, Ms. Sampson," one of the time cops said, "you're going to have to come with us."

"Come with you?" I asked. "But we didn't do anything wrong. It was Kink and Freyja who..."

"Yes, well, we'll see about that."

"You're accusing us of some kind of crime?" Jamal asked, completely flabbergasted. "We just saved all of space and time!"

"That's still needs to be determined," the cop said.

"My daughter just save you all from nonexistence!" Jamal yelled.

The Time Cop looked at Tilly. "Not me," she said. "The older version of me. Presumably I'll do it when I get older."

"Mm-hmm."

The Time Cop open the temporal door. "Move along. Don't make me send for more backup. Fixing time is much easier when the anomalies are compliant."

"I bet the 'anomalies' are much more compliant when they don't hear you call them anomalies," Jamal replied.

"It's been a long couple months trying to fix this mess you've all made, so just work with me here. None of us are in the mood."

to be continued next week

"But she might kill Jamal!" I yelled, looking for a way down.

"Yeah," Tilly said, grabbing my arm. "She's probably prepared for it."

"How?" I asked.

Tilly pulled me forward as we started to phase through the roof. "My guess, she'll just replace him with an earlier version."

"Can she do that?"

"Who knows? But if she can't, having that horn will make coming up with another way even easier."

We reached the ground and Tilly started running. I did my best to keep up, but all the other people in the street were running away. Well, maybe not everyone. More than a few people were standing on the sidewalk gawking at the spaceship hovering over their neighborhood.

"Get out of here!" I yelled to them. "Go!" But they didn't listen and I didn't have the time to make them. Kink was already preparing a counter attack. The buildings themselves began to grow arms and legs and rise from the ground.

"Stop it! Stop!" Tilly yelled, but they couldn't hear her, not over the sound of living buildings attacking a spaceship. Tilly stopped as the buildings began to explode from Freyja's ship's weapons. She turned around and grabbed my hand. "Come on!"

She pulled me forward as we angled away from them. We went right toward a building. I closed my as she went running right into the wall. She, of course, phased right through it. I opened my eyes just in time to see the wall coming toward me, I barely had time to let out a yelp. Then I went through the wall as well and into the lobby of an apartment building.

We continued on outside and through several more buildings. When we emerged on the other side, I glanced back and saw the fight behind us, the living buildings versus the spaceship. We continued to run on. "Hurry!" she yelled. "His apartment's up ahead!"

"Yeah," I shouted back. "I know! I was alive in this time. Jamal was my friend!"

"Well, then get your butt moving!" she yelled. "And stop making me do all the work! We need to get to him before they do!"

The explosions behind us were getting louder. I tried to speed up to take the lead, but it turned out future Tilly was just faster than me. I recognized Jamal's apartment building as we came up on it. I remembered this place. It had been a while since he had lived here.

Tilly started toward the door, but before she reached it. The door and Jamal stepped out. She stopped dead. "Mr. Sampson?" she said. He looked at her, then me, and I realized not only didn't he recognize her, but he didn't recognize me either. "We need to move," Tilly said.

to be continued next week

"Job? What job?" I asked.

"The Xian need your help," the other me said.

"Our help? Why can't you help?"

The other me smiled, "I already did."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Jamal asked. "And where the hell am I? Where are the rest of us? Why are you the only one here?"

The other me shook her head. "I can't tell you that. I shouldn't tell you this either, but I did to me, so I guess it's ok for me to tell you."

"Right," Jamal said. "That makes sense."

"So what are you even doing here?" I asked.

The other me took a bottle from out of her pocket. "I'm here to give you this." She tossed it to me which I easily caught.

"What are these?"

My other replied, "Nanite pill. They'll make it so you can breath outside this room. It may hurt for a few seconds as the nanites adjust to the new atmosphere."

"Why are there only 2?" I asked.

"1 for you, 1 for Doc," my other replied. "Tilly and Jamal don't need them. They already have the upgrade."

I didn't like taking pills that I didn't know where they came from or ingesting strange tech, but the pills came from future me. So I swallowed the pill and gave the other to Jennifer. If I couldn't trust myself, who could I trust?

The Xian led us out of the chamber room. We all gagged and coughed as we breathed in the Xianic atmosphere, but slowly we adjusted. As future me had predicted, we were able to breath it with the help from the nanites. When we entered the bridge, Jamal's impatience got the better of him. "Ok. Enough of this. Why don't you tell us what you want with us."

"We are under attack," the Xian explained. "We are being attacked from the inside. Our soldiers are being turned against us."

"Turned? How?" I asked.

The Xian replied, "We do not know. It is happening too quickly. We had to run. They are turning Xian. We need non-Xian."

"You think it's biological?" Jennifed asked.

"We don't know."

"We haven't been able to capture a turned-Xian, but we hope that it is based on our biology. It just has to be."

I turned to the other me. "And you solved this?"

She shook her head. "No can do. You know I can't tell you anything. Time paradoxes. In fact, I should be going. We should be passing by Earth by now. I have to go. I have my own work that needs to be done." And so the other me left and things got less confusing and paradoxical.

"As soon as she is clear, we must leave as well," the Xian said. "We will be heading into hyperspace and soon be in Xianic space."

to be continued next week

"I injected him with nanos," the woman said matter of factly. "They're going to restructure his skeleton. They're going to make his jaw more pliable and his tounge more flexible. They're also going to make his hands more dexterous. I mean, I love my dad and all, but that scooby-doo talking can get annoying pretty quickly."

"And we're just supposed to believe you're Mathilda?" I asked. "We're just supposed to trust you?"

"Tell your robot to scan me," she said. "No mods can beat a Jotun scanner."

"But your nanos can corrupt his scanners," I rebutted.

"True." She smiled. "Don't tell me you don't recognize me, Uncle Frank? Besides, who else would risk their neck coming to save your asses?"

"Wratch yourrr langrage young lady," Jamal said, picking himself off from the ground.

"Jamal, she might not be..."

"She is," he cut me off. "I know mry daughterrr. No matterrr how old she is."

"That's good enough for me," Jennifer said.

"ALAN?" I asked.

"Confirmed. 100% match for Mathilda Sampson." I nodded. "Ok. You're Tilly. So now why don't you tell me what the hell you're doing here? Or more importantly how?"

"What I'm doing here? Isn't it obvious? I'm here to rescue you," she replied.

"What took you so long?" I demand. "Why are you here now?"

"Why now?" she echoed "Because this is when it happens. This is when I save you."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"There are rules that need to be followed," Mathilda explained. "The universe depends on it. Time travel is serious business. We're talking about cause and effect. Small changes can have enormous unexpected impacts. It's the reason the Time Cops exist. Not even Freyja would dare break the rules. I'm here now because it's the only time I could be."

"So you can send us back?" Jennifer asked.

"Yes," Mathilda replied. "I'm here to send you back to the future, so you can save me."

"You can send us back to when we left?" Jamal asked eagerly, sounding amazingly like his old self. "You can send us back to Freyja's castle?"

"I can," Mathilda carefully chose her words. "But remember I can only do so much. Certain things must happen. Certain things I can't change. I can only send you when I can send you. There's a time you're supposed to be there and I can't do it any sooner. Time can only be bent so much."

"But we can save you?" Jamal asked, his raptor face full of hope.

Mathilda smiled. "Not only can you, dad. You will. You have to. But," she added, "you have to do it now. This is the time."

Mathilda squeezed her hand and with a flash we were in the future.

to be continued next week

And so days passed. Days became weeks. Weeks became months. Jamal and I would go out hunting, though most of the time it was ALAN how caught our food. Jennifer would disect it before we would eat.

Each day I would take a shot from the stabilizer. The pain would be excrutiating, but it would have to be done. Slowly, but surely my body started to get into shape. It was the 1st time I had been in 1 body for so long in years. It was kind of strange. But the good times couldn't last.

"The buildup of instability in the stabilizer is getting too big. I don't know how much more it can take. We have to figure out something to do with it," Jennifer continued. "If we don't the whole thing could explode. We don't know the damage it could do. The quantum energy could be catastrophic! It could destroy the future!"

"I don't think we have to worry about that." We all turned to the sound of the new voice. "Trust me. I just came from there. It's fine."

The woman that entered the cave looked to be in her thirties. She had light brown skin and shortly cropped black hair. She appeared to be wearing tight leather pants, a blue t-shirt, and a brown coat that was much too heavy for the prehistorical summer heat. I say 'appeared' because I noticed her swirling multicolored eye mod that made me think that her clothes were likely some futuristic material.

"'Oo t' 'ell arrre yoo?" Jamal growled.

The woman laughed. "I'm going to assume it's because of your strange new eyes you don't recognize me. "That and I'm something like 20 years older than the last time you saw me, but seriously, Dad, come on."

Jamal's reptilean jaw dropped. "'Ahtilda?"

The woman curtsied. "In the flesh."

"I don't underrrstan'," Jamal said as this older, stranger Mathilda walked toward him. "'Ow? Ry?"

"Hold that thought," Mathilda interrupted. She took from her pocket something that looked very much like a pen, then slammed it hard into Jamal's skin. Jamal flinched. I raised my gun. And the woman, she giggled. "Don't worry. I've only just injected him with nanites."

"You what?" I screamed as Jamal roared out in pain.

to be continued next week