Epilogue
At the end of time, where the universe implodes into itself as all mater and energy dissolves, only to be reborn again in an eternal cycle, there is a sliver of time, frozen by the hubris of one man, all so that he could rule from a point where he can see the entire universe, all that ever was, from the windows of his tower.
In this sliver of time, he erected a fortress, a sinister, towering edifice of disks and spires branching out in all directions, unconcerned with gravity or the dimensions of space, most of which have broken down. It is nearly unassailable, guarded on every approach by the finest weapons technology from a thousand eras.
It is fully automated, for what need does it's master have of company? He long ago decided he was above all his fellow men, when he set out to rule them. For a time, he had kept a few loyal assistants with him, Bonnie, Corky, and Jeff were there names. But their incompetence and repeated failures, as well as their ignorant questions had grown unendurable, and he had decided they had outlived their usefulness.
He had intended to spare Bonnie. He was attracted by her, and might have made her his queen. But she fled into a parallel world after he aged her brother into dust. One day he might go after her, but not now.
After all, there was always more time.
The man once known as Rip hunter was longing in a form-fitting command chair, taken from the 25th century, surrounded by holographic screens. Some monitored his ongoing research projects, others probed the time stream for new threats, or avenues to power. He had a hundred schemes to monitor, all designed to bring history under his rule. In fact, many of his screens featured himself, at different portions of his life, carrying out different stages of the The Plan.
Suddenly, and automated alert sounded, and all the information on the screens changed abruptly.
"Alert! Alert!" the automated voice sounded tonelessly. "Disruption in temporal flow. Probability of Timeline Alpha diminished to 53%."
"What?!" Hunter leaped from his chair in fury, and began hastily redirecting his scanners to back-trace the disruption. Timeline Alpha was the path of history which lead to his domination of time and space. When he had first discovered time travel, he had been barely 10% probable, overwhelmed by a number of other, more likely futures. After subjective years of effort in engineering history, he had raised the probability of that future to 75%. Now much of that work had been suddenly undone.
This could only be the result of a time-traveler. "Who has dared to trespass in the time-stream, my own domain, and interfere with my plans?" he said to himself.
Not understanding a rhetorical question, the computer answered "Identity of time-traveler unknown. Tracing source of disruption now."
Growling with impatience, Hunter dismissed the automatic search. He could do it better on his own. Within half and hour he had determined that the disruption was in the Prehistoric era. Somebody had interfered to prevent David Clinton and the Clock Queen from being stranded in that era. Thus, David Clinton had become the founding father of 20th century temporal research, something that was decidedly contrary to Rip's plans.
But who had done this? His first thought was his old enemy, the Time-Keeper, or possibly his meddlesome daughter Gloriana. But no, they dueled across the ages against him with finesse and subtlety, like a game of multi-dimension chess. This attack was too brazen for the Time-Keeper, too direct.
Could it be that self-proclaimed mega-genius, Brainiac? It would not be the first time he and his Cable of Super-Criminals had stumbled into Rip Hunter's plans and ruined everything.
No, tracing the temporal co-ordinates indicated the time-traveler came, not from the 30th century, but from the 20th. From 1947 specifically.
"Whoever it is who has done this" he swore "will soon face the wrath of the one true Time Master."