Meg goes on. “While I was gone, my world had progressed enough so that a descendant of AB met a beautiful red-headed girl named Missy. She was obviously a descendant of Keb, but since no one knew any better, there was no reason to stop them from falling in love and getting married. For all the times the System preventing this in all the other storyboards, this apocalypse was finally allowed to happen in the very universe it started in, and as the child of AB and Miss was born, our version of Arion Jekel fused with it and grew up as a normal boy with no one knowing the new prince of our space kingdom was actually the ancient enemy of our people. This son, once he was a young man, killed his parents and took over the kingdom. He changed his name…to Zocar, the Wolf Sheep.”
Elena butts in, “When I learned this, that Zocar was the one behind the molding of my parents’ society, I freaked out, crying, ‘I’m the child of a demon!’ It was awful. I was so dramatic back then.”
Back then? Everyone stares at her. No one believes her.
“There’s no ‘back then’ to it,” says Jo. The class laughs and gives the attention back to Meg.
“With our kingdom taken, Zocar set his sights on other worlds, having learned about a dangerous material, even more powerful than the red rocks he had been using, called the Eyes of Thanatos. Zocar eagerly took his campaign out of this universe and rushed after the power he sought. Anyone want to guess where he went first?”
The kids think for a second, but as the light comes on, laughs begin here and there.
“Exactly,” says Meg, “Zocar spent all the time manipulating and terrorizing the System in order to create a body for himself that was destroyed by James Scott the moment he stepped outside of this universe. Zocar’s first stop was SBXI, and that’s where he met our Crimson Prince and was destroyed before his reign had even started. Zocar literally spent generations genetically engineering his own death, and at the hands of the very thing he was hunting as the Eyes of Thanatos was merely the misunderstanding of James Scott becoming the evil Thanatos in an alternate storyboard. Zocar got his just desserts. Well, Ultimax brought him back, but the beast was finally destroyed, and we’re all good now. Since then, I became the leader of CCCXLI with my Megs and these four time-traveling clowns visiting me all the time. Of course, Canbel and I produced one of these clowns, but that’s neither here nor there.”
“I’m very right here, Mother,” says Travis Scott. “Yes, my parents had me some time after the rebuilding process had begun with the final expulsion of Zocar from our world. Also, with the System Guards being made aware of Zocar’s plan, they have been able to cleanse the universes of any residual effects from those dark days. This has been done carefully with established histories in mind, but as of now, all is safe. Any questions?”
“I have one,” Faye nano-chats to Entoni.
“Oh? What’s that?” Ent chats back.
“Are we the Ultimate Machine, Elfie, you and me? Or are AB and Missy the Ultimate Machine perhaps?” Her question starts a whole paranoid discussion between the two.
“What nonsense are you talking about?” is his response.
She explains, “Everyone else thought the Ultimate Machine was a being made of humanity and of machine, an iron-clay. Then things specified with it being a cyborg AB that would kill us all. This turned out to be Ultimax and was dealt with. It even got more specific with this whole legend referring to the moment when AB would choose to either accept or reject the Ultimate Power for himself. He refused and crushed the fear of the Ultimate Machine. However, Victor Grille presented the notion that the Ultimate Machine might be a cyborg woman instead. The idea was that, while the temptation of AB becoming a powerful cyber warrior was strong, the temptation of a beautiful robot girl was much more likely to be effective in bringing the System to destruction. Well, we dealt with Grille’s personal creation, but the fact that all the System is affected by Zocar, another form of Arion Jekel, and his plan is exactly the same as Grille’s, I can’t help but wonder how far his reach has gone.
Inner Man Theatre 