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  • vonBoomslang

    That’s a novel use of mind-reading. I love it.

  • Markus

    Apparently Patrick is of the opinion that Allison treats time travel the way ‘cool’ moms treat underage drinking.

  • Darkoneko Hellsing

    Patrick, that ref to her talk with Paladin… won’t be well received I’m afraid. Especially after what she said about Templar.

    • StClair

      … whoa. I missed that callback.

    • Insanenoodlyguy

      This is going to end in time traveling murder robots, I just know it.

      • Ryan

        They’ll travel back in time and kill themselves during pivotal historical events.

        • Ian Osmond

          Often, in hilarious reenactments of Monty Python sketches. In fact, it turns out that many pivotal figures in the Dada movement are actually time-travel “murder” bots; they end up throughout history being usually shunned and driven away, but occasionally respected as holy mystics, humorous social commentators, or artists. Time-travelling comedian AIs turn out to be pivotal figures in Zen Buddhism, among the Cynics in Athenian philosophy, several holy-fool saints revered by the Catholic Church, heyokas in tribes in the American Southwest, and also Will Rogers.

  • Kyle Brand

    Better the devil you know, I suppose.

  • Balthazar

    “Don’t you feel comfortable knowing it will happen in my lab and not someone else’s?”

    First: A former villain with access to time travel seems like a good premise for a sci-fi action comedy.

    Second: Was that a dig at Paladin? Not cool bro, not cool.

  • ashdraws

    Nope!

  • Sage Catharsis

    This.

  • What, is Patrick in a who-can-instantiate-the-worst-apocalyptic-idea contest with Lisa/Paladin? Is there mad scientists working on “grey goo” and “zombie rage-virus” that we haven’t encountered yet?

    • Classtoise

      “Alright, Patrick, you’ve got time travel, Lisa you’ve got grey goo. Anyone else? I had an idea about a patient of mine going nuts and we have to evacuate the planet.” “I had one involving hyper intelligent radioactive pigs, but it’s more in the planning stages…*OIIIINK*QUIET DOWN IN THERE!”

    • the grey goo scenario was denounced by its original author. Nanotech is the way of the future.

      • That’s what the nanobots *want* you to think. It’s easier to disassemble a complacent population for their constituent organic molecules if they’re not running about in a frothing panic. Heat issues being, after all, the besetting sin of nanotechnology…

        • hard for something that’s mostly theoretical at the moment to think

  • Michael Corley

    You’d think she’d be more open with all she has seen, but then time travel is a pretty big pill to swallow.

  • Jack Lostthenames Warren

    Evil stretching is the new evil monologuing.

  • Ramsey Hong

    Doesn’t matter who does it, time travel is always a BAD idea.

    • Worst case scenario, you just tell yourself not to do it. What could go wrong?

    • Tylor

      I disagree, it seems to be an effective way to stop space parasites. So long as you don’t mind accidentally creating nonsensical parallel universes.

    • Marc Whipple

      If we have learned ONE THING from the Marvel Universe, it’s that both Franklin Richards and Scott Summers are unbearably annoying. But if we have learned TWO things, the second one is this:

      “Time travelers are bad news.”

      • Kid Chaos

        Don’t forget the Flash (DC Universe), whose experiences with time-travel have always been horrible.

        • StClair

          That has as much to do with God (i.e., the Editor who dictates his life) being a bastard who seems to agree with the character of Zoom – that you can’t be properly heroic without a tragic angsty backstory. :p

  • RollingMan

    Patrick! Don’t stretch cold muscles! Don’t you know that only increases your chances of injury? And keep your back straight and your core engaged, for heaven’s sake! Maybe you should be studying up on kinesiology before trying to tackle closed timelike curves.

    Hold up…why is Patrick investigating time travel? Is he perhaps trying to go back in time to save the murdered world-saving biodynamics? Or perhaps he has a more personal motivation….

    • Shino

      Maybe it’s generic-as-fuck plot where he hopes to help younger himself success in taking over the world as Menace, hence having resources necessary to save said biodynamics?

      • That wouldn’t work. I think they all died before Menace was around.
        Now, faking their deaths and then bringing them to the future, that could work. That could change the world.

        • Shino

          Didn’t Patrick start being Menace like, just after everyone’s powers started showing up?

          • I think that the killings also happened really quickly. As in, before everyone’s powers showed up. Somehow.

          • Shino

            That’s… that’s impossible. These people were killed BECAUSE of their powers. This couldn’t be achieved without some ability to read the future, which again would be impossible BEFORE the superpowers have showed up.

      • spriteless

        Young-Menace could download all the memories of Old-Menace, couldn’t he? That would be a quick lesson on how to leverage all the knowledge as well as the knowledge.

      • MrSokar

        Or it could be the “I was the killer all along and didn’t know it” plot. Patrick goes back to find his future time-traveling self is behind the murders in the past. Who new who to kill because he already has the files on all of them.

        • Shino

          I thought Menace’s ideology is one of biodynamic domination? I mean, it’s more of a guess, but he DOES have some followers, so I assumed it was about takeover of biodynamics to change the world. Which would be also reason why he stopped being a supevillain when he learned about the plot, since he now had clear ‘opposite side’ and they were hiding, so he decided to hide too.
          Okay, so this is mostly conjecture though.

    • Rich

      The saddest thing about being a telepath is knowing that she’s thinking about offering you a back rub and deciding against it because you flinched at a hand touch back in the motel room and now she’s afraid you’ll always react that way no matter what and who needs that kind of rejection…

      • Classtoise

        “Alison, I would indeed like a backrub but first you’re going to have to drop that ‘what if I accidentally fold him in half’ thought. It’s very disconcerting. Especially since you just dropped the ‘accidentally’.”

    • KatherineMW

      I’d bet you’re right that he wants time travel to save the biodynamics who were genuinely able to change the world for the better.

  • Kid Chaos

    Not inspiring a lot of confidence here, Patrick.

  • MrSing

    He’s, of course, joking. They are merely working on a way to stop him from looking so damn smug.

  • Kittenbot Doomypants

    All digs at Paladin aside… Maybe Patrick’s right. Maybe it IS better done in his lab. Would these discoveries/experiments be better solved/done in, say, the government’s labs? For example, the government that seemingly knows about Moonshadow’s killings and is letting them go on, possibly encouraging them? Or maybe part of it is just Patrick’s guilty conscience. He wants to fix the wrongs he did. Or maybe he’s still evil and not telling anyone. 🙂

  • S.I. Rosenbaum

    no, “fuck you” would be my immediate response to someone working on time travel.

    • True. I think she means it as a kinda ‘no shit, really?’ thing.

      Alternatively she knows the risks, and it’s ‘fuck you for being really stupid’.

  • Markus

    Have it so that he repeatedly threatened the planet with death rays in the past and call it ‘Minute to Twelve’ after the Doomsday Clock. I think it works better as an action thriller shot in a close third person with no narration. There’s already danger in every different time period for him: the far past he risks grandfather paradoxing himself, the recent past he’s a known supervillain and past-him could easily end up accidentally killing him, in the present his old rogues gallery of allies is pissed off at him. Maybe he’s also trying to prevent some sort of superpowered apocalypse? Give it a sort of time-period-of-the-week format where he has smaller weekly plans that end up culminating in larger plans from season to season, with special stuff for sweeps week obviously.

    Hell, that sounds like an Emmy winner when you pitch it like that.

    • Ian Osmond

      BEFORE Twelve? It’s time travel — “Doomsday Clock: Quarter Past Midnight”

      • Markus

        That’s the name of the movie you make after six seasons.

  • TheGonzoMD .

    I think what Patrick’s getting at is that these people are currently working on time travel in a hyperrealistic mindscape created by him. So yeah, that is a lot safer than Paladin’s strategy of poking artificial intelligence to see what it does over and over.

    • Ian Osmond

      As far as I know, Menace CAN’T project mindscapes. The only thing he can do is read minds: he can’t send thoughts. People BELIEVE that he can project thoughts and do mind control, because it’s easier to accept that “the Devil made me do it” than “I did it myself.” All he can do is talk to people. But since he knows what people actually truly WANT, he’s really, really good at manipulating them.

  • I laughed my ass off just now. Thank you for reminding me of this guy.

  • This would be a really good place for an Inception reference.

  • Caravelle

    What I don’t get is why those people all seem so damn uncomfortable. If it’s a long-term thing (and not a “okay, we’ll have our sleep telepathy hour now” thing) then why aren’t they in beds ? Or at least all lying horizontally on the floor ? And if it’s a short-term thing, why the sleeping bags ?

    • StClair

      Pretty sure Patrick had his minions grab them all up, sedate them, bag them, and bring them by so that he could “pick their brains”. This way, with them kept separate and unaware of each other’s research, he’s the only one that gets the full picture.

  • Kid Chaos

    “With your powers combined, I am Captain Planet!”

    • Wikimancer

      “… in that I have assimilated the material of the entire planet and given myself the rank of captain.”

      • Kid Chaos

        That’s “Captain Galactus”, not “Captain Planet”.

        • Wikimancer

          Galactus eats planets. I was referring to the AI’s future use of the material of Earth for its own ends.

  • StClair

    IMO – nope, see above. He’s having them each work the problem independently, and from time to time, “collects” them so that he can “harvest” their research progress, and so that he’s the only one who has the full picture. Information security.

  • JeremyP

    I just don’t understand what she sees in him…

    • Wikimancer

      But he does! 😉

      • Darkoneko Hellsing

        Or does he ?

        • Wikimancer

          Well, he can read her mind, so yeah, I’d think so. 😉

          • Darkoneko Hellsing

            Reading isn’t necessary truly understanding, tho.

  • Classtoise

    Doctor Who time travel is actually pretty straight forward! The only thing timey-wimey explains is why time travel is POSSIBLE, not what it does (i.e it’s not a strict linear progression, as he says. Not a straight line. It’s more a tapestry. Meaning lines cross and loop back all the time.)

    • Shade

      Manly Guys Doing Manly Things explains it even better: the less you think about it, the better it works, since we all know the technology runs off bullshit in the first place.

  • As much as I would love to have cooler museums and more accurate history books, this sounds like a horrible idea