The George Fox Chronicles: The Final Chapter
(Continued from the previous chapter…)
Sly kept tapping the window. George was still gathering his thoughts on how to approach this, he was not sure if he did the deed, what the consequences were. He stopped hesitating and finally opened the window.
“George, is it? We’ve met before.” Sly said.
“I know what you’re here for, Sly. It was only a few hours ago in my perspective.” George said. He could sense Sly was hiding something deep down, but he was there (stuck in his boot) when Sly said his ultimate wish: He was here to find a way to bring his parents back to life.
Sly held the card up again. “You gave me this a week after my parents died. Back then, I wanted anything to bring them back. It’s still in the back of my mind all these years.” He said. “You haven’t aged a day since you gave me the card.”
“You saw me make portals, right? Those are time travelling portals. I was going to be discrete by only observing, but I kind of fell out of your boot.” George said. “I’ve already made a minor re-write to history. You coming here was I guess the result of that.”
“Can you bring them back?” Sly finally asked.
“Do you want to risk re-writing more of history and potentially altering the time continuum?” George didn’t know why he said that, when there was so much irony in the actions he took not being discrete in the past.
Sly took a hand and placed it on George’s hand. “Please… anything to prevent the Fiendish Five from taking them.” Sly said.
“Alright. Wait five minutes.” George said.
He opened up a white portal to the past and jumped in. The portal closed and Sly was left in George’s room to observe for 5 minutes.
Sly took the time to examine the room. The first thing he noticed was Carmelita’s old work issue boots. Sly remembered when these grew to gargantuan size during the Australian outback job, and he had to climb it to pry off the Mask of Dark Earth. Looking down the shaft, fabric seemed to have prevented him from seeing the footbed of the boots. All too curious, Sly picked a boot up and shook it gently.
Inside the boot, sounds of glass breaking and shuffling furniture came to his ear. Since George was away, he couldn’t activate his protection circuitry for his boot home. Sly couldn’t help but wonder what George had done to her boots.
Sly moved to the opposite side of the bed from where the window was lying. Stockings were spread across that side of the bed and lipstick was spotted near the lamp and clock by the bedside. “Who was really staying with George? Where did he get Carmelita’s boots?” Sly wondered to himself.
In a moment, a flash of white light marked George’s return. Sly rushed to him, nearly knocking over Carmelita’s boots.
“Whoa! Be careful! There’s a house inside those.” George said.
Sly stopped momentarily to look at the boots again. It made more sense now, why George was initially rat sized inside his boot all those years ago.
“I only just replaced my projection system with a flat panel… The stand is very fragile.” George said to Sly. He was feeling guilty about shaking Carmelita’s boot now, knowing a house was inside it.
“Sorry about that. I only gently shook it.” Sly said.
“Anyways, the deed’s been done. What do you remember about the night the Fiendish Five arrived, Sly?” George said.
Sly was shocked to find a different memory of the night in his head, so crystal clear, but for a different reason. “I remember… them taking the Thievius Raccoonus… My dad wasn’t there when they showed up. But after they left… My dad got me out of the closet and told me he was splitting up with my mom. Going to the courts to formalize the divorce would land them both in jail… They had to give up custody of me. I still ended up in the orphanage.” Sly said.
“I took the place of your father to deliver that message.” George said. 
“Are they really safe and *gulp* still together?” Sly said.
“Your parents are still together, Sly. They’re waiting for you right now at the penthouse you and… *ahem* Carmelita stayed at while, um… you two were together.” George looked down to his own feet. He knew Carmelita hid the fact he was her boyfriend from Sly when she was together with him briefly.
Sly wondered about George’s hesitation to say Carmelita’s name. “Are you okay?” he said.
George sighed, and had to be honest. “Sly, did Carmelita ever tell you she had a real boyfriend?”
This was the first Sly heard of this. He was surprised, but at the same time the pieces of the puzzle were starting to come together. “Is… this… her place?” he said.
“Yes… and I’m Carmelita’s… boyfriend. We started off as roommates, but it kind of grew from there. Our regular flings with her putting me inside her boots kind of touched off to us sharing this bedroom. It then got slightly romantic recently.” George said. 
Sly realized he may have complicated his relation to Carmelita even further. “Listen, I was merely taking advantage of the situation to fake amnesia. I wasn’t trying to rip you off.” Sly said.
“Don’t worry about it. You know her work personality, right? All relationships with thieves would on the rocks anyways.” George said. 
Sly remained composed. He knew a relationship with Carmelita was nice, but not a necessity. Considering the new facts, it would be so much more complicated to start now. “I’ll live with it.” Sly said. “I’ll be heading out now. You’re a lucky man, George. Cherish the hours you have with her. I know I would.”
Sly headed for the window, giving a salute to George on his way out. “I’m coming home, mom and dad.”
Sly climbed the pipe up to the roof and the power poles and silently walked the power lines away from the house. George was conflicted in his emotions. He was happy he brought Sly’s parents back to life, but felt bad he had essentially told him that Carmelita was taken.
It was 6AM already. Dawn was rising on a new day. George could see the early morning twilight of the sun about to rise over the city. Just as George was about to catch a deep breath, the doorbell rang.
It had only been an hour since Carmelita left. Unless she was told there was no work at the detachment, it would be very odd that she would return this early.
George went down the stairs to the front door. He opened it to find a female mouse in a yellow jumpsuit with purple skin. George greeted her with some uncertainty.
“Can I help you?” George said.
“This is it. The precise coordinates… where it all started.” The mouse said. “Is this George’s house?”
“Yes…” George was feeling less and less secure about himself the more he talked to the mouse.
“You…” The mouse tensed up and started to grin. “You’re the reason she’s gone!”
The mouse in a fit of raw emotion grabbed George by his shirt and began to shake him while walking forwards into the house. “I’ve been looking this whole time to disband the Cooper clan to prevent it from happening, but who knew you were the one to set everything off!?”
George was caught completely off guard by the sudden hostility. “Uhhhh…” George said before he was cut off again by the mouse.
“She was my best buddy. We were supposed to stop Neyla and The Rat Baron together. She disappeared in that white orb he fired…” The mouse paused, and started to tear up. She loosened her grip slightly. “I couldn’t find a single molecule of her afterwards. She was gone.”
George was clueless… was this a patient from a psych ward that recently escaped to find him? “Lady, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” George said. “What did I have to do with your best friend?”
A sudden mental shock came over her, as if she had encountered a vision of who she lost. She loosened her grip completely. The tears came swiftly and she collapsed on the floor.
George tried to console her. “Calm down, take some deep breaths.” He reached a hand for her hand and grabbed it to sit her down on the living room couch. The tears stopped as George took one of her hands and sat next to her. “Start from the beginning. What’s your name?”
“Penelope.” She replied. “I’m from the year 2020.” Noticeably calmer, she was still wiping the tears away onto her jumpsuit.
George wasn’t going to discount her. Many time paradoxes sometimes worked themselves out to be a fixed path some people follow in the time continuum. George went to the kitchen and got a glass of orange juice for him and Penelope and both sat down on the sofas in the living room.
“The one you lost, who was she?” George said.
“Her given name was Kay Cooper.” Penelope said, after finishing her sip of the orange juice. “She went by another family name before Sly adopted her. According to the timelines, Sly enters retirement next year due to an event that made him reconsider his perspective on life… according to his personal diary, which Kay had electronic access to.”
George knew the consequences of going back in time would alter the present in the way that he expected, but he never expected to alter the far future 6 years down the line.
Penelope continued. “Even though she was not of Cooper blood… at least… I think she wasn’t… Kay learned from the Thievius Raccoonus all of her father’s moves. Kay approached me to be to partner up to stop Neyla. We were trying to stop her from activating a replica of Clockwerk she had built.”
George had to stop on that note, since he was around when Carmelita smashed “The Hate Chip” with her boot. “Whoa, stop right there. I was around when “Constable Neyla” became Clock-La. You’re saying she did it twice?” George said.
“Neyla’s from the future, just like me. All the events that brought me here took place in 2020.” Penelope said. “The Clockwerk that she built in the future was her first one. All the parts were fabricated from ancient blueprints she had gathered. She flew a fleet of unmanned drones to carry the replica to the correct altitude, and she had help in convincing people through a crowd-funding campaign to spread the word about a food flavor enhancer, which turned out to have the same hate-inducing effect as spice.”
Penelope showed mission briefing photographs she had kept hidden to prevent timeline pollution. One showed Constable Neyla constructing the parts in a warehouse, another showed the drone test flights she had done, and a third photo showed a labeled powder container with a purple tiger insignia.
“She said it was important to the Coopers that Clockwerk must not be revived. We set out the night she was about to activate the machine and physically disabled her drones in-flight. The parts couldn’t activate because it had a non-genuine hate chip.” Penelope said. “The parts crashed into the museum of natural history, and Neyla had to resort to “Plan B.” That’s when she travelled to the past, to steal the parts to do the same deed, with Arpeggio’s help of course.”
“So, that would be the end of it, right? You stopped Neyla from wrecking the future and forced her to return to the past?” George said.
“No, her second plan was worse. By the time everything had happened, we found out she had an assistant by the name of “The Rat Baron.” He was researching inaudible hypnotic frequencies that could be hidden in television and radio transmissions. The flavor enhancer had become wildly popular in the months before she did her stunt, but we were clueless as to why people weren’t affected by it until that one night. Turns out it was activated by an inaudible noise inserted into the soccer match people were watching at the time.” Penelope explained. “His research had been advanced enough that he was controlling everyone like zombies a month after Neyla left”.
While Penelope was talking, George was busy on his phone researching the future he had set into motion. George didn’t like peeking into the future, but pulled up through subspace internet on his phone a photo from 2030. The old city was already in ruins, but a new mile high self-sustaining city had been built within a decade of Penelope’s time frame. George showed the photo to Penelope. “What do you make of this, Penelope?”
“That’s… a sky city… in 2030? I thought it was a theoretical project. It would normally take half a century to build something that big.” Penelope said.
George jumped back 5 years. His temporal photo viewer was no ordinary photo viewer. Population statistics were also in view to coincide with the photos. His city had dropped 2/3rds in population since the towering city finished construction. The photo was of the last green space being completed on the very top platform.
“This is bad… If the towers do get completed, our city will suffer a huge cull of population.” George said.
“Which was why me and Kay tried to stop him… we knew the results would drastically affect this city, then the rest of the world.” Penelope said. “Kay was sent to his hideout in the same warehouse Neyla once held, but despite making sure she didn’t get detected, she ended up disappearing in that orb before she was going to make her strike on him.”
George scrolled further back in photos, and found one particularly interesting: “Bio-mechanical rat consciousness suit.”
“I think I may have just found what you’ve been looking for… Attacking the source may bring Kay back, Penelope.” George said. He handed his phone over to Penelope, who saw the photo of the prototype bio-mechanical suit Neyla had constructed.
Penelope gasped. A newfound joy came in her eyes as she handed the phone back to George. “I never knew the Rat Baron was a machine! Please take me there. I could sabotage the machine to bring Kay back!” Penelope said excitedly.
George wasn’t sure at first. Another time travelling event could trigger something completely unexpected. He looked through the app again to see if anything that resembled a 2nd Penelope showed up. The app didn’t show any signs of the 2nd Penelope… Perhaps she kept a low profile to her other self?
“Doesn’t look like there’ll be consequences of you jumping to that time.” George said. “Alright... Can I have your assurance you won’t be detected?”
“I evaded being caught multiple times. More recently, got out of the cell after being locked up for being an associate of Le Paradox.” Penelope said. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll evade Neyla.”
George pressed the “open portal” button on his phone with it being pointed directly at Penelope. In a flash of light, a portal appeared for which beyond it was pure white. Penelope came to George’s side, took a hand and raised his chin. 
“Wish me luck.” She said. She jumped through the portal and it closed in once she entered it. She was gone.
The phone vibrated. Was it Carmelita from the detachment, or was this something else? The message was a subspace message… That did not sound good. How did someone find his subspace phone address? It was a secret to everyone but E and himself… until he saw the EXIF data. It was the same model of phone he owned, communicating a message at a specific time in the time continuum. If it was a counterfeit of his, it’s a good enough one to pinpoint when Penelope jumped to the future again.
It was a photo… a selfie by the looks of it… dated 2020. Neyla had rigged the unconscious Penelope to the Rat Baron machine. The message that came with the photo said. “I’m prepared for time travelers messing up my plans.”
George dropped the phone directly onto the living room table. The screen shattered from the fall, and it chipped the center glass portion of the table badly too. “Damn it! Penelope was trapped inside that Rat Baron!” George exclaimed.
The phone’s self healing mechanism kicked in, but George picked it up mid repair to try to find a timebase to lock onto. The digitizer was still busted, and it wasn’t registering his touches.
“Come on, come on… Don’t fail on me now…” George said to his busted phone.
The digitizer finally started working again. He found a photo of The Rat Baron’s lair, and proceeded to send it’s coordinates to the time travel app. Its targeting sensors were completely messed up, and couldn’t get a lock at all. The repair ETA it gave was 5 minutes.
George took this time to collect his thoughts. He knew full and well he had the ability to take on this villain. But the thought of failure clouded his mind too, and so he took a sticky note from the kitchen and wrote a note to Carmelita in case of his failure.
3 minutes passed as the audible ding of the app saying repairs were complete had set off. Without thinking, George took the phone and pressed the “Open Portal” button. “I’m coming, Penelope. I’ll save both you and Kay at the same time.” George said. He leapt into the portal, carrying his phone with him.

That night, Carmelita returned home rather early. “George, I’m home.” She said, but no one answered from upstairs. She then saw the sticky note George had made:
“Carm, I’m going away to save friends in need. If I don’t arrive back within 15 minutes of you coming home, lie in my spot on the bed and talk to my buddy.”
Carmelita sat down, slightly confused at the wording. She had never slept on his side of the bed before, so this would mark the first time she could take over his spot.
15 minutes passed… no flashes of light, no doorbells signaling he had come home. Carmelita went back up to their room and did as directed, lying down on George’s spot of the bed. She then heard that familiar geekish voice George was newly accustomed to, but Carmelita was frightened slightly by.
“How’s it going, man?” E said. Carmelita let out a slight scream before laying back down to talk to E.
“Yeah, it’s Carmelita. Where did George go? He said he would be back within 15 minutes of me coming home. I know him, he’s 100% punctual.” Carmelita said.
“Whoa. I never expected you to learn how to communicate using the link. Let’s see… a scan of recent space time showed he jumped to the year 2020, and then… no results…” E said. “Oh no.”
Carmelita’s concern rose. “Is he… where did he go after that?” she said.
“I can’t find him in this universe after that. I’ll try searching other ones…” E said as he furiously tapped his mechanical keyboard. “He’s in none of my visible universes…”
Carmelita covered her mouth. Was he truly gone? Did the little fox she flattered all these years finally disappear from her?
“I’m sure it wasn’t intentional, Carmelita. He went to fight a villain and he didn’t succeed by the sounds of it.” E said.
“Little buddy… please come back to me…” Carmelita said. A single tear came down her eye, as she returned to her normal spot on the bed, severing the connection to E.

The warehouse was immense, and protected by the looks of higher than normal amounts of junction boxes scattered around the building. George had arrived outside to finally put the Rat Baron to an end and save Penelope and Kay.
He was obviously not entering the building at his normal 5’ 9’’ size. He had made a scan with his fully healed phone and detected many different sensors far beyond the time period he was in. The vent system was the only thing with avoidable security, so naturally that’s where he went first.
Shrinking in size, the ducts only had invisible mesh beams of intruder protection on the bottom facing side. All George had to do was evade the diagonal beams by moving upside down on the top face of the duct system. Easy enough for now, as he made his way to the warehouse’s head office where the Rat Baron was doing his work.
When George slipped through the grill of the air vent into the room where The Rat Baron was busy on a computer, something felt off. The smell of ozone filled the air, as if a lightning storm had passed through the area. George had no time to check the little details. He just had to get the sabotage done and get Penelope out, and hopefully stop Kay from being blasted into non-existence.
George gently slid down a cord leading from a light on a shelf close to the vent. He walked carefully to the chair where the Rat Baron was sitting, careful not to step on the tail of the 7 foot tall rat. He was in the crawlspace below the desk now, looking up to the rat clothed in full denim in his pants and his shirt. George didn’t have a thing for rat paws, but stood next to them nevertheless.
The thing was entirely organic on the outside… there was no entry point to his circuitry to rescue Penelope… The indirect approach wasn’t going to work.
George kept thinking, but a giant hand reaching down told him his time was up. The rat firmly grasped George and he was unable to move at all. The rat spoke in an Irish accent to George. The speech synthesis was far more advanced than anything he had ever heard from present time frames.
“Sneaking up on people always fails when your phone is on…” said The Rat Baron. He twisted his hand to show George his computer. It showed a “Hero alert: Under your desk.” How could be so stupid? The radios were all on and a simple EM scan would have given him away. His phone turned out to have spelled his own demise.
The Rat Baron continued. “You’re 5 minutes late. I’ve already taken care of your friend.”
George was being squeezed so tight that he couldn’t even speak. He wasn’t going down like this, not to him, not to anyone. In a last ditch effort, he spit in The Rat Baron’s face. It was a futile effort, as that was his only weapon. The Rat Baron wiped the spit off.
“I’d expect people coming in guns a blazing, but 2 unarmed heroes in one day? That’s quite sad.” The Rat Baron then proceeded to show the Cooper family cane he snatched from Kay. He threw it away and waved his free hand at George. “So long, hero number 2.”
The Rat Baron took his free hand and covered up George’s entire body. Darkness enveloped him, but then a sudden flash of light and the feeling of nothingness came over him. George had suffered the same fate as Kay. He was no more in this universe, consciousness and molecules floating between the multiverses, being guided to a new beginning elsewhere.
THE END?