The console clocks flashed red, numbers dropping fast.
00:15.
Rod's hands flew across the damper controls, every adjustment sending ripples of energy through the system. "You're giving me way too much intake, old man! I can't sync dampers to this surge!"
Rick's voice came over the comm like gravel in a blender. "Then push 'em harder! You want the farm to implode or explode? Pick your poison!"
00:11.
Beth and Diane braced themselves against the railing as the whole room swayed. Overhead, the viewport showed the collector array glowing white-hot, each pulse brighter than the last.
Rod slammed a lever down. "Alright, that's my limit! Dampers locked at ninety-eight percent!"
Rick cursed. "That last two percent's the part that kills us, genius!"
00:07.
Diane's voice cut through the chaos. "You two will fix this—right now!"
Rod shouted back, "Working on it!" and yanked up a secondary control board. "Feeding you my reserve buffer—catch it!"
Rick's hands blurred over the intake controls. "Got it—rerouting… now!"
00:04.
The lights dimmed, the floor plates hummed like they were about to lift off.
Rod yelled, "Mark!"
00:03.
Rick slammed the bypass shut. "Done!"
00:02.
Rod hit the final damper sync, the panels flaring green for the first time since the overload began.
00:01.
A thunderclap of energy rolled through the planet—then everything went still. No shaking. No alarms. The collector array outside spun down to a calm, steady rotation.
00:00.
Beth peeked one eye open. "Uh… did we win?"
Rick leaned back from the console, breathing hard. "Yeah, kid. No fireworks today."
Rod wiped sweat from his brow and looked at the readouts. Stable. Completely stable. "…Hell yeah. We nailed it."
Rick smirked. "Team effort. Don't get used to it."
Rod grinned back. "Don't worry. I won't."
The hum of the systems settled into a steady, almost soothing rhythm. The once-blazing red alarms had faded to a calm blue, and the air smelled faintly of scorched metal cooling down.
Rick slumped against the side of the console, grease streaking the front of his lab coat. Rod was half-sitting, half-collapsed on the nearest step, still catching his breath.
Diane was the first to move, walking over with that purposeful stride only a mother could pull off. "Both of you—sit still."
Rick raised an eyebrow. "Pretty sure we already are."
She ignored him and crouched down beside Rod, brushing a stray bit of ash off his shoulder. "You're pale."
Rod smirked tiredly. "Pale is my default setting, Mom."
Beth bounced over, hands on her hips. "Pale and sweaty. You both look like you crawled out of a garbage compactor."
Rick shot her a look. "And yet somehow, I still look better than you on a good day."
Beth gasped. "Wow. Even after saving your wrinkly butt, I get insults?!"
"Beth," Diane warned. "Not now." She turned back to Rick, who tried to wave her off as she tugged at his sleeve. "Let me see your hands."
"They're fine—"
She took them anyway, turning them over. "Burn marks. Of course." She sighed, softer this time, then glanced over at Rod. "And you—when's the last time you drank water?"
Rod frowned. "…Define 'water'?"
Beth threw her hands up. "Oh my god, they are like overworked mechanics. One more emergency and they'll start smelling like one."
Diane chuckled despite herself, getting to her feet. "Stay here. I'll get drinks before one of you falls over."
Rod leaned back against the step and let out a long breath. Rick glanced over at him, smirking faintly. "Well. We didn't blow up your planet. Call that a win?"
Rod's smile was small but real. "…Yeah. Call it a win."
Diane brushed her hands on her jeans and glanced around. "You two have a kitchen in this… planet-sized science fair of yours?"
Rod pointed down one of the side halls. "Third door on the left. But the fridge might be holding a grudge after the last experiment."
She gave him that look only a mother could—half suspicion, half amusement. "I'll take my chances."
Beth skipped after her. "I'll help! And by help, I mean taste-test."
When they disappeared down the corridor, the room went quiet except for the faint whir of cooling systems. Rod sat there, elbows on his knees, staring at the still-steady readouts. Rick fiddled with a burnt wire for no reason at all.
A few minutes later, Diane returned, balancing a tray with four tall glasses of something bright and cold. She set them down on the nearest console and passed them out—Beth instantly gulping hers like she'd been stranded in a desert.
"Here," Diane said, handing one to Rod. Her hand lingered on his for just a moment—enough for him to feel that unspoken warmth, the kind that used to greet him when he came home from a trip as a kid.
He tried to smile without letting it show too much, but the truth settled in his chest: he'd missed this. Missed her. The simple act of her putting a drink in his hand was heavier than anything they'd done today.
When she passed Rick his glass, he took it without meeting her eyes, covering the motion with a casual, "Wow, service on this planet's really gone downhill. Used to get snacks with my drinks."
She rolled her eyes, smiling faintly. "Drink it before it warms up."
Rod glanced at Rick over the rim of his glass. The old man's mouth curled in that lopsided smirk, but there was something softer under it—something he wasn't going to say out loud. Not now. Maybe not ever.
Beth set her empty glass down with a loud clink and leaned back in her chair. "Sooo…" She glanced between Rod and Rick like she was about to drop a nuclear question. "When you guys were in the river of time—did you see me naked?"
Rod almost choked on his drink. "What?! No! Why would you—what the hell, Beth?!"
Rick didn't even flinch, sipping casually. "Only in the embarrassing 'you're-two-years-old-and-running-around-the-house' way. Relax."
Beth narrowed her eyes. "You answered way too fast, Dad. Suspicious."
Rod set his glass down hard. "Why is that your first question after literally being saved from a time death bomb?!"
She shrugged. "You two looked all emotional, so I thought I'd ruin it before you start hugging again."
Diane pinched the bridge of her nose, muttering, "Young lady…"
Beth smirked, clearly satisfied at the derailment. Rick shot her a half-smile. "Kid, you're a menace. Proud of you."
Rod groaned. "She's your kid."
Beth folded her arms, leaning forward like an interrogator. "Alright, so what exactly have you two been doing while Mom and I were… you know… not here?"
Rod blinked. "What do you mean 'exactly'? That's like asking 'what did you do since you were born?'"
Beth grinned. "Then start from when I died. Make it quick, I'm timing you."
Rick scoffed. "You think I'm gonna summarize years of adventures and trauma like it's a book blurb? No thanks."
Beth pointed at him. "Dodging the question. Suspicious."
Rod rubbed his temples. "You were gone for years, Beth. We fought aliens, stole from gods, rewrote time in three different universes—"
"Got drunk on a planet where gravity gets you high," Rick added, like it was an important bullet point.
Beth tilted her head. "Okay, but which one of you crashed that pink hover-limo into a space church?"
Both of them froze.
Rod slowly turned to Rick. "…You told me you crashed it."
Rick shrugged. "Yeah, well, you were drunk enough to believe me."
Beth burst out laughing. "Oh my god, you're both disasters."
Diane, sitting back with her drink, smiled faintly. "At least they're honest disasters."
Beth leaned closer, eyes narrowing with mock suspicion. "What about relationships? Any alien girlfriends? Robot boyfriends? Married a planet?"
Rick rolled his eyes. "I'm not getting into my dating history with my kid."
Rod, smirking, added, "But I can tell you about that one queen from—"
Rick cut him off instantly. "Don't. You. Dare."
Beth's laughter filled the room, bouncing off the walls and breaking the last of the tension.
Beth was still giggling, throwing mock-accusations at Rick and Rod, when Diane finally set her glass down and cleared her throat. "Alright, fun's over. We need to talk about… what's next."
Rick groaned. "Can't we at least have a post-victory nap before you start scheduling existential decisions?"
Diane gave him that patient-but-unmoving look. "No. Because you've brought us back, but you haven't told me where exactly you plan to put us."
Rod shifted, suddenly very aware of her eyes on him too. "Well, there's… options."
Rick spread his hands like it was no big deal. "Option one, we drop you in C-131. Pretty standard, no big paradox headaches, nothing fancy. Option two—" he leaned forward slightly "—we set you up in a reality just like C-137… except, you know, that version's running on a time loop I designed and nobody forgot to stop people aging."
Beth blinked. "So like… a Groundhog Day thing but with birthdays?"
Rick sighed. "Sure, kid. That's the simplest way to put it."
Beth tilted her head. "Cool. I'll take the loopy birthday place."
Before anyone could stop her, Rick and Rod both slapped their hands over her ears.
"She doesn't need the full details," Rod muttered.
"Yeah," Rick said. "Let the kid keep thinking it's birthday cake on repeat instead of existential reality maintenance."
Beth wriggled free. "You two are so suspicious."
Diane folded her arms, her tone still calm but edged with unease. "I'm… not sure how I feel about swapping realities. Or loops. Or… whatever you're actually calling this."
Rick met her gaze, his voice softening just a hair. "You won't feel any difference. I promise."
She studied him for a moment, then nodded slowly, though the uncertainty didn't completely leave her eyes.
As she looked away, Rick leaned toward Rod, muttering under his breath, "Make sure you deal with the dead versions of us before she ever finds out."
Rod's eyes flickered with understanding. "Got it."
Beth, catching only the whispering, frowned. "What are you two plotting now?"
Rick straightened, plastering on a smirk. "Nothing, kid. Just making sure your birthday cake is extra fresh."
Rick slipped out of the lounge first, motioning for Rod to follow. They ducked into one of the quieter side corridors, the hum of Rod's star-energy systems filling the silence.
Rod leaned against the wall. "Alright, so… you want me to just delete them? Or are we doing something a little more… ceremonial?"
Rick snorted. "What, you wanna throw them a funeral? Sing Kumbaya? Kid, these are us. Dead us. In the wrong place. They're a giant neon paradox sign screaming at every cosmic busybody to come poke around."
Rod rubbed his chin. "So, vaporize them?"
Rick's lips twitched into a grim smile. "Quick, clean, and make sure nothing—nothing—remains. We dump the remains, data, atoms, and whatever's left into a pocket dimension that eats entropy for breakfast."
Rod whistled. "Overkill much?"
Rick stepped closer, his voice low but sharp. "When it's me—and especially when it's her—there's no such thing as overkill. You want Diane to keep believing this transition's clean? We make it clean."
Rod's eyes narrowed, the usual humor gone for once. "You sound like you've done this before."
Rick didn't blink. "You sound surprised."
A beat of silence.
Rod finally shrugged. "Alright, I'll start prepping the entropy pocket. But you're the one pulling the trigger."
Rick smirked. "Wouldn't have it any other way."
They turned back toward the lounge, the sound of Diane's laughter and Beth's chatter faint in the distance—a reminder of what was at stake, and what couldn't be allowed to crack.
The entropy pocket generator loomed in the center of Rod's secondary lab—a swirling, black-violet vortex in a steel frame, like some sadistic god tried to build a kitchen appliance and gave up halfway through.
Four stasis sheets lined the wall. Four familiar shapes underneath.
Rick's eyes scanned them, his mouth twisting. "Well… nothing says 'Tuesday' like a family death lineup."
Rod yanked back the first sheet—himself. "Man, I look good even when I'm dead."
Rick snorted. "You look like roadkill after a parade. Half your jaw's missing, champ."
Rod shot him a glare. "Says the guy whose corpse looks like it owes the Reaper money."
Beth's tiny form under the next sheet made them both pause. Rod's voice dipped. "She looks… smaller than I remember."
Rick didn't look directly. "She was. Kids don't get the chance to grow when—" He cut himself off, yanking the sheet off Diane's body instead. His face went unreadable. "Alright. Let's make this quick."
Rod coughed, trying to shake off the heaviness. "Right. So… vaporize the entire dead family. Nothing weird about that."
Rick smirked. "Weird is leaving them around long enough for the river of time to throw a fit. We erase them, no paradox, no sniff trail for multiversal busybodies."
Rod raised a brow. "Cold, even for you."
Rick's jaw tightened. "Cold gets the job done."
They loaded the four bodies onto the grav-platform, the stasis fields flickering as the generator's hum deepened. The air around the vortex seemed to bend and shiver, like it was already tasting the paradox.
Rod hesitated, hand over the console. "You ever think about how insane this is? Killing the same people twice?"
Rick didn't blink. "I think about how not doing it would kill them a third time."
That shut Rod up. He slammed the "start" key.
The platform tilted, sliding the bodies into the churning darkness. The vortex rippled hungrily, swallowing the physical, the data, the everything. The lab lights dimmed, and a high, metallic whine filled the air until—snap—silence.
Only the faint smell of ozone lingered.
Rick clapped his hands. "Boom. Problem solved. No paradox, no evidence, no mess."
Rod tilted his head. "And no haunting?"
Rick shrugged. "If there's a ghost version of us out there, it's probably too drunk, too small, or too pissed to bother."
They shared a brief, humorless chuckle before Rod powered down the generator.
Rick slapped his shoulder. "Alright, kid. Let's get back before Beth thinks we ran off to start another space war."
Rod smirked. "Or before Diane figures out we were cleaning up our own corpses. That's a dinner conversation I don't want."
Rick's grin turned sharp. "Then we go back acting exactly like ourselves—loud, chaotic, and completely untrustworthy."
The portal hissed open in the corner of Rod's lounge, and Rick and Rod stepped through like a pair of mechanics trying way too hard to look casual.
Diane was curled up on one of the low couches, a mug cradled in her hands. Her eyes flicked up the moment they entered—just one glance each, but enough to size them up. She didn't know what they'd been doing, but years of living with both of them had trained her to smell trouble before it even knocked.
Rod flashed her a too-wide grin. "Hey, we're back. No disasters, no scorch marks, no 'oops, I destabilized the moon.'"
Beth was sprawled on the rug with a hologame controller, not even looking up. "Yet."
Diane sipped her drink, eyes still on them. "What were you doing?"
Rick slid his hands into his coat pockets like a kid hiding contraband. "Oh, you know—tweaking some systems, running checks. Totally boring, Diane-level safe."
Rod nodded along, almost too fast. "Yep. Safe. Incredibly safe."
Beth finally glanced up, smirking. "You two have the worst poker faces. It's like you're daring Mom to call you out."
Rick pointed a finger at her. "Says the brat who smuggled a plasma blade into the pantry."
Beth grinned wider. "Which you never found until I told you."
Diane leaned back, letting them babble. She didn't press. She didn't need to. The little tightening in her jaw and the faint twitch at the corner of her mouth were the only signs she'd clocked something.
"Anyway," Rod said, clearing his throat, "I'm gonna get snacks. Drinks too."
"Lovely," Diane replied, her tone sweet but her gaze steady.
Rick muttered as they walked toward the kitchen, "She knows."
Rod kept his voice low.
"She always knows. Just don't make it worse."
"You're the one making it worse."
"No, you're the one sweating."
"I'm always sweating!"
- - - - - - - - - -
The Omega+1's hum rose to a teeth-rattling pitch as every linked system strained under the coordinated load—time-loop generators grinding against causality splicers, clone–real-body swaps syncing in fractions of a second, stabilizers screaming to keep the present from ripping open.
The river of time battered against them, folding in on itself like a wounded predator, each wave trying to shove the extraction off course.
The core function of the Omega+1 wasn't just the precision alignment for Diane C-137's recovery—it carried an un-erasure pulse across the multiverse.
Every erased Diane except the one they were stealing from death now surged back into existence, not in the past where they'd been lost, but here, now, in their respective presents. I
t was a loophole—a revival without rewriting history, but with every memory restored to those who had known them.
The ripple didn't discriminate. It went everywhere.
It hit Earth C-131 like a silent shockwave.
Beth stood in her kitchen, mid-sip of coffee, when her vision tunneled and a spike of pain shot through her skull.
"Not again!"
She gripped the counter, jaw clenched, as a flood of memory poured in—her mother's laugh, her voice, the smell of her cooking, the weight of her hand on Beth's shoulder.
Years of life with Diane, a life she'd known she'd lost, returned in perfect detail.
She didn't remember everything. But now, there was no gap—only the certainty that it had been there all along.
Far from that quiet kitchen, on the bridge of a warship riding the edges of hostile space, Space Beth jerked in her seat.
The headache hit her harder, sharp enough to make her eyes water, and then came the same unstoppable flood.
She saw Diane standing at the old house's doorway.
Heard her call her name.
Felt the half-sarcastic, half-sincere advice she'd given over the years.
And deep under it all, the cold realization—this had been stolen from her once.
For both of them, the memory was special in a way they couldn't name.
Prime Rick's Omega Device had erased every Diane in every conceivable reality, and with them, every trace of those lives.
Their C-131 minds had been scrubbed clean, left without the ache of loss because the loss itself had been excised.
Until now.
They both stood frozen in their separate worlds, breathing hard, heartbeats pounding in their ears.
Someone had undone the impossible.
Someone had given their mother back.
And both of them knew who....
"Rod..."
"Big brother..."
At the same time, both muttered, "You succeeded."
- - - - - - - - - -
Do you get any of that?
Wublubdubdubdub!
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