The 1960s….

In the short time that Ray Palmer had been the Atom, he had helped his girlfriend Jean Loring with legal cases, been invited to join the Justice League of America, and visited a microscopic world. He had begun to think that he had seen it all, until he saw something quite unexpected: the Atom.

Ray was working in his laboratory one day, when a six inch man appeared in front of him and landed on the laboratory bench. The man’s clothing looked surprisingly familiar. He had a costume very similar to Ray’s Atom uniform, but with one major difference: The face mask did not cover his hair.

“Don’t worry, Ray,” said the little man, “Just let me explain.”

“By all means,” said Ray, and sat down on a stool.

“I’m you from over 20 years in your future.”

“That explains a lot of first impressions,” said Ray, and then asked the thing which was foremost on his mind, “Do Jean and I get married?”

“Yes, but if you don’t take my advice, you also get divorced. That’s why I’m here. As history stands so far, I spent too much time playing super hero, both with and without the Justice League of America. I spent too much time and money working on scientific experiments, and I even spent too much time (pun intended here) in the past, using Professor Alpheus V Hyatt’s Time Pool without his permission. It took him a while to forgive that. Jean was lonely, and a home wrecker from her office moved in while Ray was out saving the world. They tried to make it work, but recently, for me that is, Jean and I talked alone. She said that I remained her one true love. She went on to say that she came to understand that her times of waiting for Ray to take a break from science and super heroes during our marriage years were really only a reciprocated echo of the time that I (as you) waited while she put her career ahead of the chance to get married to you. She’ll still come to realize that in time, but you have to spend the time with her. Believe me, the outcome is too horrific to contemplate if you don’t.”

He would never tell Ray 1960s just how horrific. A tribe of alien visitors including Ray 1980s’ new girlfriend Laethwen all murdered by members of the CIA who were controlled by an evil global secret society. The CIA operatives had learned Ray’s identity in the 1980s, learned of his romance with Laethwen, and incinerated his tribe behind his back, so that the Atom would return to the United States and assist the CIA. After he had learned this, Ray had permanently shrunk the CIA members and left them to make their way in a world of relative giants.

“You’re telling me I should change my future and your past, to save a marriage with a woman you claim was an unfaithful wife… will be one to me,” said 1960s Ray.

“She made a mistake, regretted it, and wished we could undo the damage, to both of us. What she didn’t know is that I’d never told her of the Time Pool.”

“Of course, that’s how you’re here!” said Ray 1960s.

“Yes. I had many adventures with that, exploring the past and learning about history … only to waste what has become my past with Jean. You could change that,” said Atom 1980s.

“So what do I do?” asked Ray, “That Time Pool in particular would go to waste without someone my size to assist Professor Hyatt, even if he doesn’t know he’s being assisted.”

“There is someone else your size, smaller actually,” said Atom 1980s, “I talked to him in my time. He was considered a super villain in the 1960s, but he trusted me with secrets which revealed that he was not truly malevolent, that he could change his ways and work for good instead. I refer to the Mouse Man.”

“I heard a fair bit about him from Wonder Woman. He’s barely out of his teens,” said Ray 1960s, “Would he really reform in my time?”

“That and earlier times,” said Atom 1980s, “I’m convinced that he could aid Professor Hyatt openly, if you could arrange his release from the cage in which Wonder Woman imprisoned him. Not only that, but Professor Hyatt could operate the Time Pool with full awareness of the Mouse Man’s presence in the past, and extract him back to the present. Professor Hyatt would not be able to see the Mouse Man’s activities in the past, but he could still use the Time Pool to return Mouse Man to the present at some arbitrary ‘time’ of Professor Hyatt’s choosing.”

“I don’t know how I’ll get Wonder Woman to go for it,” said Ray 1960s.

“You just ask her to remit the Mouse Man into your custody,” said Atom 1980s, “Wonder Woman will probably assume that you want him to work with you in your Atom identity on a scientific experiment requiring another person of your own size. That would be enough to ease her concerns. In fact, the equally safe reality will be that the Mouse Man (whose future self has guaranteed the benevolent reform potential of his past self) can be trusted to work with Professor Hyatt.

“I’ll do it,” said Ray 1960s, “I can’t lose Jean, and it sounds like I’m doing Wonder Woman a favour, if she won’t have to worry about a fourth encounter with an unreformed Mouse Man.”

“I’ll fill you in on the fine points, and then I’ll really have to return to my time,” said Atom 1980s.

Ray 1960s activated the size controls that reduced him to six inch size and made his costume visible to the naked eye. The Atoms of two times talked for a while, and then the 1980s Atom seemed to disappear through a hole in the air.

“So that’s what it looks like when I do that with Professor Hyatt’s Time Pool,” thought Atom 1960s.

At the next Justice League of America meeting, the Atom waited for a suitable opportunity to talk to Wonder Woman alone, and then explained his need for the Mouse Man’s assistance in a top secret experiment.

Wonder Woman’s mouth opened wide as she laughed.

“It would be good to see him out of that cage and serving the same cause you do,” she said, “He was too funny to remain in the ranks of my bitterest enemies. He’s yours.”

Ray soon introduced the Mouse Man to Professor Hyatt, and explained that he believed the two could work together to make time travel beneficial for the study of history. Ray then began to make changes in his own life. He limited his involvement with the Justice League of America. He left time travel to the Mouse Man. He limited his time in the laboratory, and he made one more change, which only seemed fair, given what he’d learned about the potential Jean Loring of 1983.

Ray told Jean that he was the Atom, that he had been helping her with her legal cases to speed up her availability. He asked her to seize the moment and decide whether career advancement was more important than their love for each other. This time Jean was happy to advance their engagement, and the Paul Hoben of 1983 would find a partner elsewhere, without destroying one of the greatest potential romances of Super Hero and wife.

The Mouse Man worked with Professor Hyatt until they were able to modify the Time Pool enough to send a small person to a specifically chosen point in time. Both of them agreed that it would be interesting to send someone back millions of years, to see prehistoric eras. Professor Hyatt set the machine to take the Mouse Man back millions of years.

The Mouse Man went through the Time Pool and hit some strange force which bounced him back to Professor Hyatt’s laboratory in the 1960s, his present.

“Professor, what happened?” asked the Mouse Man.

“According to the instruments, you only went back about 6000 years,” said Professor Hyatt.

“But the world’s been evolving for millions of years, and so have we,” said the Mouse Man.

“That’s what many scientists have believed,” said Professor Hyatt, “But there is another school of thought, one which was often frowned on. Nonetheless, I learned it: The size of the sun has been decreasing at a rate that can only be measured over hundreds of years, but measured nonetheless. My calculations confirm that, if the sun had been around millions of years ago, it would have been so large, that it would have touched the earth and burnt it to a cinder long before the 20th Century. A number of Christians among the scientific community believe that the world was literally created by God in six days, just as Genesis records.”

“Then why is evolution so popular?” asked Mouse Man.

“Because it leads people away from any belief in intelligent design by a benevolent creator God. Evolution is widely taught in universities throughout the world, so that Christianity can be undermined, atheism can be fueled, and people can be turned away from any thought of a master designer calling them into a relationship with Him. Some believe that demons themselves are responsible for the spread of atheism and evolution. The fact that you just hit some sort of obstruction in the time stream 6000 years or so ago implies to me that creation must have indeed begun back then.”

“If that’s true, it may not be our right for me to try to witness THAT,” said Mouse Man, “Could you send me back to some time shortly after the flooding events in the time of Noah’s Ark? We could debate the origin of the world and of human beings indefinitely, but I’d rather just go back and see what’s happened in the 6000 years we can access.”

“I formed the same conclusion myself,” said Professor Hyatt, “I’ll see what we can do next.”