"They're back!"
His lean clever hands trembling from exertion, William "Bill" Smithson III leaned back from his piloting chair and finally allowed himself to breathe. He had done it. Thank the gods, he had done it! With an array of devices drained to their cores beyond repair, he had finally broken through using his new time travel machine, Namora's Needle.
Locating the moment when the nine time travelers exited the first (reimaged) McDonald's in 1948, he had been able to stitch up the rip in time that had caused his grandfather's team to disintegrate upon re-entry. It had taken three generations of dedicated scientific research and labor: his grandfather dedicated his life to it, his father before him took up the quest, and then the baton had been passed to him.
The newly arrived members of the team looked at him strangely.
Naturally.
They had left in 2008 and it was now much much later. The Central receiving station would have changed, and of course, with his pink hair, Bill couldn't possibly pass as his grandad, even though he was the spitting image of him otherwise. But first things first.
"Welcome back! You're probably wondering why your ears are now pointed and um, you have little wings on your feet. Truth is…" he coughed nervously, "ahem, uh, we had to make a few temporary modifications to circumvent a very tricky situation." He pasted a bright smile on his face. "Temporary being the key word, I assure you! There was a bit of trouble getting you home, you see."
Team leader Victor Wysefed interrupted him, his darkly handsome face stern. "Yes, I noticed that. There was this enormous pressure, it felt like my very molecules were vibrating at an impossible speed, and then those weird flashing lights… Hell, I was sure we weren't going to make it!"
His companions nodded in agreement, examining their winged heels and touching their restyled ears with much less panic than Bill had anticipated. This was good!
Bill held up his hand for silence. "But now! With the invention of Namora's Needle, we were able to retrieve all of you. 'A stitch in time saves nine!' As they say. Heh heh heh. I can't wait to tell you all about it. But first we need to get all of you checked out. Medics!"
The team looked at each other as the medical team rushed in. Young buffaloing Bill couldn't possibly know, but it wasn't the first time they had lived this scenario. No one was exactly sure what had gone wrong at the site in 1948 (they had grave suspicions which would bear further investigation), but at least they weren't sporting two heads and one eye in the middle of each of those foreheads such as had happened during a previous attempt to retrieve the team. In that alternate future, they had appeared grotesquely deformed in the bottom of a cistern and Bill had chirped "All's well that ends in a well!"
Oh no. That hadn't been "well" at all! They had made him reverse the procedure and send them back to Point A. Again. And again and again.
"I'll live with the Spock ears and the little wings," murmured Sherry Blitely, second-in-command, to the rest of the team. "Just get me off this fuckin' merry-go-round and get me a drink!" A sentiment which her teammates silently, but heartily, seconded.
