Saturday, January 12, 2019

Goodbye, Harry Hembock.


Harry Hembock Diamond.

Part 1:
Goodbye, Harry Hembock.


2019.
In a parallel dimension of the Harry Hembock graphic novel universe where everything was the same in every microscopic detail, except that Harry Hembock had cornflakes instead of Cheerios one day, Harry Hembock monitored an anomaly on his teleporter console.

He tuned into the anomaly, and set up a counter-frequency to block it.
Then, he set up a block to the block, and scanned through it order to tune into the source of the anomaly without being scanned back.

He saw various others of his dimensional counterparts getting beamed up, and merged into one.
Then, that one bouncing all around the timeline of the Jade-Shade universe, until he cobbled together a semblance of a happy ending for those characters.

This Harry thought he could do better.
But, he'd have to go further back.
He tuned into that dimension, and set the time coordinates back to 1975.


1975.

Harry materialized in a foggy swirl of colors and shapes.
No sense of up or down, left or right, time or location.

He was in a haze of baby memories.

Before the Harryverse was formed.


1977.

The baby became a kid, and a space movie by that THX guy from Modesto finally pierced the fog.
Thankfully, the distorted sense of time made the transition from '75 to now seem like a few mere moments.

Harry concentrated, and manifested himself (in the kid's mind) into an action figure from the movie.
"The brown haired one", he decided.
It would be close enough.


1978-1980.

The kid's interests shifted over to a show about a green comic book monster.
The kid did crappy crayon scribble drawings of this monster.
The Harryverse was born.

Harry concentrated, and as the action figure, stepped into the paper-verse, and stood next to the scribble monster.

The kid would process it as a dream, and then forget it all.

"So, you're how it starts", Harry said to the creature.
Harry morphed from an action figure of the movie space pirate, to an action figure of himself, to just himself.
His reality was re-solidifying the closer to the mainline Harryverse he got.

The creature merely answered with a confused "ruh?".

Harry whipped out the remote for the teleport from an unseen pocket, opened a compartment, popped out a small stick-on transmitter patch, and slapped it onto the crayon scribble monster.
He pressed a few buttons on the remote, and they both de-materialized.


1981.

Harry and the scribble monster materialized next to a jellybean with stick arms and stick legs.
It was Jellybean-Man.

"Hi, I'm Jellybean-Man!!", said Jellybean-Man in a high squeaky voice.

"Yeah...I...I gathered", Harry mumbled.

He then pointed to the scribble monster, and said "this is a scribble version of...The Prodigious Mass, so...call him Scribble-Mass I guess, and I'm Harry Hembock".

"Hi!!", Jellybean-Man said while waving one of his stick arms.

Harry slapped a fruit sticker sized teleport tag on Jellybean-Man, and he dissolved, along with Harry and Scribble-Mass.


1981, mere months later.

Harry, Jellybean-Man, and Scribble-Mass materialized next to a hawk with a little cloth chest covering like a shirt. On the shirt was a chest shield, and on the chest shield was the letter "T".

The bird cawed.
Harry ran the caws through the translator on his remote, and up popped a line of text saying "I am Tuperbird! Super plus "T"! The "T", is for "tough!"".

"Of course it is", mumbled Harry.

He tagged the bird, and the four of them de-materialized.


1982.

Harry, Jellybean-Man, Scribble-Mass, and Tuperbird materialized next to an anthropomorphic 5-pointed star in a superhero costume.
This was Superstar.

"Superstar! Now we're talking! We're getting close now!", Harry exclaimed with relief.

Superstar made a confused face, and went to say something, but Harry tagged him, and the 5 of them dissolved.


1983.

Harry, Jellybean-Man, Scribble-Mass, Tuperbird, and Superstar materialized next to a video game blip of a chomping mouth vomiting profusely.

Harry recognized this creature as "Pucky".

Harry slipped Pucky an anti-nausea pill from another unseen pocket, and the creature slowly felt better.

He tagged Pucky, and the 6 of them were gone.


1983-again.

Harry, Jellybean-Man, Scribble-Mass, Tuperbird, Superstar, and Pucky materialized next to a row of teeth with red arms and legs weilding a giant toothbrush with foaming toothpaste coating the bristles.
This was Supersmile.

They were inside a giant mouth that had been attacked by plaque monsters.
The monsters were coated with the same foaming toothpaste as the brush, and were laying dead on the pink squishy ground.

Supersmile seemed to instantly recognize an act of teleportation when he saw it, and immediately said to Harry "get me out of this nightmare Hellscape!".

Harry complied as quickly as was humanly possible, and then there were seven.


1984.

Harry, Jellybean-Man, Scribble-Mass, Tuperbird, Superstar, Pucky, and Supersmile materialized into a character sheet of up to 30 other characters.
All of them terrible rips of other better characters.

They were "The P Team".

Harry said "okay, I think I have enough of you guys to get a quantum lock on this reality now".

Harry tagged the members of the P Team, cross-referenced the quantum signature on all the characters he had so far, and got a unversal signal for this universe.

As he did, a switch in reality was thrown, and a base drew itself around them.
A volcano base complete with teleports, food materializers, computers, holographic rec-rooms, and any other superhero fun gizmo one could think of.

Then a town drew itself around the volcano base.

Then a parallel version of America drew itself around the town.

Then the rest of the Earth filled in.
Then the solar system.
And so on.

The Harryverse was fully formed.

And it had only taken 9 years.
Scrunched down to a few minutes.

Harry tuned his teleport remote to the remote frequency of the base's computers.
He created an up-link, and his teleport back home upgraded the crummy 80's computers to 2019 operating systems.
The upgraded computers tuned the base teleports into functional duplicates of his teleport.

The upgraded teleports reconfigured the base power core from nuclear to anti-matter.

The anti-matter boosted teleports then physically upgraded the base computers from 80's microchip boards to optronic circuits.

This whole process took a minute.

"There we go!", Harry mumbled in satisfaction, and nodded.

He used his remote to take control of the base's teleport, target it outside, found the location of his future house, and replicated it into existence.
Then, he beamed himself there.

And then Harry was back home, full circle.
Original teleport and all.
But, now he was rooted to this universe.

Harry set the teleport to scan the TV news, and make recordings, and then jumped ahead a year.


1985.

Harry appeared, and punched up what the system recorded.
He sped it up and condensed it by running some search algorithms.

The P Team allied themselves with a race of sentient giant robots called "The Roboton Defenders".
The P Team and Robotons were decimated by two evil androids made from Roboton tech combined with black magic.
The evil androids were killed by the US Army upgraded by Roboton tech.
The Army scavenged all the dead Robotons to dissect for even more tech.

Sickened by what they had seen, the P Team started building a starship, and then vanished from all media coverage.

Reports did however pop up of a new superhero in town called Planetary Patrolman.

Harry traced down the projected location of his base, and beamed there.

He arrived at a pile of cut down trees and brush being used as a sort of sideways tree-house.
There was a man playing in the "tree-house", as if it were a base with computers.

The man saw Harry materialize, and nodded as if with recognition.
He then pulled out a sort of flip phone, pressed a few buttons, and the "tree-house", vanished as a holographic disguise revealing a real base with real computers.

"Ah", Harry said relieved that the man wasn't insane.

The man pressed some more buttons on the phone/controller, and he de-cloaked to stand revealed as....Harry.

"Okay, that I didn't see coming", our-Harry said.

"You should have though", other-Harry said.

"How so?", our-Harry said.

"How do you think you intuitively tracked down my coordinates?", other-Harry said.

"Good point", our-Harry said.

"Questions?", other-Harry said.

"Several", our-Harry said.

"Let's have 'em!", other-Harry said.

"Well, for one, when do I become you? And, I'm pretty sure Planetary Patrolman is and was a separate guy in Jade-Shade", our-Harry said.

"You become me in mere moments, and that other Planetary Patrolman has memory implants to think he was me, it's a whole thing".

Other-Harry popped a disk out of his phone/controller, and stuck it to our-Harry's forehead.
Memories flooded in.
Our-Harry instantly understood what do do.

Our-Harry beamed back in time 1 year.
He called up the teleports at the volcano base, and replicated the Planetary Patrolman base, and turned on it's tree-house holo-cloak.
He then holo-cloaked himself as Planetary Patrolman.

As Planetary Patrolman, he stopped several bad guys from destroying the world.

He then found Wayne Vance, and memory implanted him with those adventures.
But, he put a block on them so Wayne thought they were just childhood play.
Until he later as an adult became Commander Continuum.

The year ran out, and his past self materialized, and they had the same conversation all over again, then his past self went back in time again, completing the loop.

Harry pushed some buttons on the phone/controller, and it de-cloaked as his 2019 teleport remote.

He tapped some more buttons, and the control AI, SILICO, morphed back into Omneron.

He tapped away at yet more controls, and the volcano base de-replicated the Planetary Patrolmen base.
It wasn't needed anymore.
He beamed back home.


1985-again.

Harry flashed back.

When he was floating in the baby-void in 1975, he scooped up a gloop of void-stuff into a sample cup, and stuffed it into his pocket.
He still had it.

When he met Scribble-Mass in 1978-1980, he distracted Scribble-Mass with coin magic, and plucked off a frayed crayon line, and put it in another sample cup.
He still had that too.

He pulled out the two sample cups.
He poured the baby-void gloop into the cup with the green crayon line.
The gloop dissolved the line, and turned green.
The green gloop began to move.

Harry put the cup on the floor, and beamed it away.

The cup of green living gloop appeared in a genetics lab.
A lab where Dr. Jonathan Parks happened to be working.

Jonathan Parks noticed the cup, looked at it it, and just then, the gloop jumped out of the cup, and landed on his face.
The gloop began to burn, and he passed out from the pain.

The gloop ate and grew, ate and grew, and completely absorbed Dr. Parks.
In doing so, it absorbed his memories, and became intelligent.

The intelligent gloop beamed away.

It appeared at Harry's house.
It tried to attack Harry.
It was stopped by a force-field.

It morphed a face with red catlike eyes, and a mouth with rows of fangs.
In a gurgly voice, it said "I am Globulus Dahk Grooaarr-aarr! Set me free, that I may destroy!".

Harry smirked, and said "yeah, that's a mouthful of nonsense, I'm just gonna call you Glob".

Harry replicated a brain interface patch, and sent it back in time.

The patch appeared on Dr. Jonathan Parks's forehead. It downloaded the memories of Glob when he was a good guy from Harry's home dimension, then it put up a block, and made Dr. Parks forget the memories on a conscious level. But, they'd be there for Glob to absorb.
Which was the point.

Then, the memory patch vanished, and history happened as it was intended to.

The repressed memories activated in Glob, and he calmed down, and formed into a more humanoid shape.

"Better?", Harry asked.

"Better", Glob said.

Harry dropped the force-field.

"So, what happens now?", Glob asked.

"You? You're going to space. You have an important role to play later", Harry answered.
And with that, Harry beamed Glob to the volcano base where they were still working on that starship.

Harry beamed ahead a year.


1986.

Harry scanned the stored news broadcasts again.

The starship full of superheroes left the Earth.
It was made to look like a hamburger with a hot dog sticking out the back.
Literally.
It was a flying fast food restaurant called the USS Burger-Boy.
The crew decided they needed to make money out in space, so they'd run the ship as a business.
It was either the most stupid idea ever, or genius.
Harry leaned more towards it being the former.

Harry beamed ahead another year.


1987.

Harry checked the news scans.

Burger-Boy dropped off Glob, he got mutated into a humanoid muscle bound monster with claws, and various other new super beings, cyborgs, and robots emerged.

Harry beamed ahead another year.


1988.

Harry checked the news scans.

Glob formed a team with Superstar called "The Superior Seven", with some of the other mutants, cyborgs, and robots.

Harry beamed ahead another year.


1989.

Harry checked the news scans.

The Superior Seven left on The Burger-Boy, and the Harry of this universe had his "Harry Hembock: Hurt Hero", origin.

Our-Harry beamed into him, and they fused.
1989-Harry gained his memories, and 2019-Harry gained his old self's origin memories and healing factor.

The fused Harry beamed home, and ahead another year.


1990.

Harry used the volcano base one last time to replicate Hembug's body.

He then de-replicated not just the volcano base, but the whole damned volcano.

He then had Omneron duplicate himself, and send the duplicate into Hembug's body to become Hembug with false memories.

He then replicated Spruce's costume, beamed a memory patch with a false origin to the man who would become Spruce, beamed the costume onto him, and beamed him to the house.

He then had Omneron rewrite his own memories with a false origin.

Then, he put a memory patch onto himself to remember only his regular 1989 origin, and subsequent adventures, and the false origins of Hembug, Spruce, and Omneron.


1990-1993.

The adventures that make up "Harry Hembock Classics", and "The Continued Adventures Of Harry Hembock", happened all over again.


1994-1996.

The adventures that make up "Harry Hembock Regurgitations", and "Harry's Finale", occurred all over again.
Ditto "Harry Hembock And The Zone Dweebies".
That one was in 1995.


1997.

A hypnotic trigger finally made Harry's 2019 memories resurface.

He blanked Spruce's memories, and sent him back home.

He ordered Hembug to go out in space, and meet up with the Burger Boy.
As with Glob, he'd need him later.

He then hooked a memory patch to the TV, had Omneron use it to hack all the TVs on Earth, and send a hypnotic signal that erased everyone's memories of everything meta-human or supernatural, and put a memory/sensory block on any evidence anyone ever found about meta-humans and monsters.

This blanked the world of the superhuman to pave the way for Jade-Shade.

He then beamed ahead 8 years.


2005.

Harry caught up on the news, and happily saw there were no meta-humans.
Oh, there were street vigilantes, and mad scientists, but nothing like the old days.

He blanked his memory again, and beamed to the universe of "Nobody Loves Harry Hembock".

The events of "Nobody Loves Harry Hembock", occurred all over again.


2008-2012.

The events of "Nobody Loves Harry Hembock: Dark Designs", occurred all over again.


2013.

A hypnotic trigger re-activated Harry's 2019 memories yet again, and he beamed back home to what would soon become the JS-verse.

He blanked his memories yet again. This time, giving himself the false memories of being an actor playing himself.
This would sort itself out, and he'd become himself anyway.
(Long story, go read it)


2013-2016.

The events of "Jade-Shade/Quantum Dissolve", happened all over again.


2017.

A hypnotic trigger re-activated Harry's 2019 memories yet again, and he beamed back home again.

He beamed ahead 2 years.


2019.

Full circle.
Harry was back to where he started.
But not in his home dimension.
Yet.

Harry opened the console of his teleport in this dimension, and found the diamond that acted as both its focusing element, and hard-drive.

He remote-accessed the teleport in his home dimension, and beamed back to it.
But seconds before his past self left.


2019-again.

Seconds-in-the-past-Harry saw various others of his dimensional counterparts getting beamed up, and merged into one.
Then, that one bouncing all around the timeline of the Jade-Shade universe, until he cobbled together a semblance of a happy ending for those characters.

This Harry thought he could do better.

Through-the-loop-Harry materialized, and said "you can, and here's the data to do it with!".

Through-the-loop-Harry opened the teleport console, and installed the diamond hard-drive next to the one already in there.

He pushed some buttons on his remote, and the data of everything he had done began to process.

Through-the-loop-Harry popped out a memory patch from the remote, and uploaded a copy of his memories into seconds-in-the-past-Harry.

Seconds-in-the-past-Harry nodded, and said "ah, it's so easy. I should have done that to begin with".

"But you needed the whole scope of the timeline to find the needle in the haystack", said through-the-loop-Harry.

Seconds-in-the-past-Harry tuned into the JS dimension, and set the time coordinates back to 1975.
Again.


1975.

Harry materialized in a foggy swirl of colors and shapes.
No sense of up or down, left or right, time or location.

He was in a haze of baby memories.

Before the Harryverse was formed.

He pulled out the sample cup again, and took a scoop of baby-void gloop.

He popped out a memory tag, uploaded a copy of Omneron's core program into it, and plopped it into the gloop.

The gloop dissolved the chip, and turned all blue and sparkly.

He tossed the cup into the void.
The void ate the Omneron-gloop, and the blue sparkly energy spread until the whole void was blue.
In giant scale, Harry could see the sparkles were swarms of binary code.

Omneron's face formed from the code.

There was a flash, and then....


2019.
Omneron rewrite.

Utopia.
No crime, no poverty, no greed, no pollution, no war, no hunger, no disease, and no warring meta-humans or street vigilantes.

Harry's house was a floating mansion, and he stood on the balcony.

Harry went inside, went online, and read up on history.

Omneron fixed everything all right.
At the expense of freedom.
Or individuality.
Or fun.

"Shit!", Harry whispered.


1986.
A reality exactly the same, except Harry had Lucky Charms instead of corn flakes or Cheerios.

Harry materialized on the bridge of the Burger Boy.

"Where's Glob?", Harry said.

Glob stepped forward "they call me Lieutenant Parks now, and...".

"Yeah, yeah, whatever, it's time for that special job I needed you for", Harry said as he tapped buttons on his teleport remote.

He beamed Glob, and split him into two exact duplicates.

He then beamed away with one of the duplicates.


1975.

Harry and Glob materialized in a foggy swirl of colors and shapes.
No sense of up or down, left or right, time or location.

He was in a haze of baby memories.

Before the Harryverse was formed.

Again.
But this time, a minute before Harry's other self would get there.

Harry gave Glob a shove, and he fell into the void, and got absorbed.
The void turned green.

Harry beamed away.

A minute later, his other self appeared, and added Omneron to the void.
This time, the Omneron and Glob consciousnesses cancelled each other out, and the void turned back to normal.

All was as it was supposed to be again.
Chaos, randomness, messiness, and all.

Original-2019-Harry went through the loop again, and history was restored.


1986.
The reality that would become the JS-verse.

Harry that stole the Glob clone appeared on the bridge of the Burger Boy again.
No one remembered, because it was an adjacent dimension.

He tapped some buttons, and Omneron took over the ship, and flung it into time warp.


1985.

The Burger Boy beamed up all the heroes that died moments before their deaths, and beamed dead-flesh clones in their place.

Ditto the Roboton Defenders.

All the classic heroes lived.
But history maintained its shape.

Burger Boy time warped again.


1987.

Burger Boy beamed down a Glob clone to go found The Superior Seven.

Burger Boy time warped again.


1989.

The Burger Boy beamed up The Superior Seven, and merged the two Globs.

Burger Boy time warped again.


1997.

Burger Boy beamed up Hembug.

Burger Boy time warped again.


2016.

Burger Boy beamed down Hembug, Glob, Jellybean-Man, Scribble-Mass, Tuperbird, Superstar, Pucky, and Supersmile to the big Jade-Shade victory party.

Harry from 2016 was already there.
Ditto Spruce.

Burger Boy docked at Planet Eidolon.

2019-Harry beamed back home with his own teleport.


2019-again-again.

Seconds-in-the-past-Harry tuned into the JS dimension, and set the time coordinates back to 1975.

Through-the-loop-Harry vanished from the history change.

Through-the-loop-again-Harry materialized in his place.

"Well, I was wrong, I couldn't do better than the 2016 Jade-Shade ending", he mumbled.

He opened the teleport console, plucked out the diamond hard-drive from the JS-verse, and beamed it back to the JS-verse.

He then beamed himself back to the JS-verse in 2017.


2017.
JS-verse.

2019-Harry beamed into and fused with 2017 Harry.

This time, he stayed there, and lived out his days.


2019.

Harry retired.
30 years was a good run, he figured.

And it was.


THE END.


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