Our young Heroine delivers a moral Judgment

They walked toward the rising sun, a strange procession: a space trooper, a pirate, a psychic fraud, and a seven-foot furry creature who'd just spent eighteen years on the run from police. Behind them, Damien Thorn's tent lay in ruins. Ahead of them, 1990 waited—with all its dangers, all its possibilities, and one little girl who didn't know yet what she was going to become.

Bill glanced back at Splock. The Nocturnian walked with new purpose, his ridiculous robe billowing in the morning breeze, his eyes fixed on the horizon.

"You okay?" Bill asked.

Splock was silent for a long moment. Then:

"I have determined that logic is insufficient. That reason has limits. That the universe is fundamentally irrational and possibly hostile." He paused. "Also, that I will never again trust a female of any species who compliments my ears."

Bill nodded. "That's fair. That's completely fair."

The fairground was closed. Of course it was. Weekday mornings in Brooklyn were not prime time for psychic consultations, curse removals, or aura cleansings. The booths stood empty, their canvas flaps tied down, their signs creaking slightly in the damp breeze.

They climbed the fence. Chewgumma went over like a furry mountain, his weight making the chain-link groan in protest. Splock followed with surprising grace, his new purple robe billowing behind him like a sad superhero's cape. Duo vaulted over with practiced ease. Bill brought up the rear, catching his pants on a loose wire and tearing a hole in the knee.

The empty lot beyond was a wasteland of mud puddles and garbage. They picked their way through carefully, avoiding the worst of it—though "worst" was relative when you'd spent the last hour in a post-apocalyptic Cleveland.

Bill's hand went to his pocket. His brow furrowed.

"Hey." He stopped. "The radio. The one that appeared out of nowhere. It's gone."

Duo shrugged without breaking stride. "Probably stayed in 2000. The universe probably decided we'd had enough free temporal gadgets."

"But it was in my pocket. I had it. I—"

Splock's voice drifted back to them, calm and slightly distant. "The radios were temporal anomalies. Manifestations of intersecting time streams. Their disappearance upon our return to 1990 is logically consistent with—" He paused. "—with the general principle that the universe does not give out free gifts. Especially not communication devices."

Bill stared at him. "You're taking this pretty calmly for someone who was just—"

"I am not taking anything calmly. I am simply... processing. The processing will continue for an indeterminate period. Possibly forever."

They walked on.

The empty lot gave way to a sidewalk—cracked in places, but sidewalk nonetheless. Normal sidewalk. The kind you could walk on without expecting it to collapse into a sewer filled with mutant alligators. Bill tested each step carefully, waiting for the ground to open up or the sky to turn orange or a pack of slobbering Ryder-clones to come charging around the corner.

Nothing happened.

The street was quiet. A few cars parked along the curb, their paint jobs intact, their windows unbroken. A newspaper lay on someone's stoop, the headline readable: something about local elections, nothing about talking bears or apocalyptic prophecies.

Duo kept glancing over his shoulder. "This is wrong," he muttered. "Where are the fires? The smoke? The floating debris?"

"Don't jinx it," Bill hissed back.

They passed a small grocery store. Its windows were whole. Inside, a man in an apron was arranging oranges in a pyramid. Oranges. Bright orange. The kind you could eat without worrying about radiation poisoning.

Bill stared at the oranges. The man stared back through the glass, probably wondering why four extremely strange individuals—one in a torn military uniform, one in a pirate's jacket, one in a purple psychic robe, and one seven-foot furry creature—were gawking at his produce display.

"Keep moving," Duo whispered.

They kept moving.

A woman jogged past them, headphones clamped to her ears, a bright pink leotard stretching over legs that had clearly never carried her through a post-apocalyptic wasteland. She didn't give them a second glance. Joggers in 1990 Brooklyn had apparently seen stranger things than a Kookie before breakfast.

Chewgumma's head swiveled to watch her go. "Kookie remembers joggers. Joggers always screamed. This one not screaming. Strange."

"Don't question it," Bill said. "Just walk."

They walked.

The neighborhood slowly transitioned from commercial to residential. Small houses with tiny front yards. Chain-link fences. The occasional dog—normal-sized, normal-furred, normal-tongued—barking from behind a gate. Not a single one of them had mismatched eyes or an expression of cosmic confusion.

Bill found himself relaxing despite his better judgment. The sun was actually warm on his face. The air smelled like car exhaust and someone's breakfast cooking. Normal smells. Human smells.

Splock walked slightly behind them, his purple robe swishing with each step, his eyes fixed on the middle distance. His ears twitched occasionally, but otherwise he was a statue in stretchy pants and sandals.

Duo fell into step beside Bill. "You think he's okay?"

"No."

"Me neither." Duo glanced back at the Nocturnian. "He's processing. That's what I think. This is in the spirit of aliens like him!"

"Processing what? The trauma? The existential horror? The fact that an eighteen-year-old with the face of a reptile and the hips of a continent spent an hour trying to—"

"I don't think we should speculate."

"Probably wise."

They turned a corner. A school came into view—elementary, by the look of it. Empty. The building loomed silent against the morning sky, its windows dark, its doors still locked. A flag hung limp on its pole. The playground equipment stood motionless, swings hanging straight down, slide waiting for children who hadn't arrived yet.